Maybe it’s just me. Have you noticed how massive the parade has become of folks commenting on, conjecturing about, agonizing over, second-guessing, fixing, denying, snake-oiling, and profiteering from the concept of aging?
We “modern elders” are kicking up quite a fuss about this irreversible phenomenon.
It’s understandable. The youngest baby boomer hits 58 this year and the oldest is looking a ninth decade in the eye. And that’s a group that has never been known for being all that quiet and complacent.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is all this commotion about aging an anxiety-based “gnashing of teeth and ripping of robes?” Or is it an objective view of the inevitable with a touch of positivity?
It’s kinda my space so I read a lot of this stuff and consider it a bit of both i.e. mostly anxiety-based objectivity.
We’re smart enough to appreciate the inevitable nature of it i.e. objectivity. But we can tend to be a bit naive about the extent to which we can alter the course of it.
OK – I know. I’m a poster child for altering the course of it with my goal of reaching 112 1/2.
But, I get a bit riled up with all the anti-aging and age-reversal stuff flying around the net – magic creams, untested supplements, tantalizing and unfounded hints by microbiologists that we are on the verge of finding the magic to reverse aging. Especially considering that there is a better than even chance that those most desirous of an anti-aging or reversal formula spend an inordinate amount of their income at fast-food restaurants and much of their time being one with a voice-activated remote.
Ashton nailed it!
That’s why I appreciated a recent article by Ashton Applewhite published on Medium.com and on the Neo.life website. (Here’s a link to the Medium post).
Gotta love the headline:
I Hope I Get Old Before I Die
You may already know Ashton. She’s a prolific writer, author of the best-selling book “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” and a leading spokesperson for the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and to dismantle it.
I encourage you to read the article as she puts a balanced spin on aging with more of a positive flavor than most of what you will read.
I’ll entice you with this excerpt (the bolding is mine):
Goal #1: longer lives
“Aging isn’t something debilitating that bushwhacks us somewhere north of mid-life. Aging is living and living means aging. Nor is aging a disease; otherwise life, too, would be a disease. As British journalist Anne Karpf put it to NPR’s Brian Lehrer, “You can no more be anti-aging than anti-breathing.” Part of the distinction is semantic: make the target “age-related functional decline,” not “aging.” The “root cause of aging” is the passage of time, not cell senescence. At the end of all that living, we die. If the goal is to prevent death, whether by freezing ourselves in cryonic vats or by achieving what scientist Aubrey de Grey calls “longevity escape velocity,” let’s describe it accurately: not anti-aging but anti-dying.”
Can’t we all relate to “age-related functional decline?”
I like that better than saying I’m getting old.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Old-man-view.jpg5471920Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-10-11 00:06:252022-10-11 00:06:25Does Age Matter? Yeah, But We’re Overplaying It!
The concept of a “crisis” at mid-life is talked about a lot.
IMHO, it’s highly overplayed. Few of us experience a true crisis. It’s really more of a catharsis that we go through, usually starting at that point where the ego begins to move aside and the need to continue to accumulate, strive for title or prestige, and meet artificial cultural expectations begins to fade.
It can be a point in which the individual comes to grips with the fact that earlier life decisions have placed them into something outside of their true nature or essence.
Often, it’s the realization that continuing on the ego-dominated track seems pointless, or certainly not fulfilling, in the long run.
The caricature of the red convertible, trophy wife, and bling is rarely the true manifestation of a middle-age crisis. It will tend to be more of a phase of deep and often uncomfortable internal turmoil and reflection, with questions like:
Is this all there is?
Does anyone know I’m here or really care? (P.S. – they don’t.)
Am I doing anything that will succeed me? How do I leave a footprint when I’m gone? Do I still have time?
Why do I feel so empty in what I do?
The classic for me, as I finally acknowledged a catharsis in my mid-50s, was this:
Is it true that the number of people who will attend my funeral will be largely determined by the weather?
OUCH!
For many, this midlife catharsis represents a significant turning point that leads to a life that is more fulfilling and purposeful. For others, the potential for this turning point is missed, the cathartic questions ignored, the ego kept in control, and an opportunity wasted.
