A coaching conversation
It’s a coaching conversation: your coach listens, asks questions, offers observations, helps you explore what matters to you, and helps you stay accountable to the things you choose to do.
Retirement Transition Coaching
When work has shaped much of your life, retirement can be a bigger transition than you expect
Work can provide identity, purpose, structure, relationships and opportunities to grow. When work comes to an end, these elements do not automatically disappear – but the framework that once provided them is no longer there. This can leave important questions about who you are, what matters to you, and what comes next.
Living Retirement helps you explore those questions — with reflection, imagination and purposeful action.
Retirement is not a destination
It's an unfolding transition
You may be thinking about retirement differently than you expected
You don't have to be struggling to benefit
You may be looking forward to retirement and still feel uncertain or a little unsettled about it. Perhaps work has given you a strong sense of identity and purpose, or you're wondering how your relationships, routines and sense of direction might change. Perhaps you've already retired and things haven't turned out quite as you imagined.
You don't need to have the answers before you begin. The conversation starts with where you are right now.
The Programme
Preparing for the person, not just the retirement
Retirement preparation often focuses on practicalities — finances, pensions and perhaps some plans for life after work.
But retirement is also a major psychological transition. After decades in which work may have shaped your identity, purpose, relationships and routines, stepping away from that structure can raise deep questions about what matters and what comes next.
Living Retirement is a coaching programme that gives you structured time and space to explore those questions — helping you make sense of the transition and decide what you want to do next.
"The purpose of this programme is not to produce a perfect plan, but to help you navigate this transition with greater awareness, confidence, and curiosity."
How it works
Four stages, one unfolding journey
The programme is designed around the four stages of the Living Retirement pathway. It consists of four coaching sessions, a set of guiding notes and carefully selected exercises to complete before each session.
Self
Knowing Yourself
Understanding who you are beyond your work role — exploring the values, strengths, motivations and interests that matter to you now.
Hurdles
Facing Challenges
Recognising and understanding what is changing — including roles, relationships, routines and outlook, and how these may affect your transition.
Future
Looking Ahead
Imagining what the next chapter could become — exploring what you want more or less of, what matters, and what possibilities spark your interest.
Action
Taking Action
Turning insight into small steps and experiments — trying ideas in the real world and discovering what works for you.
Thoughtfully designed, not off-the-shelf
Living Retirement draws on established thinking about life transitions and real-life experience of coaching. The programme has been developed specifically to help people make sense of the life transition which is commonly referred to as 'retirement'.
What to expect
A process, not a prescription
This is your retirement, not ours
Living Retirement is a coaching programme — it is not advice, counselling, therapy, consulting, mentoring or training. It provides a structured process to help you step back, reflect on what matters to you, explore possibilities and decide what you want to do next.
We won't tell you what your retirement should look like, or give you a list of things you ought to be doing. Instead, we'll give you the time, space and challenge to think more deeply, explore different perspectives and turn insight into purposeful action.
The conversations are collaborative and purposeful. You bring the questions, ideas and experiences that matter to you, and we will help you explore them.
Space to think
Retirement can raise questions that are difficult to explore when life is busy. Each session gives you protected time to step back, reflect and think more deeply about what matters and what you want from this next stage of your life.
Our process – your agenda
The programme is structured around our four-stage Living Retirement pathway. But you will direct the substance of the conversations — exploring what matters most to you and deciding what you want to do next.
Questions that challenge your thinking
Coaching isn't simply about agreeing with you. We'll sometimes ask difficult questions, explore assumptions or offer a different perspective. The aim is constructive challenge — helping you see things differently and make your own decisions.
Time between conversations matters
Sessions are typically around four weeks apart. This gives you time to reflect, complete exercises and notice what emerges as you go about your everyday life. The thinking continues between sessions.
From thinking to trying
Clarity rarely arrives fully formed. You don't need to have everything worked out before you begin. We'll help you turn ideas into practical steps or experiments, so that you can learn through experience and build greater clarity about what works for you.
Inside the Coaching
What happens in a session?
Each 90-minute coaching session is a focused conversation between you and your coach — a space to explore what matters to you, challenge your thinking and consider what you might do next.
You'll use guided reflection, practical exercises, conversation and small experiments throughout the programme. We also refer you to two third-party profiles which can provide useful material for reflection.
Check in
We start by looking at where you are and what has emerged since our previous conversation.
Explore
We focus on the questions, issues or possibilities that are most useful to you, using conversation and carefully selected exercises to help you explore your thinking more deeply.
Reflect
We help you to make sense of what you've discovered and consider what it might mean for you.
Take the next step
We finish by considering what you've learned and what, if anything, you want to explore or try before we meet again.
The space between sessions is part of the process too – giving you time to reflect, experiment and allow new ideas to develop.
Who It's For
The programme is designed for people at two points in the transition
Approaching retirement
Preparing well before retirement
For people approaching retirement who want to understand the transition before it happens — and give themselves time to think about what they want the next chapter to look like.
