So, You’re Over 60 and COVID Sucker-punched. Now What?

We’re alike right now, I’m guessing.

Lots of time to think. Thinking like we’ve never had to think before. Maybe even thinking about our thinking.

What now? What if? What’s next?

Can things possibly ever be the same again? (Can we say a collective “no” on that?)

There are some who say that this is just accelerating things that were already in motion and inevitable. Like changes in how we do healthcare and education, the two industries where costs have zoomed up while the quality has gone down and the two most in need of disruption.

Because it’s where my heart is, I think a lot about what happens now for those of us who are at or past mid-life point and still healthy. What is this final stretch run going to look like? What are we going to (have to) do differently?

We had enough uncertainty dealing with a possible longevity bonus of 20-30 years before this hit. Just as we were beginning to develop some roadmaps for this “third age”, the territory gets changed.

Financially, we weren’t going into this “post-career” phase in great shape to start with. Nine months ago Yahoo Finance claimed “64% of Americans Aren’t Prepared For Retirement — and 48% Don’t Care”.  Forty-five percent had zero retirement savings.

But what about the more fortunate, the better planners?

Most have taken another nasty hit after a great run following the 2008 crash.

More folks are going to have to re-think retirement; many will be forced to make mid-life career pivots.

I dropped and shattered my crystal ball at birth, but this one isn’t too hard to predict.

Some jobs just aren’t going to come back. Some industries will be unalterably changed. Skillset requirements were already changing rapidly. This will accelerate that change and hasten the elimination of many that were just hanging on.

If you saw this coming and planned for it, go to the head of the line while the 99.999999% of us behind you sort this out and try to figure out “what’s next.”

How do you pivot at 60?

Maybe you are being forced into a pivot because your job isn’t coming back.

Or, maybe you see that you are unfortunately ensconced in an industry or business that won’t survive in the long term or will never have for you what it has had for you in the past.

Or maybe, this is a wakeup call that’s telling you it’s time to be “rethinking” your post-career plans and to plan on working longer.

Regardless of where you are, here’s a suggestion for three things to consider doing right now:

  1. Get in shape. Any kind of life-pivot at mid-life was tough enough before.  It’s gonna be tougher now. You’ll need stamina. You’ll want to have a physical presence that says energy, vitality, zip. Ageism isn’t going away with this crisis. It will only intensify. Looking like you take your body and your health seriously says loads about you and can give you an edge. Make a renewed commitment to being the CEO of your health, take control, and transform your health if you allowed it to slip.
  2. Get your “paperwork” updated. By paperwork, I mean your resume and your online presence. If your last resume is still on floppy disk, don’t even think about using it. Call me. I had decided to add executive resume writing to my service offering a few months before COVID hit. It’s now looking like a smart decision. I’ve been dealing with resumes for 18 years as an executive recruiter so I know a good one from a bad one. There are very few good ones. I can help you turn it into the type of marketing document you, as a mid-lifer, need.  Your online presence on LinkedIn needs to be A-grade as well. I do that also.
  3. Start networking your arse off. It’s important to know that less than 20% of jobs, at any age, are filled through job boards and applying to posted jobs online. Eighty percent are filled through referrals and networking. Chances are you are better networked than you realize but haven’t felt a need to massage that network.  Now’s the time to resurrect it and reconnect with people you know and respect. Not to be asking for a job, but to find out what is happening in their lives and how you might be able to help. Remember, chances are they are in the same physical and mental boat you are and will appreciate having a chance to reconnect and exchange thoughts and ideas. Use your network to identify trends and to stay ahead of developments in and out of your area of expertise. Crazy and exciting things can come out of being an ongoing, active networker.

Do these things even if you are gainfully, securely positioned. Protecting your health speaks for itself. But, don’t get caught having to do catch up with your resume and networking. I see it a lot, especially in the healthcare space where I spend much of my time. It’s smart to have your resume professionally done and done in a form that enables you to update it with each change.

Networking is a big differentiator. Folks who end up in protracted career pivots have typically failed to build a network or to keep their existing network alive.  Effective networkers make it a weekly objective to connect with people in their network or to connect and add someone new.