The career is where the catharsis and the tough questions are most likely to emerge. Most career decisions are made to satisfy the ego and the need to accumulate, compare favorably, and meet cultural expectations.
It’s a fortunate soul who comes to the realization that their career choice is misaligned with their deepest talents and true essence and then able to emerge from this catharsis doing something that aligns with that essence.
I’m a poster child –
-for mishandling a catharsis.
I acknowledged, by my mid-50s, that corporate life had been a mismatch for me all along, although I was almost three decades into it.
I decided to disengage and do my own thing at age 60, a time when many are choosing which pasture they want to head for.
My own thing didn’t flourish. It was done for the wrong reasons – to make more money and gain control of my time.
Ego driven.
It failed to consider the misalignment with the way my creator wired me up, with the things that were natural, comfortable, and easy for me.
I was continuing to try to fit the proverbial square peg in the round hole.
A second catharsis.
It took me until my 70s to fully unfold the earlier catharsis and realize and act on my true essence and innate talents.
I was a teacher, a learner, a deep introvert, an iconoclast with a “terrifying longing” to write or speak to the unordinary.
Although quite late, I consider myself fortunate to know where I should be and what I should be doing by honoring my essence. And that I have something that I can finish out with and perhaps even leave a faint footprint.
I’ve adopted a mantra from one of my heroes, Dr. Ken Dychtwald, author and expert on aging and founder of the AgeWave organization, who lives by this simple phrase:
Breathe – Learn – Teach – Repeat
It’s a fit and the result of catharses, not a crisis.
Did you have one? Having one now? If you did, how did your middle age crisis/catharsis play out? Love to hear from you on this one. Leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.
P.S. I apologize for my two-week absence (the first time in 5 years). My hosting service chose to do maintenance on my site on 9/19 and proceeded to take down the site along with access to my WordPress. It took them until last week to sort it out.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/cocoon-butterfly-insect-animal-39862.jpeg408640Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-10-04 03:08:442022-10-04 03:15:29What Is a Middle-age Crisis? Had Yours Yet?
Thanks for being a reader. I hope you enjoy these posts. I wish you the best in health, happiness, and prosperity for the rest of 2022 and many years to come.
What does “gracefully” mean? My dictionary doesn’t have it except as an adverb of grace.
Under grace, we find words like charm, attractiveness, beauty, and ease of movement.
I’ve been on the planet longer than most, having just entered my 9th decade (P.S. – for you Las Vegas Raiders fans, that means I just turned 80 ).
Candidly, there isn’t much about aging that I would consider graceful.
Charming? I can’t think of a single person in my circle of family, friends, and acquaintances that would herald me as charming. I think Webster’s antonym would apply better: inelegant, stiff,unchangeable, nondisposable, gaseous.
Attractiveness? Yes – to my daughter’s two standard poodles. Beyond that, the ranks dwindle to, well, zero.
Beauty? Exit from the shower tells it all – it ain’t a pretty picture.
Ease of movement? Not bad for an octogenarian, but only because I take my physical health very seriously, and do serious weight training and balance exercises. Thankfully, the grandkids don’t need me on the floor with them anymore. Half of that playtime went to getting up.
Trying to match graceful and aging is too much work. I’ve decided not to try to be graceful but rather to move to the antonym side.
There’s an argument for being inelegant at this age. Most of us octogenarians have something to say that’s important. Unfortunately, it requires being inelegant to get anyone’s attention since most have sort of written us off as irrelevant based on the number.
Yeah, I’m largely unchangeable. At 80, we have all the answers, hoping that, any day now, somebody will start asking the questions.
So, I’m not going to pursue graceful. I’m choosing “audacious” as my adjective of choice and the style that I will finish out with.
I don’t think you will find much graceful in the definition of audacious:
Extremely bold or daring
Recklessly brave
Fearless
Extremely original
Without restriction to prior ideas
Highly inventive
Recklessly bold in defiance of convention, propriety
Insolent
Brazen
Lively
Unrestrained
Uninhibited
OK, I’m not all of any of those. I like to think I’m a bit of all of them. Some of the above come naturally and were built in when the universe assembled my parts.
Some are coming along nicely.
