Why Seniors Should Continue Growing in Retirement
Collaborative Post
Retirement is often seen as a time when you can stop working and focus on yourself. While for many seniors, this involves activities like gardening, playing golf and doing yoga on a regular basis, for others, it involves taking steps towards personal growth and development
One way to do this is to study online psychology courses with UTS or any other subject for that matter. This course can help you make sense of the world and interact better with people.
Moreover, far from being a young person’s domain, it can also have several benefits for older Australians who are no longer working.
In this post, we’ll explore some of the main reasons why seniors should continue to grow in their retirement years. By investing in their development, it will provide them with even more wisdom to match their experience.
Benefits of continuing to grow
It is easy to understand how the idea of pursuing higher education once you have retired might seem daunting. After all, it could well have been almost 50 years since you last stepped into a classroom!
However, doing so can provide you with numerous benefits. They include the following.
Mental Stimulation
Studying for a Master’s degree is a great way of keeping your mind active and sharp.
Research has shown that keeping your mind stimulated in a way that education may significantly reduce the risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease you would otherwise be exposed to if your mind was not regularly challenged.
Essentially, the more you think, the better your mind will work. So, it is within your interest to ensure it is being challenged.
Passion Project
During your working years, you may have neglected your passion for learning. It is not surprising really, with bills to pay, children to feed and mortgages to cover understandably taking precedence.
However, now that you have stopped working, it is worth undertaking the passion project you always wanted to do but never seemed to have the time for.
With no boss to answer to or company targets to meet, you will be free to embrace the joy of learning without restriction.
Unfinished Business
If you have retired in Australia in the last ten years, there is a good chance you will have missed out on the free higher education that was available from 1974 until the latter part of the 1980s, when the Labor government under Bob Hawke introduced the HECS (Higher Education Contributions Scheme).
For this reason, you might have a sense that you missed out on going to university – if circumstances meant you weren’t able to enrol in a course for financial reasons.
While it does still incur a cost, the fact that you can study a course that interests you now if you can afford it should help you get rid of any feeling you might have of unfinished business.
Sense of Purpose
For some seniors, especially those who held a position of responsibility in the workforce, retirement can sometimes lead to feelings of a loss of identity and purpose.
Therefore enrolling in a university course can provide them with an academic goal to work towards in the next phase of their life. Not only does this instil a sense of relevance and vitality within them, but it also sets an example to other retirees that their golden years should not mark the end of their personal growth.
Social Interaction
Once the camaraderie of seeing people in your workplace every day has been taken away from them, some retirees can start to suffer from social isolation. This is amplified if their family, friends and loved ones don’t live within easy visiting distance of them.
University campuses, with their vibrant communities of individuals who have a diverse range of interests, provide plenty of opportunities for social interaction. So, they can offer something very valuable to retirees beyond the general scope of academia.
These interactions provide excellent opportunities for intellectual discussions on the books you have read, collaboration on projects, and even forming meaningful connections.
In turn, this could help you gain a perspective on the world through the eyes of people of different ages and backgrounds whom you would not normally converse with.
Photo by Jackson Films on Unsplash
