Your Retirement Should be Like a Baby Learning to Walk

During a coaching conversation today, a fellow coach mentioned the metaphor of a baby learning to walk. But this article isn’t about coaching. It’s about babies and retirees.

The metaphor reminded me about Eckart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, because babies live in the moment, always. Their experience of learning to walk is entirely in each moment of the journey.

Babies don’t think about walking, agonize about it, or follow a process. They observe, try, fail, and try again, keeping at it until they walk.

Somewhere along the way, though, babies stop living in the moment, stop experiencing the Now.

Why?

Maybe because babies start receiving feedback and judgment from others.

Parents, with every beautiful intention, start teaching their babies how to walk. These interactions change the baby’s natural evolution of learning.

Depending on how and what the parents communicate, the baby begins to respond to conditioning.

No, not like that. Like this.

Go on, only try it this way.

Babies are capable of so much more learning on their own than we realize. When they are born, they are genuinely open and absorb everything.

Once they start to perceive their environment, they start adapting and screening information. After about six months or so, they start sorting information, removing what doesn’t seem relevant.

They start absorbing rules and structures from their parents. Most will form limitations on what and how they learn. Some limitations are necessary; many are not.

Instead of learning naturally by doing, they find learning is received, coming from outside rather than inside.

So, what does this have to do with you, as a retiree?

Well, as a retiree, you have lived a life full of limitations.

To be retired probably doesn’t feel natural or normal. You may feel lost or disconnected.

You might be looking outside yourself, trying to find a way to fill your time.

However, retirement is a perfect time to throw off boundaries and return to living in the Now. You can learn to live again through taking action, like the baby.

A baby learning to walk will have successes and setbacks. Both mean nothing. The baby only wants to walk and will keep trying until it walks.

You might be afraid to learn something new. Maybe you’ll fail, or “do it wrong” or make mistakes.

Instead, be like the baby, learning through progress and setbacks. Revive the joy that comes from living in the moment.

Offer yourself the gifts of curiosity and exploration, without expectation or judgment. Create a new and enriching life, living, like a baby, in the Now.