Most still need a lot of work.
“Do not go gentle into that good night.” Dylan Thomas
I’m not into poetry, but I’m all in with Dylan.
Better to make a ruckus on the way out than to go silently into the night.
What’s your audacious factor? Tell us about it with a comment below.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/old-red-tractor-nostalgia-158689-pixabay.jpeg12591880Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-09-06 03:56:532022-09-06 03:56:55In your assessment, do you think you are aging gracefully?
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.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/mentor-2062999_640.png514640Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-08-30 03:48:322022-08-30 03:48:33I Went Back and Had a Conversation With My 50-year-old Self.
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.”
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.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/paul-debrone-boat-picture.jpeg15122016Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-08-23 02:55:132022-08-23 02:55:13A Retirement Salvaged – A Story About Paying Attention.
As you might expect, turning 80 generates this question a lot.
There’s a strange significance tied to it, perhaps because something less than half the U.S. population gets there.
Well, I just got there — with much more fanfare and celebration than I expected or deserved.
Having gotten there, I don’t find it to be much different than hitting 70 or 75, other than people seem to be more “surprised” that I’m 80 than they were when I was 78 or 79, thus speaking to the significant role that numbers play in our psyche.
Yes, I suspect I’m not different than most at this point. My eyesight is slipping a little, my tinnitus tends to rage more often, and being able to participate in conversations in a large, noisy environment ain’t gonna happen. But turning 80 didn’t flip those switches. They’ve been creeping in over the last several years.
It takes 5 minutes longer for the lower back stiffness to go away in the morning than 5 years ago.
Balance deterioration is a very real thing that I refuse to give in to with thrice-weekly aggressive strength training and daily balance and core strengthening exercises. Even at that, I’m aware of my deteriorating proprioception and am wiser about doing certain things, such as not being over 3′ off the ground on a ladder, or jumping off a moving golf cart or merry-go-round.
I suspect I’m not much different than others reaching the ripe numbers. I’ve gotten pretty good at not trying to control the uncontrollable. Many things that were important during the accumulation phase no longer matter. Other’s opinions don’t matter so much either. Material accumulation now reverts to a difficult disposal process. Some of the knowledge accumulated over many years begins to morph into worthwhile wisdom, sought out and welcomed by some, unacknowledged and ignored by most.
There’s this frustrating feeling of “having most of the answers” while nobody asks the questions.
Irrelevance comes easy.
It’s an easy trip into feeling irrelevant, with no help from a youth-obsessed culture. But, irrelevance is a choice and an easy narrative to buy into with all the calls to head for the park bench, retirement community, or pasture of your choice.
While admittedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I’ve got a hard drive between the temples crowded with acquired knowledge, experience, screw-ups, and victories that just might help someone. I can choose to sit on it and let it fade away in retirement mode, or I can put it out there for consideration for anyone who wants to partake.
So my 80 and all that follows is built on a simple daily mission to “breathe, learn, teach, repeat.” (Thank you, Dr. Ken Dychtwald, for that mantra.)
I have today. If I make it through today, it’ll be rinse and repeat a day at a time with a clear appreciation for the fact that tomorrow may not arrive.
Respecting the biology.
I know that I’m walking around in a 35-trillion-cell vessel that has proven its ability to last 122 years and 164 days. I’ll continue to give it the simple things it needs and see how long it can hold out, a day at a time, against that benchmark with no illusions of what the lifestyle choices in my first 50 years did to keep that from being a possibility.
If I am an outlier in terms of vitality, energy, and sense of purpose or mission, I attribute much of that to having rejected the concept of retirement 40 years ago with the realization that biologically we either grow or decay.
Retirement is defined as going backward or withdrawing. I observed back then that many of the most successful and creative humans never left the creative process and were living longer. There seemed to be something fundamentally askew with retirement and the idea of going against our biology and the reason for being on the planet.
Is being 80 fun? Or a bummer?
In my aged opinion, it’s a choice. For me, it’s far short of being a bummer. Is it in the “fun” category? That would be a bit of a stretch. Fun gets redefined at this age. I find it in reading, contemplation, writing, and deep conversations with family and close friends.
