I Went Back and Had a Conversation With My 50-year-old Self.

It was informative but a bit painful.

Image by tumisu, Pixabay

I recently wrote about what it’s really like to be 80 years old. I don’t normally allow my thinking to regress into the past, but the post got me thinking about what I would say to my 50-year-old self, knowing what I know now.

Here’s how that dialog with my 50-year-old self might go:

1. Stay the course and avoid buying into the traditional off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement model that has prevailed over the last 50 years. Don’t drink the Kool-aid that says you have a “use-by stamp” with a number, like 65, on you. Start preparing now for the possibility that you may have as many years ahead as you have already lived — a serious runway that merits attention before getting on it.

2. Start thinking seriously today about what you want this “second half” or “third age” of your life to look like. Don’t wait until you’ve arrived at that stage, drift into it, and try to figure it out on the fly. You’ll lose too many years of high physical and mental vitality and productivity if you wing it.

3. Don’t wait until your 60s, like your 80-year-old version did, to figure out what your true essence is. I know, you’ve bought into the 20th century “learn, earn, retire, die” model that drug you into the corporate world to build someone else’s dream. I get it — you’re doing it for the money to get to the retirement portion of that model. It works for some but not for everybody. And it has a considerable downside.

Count on this 50s decade being tough as you battle against those tough questions that seem to come from nowhere:

  • “Is this all there is?”
  • “Why am I here?”
  • “Does anybody care?” (P.S. They don’t!)
  • “What if it’s true that the number of people attending my funeral will be determined by the weather?”

Get your arms around what you really are at your core, what you are really best at, what lights you up, and what brings value to the world around you. That “essence” continues to get barnacled over the longer you hold out and stay enslaved in cubicle nation.

4. Become a serious student of your biology. The first 50 — let’s use a golf analogy and called it the front nine — wasn’t great. Marginal diet, those 18 years of smoking, limited exercise, comfort-seeking — all that’s gonna catch up and make the second half/back nine messy if you don’t raise your self-care literacy and reverse the front-nine lifestyle habits.

The damage is reversible, but it’s gonna take discipline and commitment to salvage a good back nine — or even to finish it. Become a student, understand your biology at the cellular level, and start giving it what it needs to continue to protect you. You’ve got 35 trillion cells that know what to do to keep you healthy, but they need your help.

5. Make learning a daily habit. You’ll be tempted to be a part of the 40% of college grads who never open another book after graduation. You’ll be facing big and little screens that offer up an incredible assortment of drivel that fails to challenge your brain. Remember these “3 C’s”: Curiosity, challenge, and creativity. Keep them active every day going forward.

6. Be an outlier, make a ruckus, and change a life. You get one chance to leave a footprint. You won’t be remembered for your houses, cars, clothes, or exotic vacations. But you will be remembered if you can share your experiences, talents, mistakes, and victories with others and help them make better life decisions.

Don’t wait — start the transformation now. It gets tougher the longer you wait.

A Retirement Salvaged – A Story About Paying Attention.

The picture above is of Paul Debrone, retired Air Canada pilot, in the early days of his retirement. Paul still holds the world record for the longest-tenured pilot in aviation history – 46 years of continuous service with Air Canada, which included being the #1 pilot in seniority for eight straight years.

It’s also the picture that spawned an awareness that his coveted retirement was not serving him well.

I introduced you to Paul in a post (click here for the article) almost a year ago. Paul and I had met by phone about a year before posting the article. I was impressed with the life adjustments he was making as he transitioned into retired life and his awareness that he needed to do something about his physical condition.

Motivated heavily by the picture above, he had changed his diet, started an exercise regimen, lost 30 pounds, and committed to, and completed, a sprint triathlon. His wife, Cheryl, recorded the event in this nicely done YouTube video.

Then this email hit my inbox:

Good evening Gary,

Last April I did a sprint triathlon and started training for an Iron Man 70.3. I am retired and 67 years old and I thought in excellent shape with a change to a whole plant-based diet. In my excitement for my newfound energy, I decided to get my FAA pilot (license renewed). Well. I failed my EKG. Fast forward, testing etc. I am at this time sitting in my room at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston Florida, just had quadruple open heart bypass performed on Thursday. There is too much to share on an email – feel free if you’re still up give me a call till 2 AM another 55 minutes from now on my cell phone and I can discuss these matters.

