Changes occur whether you are emotionally ready for them or not. You don't want to feel left by the wayside in your own life. One way to handle your transition away from full-time work is to realize that even if events happen abruptly — one day you are at work and the day after you retire you are not — your reaction to them is not so clean-cut. It takes time to sort through any transition. Gradually you will adjust to changes in the following areas:

• Income (less)

• Daily routine (unstructured)

• Identity (no longer “teacher,” “engineer,” “waitress,” “CEO”)

• Status (who will step and fetch for you now?)

• Relationships (who will fill the role of work colleagues?)

Transitioning out of full-time work is no less an upheaval than when you went through adolescence. As you may remember, that process took the better part of a decade of your life, beginning with preadolescence as a ten-to-twelve-year-old, and may not have been wrapped up until your early twenties. The period of adolescence was the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Your body went through an alarming series of changes. Depending on how much accurate information you were provided, you may have been terrified by the prospect of puberty. Your brain didn't reach its full growth until you were in your early to mid-twenties, and you probably have some interesting stories of world-class bad decisions you made along the way to prove it.

When you transition beyond your working years you undergo a large shift in appearance, attitude, and self-image that is similar in scale and feeling to what you felt as an adolescent. By mentally preparing for this change, you will have a strong enough sense of self to approach it calmly and even take pleasure in your metamorphosis.