Meet Steven Pressfield

I just reread Steven Pressfield’s highly acclaimed book “The War of Art” for the third time. You might consider it if you are feeling overwhelmed with doubt and with worry taking the front seat. I needed his reminder that the “Resistance” we are feeling is powerless against our boundless imagination.  The last page says this:

“Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end, the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

Creativity doesn’t die at midlife. I’m thinking COVID is going to help us prove that.

Let me know your thoughts with a comment below. Also, I am making my resume service available to subscribed readers at a huge discount ongoing. If you are interested, email me at gary@makeagingwork.com to set up a free 15-30 minute consultation.  Or call me directly at 720-344-7784

If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

 

 

 

 

Wait! Don’t Open That Restaurant! We’re Getting Healthier. Well, maybe.

“The mythology of nutrition is immense and confounded by culturally acquired eating habits and prejudices. For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, nutritional supply and mobility were tightly linked. Today we have uncoupled this relationship.”

That’s a quote from one of my favorite virtual health and wellness mentors, Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician. At 89, he is still “out there” pounding the drum in favor of sanity restoration regarding lifestyle habits.

The quote came from one of the seven books he has written: “We Live Too Short and Die Too Long: How To Achieve and Enjoy Your Natural 100-Year-Plus Life Span.”

What a coincidence. Front-page Denver Post today features this headline and story from the New York Times:

“Obesity tied to severe coronavirus, especially in young.”

A “new” study now says that obesity may be one of the more important predictors of severe coronavirus illness, second only to “old age”, whatever that is. Always quick to CYA, the report is based on “anecdotal reports” from doctors who have been shocked by how many seriously ill younger patients are obese.

Anecdotal or otherwise, I’ll bet showing up at the ER with a dry cough, fever, body aches, carrying 30 pounds of extra weight and being over-60 won’t put one high on the ventilator wait-list.

The article then proceeds to explain why obesity may have compromised respiratory function with a list of what I would call “duhs” that aren’t exactly revelatory but still cautiously called anecdotal.

Things like: ” – abdominal obesity, more common in men, can compress the diaphragm, lungs and chest capacity. And obesity causes chronic, low-grade inflammation and an increase in circulating, pro-inflammatory cytokines” which they now think may contribute to fatal COVID-19 outcomes.

I think we’ve known most of this for a long time but are hesitant, for some reason, to confront. We don’t seem to like to admit that we Americans are getting really fat. It’s a trend that has continued and is now endemic.

According to the American Medical Association, with most of our population overweight, 50% of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.

I’m not trying to put that on all restaurants but for many of them, if the shoe fits – – -. Truth is, it’s mostly on us.

I’m gonna try to link some things up here, so bear with me.

  • American purchases of restaurant and bar food crossed over and surpassed food purchased in grocery stores in 2015. So what?  We’ve got a much better chance of getting good nutrition at the grocery store than at most restaurants, depending, of course, on how we shop the grocery store. We can just as easily load up on C-R-A-P (Calorie-Rich-and-Processed) foods there if we hang out in the interior aisles.

  • Forty-two percent of American adults (80 million) are obese. What is obese? Here’s the body-mass-index calculation formula and scale from the CDC:

Calculate BMI by dividing weight in pounds (lbs) by height in inches (in) squared and multiplying by a conversion factor of 703.

Example: Weight = 150 lbs, Height = 5’5″” (65″”)
Calculation: [150 ÷ (65  x 65)] x 703 = 24.96

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
Overweight = 25–29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

Confession time: I’m at 26.4 – and embarrassed.  This “fat” thing is easy – and we don’t eat out. I’ll blame it on the virus if that’s OK.

  • Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption, respectively, was associated with a net increase in daily total energy intake of 190.29 and 186.74 kcal, total fat of 10.61 and 9.58 g, saturated fat of 3.49 and 2.46 g, cholesterol of 10.34 and 57.90 mg, and sodium of 297.47 and 411.92 mg over home-prepared meals.
  • We weigh, on average, 15 pounds more than 20 years ago but we didn’t get any taller, just a lot rounder.
  • The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.  According to the website Forks Over Knives:
    • 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
    • 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
    • 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
    • Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from french fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

There’s a good reason we abbreviate standard American diet to S.A.D. The Standard American Diet leads to standard American diseases that lead to standard American deaths.