And helping people understand it’s all just a number.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/hourglass-2910951_1920-Image-by-annca-from-Pixabay-.jpg7991920Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-08-14 17:09:332022-08-14 17:09:33What’s It Really Like Being 80 Years Old? Surprise, surprise! Nothing changed.
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:
Outliving our money
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.
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
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Old-man-view.jpg5471920Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-08-08 23:53:202022-08-08 23:53:20How Come Some Older People Don’t Want To Live That Long?
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.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/potholes-dirt-road-5975935_1280-Image-by-Siggy-Nowak-from-Pixabay-.jpg8531280Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-08-02 01:59:262022-08-02 02:17:54Open Letter to Someone Who Needs to Be Rich to Avoid Suffering.
Spousal relationships can be heavily impacted by retirement, especially when both have been working and both decide to retire, regardless of the timing of the respective retirements.
The key to this and to the other elements of retirement that may take place is to start the planning process early, ideally 3–10 years ahead of the planned retirement date, and to COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE!
It’s possible that each partner will have different expectations for their retired life together. Some of these expectations can be major and call for serious two-way compromise. Or face the dissolution of a marriage if not addressed.
Divorce of couples over 50 is the highest divorce rate in the U.S. Most of these divorces are initiated by the woman.
Unfortunately, retirement decisions are not easily dislodged from favoring the male perspective and preferences.
Some examples
The husband retires first and has his heart set on a second home on a golf course. The wife retires at the same time or later and wants the second home to be close to the grandchildren. This calls for serious compromise and should be on the table early and not surface as a surprise upon retirement.
The wife retires after the husband, and his expectation of her, upon her retirement, is for her to run the household instead of equal sharing of those duties.
One spouse may like to travel and the other not. That shouldn’t be a surprise a couple of weeks into the shared retirement. That card should be on that table early and a compromise reached.
An important part of the preparation process is for each partner to know and honor differences in personality, values, personal drivers, and aspirations. This will lead to a retired life that balances time together with time apart to pursue diverse interests.
There should be agreement on what they want to do together and what they wish to pursue separately. The retirement should not end up with a “clingy” partner. Nothing worse than a retired male who expects his wife to be his retirement plaything upon her retirement and failing to honor her desire to have her own life within retirement.
Retirement is full of surprises, usually positive in nature. But there can be many unpleasant surprises, which are unpredictable. But many of the potential pitfalls of retirement can be headed off by spouses getting on the same page about what their retired life is to look like and doing that well in advance of the retirement date(s).
Support that planning with a flexible written plan and revisit it at least twice a year and adjust as appropriate based on the early retirement experiences. It’s best to grow and learn your way into a satisfying and purposeful retirement.
Drifting in and winging it can be disastrous.
I’ve reached back into my archives to pull up a couple of retirement stories that you may find enlightening and helpful. Let us know what has worked for you in your couple’s retirement planning. Click on the pictures below to pull up the articles.
https://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/honeyHome_default_thumbnail.jpg175185Garyhttps://makeagingwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/logo2-1.pngGary2022-07-26 04:46:152022-07-26 04:46:32Are You Prepared For the Challenges Presented When Both Spouses Retire? Here Are A Few Tips to Consider.
Does Age Matter? Yeah, But We’re Overplaying It!
The inevitable seems to be consuming us!
Maybe it’s just me. Have you noticed how massive the parade has become of folks commenting on, conjecturing about, agonizing over, second-guessing, fixing, denying, snake-oiling, and profiteering from the concept of aging?
We “modern elders” are kicking up quite a fuss about this irreversible phenomenon.
It’s understandable. The youngest baby boomer hits 58 this year and the oldest is looking a ninth decade in the eye. And that’s a group that has never been known for being all that quiet and complacent.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is all this commotion about aging an anxiety-based “gnashing of teeth and ripping of robes?” Or is it an objective view of the inevitable with a touch of positivity?
It’s kinda my space so I read a lot of this stuff and consider it a bit of both i.e. mostly anxiety-based objectivity.
We’re smart enough to appreciate the inevitable nature of it i.e. objectivity. But we can tend to be a bit naive about the extent to which we can alter the course of it.
