When you entered your golden years, you joined an exclusive group of people with a lifetime of hard work behind them and a bright future of personal fulfillment in view. Using experienced gained through long and fruitful lives and careers, these seniors wrote the book on living well after retirement, and you can use their experience as an “insider’s guide” to a more fulfilled senior life.

In your working years, you gained valuable insight and expertise in your profession. You achieved many goals and fulfilled many of your personal and professional dreams. Those many, long years of work made you vocationally strong, fit and healthy— ready for any professional challenge you might encounter. Hard work may not have been fun but it always left you with a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment. This feeling of fulfillment is known as occupational wellness, sometimes called vocational health.

As you grow older, and especially after you retire, you might worry that you will lose that wonderful feeling of occupational wellness. Fortunately, the experience of successful seniors who have come before you provide an unwritten insider’s guide to building a lifestyle that is both relaxing and fulfilling. Now that you are a senior, you have access to this insider’s guide to a more fulfilled life.

Vocational Wellness for a More Fulfilled Senior Life

Wellness is a state of optimal wellbeing. It is a lifelong process, oriented towards maximizing your potential. Wellness is a complex and multi-dimensional integration of the physical and spiritual elements that act and interact in a way that contributes to your overall quality of life.

At Deupree House, we believe in a holistic approach to a fulfilled life that incorporates six dimensions of wellness:

• Physical health
• Social wellness
• Emotional health
• Intellectual wellness
• Spiritual wellness
• Vocational health

To live your best life, you need a balance of all six dimensions. While it’s no simple task to maintain wellness in the first 5 dimensions, most seniors find it most difficult to pursue occupation health after retiring. During your career, your hectic work schedule provided an easy to stay vocationally healthy.

At the core of vocational wellness is your attitude about work. As you travelled through your career path, you developed and contributed your unique skills, talents, gifts and perspectives that made work both meaningful and rewarding. After retirement, however, you will need to look for other ways to remain occupationally healthy without getting another fulltime job.

Vocational Fulfillment in Senior Life

Vocational fulfillment in senior life is easier than you might think: The same passion that drove your career can fuel your vocational wellness even after retirement. Now, however, you can employ your unique talents in volunteer opportunities or other activities that you find gratifying— something that is consistent with your personal values, beliefs, and interests— as participating in something you believe in is infinitely rewarding.

Consider joining a group like The Council for Lifelong Engagement (CLLE). Formed in 2009, CLLE helps seniors share their wisdom with schoolchildren of all ages. In that program, residents from Episcopal Retirement Homes (EHR) communities like Deupree House speak to classes about a variety of topics, including art, education and business.

Participating in activities like CLLE stimulates vocational wellness by giving you a chance to share your expertise with people who are deeply interested in what you have to share. You can also sign up to give speeches to your community or volunteer to read at your local library.

A fulfilled senior life is all about balance— giving back as much as you receive. Your many years of work experience have given you a lifetime of valuable skills and insight that others would find helpful and enriching. Share your knowledge and expertise with others and reclaim the satisfaction you can feel only after a job well done. Join that exclusive group of seniors who continue to pursue occupational wellness and are living well even after retirement.