Already retired
Finding the right path
For people who have already retired but are finding that retirement hasn't turned out quite as expected — and want space to work out what comes next.
Our story
Why we created Living Retirement
Living Retirement grew out of conversations about our own thoughts and experiences of the retirement transition, and about how we had both developed a coaching approach in our professional work.
We quickly realised that coaching techniques and tools could be used to help people navigate the retirement transition. It took time to develop and refine a pathway we were happy with, and then to build the wider programme around it. In all, the programme developed over a period of around five years.
Before launching Living Retirement, we extensively tested the programme with people who took part without charge, including friends, colleagues and others interested in exploring the retirement transition. Their experiences and feedback helped us refine both the content and the way the programme works in practice.
We also established what we call the Founding Circle — a group of trusted critical friends who have reviewed programme material and challenged our thinking as the programme has developed. Their feedback has been an important part of testing, refining and strengthening Living Retirement.
We both have a research and development background, so it was important to us that the programme should draw from a credible evidence base. In particular, we draw on the work of Nancy Schlossberg on transitions.
The exercises we use come from a range of sources. Some draw on third-party profiles, some are adapted from established coaching approaches and tools, and some we have developed ourselves.
We launched Living Retirement on 25 July 2026, in a field at WOMAD Festival, where our initial conversations and this project began — a fittingly unconventional setting for the beginning of something designed to help people think differently about what comes next.
Early reflections
What people have found useful
Some early participants and reviewers have shared their reflections on what they found useful about Living Retirement.
Living Retirement really helped me to prioritise the things I want to achieve in retirement. It gave me a sense of purpose and intention. It was also very reassuring to know that the feelings I had towards retirement and what it entails are normal and relatable.
Caroline
Programme participant
Living Retirement has begun to enable me to view upcoming retirement through more than one lens and prepare me better for what comes after ending paid employment. Living Retirement is giving me a framework for preparing and entering the next phase of life with a bit more confidence and optimism.
Ray
Founding Circle
Your Coaches
Created from professional expertise and lived experience of the transition
Dr Andy Nevill
I enjoy helping people make sense of the transition beyond work, particularly after careers that have shaped routines, identity, relationships and ways of thinking over many years. As the structure work provides begins to fall away, questions about purpose, connection and how to live often become more pressing. I help people step back, think clearly, and move forward with greater intention.
I bring a distinctive mix of senior scientific and clinical leadership, organisational development and coaching experience. I am a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Manager and Chartered Scientist, with extensive experience within the NHS supporting clinicians and technical specialists moving into leadership roles. I am also qualified as a workplace mediator and executive coach and mentor. My style is calm, thoughtful and practical — creating space for honest reflection and grounded decision-making during periods of uncertainty.
Outside my professional work, I have a longstanding interest in sustainable living and the environment. I have taught myself property construction and renovation, and maintain a creative practice working with wood, metal and masonry inspired by natural geometry.
Professor Mark Tooley
After many years in senior clinical, scientific and leadership roles within the NHS, I became increasingly interested in the human side of retirement — and the challenges people face when long-established routines and professional identities begin to change. My own experience of retirement played an important role in shaping this programme.
I combine extensive scientific, clinical and leadership experience with a deep interest in the human side of transition. I am a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Scientist. During my NHS career I led major scientific departments and served as Director of Research within my hospital, contributing at board level to organisational change. I now help people think clearly about purpose, identity and relationships, encouraging thoughtful exploration and the confidence to approach retirement as an opportunity for renewal rather than simply an ending.
Outside my professional work, I enjoy time outdoors in my garden and allotment, running around my neighbourhood, and playing classical piano — especially Debussy and French repertoire.
Investment
A structured investment in your next chapter
Living Retirement is a structured coaching programme designed to give you the time, space and support to explore your transition beyond work.
You would typically engage with the programme over approximately 18 weeks, with a total time commitment of around 25 hours. It is not simply four separate coaching conversations: the time between sessions, the exercises and the opportunity to reflect and experiment are all part of the process.
It is designed for people who see retirement as an opportunity for continued personal growth, learning and development.
Programme investment
£950
This includes
- Four 90-minute individual coaching sessions
- Notes to support your work between sessions
- Guided exercises for each stage of the programme
- Time and space between sessions to reflect, experiment and allow ideas to develop
- Access to support between sessions
- Recommended reading and additional resources
- Optional additional coaching sessions, available at an additional cost
Third-party profiles
The programme refers you to two third-party profiles which can provide useful material for learning and reflection during the programme. These are arranged and paid for directly by you and are not included in the programme fee. At the time of writing, the combined cost for these tools is approximately £90. These are third-party services and their prices may change; any fees are outside our control.
Want to find out if it's right for you?
Before deciding whether to enrol, you can request a free 20-minute chemistry session — a no-obligation conversation to see whether the programme feels like the right fit.
We can talk about where you are, explain how the programme works and answer any questions you have.
Request a free 20-minute conversationReady to take this further?
Get in touch to find out more about the programme or ask a question.