Workshop Overview
Retirement is often framed as a financial milestone — but for many professional women, the more challenging questions emerge after the spreadsheets are done. Shifts in identity, daily structure, boundaries, relationships, and expectations can feel unexpected and difficult to name, especially after decades of meeting others’ needs and definitions of success.
In this interactive 90-minute workshop, retirement transition coach Elaine Belansky, PhD leads a research-informed, honest conversation about the identity and lifestyle shifts women experience after leaving long-held professional roles — and why these changes are normal and workable.
Elaine will share insights from positive psychology (including PERMA: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement) and her Bold Retirement Method, along with practical tools to help women understand what truly supports wellbeing, purpose, and engagement in this life phase. The session emphasizes self-trust, experimentation, and letting go of pressure — with clarity emerging through small, intentional steps rather than having everything figured out.
Key Takeaways
Participants will walk away with:
- A clearer understanding of why retirement can feel challenging even when it’s long-anticipated
- Insight into common identity shifts and internalized “shoulds” many women experience
- A research-informed understanding of how purpose, engagement, and wellbeing
naturally evolve in retirement — and how to work with that shift rather than fighting it
- Simple tools for creating structure, boundaries, and momentum without recreating work-life pressure
- A small, meaningful next step you can actually take to move forward with greater clarity
About Elaine Belansky
Elaine Belansky, PhD is a retirement transition coach who helps professional women in their 50s, 60s, and beyond design lives that feel true, spacious, and deeply their own after work.
A former professor and public health researcher with a PhD in social psychology, Elaine spent 30 years studying wellbeing, behavior change, and what helps people thrive. After her own transition into retirement, she realized that even a well-planned retirement can feel unsettling when your identity has been shaped by decades of roles, responsibilities, and expectations.
Many accomplished women reach retirement and ask, Who am I now — and what do I actually want? Elaine helps women give themselves permission to let go of “shoulds,” release long-held expectations, and reconnect with parts of themselves that were set aside. Her work supports women in creating daily rhythms and lives that reflect who they are today — not who they were told to be — so their days feel grounded, engaging, and intentionally lived.
Elaine is the creator of the Bold Retirement Method, a four-phase framework designed to support the emtional, idoentity, and lifestyle shifts of retirement.
Webiste: elainebelansky.com
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