The “age old” issues of life are haunting me- Age and Money. Well, I can't REALLY say they are haunting me – rather I am haunting them. Webster defines “haunt” as “to visit often, to continually seek the company of.” I am sure you can understand why I would haunt money – by these definitions, who wouldn't? But Age?
There are pockets all over the world where people live to over 100 on a much greater than usual average. About 25% of these live independently. Who wouldn't want to live to be 100+ if the odds were in our favour of good physical, mental, emotional and financial health? What does it take to even the odds?
Catherine Bateson (a scholar who was also the daughter of Margaret Mead) says that because of the growing world population over the age of 60 it is as though we have added another room on our house – in this case our world culture. She discusses the meaning/options now available in this new room, one that she calls Adulthood II. Very few of us have memories of our parents at these advanced ages, and if we do, they are not necessarily models we wish to emulate ourselves. Like intrepid explorers , those living centenarians are charting new territory.
I am just starting to consider Adulthood II, so I have few answers for myself besides a commitment to keep learning, stay actively aware and continually flexible. Lessons come through reading about the research people have done on living longer, especially through reading and knowing people who are twenty or more years older than I am. They chart a course in seas I have not yet encountered and many are blogging about it.
First we have to consider that lifestyle far outweigh the power imposed by our genes. Certainly health challenges may run in families, but there are always exceptions to the rule and if we orchestrate a healthy lifestyle and work consistently at it we will go far. Bodies need regular exercise and wholesome fuel. This is true also for mental emotional and financial wellbeing. Our minds need challenges, especially those that end with our continuing to contribute to the world around us. Our emotions require that we stay connected to others and that we have occasion to laugh frequently.
What have I learned about money?
Financial health also requires that we pay attention, stay out of debt and diversify our income streams so that we can weather national or global challenges. The health of the world's economy likely will impact our own, and while many have been fortunate to retire well, this will likely be the case less and less often in the future. Indeed this seems to be a time (as my Mother would have said) not to “have all your eggs in one basket.”
Entrepreneurs risk their time and resources on the one hand but continue to contribute to their community, live a life that requires flexibility, and add to their cash flow on the other. Many, like myself, came wired to be entrepreneurs and with that are familiar with, and perhaps have some skills in place that will see us pursuing new businesses well into adulthood II. It may be a worthy consideration for all to investigate what diversified income streams are available, ones that have not previously been available.
Forming a new vision
Adulthood II and beyond requires that we craft a new picture of older years – kicking out the ideas of frailty, being infirm and replacing them with, not images of zen masters sitting in lotus position in paradise, but with grey haired strong bodies, easily climbing the hills around where we live and across the world. Thriving centenarians discuss moving beyond the cares of the world into ever increasing appreciation of it. We live in a time when we can all embrace new futures in later years.
As Catherine Bateson reminds us, what we do with this new room in our house is up to us. Will we fill it with junk or make it an art studio? Will we bury ourselves there or embrace things that are new and exciting, things that open us to new visions of the world? As with everything else, the choice is ours. One of my favorite teachers points out that because we determine how we think and feel, we determine our entire lives.
This is the second collage in my series of reinventing life over 60 - you may notice small remnants of the fear lion floating away into the horsehead nebula. My meditative space for "all that is" is floating near the horsehead which is superimposed on the milkyway. This piece is also my desktop and it reminds me to laugh and enjoy life.
As you reinvent your life - what reminders have you set that help your heart move towards laughter and joy? Please share them as we build a community of people who are moving on as elders past what we would have dreamed possible.
One of the underlying strategies for both action research and doctoral work is that before you take action or move forward with research you must understand what is already known about your topic. In academic terms this is called a review of literature. Therefore, the natural thing for me to do this morning, focused as I am on finding models for reinventing life over 60, to proceed with my strategy towards building the healthiest and most abundant possible next stage of life, is to understand what is known about thriving elder years and to find models or mentors who will introduce me to patterns on which I can build.