Here in Denver, our brown cloud of air pollution has been absent for several weeks now as the highways have emptied. Grocery stores are booming. People are rediscovering their cookbooks, spice shelves, and cooking utensils. We seem to be outside, moving more.

People might just be getting healthier. And, for sure, saving money.  That is if they don’t resort to delivered food.

How Much Money Do You Save by Cooking at Home?

This is a pipe dream.

OK – I know this isn’t going to happen. We love our little favorite, secret restaurant haunts -and the convenience – too much to ever think of giving them up. Plus, what normal red-blooded American woman today would redon a Donna Reed apron to prepare three squares?

Red-blooded American male stepping up?  Yeah, right!

The restaurant business is a tough business run by a lot of great people, and sustaining livelihoods for a lot of hard-working people. I’m not intending to rag on restaurants in general but more on our own individual lack of awareness of how we eat impacts our endemic obesity. It’s a rare restaurant that hasn’t taken note of the increase in health consciousness and modified their menus to accommodate the more health-conscious.

I’m guessing, however, those “healthy” meal options aren’t the big sellers. Our sugar-salt-fat cravings ignite at the first step into the restaurant – clogged arteries be damned.

But, just suppose this forcing of families together for home-prepared food puts us on a healthier track for the long run. If we knew what we were doing to our systems insidiously with each undisciplined restaurant visit, we probably wouldn’t be doing it. But lifestyles are hard to change, taste-buds hard to retrain. And the food manufacturers have been incredibly clever and successful in capturing ours. Restaurants are their most effective medium.

Over 60% or early American deaths are due to poor diet, pandemic or no pandemic. Will we take advantage of this “new” awareness of how vulnerable our lifestyle decisions leave us when the next virus rolls around?

P.S. It will roll around.

We’ll all be older when it does. But we don’t need to be rounder. Let’s hope we pay attention and learn something about waistlines while we keep our six-foot separation.

Like getting reacquainted with the perimeters of our local grocery store – or selecting the salad option at your irresistible restaurant.

Perhaps we could even go neanderthal and get back to the ELMM diet:

Eat Less, Move More.

Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com. We’d love to know how you are doing through all this mess.

Thanks for tuning in. If you haven’t joined our growing list, trip on over to www.makeagingwork.com, sign up and receive a copy of my free ebook “Achieving Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Three things a person should avoid once they are past 70 years old. P.S. I’m on the list

I’m being a bit lazy this week.

Actually, that’s not true. I just seem to hit a wall on coming up with something that I felt you fine folks would pay even a hint of attention to.

So, I’m cheating and republishing a post that I put out on Quora.com a few weeks ago.  It has become my 3rd most popular post and 10% of the 1,300,000 views my Quora posts have garnered since I started posting daily in December 2019.

It’s a response to the question: “What three things should a person avoid once they are past 70 years old?

At 78 (this month), I guess I can bring a little credibility.

From my experience, here are three things to avoid:

1.Most other 70-year olds. That sounds cruel – and it may blow a big hole in my circle of friends, many of whom are 70+ and who I do love and cherish. I suspect I may have some explaining and repair work to do. But here’s my rationale.

Many, if not most, 70-year-olds are innocently in the “decay mode”, attitudinally and biologically, with resignation to the myths of automatic senescence and accelerating physical decline. Dinner conversations rarely progress beyond the latest knee replacement or shoulder surgery, concerns about memory lapses, or a friend with this or that malady.

I’ve started calling them “organ recitals.”

“Getting old isn’t for sissies” and “aging is a bitch” are common cliches.

Rarely does the conversation swing to how to continue to honor one’s birthright of good health and counter the accelerating decline with good practices that should have been a part of life all along. There is little appreciation for “it’s never too late to start, but always too early to quit.”

As an outspoken advocate for living to 100 or beyond (I’ve set my target at 112 1/2), I’ve learned not to bring it up at gatherings of my 70-something friends as I’ve endured enough derision to know not to put my hand on that hot stove again. The repulsion is deep and wide.

Famed motivational speaker, Jim Rohn said: “You rise to the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Selfishly, as time squeezes in, I ask myself how can I grow through this relationship and is this person open to considering that life doesn’t need to be one of accelerating decline.

I love hanging with a kick-ass 70-year old who is relaunching and not landing. But there’s a lot of chaff and not a lot of that type of wheat in our demographic.