Fly safe

Paul

From sprint triathlon and training for an Iron Man 70.3 to this:

And from that to this – in 10 months:

No podium honors, but he finished the swim-bike-run in his first attempt at an Ironman 70.3 – at age 68 and less than a year after a quadruple bypass.

But, there’s a bigger story here!

It would be easy to stop here and have a good story. But, as significant as it is, the 70.3 Iron Man success is just a product of a bigger story – one kickstarted with the boat picture.

Paul’s deteriorating physical condition paired up with a post-retirement depression rooted in going from the highest-ranked, most-recognized, and most-followed pilot at Air Canada to “who am I now?”

This double-whammy moved him to take action on more than just the physical front that led to this amazing sequence of achievements.

Other things moved in Paul that are even more significant.

For years, Paul had been an active contributor to Air Canada’s Employer Assistance Program, providing guidance and counseling to pilots who were struggling with issues such as depression, anxiety, addictions, communication challenges, and interpersonal relationships. Air Canada found that $1 invested in this program had a $7 payback in terms of retaining talented pilots.

Following retirement, Paul continued his commitment to working with Air Canada pilots under that program.

The 70.3 deepened and added a new dimension to this commitment.

Enter post-race depression.

Unexpectedly, Paul experienced significant post-race depression.

It felt very much like his post-retirement depression.

He learned from fellow racers that it happens to nearly every triathlete/marathoner upon completion of a goal that required such a deep and extensive mental and physical build-up.

He also learned that the most effective antidote was to set another challenging goal – and do it quickly.

He and Cheryl booked another 70.3 in Luxemburg – a race that touches three countries and takes place in June 2023. They start the serious training in January.

A salvaged retirement-

Paul realizes now that his post-retirement depression was because it was a “retirement from” and not a “retirement to.”

Goalless, drifting, vocation-to-vacation, labor-to-leisure retirement.

They had bought into the traditional off-the-cliff model.

Their observation of the deterioration of fellow retirees and a photograph in a boat turned their ship in a different direction.

– and a new mission

Based on his experience, Paul has a concern and a heart for the other retirees in his community, where he observes the same type of mental and physical deterioration he had experienced. He’s also learned that his best chance of affecting change in that community is through example and not confrontation. Hence, he and Cheryl remain highly visible in the community with their commitments to physical conditioning and other healthful lifestyle choices.

Paul is deepening his commitment to the Air Canada EAP program by reaching out to pilots entering retirement with his message of the importance of retiring to something, protecting their health, and seeking a purpose within their retired life.

Pilots are trained to pay attention to the important. For that, we can all be thankful.

Paul used that training and instinct to turn his own life around and commit to making a difference in others.

Paying attention today is a challenge. Much of what we pay attention to isn’t important. The easy, comfortable, convenient, and urgent crowd out the important.

If we’re fortunate, we’ll all have a boat picture in our future to help us pay attention.

 

What’s It Really Like Being 80 Years Old? Surprise, surprise! Nothing changed.

 

Image by annca from Pixabay

Irrelevance comes easy.

Respecting the biology.

How Old Would You Be If You Didn’t Know How Old You Are?

How Come Some Older People Don’t Want To Live That Long?

This is one of those basic existential questions that we all wrestle with at some point in our lives.
Do I want to live long?

It’s easy to understand why one would want life to be over if they are in constant pain, lonely/isolated, and are merely drawing breath, using up oxygen, and taking up space. It has to be a terrible feeling to want your body to give out when it continues to hang in.

I watched helplessly as both my dad and uncle experienced a grueling and extended period of morbidity with smoking-induced emphysema before their bodies finally, and mercifully, gave up.

It was a lonely, fearful existence.

What I do find interesting, however, is why people who are in good health say they don’t want to live that long.

In my mid-sixties, I began to profess that I intended to live to 100 (I’ve since revised that to 112 1/2). Everyone I shared that with was repulsed by the thought and said I was nuts.

That largely remains the case, with some softening, perhaps because of some increased awareness of the possibility – or just simply out of pity.

Despite so much evidence today of people living into their 90s and beyond with high levels of vitality, activity, and positive contribution to society, we still remain fearful of later life.

Two fears.

Research has shown that the two greatest fears as we age are:

  1. Outliving our money
  2. Losing our independence i.e. becoming frail

Simply put, we don’t want to happen to us what we have seen happen to others as they have aged poorly. Plus, we cling to and suffer under strong negative cultural beliefs about aging.

