August Is An Important Month On Your Life Calendar
August in Colorado. Hot, dry, rather boring except for Palisade peaches and Olathe sweet corn. Asking ourselves: “How did another summer slip through our fingers?” Browning lawns, back to the dreaded school zone speed limits and regretting the time wasted watching pre-season NFL games.
I signed up to speak at my Toastmaster club last week. The theme for the meeting was “August”, so I pulled together this eleven-minute presentation. It was good enough to win the best speech for the evening, a nod that my sympathetic Toastmaster friends have given me several dozen times over the past six years of membership.
As I scrambled to prepare (I never start soon enough) it came to me that just like our 12-month Gregorian calendar has a beginning in January and an ending in December, so do our lives have a January and a December.
And we all have had, or will have, an August.
All of us started on January 1 of the calendar of life and each of us is at a particular month based on how long we’ve been on this planet relative to how long we will live.
It becomes a bit subjective when we do that because (1) people’s life spans can vary a lot and (2) we have no idea how long each of us may live.
We can look at a thirty-something millennial and say perhaps that she is in April on her life span calendar.
We could take someone mid-forties and say he is somewhere around June or July.
Or we could look at me at seventy-seven. Based on today’s average life span of seventy-eight for men – egad, I’m at New Year’s Eve!
And the ball should be about to drop, statistically!
Don’t fret – I intend to stick around for at least another 100 articles. (BTW, this is #97)
August is the two-third point of the annual calendar. In terms of age against our average life span in this country, that would be equivalent to 51 years for men 55 for women.
In my career and retirement coaching business, I’m dealing mostly with folks who are in the August/September period of their lives based on the current average life span. My focus is helping people at that point make a career transition or move into the post-career phase of their lives – the final three to four months of their life calendar.
I refer to it as the third age – that period between the end of parenting or end of career and true old age.
I use my personal journey in my coaching. I’m admittedly a bit strange in how I view my life calendar. Some time ago, in my 50s, I began to feel the calendar squeezing in – that realization that there may be more days behind than ahead. I was feeling like I was in August, maybe even September.
I didn’t like that feeling. I had too much that I hadn’t done. The thought of being in August/September compelled me to think differently. Hey, there’s only one-third left – and I’m not happy with what I have to show for it.
So my choice was to really kick it up and start doing more of what I wanted to do for this final stage of my life calendar – or find a way to extend my calendar.
I decided to try to do both.
Doing more – that I have control over.
Extend my calendar – not as much control.
But I decided I have nothing to lose by at least resetting my calendar because if I didn’t set that as a goal and change some things, chances are that I would likely live out just an average life span.
So about 10 years ago, I began to confess to myself and others that I was going to ignore average life span and live to 100. I backed up that proclamation with a lot of research that said there isn’t any reason, biologically, for that not to happen.
People thought I was nuts then – and still do. Even more so now, because at age 75 I changed my target to 112 ½. I wanted to have a third of my life left because I had so much I wanted to accomplish.
I learned that, regardless of age, all of us can play a proactive role in extending our life span through our attitude, habits, and lifestyle. I undertook a significant change in lifestyle and adopted more life-extending habits.
Let’s take a look at what that does to my calendar – at least psychologically. At 77, instead of being at New Year’s Eve, I’m back into August with 32% of my life left.
Think about where you would fall on your calendar if you adopted the same approach. Now I’m sure few of you here spend much time thinking about how long you will live – or have projected a date for your demise.
But if you were, say, forty-six and in the July of your life, but decided to live to 100, psychologically you’ve now moved that back to late May or June.
More time to get things done; more time to reach your life goals; more time with those you love.
The list of possibilities is endless.
Here are three things to think about in all this:
- We are learning that we can, in all likelihood, extend our life calendar by understanding how our bodies and minds work and treating them properly. We have more control over our life span than we realize because of how much more we know about how this two-legged transport vehicle works. I encourage you to learn more about your biology, exercise more self-care and to work against the healthcare illiteracy that pervades our society.
- Each decision you make today has consequences in later months on your calendar, especially in the fall and winter months of your calendar. Think today about what you are doing to protect your mind and body for the long haul. We still live too short and die too long in this country because of the habits we developed earlier in our lives.
- Getting old and aging are not the same thing. We all are going to get old. All of us has a midnight December 31st in our future. But how we get there is called aging. Despite all the forces against it such as ageism, youth-oriented society, myths about aging, we are beginning to discover that this third age – or fall/winter months of our calendars – can truly be the happiest, most fulfilling and productive months on our life calendar.
August on our life calendar – however long our calendar may be – is an important transitional time. Rather than hot, dry, and boring and sliding us into a time of despair, deterioration, and depression as our culture would lead us to believe it’s going to, it can be a launch point to a new takeoff rather than a landing. A time in which we all can bring forward our accumulated experiences, talents and passions and pay them forward to help those that follow us.
Maybe you have some thoughts about all this. If so, share them below with a comment.
Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com and receive a copy of my free ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”
Love it! Thanks for writing this!
I love how Bob writes about the best is yet to come if we eat healthy, stay active then we can prepare now to live a higher quality of life as we move ahead.
Love this article!! Hope I will be around to read your next 100!!
Claire
Hahaha!!! I honestly did not ever think of my life in a month of the calendar!!! But I understand what you are saying!!! Love it! Love your attitude!!! Love this article, and I am so happy I read it today!!! Thank you for sharing your unique and profound thoughts!! And I think I’m in February somewhere!! At least I am hoping I’m somewhere in February!!
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