Nan Ives and Lisa Stornaielo explain “Retirement Syndrome,” the unsettling emotions many retirees feel after leaving work, and reassure listeners that these feelings are normal.
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Retirement gives you freedom, but it also leaves you with a wide-open calendar and a new challenge: deciding what actually matters now. In this episode of Retirement Unfiltered, Nan Ives and Lisa Stornaielo explore what it truly means to live with intention in retirement—moving forward with purpose instead of drifting or defaulting to staying busy.
Nan and Lisa talk candidly about why filling time is not the same as living well, especially in a chapter that can last 20 to 30 years or more. They explore how many people enter retirement after decades of work with their lives tilted toward career and responsibility, only to feel disoriented when that structure disappears. Living with intention, they explain, is not about productivity or tackling long-ignored projects. Itis about consciously choosing how you invest your time, energy, and attention.
The episode introduces the idea of rebalancing a life portfolio by looking honestly at how time is spread across different areas of life. Nan and Lisa walk through five key areas to consider and explain how clarity often reveals imbalance. From there, they describe building a personal life mosaic, a mix of activities and roles that bring meaning, purpose, and energy back into everyday life. No two mosaics look the same, and the goal is not perfection, but alignment.
They also highlight mindset as a critical factor in retirement, contrasting fixed and growth mindsets and emphasizing curiosity, openness, and experimentation. Retirement, they argue, is not a wind-down. It is a reset and a chance to keep learning, evolving, and shaping what comes next.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
Nan Ives and Lisa Stornaielo are co-founders of The Future of You and former leaders at Fidelity Investments. Through their work, research, and personal retirement journeys, they help experienced professionals design a more intentional and fulfilling life after work.
Get early access to new episodes—plus honest insights on how to turn retirement from “now what?” into “this is it.”