Edith Wharton once said:

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

Maybe it’s just my circle, but I don’t find many that peer into elderhood with excitement or have that “unafraid of change, insatiable curiosity, big thinking” attitude. I’m more inclined to find it existing in the youngers and suggest that, as 70-year olds, we are better served by increasing our efforts to hang with the generations behind us with two thoughts in mind: (1) to grow and learn from their creativity and energy and (2) to help guide them with our acquired wisdom and experience.

If you would like a big dose of the logic behind this and the results of this type of effort, check out Chip Conley and his book “Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.”

2.The retirement trap. OK, here again, I’m trespassing and entering sacred ground. But the evidence is there to support this heretic suggestion. The traditional leisure-based, “vocation to vacation” retirement that has been pounded into our heads for 5–6 decades is a Trojan-horse that has lead several generations into a lifestyle counter to our biological nature and to a pattern of “living short and dying long” in the western cultures where it exists.

Retirement doesn’t exist in nature nor did it exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago. It’s a Euro-American concept that doesn’t exist in many countries, some of which can claim the longest-living citizens.

It is a concept constructed for political purposes and has no relevance to today’s world.

Retirement puts us on a path to accelerated biological decline because it implies “winding down” is preferable to staying in the growth mode.  We are given only two choices with our bodies and brains – grow or decay. Retirement, which is derived from the French verb “retirer” which means retreat or go backward, can put us on the decay path – and does for most.

What are the fruits of traditional, leisure-based retirement? Here a few that we see that are not-life enhancing:

  • Increased isolation – a major killer
  • Sedentary living – despite best intentions, most retirees fail to maintain adequate exercise to sustain good health.
  • Self-indulgence – we are wired to serve. Retirement says you’ve paid that price and earned the right to be a self-indulgent consumer and to abandon being a selfless producer.
  • Removal of work from the lifestyle. Work is a key factor in longevity – retirement takes us in the other direction.

Fortunately, we are waking up to the fallacy and irrelevance of traditional retirement as we find ourselves in the unfamiliar territory of having a 20–40-year longevity bonus. Unretirement and semi-retirement now represent a rapidly developing trend.

3. Drifting. Because, as boomers and pre-boomers, we’ve been indoctrinated to covet the leap from labor to leisure, most of us move into that “third age” space between end-of-career and true-old age without a roadmap or plan for what that now-extended period is going to look like. We are now in new territory with 20–40 more years with limited precedents to guide us.

The result, for many, is entering an extended period of life in a drift, feeling their way through at the expense of the reservoir of energy and drive that exists in the early stages of this phase.

For example, we know that 2 of 3 retirements commence with no semblance of a non-financial plan that addresses the mental, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual sides of life in this new territory.

Retirement can be like an iceberg, drifting and with little of the realities of retired life on the surface. It can become a purposeless, drifting, unfocused time of life that can put us on the path to accelerated deterioration.

Dan Sullivan, renowned business and entrepreneur coach and founder of Strategic Coach, says:

People die early for three reasons:

  • No money
  • No friends
  • No purpose.

A successful, healthy third-age requires a plan, a sense of purpose, a direction. Without it, we waste the talents, skills, experience, and energy that still reside in us as 70-year olds.

That’s close to being criminal.

Thanks for indulging my lack of momentum this week. These COVID-19 walls are closing in it seems. Hope you all are being safe. Let me know your thoughts about this week’s diatribe with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

You May Be Ignoring Your Best COVID-19 Defense. Our “Leaders” Certainly Are!

I don’t get it.

In all of the recommendations we are getting to avoid contracting COVID-19, have you ever heard one utterance suggesting consideration of “immune system competence?”

You know, like, putting your body in the best position to ward it off naturally before it can get a foothold.

I watch more Fox News and MSNBC than I should admit to. I flip back and forth between the two when I’ve become bored with Comedy Central and need a stronger hit of comedy.

Never, with all the Fauci’s and Birx’s and Pence’s that are building quite the brand for themselves have I heard one utterance like “folks, get your ass in shape. That’s the first and best front line defense against dying of this nutty stuff.”

Nothing from the CDC or WHO or AMA either.

It’s all about “duck and cover” – no prevention talk from this prestigious circle.