OK – I know. I’m a poster child for altering the course of it with my goal of reaching 112 1/2.
But, I get a bit riled up with all the anti-aging and age-reversal stuff flying around the net – magic creams, untested supplements, tantalizing and unfounded hints by microbiologists that we are on the verge of finding the magic to reverse aging. Especially considering that there is a better than even chance that those most desirous of an anti-aging or reversal formula spend an inordinate amount of their income at fast-food restaurants and much of their time being one with a voice-activated remote.
Ashton nailed it!
That’s why I appreciated a recent article by Ashton Applewhite published on Medium.com and on the Neo.life website. (Here’s a link to the Medium post).
Gotta love the headline:
I Hope I Get Old Before I Die
You may already know Ashton. She’s a prolific writer, author of the best-selling book “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” and a leading spokesperson for the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and to dismantle it.
I encourage you to read the article as she puts a balanced spin on aging with more of a positive flavor than most of what you will read.
I’ll entice you with this excerpt (the bolding is mine):
Can’t we all relate to “age-related functional decline?”
I like that better than saying I’m getting old.
What Is a Middle-age Crisis? Had Yours Yet?
The concept of a “crisis” at mid-life is talked about a lot.
IMHO, it’s highly overplayed. Few of us experience a true crisis. It’s really more of a catharsis that we go through, usually starting at that point where the ego begins to move aside and the need to continue to accumulate, strive for title or prestige, and meet artificial cultural expectations begins to fade.
It can be a point in which the individual comes to grips with the fact that earlier life decisions have placed them into something outside of their true nature or essence.
Often, it’s the realization that continuing on the ego-dominated track seems pointless, or certainly not fulfilling, in the long run.
The caricature of the red convertible, trophy wife, and bling is rarely the true manifestation of a middle-age crisis. It will tend to be more of a phase of deep and often uncomfortable internal turmoil and reflection, with questions like:
The classic for me, as I finally acknowledged a catharsis in my mid-50s, was this:
OUCH!
For many, this midlife catharsis represents a significant turning point that leads to a life that is more fulfilling and purposeful. For others, the potential for this turning point is missed, the cathartic questions ignored, the ego kept in control, and an opportunity wasted.
The career is where the catharsis and the tough questions are most likely to emerge. Most career decisions are made to satisfy the ego and the need to accumulate, compare favorably, and meet cultural expectations.
It’s a fortunate soul who comes to the realization that their career choice is misaligned with their deepest talents and true essence and then able to emerge from this catharsis doing something that aligns with that essence.
I’m a poster child –
-for mishandling a catharsis.
I acknowledged, by my mid-50s, that corporate life had been a mismatch for me all along, although I was almost three decades into it.
I decided to disengage and do my own thing at age 60, a time when many are choosing which pasture they want to head for.
My own thing didn’t flourish. It was done for the wrong reasons – to make more money and gain control of my time.
Ego driven.
It failed to consider the misalignment with the way my creator wired me up, with the things that were natural, comfortable, and easy for me.
I was continuing to try to fit the proverbial square peg in the round hole.
A second catharsis.
It took me until my 70s to fully unfold the earlier catharsis and realize and act on my true essence and innate talents.
I was a teacher, a learner, a deep introvert, an iconoclast with a “terrifying longing” to write or speak to the unordinary.
Although quite late, I consider myself fortunate to know where I should be and what I should be doing by honoring my essence. And that I have something that I can finish out with and perhaps even leave a faint footprint.
I’ve adopted a mantra from one of my heroes, Dr. Ken Dychtwald, author and expert on aging and founder of the AgeWave organization, who lives by this simple phrase:
Breathe – Learn – Teach – Repeat
It’s a fit and the result of catharses, not a crisis.
Did you have one? Having one now? If you did, how did your middle age crisis/catharsis play out? Love to hear from you on this one. Leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.
P.S. I apologize for my two-week absence (the first time in 5 years). My hosting service chose to do maintenance on my site on 9/19 and proceeded to take down the site along with access to my WordPress. It took them until last week to sort it out.
Celebrating 5 Years!!
256 articles and counting!
Five years ago, I broke through the fear, resistance, and imposter syndrome that accompanies the decision to put myself out there with a blog.