The first, and really sad, thing that you notice when you search in Google for thriving Elders is that over half of the links have to do with nursing homes. This is a travesty! Elders in traditional societies meant the place of revered respect. People spent their whole life working and hoping to achieve that status. I'm not the first, and I won't be the last, author to point out that our societies loses a lot when we lost this status for older people. Of course, some of this has to do with the fact that we are living so much longer than we used to. We need to maintain an active level of health in order to take the place of wise, and interesting older people in our societies. One article, in the Globe and Mail from April 2008, suggested that longevity will become a status symbol for baby boomers. The whole truth is that this will only happen when longevity equates with active independent living, enjoying life to its fullest, and participating in a creative way with in our communities.
My search brings up several categories of ideas that will need to be researched further: 1) living longer and what it takes to maintain health/ rejuvenating health when it slips, 2) new ways to integrate, and contribute to society after work years are complete, 3) increasing quality of life through making new friends, changing routines, embracing new activities, etc. Future posts will be used to sort out what I am learning in each of those, and likely other topics.
Some ideas seem on target to my investigation, others seem off track. There are those who list healthy habits, even subliminal tapes to help me embrace longevity – while interesting, I'll probably put those aside for now. Some aim too low – focused more on issues of health once you are close to or surviving the hospital, my goal now is how to catch the ride from where I am now and aim higher to have a longer and more fulfilling trajectory.
Just as with any journey into the unknown I will look for new ideas, take some and discard others. I will also look for new friends on the same path with whom I can share tools and ideas. Would YOU be one of those?
The learning has begun! Always an exciting time of discovery, through which I reflect: the lessons that I will find: 1) appropriate to me, 2) good but probably more appropriate to others, or 3) not to be considered at this time. After that sorting I will move into taking measurable action and my story will take on a different flavour. I look forward to sharing it all with you. Thanks for reading, and should you have any resources that I should consider, please comment.
I'll close with a provocative quote from a page from Los Angeles, put up the by Gay Elder Circle – Michael Meade says:
Those who wish to work as mentors and elders have to keep one eye on the youth – and the other on conditions in the village.
This appeals to me – perhaps to you too?
Have you noticed that everyone, even people in the same family, living in the same house actually live in different realities? For instance, in my household, the importance of certain ways of living life (such as organization patterns, use of time, etc.) vary greatly between us. What is reality? I propose that it is really the tethers which hold us in place. If, we accept that we, each of us as individuals, have control over our minds and emotions, then what is we do with those minds and emotions ultimately determine our "reality". If it's a great sunny day in my heart, it does not matter whether it is rainy and dreary outside. And if I meet people who have been affected by it being dreary and rainy outside I sort of emotionally bounce off of them, not letting them affect me, because their "reality" is different than mine.
These views of "reality" came from the tethers our parents put on our spirits in order to keep us (at least in their minds) safe. That was our parents jobs. The result however, especially in a time like this one which is full of new possibilities, is to hold back our spirits from soaring. That is one of the reasons I support science and education. They help us break our tethers. And, as everyone knows who happens ever gone back for degree only to find that their families push-back on the changes these new thoughts are making in their personalities and actions, education unhooks our tethers. It also changes our view of reality. I work in and with doctoral students, emerged every day in "scientific" evidence. No one will deny that having data to support your claims about reality is like laying a trump card down on a bridge table. Data gives us new tethers, from what we build new realities. That is the reason and way that science changes our lives.
Are you with me so far? Can you accept that the way we think about our world, not to mention feel about it, determine our reality? If so, then you can probably go the next step with me which is to wonder about all the myriad of ways we can change our thoughts and feelings, and therefore have great affect on how our lives unfold. I don't mean putting the ubiquitous happy face on circumstances regardless of their difficulty. Although I don't personally feel that has a negative effect except to perhaps annoy the people around you, it also doesn't get to the heart of helping us/me move into the space where creation of something different rarely happens.
And that is what I am really musing about today, how to move regularly into the mental and emotional space where I am the creator I know I am born to be? I started this life as an artist, and that form of creation still stays with me, even though I rarely face a blank piece of paper anymore. Today I am asking, “How does my mind create?” - is there an analogy here I can use for life creation as well? First I have to address that blank piece of paper – and if we use this analogy as how we create our worldview, then we have to be able to see our world without "reality" but rather as a blank piece of paper. Regardless of what I have created up until now, what will I create with the blank piece of paper that is my day today?