Well, I guess that would be too much of a shock for a culture looking for a quick fix, a drug, a magic elixir, and a nanny state to come up with one or all of the above.

Yep, my needle is stuck

If you’ve endured my articles for very long, you know I’ve kinda railed on this a few times. Look, we are walking around in an incredible 24×7 immune system of 35 trillion cells – give or take a few trillion – that has somehow been kludged together into a wondrous system fighting to keep us healthy.

We do a magnificent job of mistreating it.

The cells don’t ask for much – adequate oxygen and some good glucose and less adrenaline/cortisol/norepinephrine coursing through the bloodstream is good for starters.

Treat ’em right and they are inclined to return the favor with more energy, fewer infections/illnesses and, ultimately, a longer life without extended morbidity and early frailty.

But, shoot, that’s too easy.

It doesn’t fit our lifestyles. Or our healthcare system ’cause all it knows is cure -trying to catch the horse after it’s left the barn. Mop up the water but don’t turn off the spigot. If we can’t medicate it, well, there’s always the scalpel.

What’s that, your PCP asks? You’re asking if more exercise, sleep, less processed foods, more leafy greens/beans/avocados/nuts, meditation make sense?  Where’s the reimbursement in all that, he/she says? Here, try this (fill in here with the Fox News miracle drug of the day _________________) and call me if it doesn’t work.

OK, I’m 78 and I’m hallway-gurney-triage-fodder if I get this bug based on my age. Screw the good physical condition – you’re toast, gramps. Can’t waste a ventilator.

I’m nuts and arrogant enough to believe my physical condition would prevent that from happening. Nothing I’d like better than to be an example for immune system competence for septuagenarians should I get it. No, I’m not that ego-saturated that I’m going to come out of my “stay-at-home” and take the risk.

But, I am just a little miffed that we can’t mix in just a little bit of monologue or dialogue about the basic, no-cost/low cost/always available tools that can front-end this rascally bug.

Get-less-sick, need-less-care, get-back-to-work formula (these are copied – see below for attribution):

  • Restorative sleep
  • Strong hydration
  • Nutritious food
  • Regular exercise
  • Avoid excessive alcohol (sorry folks, it’s oxidative)
  • Avoid toxins
  • Mental well-being
    • Calm reading, prayer, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, playing an instrument, listening to music, doing 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzles (my wife does a couple a week), board games with your stay-at-home loved ones.

Now, that didn’t hurt, did it?

If these aren’t or haven’t been a part of your life, it’s probably too late to start today and expect it to build instant immunity to COVID-19. But how ’bout protection against the regular viruses that will continue to assault us or against the next pandemic (and there will be one).

Plus, what’s not to like about just flat feeling and looking better. And not having to unscramble the messages from our government and it’s media “friends.”

Oh no – another YouTube.

Yes, like you, I have some time that I’m filling with things I normally wouldn’t be doing. Like following some media trails I haven’t followed before.

I know you are getting besieged with tons of COVID-19 related info and, if like me, wondering what’s real, what’s fake, what’s politically motivated and shaky, what’s carrying more profit motive than not …….

Here’s a YouTube link to further clutter your inbox presented by a highly credentialed physician under the Singularity University banner that I found particularly informative because it succinctly covered  (if you can call 40 minutes succinct)  so much ground and touched so many different aspects of the coronavirus impact.

It’s also where I got the immune competence list above.

There’s stuff in here that I’d never heard before or would have ever thought about. You might find it worth the 39 minutes (or less at 1.25 speed).

Let’s renew our commitment to getting in shape.

Here’s a picture of my crowded “basement gym” which is getting lots of attention now as I continue my six-day-a-week aerobic and strength-training routine. It’s boring as hell and not the highlight of my day. But, you see, I’ve got this immune thing going that craves competence and has a big payoff.  It’s the least I can do.

I realize that’s not duplicatable in many homes, but you don’t need it.  Get reacquainted with that lost art of walking and use your own body-weight for resistance work until the rec centers and athletic clubs reopen.

Let’s stop being an easy, non-resistant target to the virus world. Perhaps this will be one of the many lessons we will have learned when we spin out of this.

And we WILL spin out of this!

Be safe – GET IN SHAPE.

Let me know your thoughts below with a comment or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

I trust that you are being safe and sensible during these challenging times.  If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”