Why High Achievers Cannot Retire.

 Talking about Pete Rose seems out of place in this space. I do not want to talk about Pete and his baseball career or his gambling. I want to talk about why high achievers and successful people find it hard to retire.

Once you have gotten past the struggles of finding your way in life, you can begin to cruise along in your success. The self doubt is greatly diminished; you know what you can do, and you do it consistently well. You begin to amass the resume and the statistics to prove your worth to a watching world. You easily dismiss the criticism. And you can continue to do this, until you can't.

What happens when you can no longer perform at a high level? You think you can. Your best supporters give you a pass based on memories. A few people begin to notice that the emperor has no clothes, but they are dismissed by the nostalgia of those who remember what you used to do. But one thing that never crosses the successful person's mind is the thought of retiring.

It is easy to retire if you have nothing to lose. Successful people cannot retire since their drive to succeed is what helped make them great. We see this in all walks of life. People who hang on thinking they can still do it, even when it is obvious that they can't. 

It seems that only in organizations where the rules that govern it make provision for the retirement of executive officers can successful people step down. Whether it is based on age or length of service, there are tools set in place that no one can dispute.

Every generation thinks that it will live forever and that it will never grow old. Every generation thinks that no one can do this better than us. Even today Boomers look down their noses at their children and grandchildren thinking that they are lazy and stupid. We will never know until the old folks get out of the way to see what their children can do.

High achievers need someone who they trust and who loves them to be able to tell them how far they have slipped. Someone with the courage to tell that successful person that their race is run and their time in the spotlight is over.