“Who would want to read what I wrote?”, I asked myself.
Then a veteran writer reminded me “your mess is your message.”
That’s when I knew it was time to try – a lot of mess to work with.
Thanks for hanging in with me!
Your feedback and encouragement are what spurs me each week. Thanks for taking the time to read my rants and volunteering your thoughts.
My most popular articles, 2017-2021
In commemoration of this five-year landmark, I’m sharing my most popular posts from each year:
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Thanks for being a reader. I hope you enjoy these posts. I wish you the best in health, happiness, and prosperity for the rest of 2022 and many years to come.
In your assessment, do you think you are aging gracefully?
Or is there some work to be done?
I had to stop and think about this question.
What does “gracefully” mean? My dictionary doesn’t have it except as an adverb of grace.
Under grace, we find words like charm, attractiveness, beauty, and ease of movement.
I’ve been on the planet longer than most, having just entered my 9th decade (P.S. – for you Las Vegas Raiders fans, that means I just turned 80 ).
Candidly, there isn’t much about aging that I would consider graceful.
Charming? I can’t think of a single person in my circle of family, friends, and acquaintances that would herald me as charming. I think Webster’s antonym would apply better: inelegant, stiff, unchangeable, nondisposable, gaseous.
Attractiveness? Yes – to my daughter’s two standard poodles. Beyond that, the ranks dwindle to, well, zero.
Beauty? Exit from the shower tells it all – it ain’t a pretty picture.
Ease of movement? Not bad for an octogenarian, but only because I take my physical health very seriously, and do serious weight training and balance exercises. Thankfully, the grandkids don’t need me on the floor with them anymore. Half of that playtime went to getting up.
Trying to match graceful and aging is too much work. I’ve decided not to try to be graceful but rather to move to the antonym side.
There’s an argument for being inelegant at this age. Most of us octogenarians have something to say that’s important. Unfortunately, it requires being inelegant to get anyone’s attention since most have sort of written us off as irrelevant based on the number.
Yeah, I’m largely unchangeable. At 80, we have all the answers, hoping that, any day now, somebody will start asking the questions.
So, I’m not going to pursue graceful. I’m choosing “audacious” as my adjective of choice and the style that I will finish out with.
I don’t think you will find much graceful in the definition of audacious:
OK, I’m not all of any of those. I like to think I’m a bit of all of them. Some of the above come naturally and were built in when the universe assembled my parts.
Some are coming along nicely.
Most still need a lot of work.
“Do not go gentle into that good night.” Dylan Thomas
I’m not into poetry, but I’m all in with Dylan.
Better to make a ruckus on the way out than to go silently into the night.
More like this –
than this –
What have I got to lose?
On How To Become an “Audacious Ager”
What’s your audacious factor? Tell us about it with a comment below.
I Went Back and Had a Conversation With My 50-year-old Self.
It was informative but a bit painful.
Image by tumisu, PixabayI 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:
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:
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
As you might expect, turning 80 generates this question a lot.
There’s a strange significance tied to it, perhaps because something less than half the U.S. population gets there.
Well, I just got there — with much more fanfare and celebration than I expected or deserved.
Having gotten there, I don’t find it to be much different than hitting 70 or 75, other than people seem to be more “surprised” that I’m 80 than they were when I was 78 or 79, thus speaking to the significant role that numbers play in our psyche.
Yes, I suspect I’m not different than most at this point. My eyesight is slipping a little, my tinnitus tends to rage more often, and being able to participate in conversations in a large, noisy environment ain’t gonna happen. But turning 80 didn’t flip those switches. They’ve been creeping in over the last several years.
It takes 5 minutes longer for the lower back stiffness to go away in the morning than 5 years ago.
Balance deterioration is a very real thing that I refuse to give in to with thrice-weekly aggressive strength training and daily balance and core strengthening exercises. Even at that, I’m aware of my deteriorating proprioception and am wiser about doing certain things, such as not being over 3′ off the ground on a ladder, or jumping off a moving golf cart or merry-go-round.