My favorite art form is collage, and it's useful in this analogy. To work with a collage, you not only face your blank piece of paper, but you also bring to it elements that you have already developed. In fact you have many more elements around your piece of paper than you will ever put in the final composite that is that piece of art, some are there for color, others for image, still others for texture. So, if my day today is a piece of art, then what are the elements I have to collage into it in order to make it shine with all the magnificence that my creative spirit would wish for? Ah ha! Herein lies a few secrets that work very well for me (when I remember to use them), in which hopefully may work for you as well:
I need to include elements of open space in my collage that is my day today. It is useful, I have found, for these elements in my life to be in my morning time. Therefore days work out for the best if I take some time to do yoga, listening to Kelly Howell's the Secret of Mind Meditation, and maybe even Destiny, or Breakthrough.
Another element in this collage of my day is useful is exercise. As I forced myself to ride my bicycle and town yesterday, even though it was raining and dreary, i.e. felt, if not younger, at least hardy. When I find myself taking deep risks being faced with potentials that scare me, having my body feel hardy and alive is a must.
An element I love to include is creativity- writing like this, and, who knows maybe soon some real live collage, bring light areas to my day and are guaranteed almost to lift my spirits.
Speaking of lifting my spirits – music! One of my students (also a woman reinventing her life over 60) mentioned putting on gospel music and writing for hours. I love Billy Joel myself.
And what about the elements that scare me? In the collage that I make my day I can see these as contrasting dark spaces, something that every art piece needs in order to be interesting. It is true, I am an adventurous spirit, and I naturally keep a certain amount of risk in my life – much like I put absolute darkness in areas of my artwork. It is a great mental attitude to see them as the contrasting elements, but not something that will take over the whole.
And what about the people that I put in my collage? My life path right now is to open up to greater qualities and quantities of love. Therefore there must always be people, and I must also be open to the elements they bring to my day, whether or not they were always planned or even pleasant. In art school we had this phrase "it was a happy accident". We used it whenever the water in the painting mixed inappropriately and we had to maneuver something differently from our original plans. When the outcome was one of spontaneity and passion and other's appreciated it we knew it to be a happy accident. All the great artists know how to use that to their advantage. In my collage of my day I look to the people in my life to help me open up to those unexpected portions of my design.
Every collage, because it comes out of the fabric of the objects I put around my white piece of paper, always have a certain elements that move from one piece and evolve over time. For instance, I always sign the work with a Phoenix, often surrounded by butterflies under my signature. These elements remind me of the resilience I have in life (the Phoenix), and my ability to transform and develop new horizons (the butterfly). My collage also always includes elements of texture. I like rough spots as much as I like deep contrast. Therefore my day will not cruise through like a person on a beach with their feet up, reading a book. I will have areas where I have to work very hard to make it right. Laughter, when look at it this way I see that these rough spots, are just part of my taste, rather than something which should make me unhappy.
I'm going to use this analogy in my journal for the next month, plotting the collage of my day in my mind and orchestrating it to include all the elements that help me find life to be juicy and interesting, in addition to advancing the elements that create the new success I am looking for. I would really love to think that this analogy is useful for others, so if people reading this agree, and want to use it for themselves, I look forward to hearing the stories that evolve.
In the meantime, here is to all of us who are willing to open up the creative spaces in our minds and hearts and create new styles of collage in our lives.
I started my morning do yoga and listening, as I often do, to Kelly Howell and either or both The Secret of Mind Meditation and her meditation on Destiny. Today I was struck by her words as she reminds us to invite our highest destiny, and the skills we need to move along that path. As I think about the word invitation I appreciate the way it opens my heart and chest to consider both the meaning of inviting and being invited.
In this series of reinventing life over 60 I am wrestling with concepts of age and the processes or norms involved in aging and yet pushing back on those norms to continue to build new vistas and reinvent life. I wonder how much invitation people feel as they consider growing all? Likely not much. In fact research shows that older people often live in greater isolation and my own experience of my mother's life was that the older she got the more she said “NO” to every invitation.
