ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that retirees should 'accentuate the positive', taking on board an emphasis on positive thinking. A positive attitude is correlated with happiness, health and better relationships, as are activities that contribute to one's sense of generativity such as volunteering, helping others, mentoring and active grandparenting. Positive psychology is a theoretical approach to research that seeks to explain how healthy people can achieve richer and fuller life experiences. Zimbardo and Boyd proposed that in order to maximise wellbeing and maintain good psychological health, it is necessary for people to have a temporal balance. It is clear that older people, whether retired or not, who are optimistic about their lives, whose temporal focus is on the present, and who have positive views of their future and past are those who have higher levels of satisfaction and wellbeing. Retirement satisfaction was associated with dispositional optimism, feelings of perceived mastery and accomplishment, maintenance of a purpose in life, and family support.