The extensive research that has been done on the lives of centenarians and super-centenarians reveals a different attitude toward aging and the trials that accompany it.

Click this link to an article by neuropsychologist and author Dr. Mario Martinez entitled “How To Live to 100 and Beyond: The 4 Core Traits That All of the World’s Longest Lived People Have in Common”.

Dr. Martinez studied the habits and mindsets of the world’s longest-living people globally. Embedded in his research are clues to what we can all do to live a longer life by simply changing our attitudes, mindsets, and cultural beliefs.

I hadn’t discovered Dr. Martinez when I began professing my goal of living to 100. I had, however, been influenced by the work of semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician, Dr. Walter Bortz, when I read his book “Dare To Be 100”.

His message is simply that there is no biological reason, aside from the very infrequent “blueprint errors” or genetic defects, for any of us not to live to 100 or beyond. He also points to the importance of mindset and habits.

He uses the acronym DARE to represent four keys to reaching 100:

  • D – diet
  • A – attitude
  • R – rejuvenation/renewal
  • E – exercise

Of the four, he emphasizes that “A-attitude” is the most important and the most difficult.

That is consistent with what Dr. Martinez found as he studied centenarians. Their trip to 100 has, at its foundation, a “defiance of disempowering cultural beliefs” that lay so much negative on us about the rigors and struggles of aging.

Dr. Martinez says this about the centenarian mindset:

“Resilience, perseverance, creativity, and flexibility are all attributes I have found in every healthy centenarian I have studied, in cultures spanning five continents.”

So I think it’s safe to say that the antidote to “not wanting to live that long” starts between the temples with an attitude shift and a mindset change that moves us, in Dr. Martinez’s words,

“-from one of passing time to one of engaging space. We need to snap out of our hypnotic concept of time in which things happen to us in sequence, and instead be mindful of how we can happen in our space without assigning a sequence”.

Yes, I expect to continue to be called “nutty or a fool” for my goal of living to 112.5. But I now realize that this reaction is just as described – it’s rooted in a deeply entrenched cultural belief that aging, early senescence, pain, and loneliness are all inextricably linked.

Will I get to 112.5? Chances are pretty slim because the first 50 of my 80 years included some marginal lifestyle habits (smoking, standard American diet, limited exercise) that will reduce my chances. But it’s certain I won’t get there – or even come close – if I don’t set the goal and adopt the mindset of a centenarian.

What if –

– you combine a centenarian mindset with a reason to get up in the morning i.e. a sense of purpose? Do you think your perspective on getting old might change?

Works for me!

Try it, if you haven’t.

Does your mindset line up with that of a centenarian? Have cultural beliefs influenced your attitude toward aging? Does the thought of hitting the century mark resonate or repulse? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Leave a comment below or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com

Open Letter to Someone Who Needs to Be Rich to Avoid Suffering.

Image by Siggy Nowak from Pixabay

Someone, somewhere, popped this question recently on Quora.com. I had to respond.

How can I be rich? Am I suffering too much?

May I ask – are you talking intrinsic riches or extrinsic riches?

The difference?

Extrinsic = external, materialistic, possession-based riches such as money, houses, cars, clothes, etc.

Intrinsic = internal riches are unbound to possessions and include self-image, self-satisfaction, feeling valued and needed, knowing and using your core talents and strengths selflessly.

Extrinsic riches fade.

Intrinsic riches endure.

If you are suffering, perhaps how you feel about yourself is too bound to the cultural influence and imagery that surrounds and pushes us onto a hedonic treadmill to try to keep up, to cast an image of outward success, to compare favorably.

That’s a trail full of potholes that typically ends in more suffering.

Teddy Roosevelt said it best:

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

We were not put on this planet to accumulate. We were put here to serve. Our capitalistic society is built on continuous accumulation, and our culture pushes comfort, convenience, and comparison. It’s a perfect storm, and the end game can be unnecessary suffering.

You’ll find true riches in:

  • Relationships
  • Understanding and being true to yourself
  • Swimming against the destructive culture of accumulation and extrinsic pleasures
  • Taking your innate talents and strengths and using them to help make the world a better place.
  • Avoiding time travel into the past and the future, seizing each day, and staying in the moment.
  • Doing something that will succeed you.

There will always be suffering in our lives. It’s part of what moves us forward.

You’ll find your riches in the gifts within you.

Use them to drive positive change based on intrinsic values.