Gareth Southgate who recently finished as England manager, after a Euro final loss, said today he was struggling to find his “next purpose in life”.
Traditional society thinking is “he has loads of money and time now with zero pressure, he should ‘enjoy’ it”!!!
By that I presume people mean go on a ‘permanent holiday’, eating and drinking what he wants, not rising much before midday and never tackling anything that could be classed as challenging ever again.
The reality for him though he said he was used to performing at his very highest level when coaching England, and the responsibility that went with it.
The void now is huge he says, and illustrates the emptiness in many people’s lives of the strong sense of purpose leaving their lives, even temporarily.
Southgate spoke about the England job keeping him track, giving his life structure and made his life more fulfulling.
These are all crucial elements of making us happy as a human beings, when we serve others often and do it well.
Society used to tell us to ‘slow down as we get older’, ‘take challenge out of our lives’, but the reality seems to be it’s a poor choice.
We need that sense of purpose to get us out of bed every day, we need to realise we can be very fit and healthy well into retirement and how essential it really is, and we all need to have a strong sense of purpose that challenges us, or the emptiness from not having that can be highly destructive for our physical, mental and emotional health.