I know that she experienced as well an increased sense of being cut off from the flow of life around her. And perhaps that is the nub of the challenge for all of us. I believe that my creative sense of my connection with Life Force (God, Goddess, All That Is/Jesus, Mohammed, and all the teachers) stems from being invited by these paths and these beliefs to to be my best and greatest possible human self. I also experience that all I (in this case my smaller human self) needs to experience more openness is to invite the greater energy of Life Force. Today I am conscious that it is within this mutual invitation to greatness, growth, abundance, energy, etc. from my human self to acknowledge and embrace more of the universal and from the universal to my human self to embrace more of life that we put our feet on a path towards lighthearted, successful, older years.
So what am I inviting today? As I sit down to write, to work on my new book about dissertations, I invite myself to feel closely connected with the doctoral students I work with so that as I write I will be speaking directly to them, just as now, I am speaking directly to you, others interested in making the most of older years. In other words, and perhaps this is helpful for all people, I am inviting a closer connection to other people in my life so that I may come from and openhearted place of love and acceptance. On a side note, and if you are a reader of this blog, it is always appreciated if you answer my invitation to come closer by taking the time to add in a brief comment – I love to see/know who my words are touching and the reinvention processes you are facing at whatever age you have achieved.
Today, I also invite all the access that I have developed over the years that helps me be a wise woman, both the good and the bad memories or lessons. At almost 60, I have gone through many things in life, and they all add up to the person I am. This requires of me that I not only invite the abundance, but also the memories of lack and limitation – because it was from those that I grew to the woman I am today. I hope all of my readers have gone to www.authentichappiness.com and take their strengths test. That test allows me to say with confidence that these previous 60 years I have developed strengths in leaderships, wisdom, curiosity, love of learning, and creativity. I am happiest when I am engaged with those strengths, and those strengths developed out of the hardships and failures which I faced. I invite memories of those lessons, and, with them, the memory of of my resilience and endurance in the face of crisis.
Another thing that I am inviting is confidence. Specifically, the confidence that much of what needs to happen will work out just fine with time. I do not need to control or plan for every possible outcome in order to make it happen correctly, in fact life has taught me that control is seldom, if ever, successful.
I invite a greater sense of faith that I am on a path towards developing the best, happiest, most abundant older years any person has ever experienced – and that I can develop these without falling onto the rocks created by my own fears of older age. And with this faith and confidence I acknowledge that when I look down at those rocks (potential lack of health, etc), or feel those fears, I can always look up spread my arms and once again invite the grace that comes with faith.
As I move into the rest of my day I invite a peace of mind which will flow under my words and help others experience it as well. My audience today, in addition to the readers of this blog, are doctoral students, filled with challenges and traumas in their lives, who need assurances that their work will pay off and enable them to graduate. By the focusing my strengths on these students, as people, and helping to invite their best work, I offer a small piece of grace to the world – this is the platform on which I build/reinvent my life over 60. I believe invitation to what is greater than our limited selves is a good platform, no matter from where you are rebuilding your life.
It is a luxury to work with a life coach. Rather than having to keep constant watch (as we all do) on our thoughts and moods in our attempt to keep them pointing in the best, positive and life affirming direction, we have a partner who watched with us. This companionship also offers new ideas, processes, etc. proven to help. In general, a life coach is a comfort, and if you can afford one I highly recommend the experience.
Whether or not you have that luxury you can follow some of the steps they would give you - and one of the best, and because of that most common, places to start or boost your life reinvention process is to write this coach (or yourself) a letter from your future. Tell yourself all about your life from that point - what worked to get you to your dreams? How does it feel to be there? What did you learn that was unexpected? The more you can place yourself in this future vantage point the more this dreaming will sync with your neurotransmitters and help you build just that future. As Esther and Jerry Hicks remind us, the way we feel is our "emotional guidance system" to whether we are aligned with our destiny/higher selves. It is from an aligned place that we build our dreams.
Attached is my letter to my coach, written from 4 years in the future - on my 63rd birthday. After writing it I re-learned an old lesson, that what is light brings up "what is in the way of it" and so I go to coaching this week asking for NLP or hypnosis to help me ease past the feelings of insecurity and doubt that this letter, brilliant with anticipation and exuberance, brought up for me.