I suspect I’m not much different than others reaching the ripe numbers. I’ve gotten pretty good at not trying to control the uncontrollable. Many things that were important during the accumulation phase no longer matter. Other’s opinions don’t matter so much either. Material accumulation now reverts to a difficult disposal process. Some of the knowledge accumulated over many years begins to morph into worthwhile wisdom, sought out and welcomed by some, unacknowledged and ignored by most.
There’s this frustrating feeling of “having most of the answers” while nobody asks the questions.
Irrelevance comes easy.
It’s an easy trip into feeling irrelevant, with no help from a youth-obsessed culture. But, irrelevance is a choice and an easy narrative to buy into with all the calls to head for the park bench, retirement community, or pasture of your choice.
While admittedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I’ve got a hard drive between the temples crowded with acquired knowledge, experience, screw-ups, and victories that just might help someone. I can choose to sit on it and let it fade away in retirement mode, or I can put it out there for consideration for anyone who wants to partake.
So my 80 and all that follows is built on a simple daily mission to “breathe, learn, teach, repeat.” (Thank you, Dr. Ken Dychtwald, for that mantra.)
I have today. If I make it through today, it’ll be rinse and repeat a day at a time with a clear appreciation for the fact that tomorrow may not arrive.
Respecting the biology.
I know that I’m walking around in a 35-trillion-cell vessel that has proven its ability to last 122 years and 164 days. I’ll continue to give it the simple things it needs and see how long it can hold out, a day at a time, against that benchmark with no illusions of what the lifestyle choices in my first 50 years did to keep that from being a possibility.
If I am an outlier in terms of vitality, energy, and sense of purpose or mission, I attribute much of that to having rejected the concept of retirement 40 years ago with the realization that biologically we either grow or decay.
Retirement is defined as going backward or withdrawing. I observed back then that many of the most successful and creative humans never left the creative process and were living longer. There seemed to be something fundamentally askew with retirement and the idea of going against our biology and the reason for being on the planet.
Is being 80 fun? Or a bummer?
In my aged opinion, it’s a choice. For me, it’s far short of being a bummer. Is it in the “fun” category? That would be a bit of a stretch. Fun gets redefined at this age. I find it in reading, contemplation, writing, and deep conversations with family and close friends.
And helping people understand it’s all just a number.
How Come Some Older People Don’t Want To Live That 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:
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:
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:
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,
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?
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:
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:
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.
Are You Prepared For the Challenges Presented When Both Spouses Retire? Here Are A Few Tips to Consider.
Spousal relationships can be heavily impacted by retirement, especially when both have been working and both decide to retire, regardless of the timing of the respective retirements.
The key to this and to the other elements of retirement that may take place is to start the planning process early, ideally 3–10 years ahead of the planned retirement date, and to COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE!
It’s possible that each partner will have different expectations for their retired life together. Some of these expectations can be major and call for serious two-way compromise. Or face the dissolution of a marriage if not addressed.
Divorce of couples over 50 is the highest divorce rate in the U.S. Most of these divorces are initiated by the woman.
Unfortunately, retirement decisions are not easily dislodged from favoring the male perspective and preferences.
Some examples
An important part of the preparation process is for each partner to know and honor differences in personality, values, personal drivers, and aspirations. This will lead to a retired life that balances time together with time apart to pursue diverse interests.
There should be agreement on what they want to do together and what they wish to pursue separately. The retirement should not end up with a “clingy” partner. Nothing worse than a retired male who expects his wife to be his retirement plaything upon her retirement and failing to honor her desire to have her own life within retirement.
Retirement is full of surprises, usually positive in nature. But there can be many unpleasant surprises, which are unpredictable. But many of the potential pitfalls of retirement can be headed off by spouses getting on the same page about what their retired life is to look like and doing that well in advance of the retirement date(s).
Support that planning with a flexible written plan and revisit it at least twice a year and adjust as appropriate based on the early retirement experiences. It’s best to grow and learn your way into a satisfying and purposeful retirement.
Drifting in and winging it can be disastrous.
I’ve reached back into my archives to pull up a couple of retirement stories that you may find enlightening and helpful. Let us know what has worked for you in your couple’s retirement planning. Click on the pictures below to pull up the articles.