good morning or perhaps depending on when you're
watching this good morning or perhaps depending
on when you're watching this in your newly unstructured
existence good afternoon now for 40 years Good
morning, or perhaps if you're watching this in
your newly unstructured existence, good afternoon.
Now for 40 years you've known exactly who you
are. You were the director of regional logistics.
You were a senior analyst in risk compliance.
You were that guy who knew how the legacy AS400
system actually works. You identified Your identity
was printed on a small rectangle piece of cardboard.
It cost a million. Starts again. Good morning,
or perhaps, depending on when you're watching
this in your newly... unstructured existence.
Good afternoon. For 40 years, you've known exactly
who you are. You were director of regional logistics.
You were a senior analyst in risk compliance.
You were that guy who actually knows how the
legacy AS400 system works. Your identity was
printed on a small rectangular piece of cardboard,
usually accompanied by A logo that cost £3 million
to design and looked suspiciously like a mustaka
accidentally drawn by a child. And then came
Friday. There was cake in the break room, store
-bought of course, slightly sweating under a
plastic wrap. People vaguely tolerated signed
a card with a generic well -wishers, secretly
terrified that they were next out the door. So
you hand it in your laptop, your badge, and your
sense of purpose. Now, it's Monday morning. The
alarm didn't go off at 6am. The adrenaline...
The alarm didn't go off at 6am. The adrenal gland,
usually pumping cortisol in anticipation of the
morning commute and the inevitable passive -aggressive
email from HR, is actually dormant. The house
is quiet, ghastly quiet. You walk into the kitchen,
you make a coffee, you sit down, and at 8 .30am,
the precise moment you would usually dial into
the... APAC weekly sync call to listen to someone
explaining why the numbers are down in Singapore,
you realise something profound and terrifying.
You've got absolutely nothing to do. And more
importantly, you've no idea who you are. Today's
video is for the newly retired, those brave souls
like me who have stepped off the corporate hamster
wheel only to realise that they've forgotten
how to walk on solid ground. We're discussing
the crisis of identity that occurs when the professional
mask is removed and the subsequent realisation
that there might not be much of a face beneath
it. Now in Western society, particularly in the
Anglosphere, finance... Now in Western society,
particularly in the Anglosphere... Now in Western
society, particularly in... Now in Western society...
Particularly in the finance and the business
world, we have this grave philosophical error.
We've confused what we do with who we are. Now,
this is understandable. So for decades, the first
question anyone asks you at dinner party is,
what do you do? And that's shorthand for, where
are you in the cycle? Now, a Western society,
particularly in the finance and business world,
we've committed this grave philosophical error.
We've confused what we do with who we are. This
is understandable for decades. The first question
anyone asks you at a social gathering is, and
what do you do? Now, it's shorthand for placing
you in that kind of social hierarchy. It says,
are you useful? Are you important? Do you make
more money than me? When you're working, the
answer's easy. I'm a bond trader. I'm a corporate
lawyer. It's a shield. It's an armor. It tells
the world that you matter because someone's paying
you a salary to occupy a space in an office tower.
But on that first Monday morning of retirement,
the armour's gone. You're like Napoleon on St
Helena. You have the muscle memory of commanding
armies, but your current jurisdiction is arguing
with the seagull over a crust of bread in the
garden. Suddenly, you're just Bob. And Bob is
finding that without that external validation
of a... quarterly review or a team of subordinates
to feign interest in his jokes. Bob is remarkably
a thin concept. The psychological term for this
is enmeshment. Your professional life and your
personal identity have become so intertwined
you can't pull them apart. Not without damaging
the whole structure. You weren't just doing a
job. You were the job. Now, you've spent a lifetime
outsourcing your self -worth to an employer who
would replace you within a week if you dropped
dead at your desk. And now you're receiving...
your self -worth back depreciated like at least
bnw with too many miles on the clock The immediate
reaction to this void on a Monday morning is
panic, followed swiftly by bad advice from well
-meaning friends. They'll tell you that retirement
is a black slate, a second act. They will use
words like passion and reinvention. Usually,
I'll try to sell you a timeshare in Malaga. Society
tells you that the solution to this identity
crisis is being busy. You must immediately take
up golf because golf is the methadone clinic
for type A personalities. Addicted to frustration
and incremental meaningless achievements. Addicted
to frustration and... incremental meaningless
achievements if not golf you're told to learn
italian or write that novel it was been threatening
to write but let me say for some time the world
does not need another thriller about a retired
cia agent pulled back in for one last job This
advice fails because it tries to solve an existential
problem with a scheduling solution. You don't
need something to do at 10am on a Tuesday. You
need a reason to be at 10am on a Tuesday. Filling
your diaries with activities just to avoid sitting
quietly in a room alone with your own thoughts
is not a retiring plan. It's a desperate... Reagard
action against terror. So how do you transition
from being a human doing to be a human being?
Now, the first step on that difficult Monday
morning is to accept the brutal truth of your
new irrelevance. Now, the market has closed on
your professional career. The ticker tape has
stopped. The emails filling your inbox are now.
and the offers for Viagra and notifications that
your extended car warranty is about to expire.
What's up? This sounds depressing, but it can
be liberating. When you were director of sales,
you had to care about things that... didn't matter.
You had to feign enthusiasm for synergies and
paradigm shifts. You had to wear pants with a
zipper every single day. The process of finding
out who you are without the job begins by embracing
the silence. It involves a great deal of subtraction
before you can begin the addition. You have to
scrape off the barnacles of that corporate speak
and professional posturing that you've adhered
to over the half of the last 40 years. to understand
that your jog was largely a performance. You
were wearing a costume, but now you're naked,
it's drafty, and you probably don't look as good
as you thought you did. The transition. requires
shifting your metric of success from external
validation to internal curiosity. And the people
who I know who successfully navigate this transition
don't try to replicate the high stakes environment
of the trading floor. in their garden shed. Instead,
they rediscover the things that they were interested
in before they decided they needed to make six
figures of suppose a mortgage on the house they
never spent any time in. Bout you were interested
in. 18th century naval history before you got
distracted by EBITDA. And go read about it. Not
just become a professor. Not to write a book.
Just because you want to know what happened in
the Battle of Trafalgar. The goal is to replace
the focused structure of employment with a self
-imposed structure of intellectual engagements.
It doesn't matter what it is. It matters that
you're doing it because you choose to, not because
your camera and bike told you to. Furthermore,
you must rebuild a sense of utility that's not
tied to a payslip. We're social animals. We need
to feel useful. In the corporate world, utility
is measured by how much money you make for the
shareholders that you'll never meet. In the retirement,
utility looks different. It might mean... Fixing
your neighbour's fence or mentoring someone younger
than you is currently suffering through the same
corporate hell that you've just escaped. Or simply
being the person who has time to properly cook
dinner. Now it's smaller, yes, and it's less
glamorous. Less glamorous than clothes and that
big deal in Zurich maybe, but it is real. And
unlike the causally earnings report, it actually
matters to the people around you. Now, that first
Monday morning is hard because it's the funeral.
for the person that you thought you were. Let
them go. They were tired. They drank too much.
They were tired. They drank too much mediocre
office coffee. They drank too much. Let them
go. They were tired. They drank too much mediocre
office coffee. Spend too much time worrying about
KPIs? Who are you without your job? You are whatever
is left when that noise stops. That won't take
you a while to recognise yourself. You're probably
a bit rusty and haven't had an original thought
since the mid -1990s, but give yourself some
time. You might find you actually like You might
find you actually like yourself. And if not,
there's always golf. See you on the next one.