So it goes, all the best,
Alana
Hi everyone,
Life's journey can be seen through tarot (something I have worked with in spurts throughout my life). I love this video and hope you enjoy all the analogies as well as the superb imagery.
What are your dragons? Depression, criticism from others, self-doubt, or fear? Each and all of these in turn can completely stop my, your, our, progress as we move forward in life. Unfortunately, the norm of our society is that with a certain age we stop taking on the risky challenges and instead lead a peaceful life at the spot where ever we are planted. This creates an norm where, when faced with, let's say for example, a depressed kind of mood - then when I wake up in the morning, a new piece of self talk enters my brain about, "I shouldn't have to be doing this, or I can't possibly pull this off, or This is too big a risk, for someone of my age."
Age is not the Dragon, it's merely a marker in the sand. Neither are relative healthiness, amount of wrinkles, degree of self confidence with which we get up in the morning – all of these fluxuate with life. All of them hurt our spirits and offer a larger and larger opportunity to quit if we listen to the self talk that goes with the low part of their cycle. I am not a quitter, never have been and fully intend to never be. That does not mean ,I like everyone else, don't face the challenges of thoughts – so what to do about them? Three things have worked for me (just today!) and so create my reason for this post.
First, it important to listen to or involve myself in something uplifting. My “day in and day out” favorites include: Kelly Howell's "Secret of the Mind Meditation", Philosophers Notes by Brian Johnson, and a good musical – (have you heard about Newsies?). What worked for me this morning was the second one – and the quote that lifted my spirit from a negative number to at least a zero level was from Wayne Dyer: “Good morning, this is GOD, I will be handling all of your problems today (without any help from you, thank you)… So have an awesome day.” That sounded good so I vowed I would give a good try!
Second, I look for a way to do something nice for someone else. Since I lead a relatively isolated life, today I did something nice for my dogs. It's a lovely sunny day, and since it's fairly early in the spring time, the beach near where we live was not crowded with people. Off we went – two dogs, person with ball and ball thrower, out on the sand, playing with each other. Three lads came up to talk to me and it turned out they were some of the summer grew grown so tall I didn't recognize them. They threw the ball for Peter as well, while Harriet, ever the food hound, search the rocks for yesterday's leftovers. 20 min. later my mood had lifted enough to make it possible for me to write this post.
The third thing for me is to get back to work, focusing on a portion of it that feels good. Although a daunting task, I recently have decided that ealanajames.com needs a content facelift, and so I'm starting this (first of what will become a series, of) blog post(s). A year away from being 60, I have three dreams to fulfill. And more than just getting them up and going, I want them all to make money, so that my retirement (should I decide to retire) is comfortable. To that end I am: 1) building a network marketing business with a line known as CieAura holographic chips ™, 2) continuing to develop doctoralnet.com and writing a book on dissertation development for Sage publishing, and 3) hope that this series on reinventing the life at 60 produces enough interest to have it become a book in its own right. Therefore, today, even in the deepest of blue funks, it's 100% appropriate for me to be starting this work.
I'm sure there are many many people out there who, at almost or over 60, still have big dreams in their hearts – are you, my reader, one of them? If you are, or if you know of someone for whom you should forward this post, please “watch this space.” I’ll try to keep in touch and weave in and out the challenges I face that are likely shared by others as I work my own personal process to reinvent myself – yet again, this time over 60!
A fina request for anyone who may be touched by these same challenges-please comment below and discuss your dreams, the things that you do when you're in a blue funk, and any encouraging words that you may have for others. We all can share this journey together.
Hi everyone,
I'm starting a journey towards a greater experience of wealth. There are other articles here that describel CieAura's wonderful Holographic chips and that is part of the work I am doing, which, along with DoctoralNet.com and the books I write are three strategies known in the world to build wealth. But what is wealth? How will I know when I have it and what feelings, experiences, etc will it engender? We can't draw things to us before we can live them in our imaginations.
The first step for me is to have fun and imagine unlimited pots of money. This video is part of that fun! I hope you all enjoy it too. A brief explanation of the first card - the Death card, drawn here to signify new beginnings. We have to be willing to cut away old thoughts, before we can build new stories.
Enjoy!
