When someone asks about what you do, the answer shouldn’t be, “I’m retired.” There is more to the second half of your life … a lot more.

When I talk about my definition of retirement, I think it sometimes catches people off guard. In my mind, retirement is not who you are or where you’re at in life, rather it is the transition of your time and money. In other words, it is a process you go through … not your identity.

The transition for money is a transition from accumulating money to utilizing it. For time, it is a transition of reallocating the 40-plus hours per week you spent working.

This distinction of what retirement means is an important one to make, because many people identify themselves with their work — but when someone is no longer working, they default to labeling themselves as “retired.”

Here is the problem: This default “I’m retired” mindset leaves people stuck, and they never really progress toward reinventing themselves. In essence, they have made retirement their new identity, which just seems odd considering when you say something is “retired” it often infers that it has outlived its usefulness.

But I don’t think this is an accurate description for most successful people who have lived a life of purpose, who have gained valuable insight and wisdom from their life experiences and who have refined their talents and unique abilities over decades.

Therefore, retirement should not be a label used to describe who someone is — it’s not their identity — rather, retirement is a term used to describe the transition a person is going through from one phase of life to another. This is important, because the success of your retirement transition is predicated on how well you grasp this distinction and your ability to shift your mindset in the following three key areas.

If done successfully, you can emerge on the other side of your retirement transition living a life of abundance.