Retirement As You Want It

Enter Retirement With Peace of Mind

Guest Blogger, Mary Albert, writes:

In our retirement, the world is a changing place. Our generation has a new plight that didn't typically exist in generations before us: taking care of our aging parents during retirement. Trying to enjoy our 'glory days' can create a challenging problem. Like others in my situation, I don't want to abandon my parents for fear that something will happen while I'm gone.

Here are a few tips to help us get more peace of mind when we're unavailable to our parents because of travel or work committments:

• In-home caretakers for those who need it. These caretakers can come daily, multiple times a week, or whenever required. Most parents will call this 'unnecessary', but can help us to feel more relaxed when we're away.

 

• Adult daycare is another solution. If you can get them to go, your parents can have a pleasant supervised time with other adults their age.

 

• Medical alert systems offer a more independent option. With these systems, help is only a push-button away. Plus, parents will feel less supervised and there is less to worry about.

I've gotten a medical alert system for my parents, and it has given us all another chance at independence. I have a trip to the Caribbean planned next month. They are happy that I'm not constantly checking on them. It's a win-win for everyone. I can enjoy my retirement and they can enjoy their independence.

Contributed by Mary Albert, a blogger for www.happyhealth.net, an innovative senior lifestyle and senior health portal targeting baby boomers and their parents.  The site contains four pillars to lifestyle happiness as well as a medical alert reviews section that reviews and rates medical alert systems.  

Creative Pursuits Linked to Health & Well-Being

The most important take-away for me from the Positive Aging Conference held in St. Pete's Fl in December was: Build creative pursuits into my daily life. So, how am I going to do that? I find it's hard to carve out a time to do this, unless I sign up for a class or workshop. Here are a few things I've thought about doing:

• find a dance class to do with my husband - Zumba, hip hop - something that keeps my energy up and uses muscles I wouldn't normally use in my horseback riding or at the gym
• improvisational acting 
• Japanese Zen painting, a class which I took last year at Kripalu in Lenox, Massachusetts, bought materials, and have not done more than once or twice since then!
• Singing for non-singers (me!)

At the Positive Aging Conference, Susan Perlstein (see photo below), of the National Center for Creative Aging, spoke about the research that's been done on people age 80+ who were exposed to art classes in senior centers. Surprisingly, this relatively small change in their lives brought unexpectedly profound results. It reduced the need for long-term care, it improved their health on a number of indices, and they did better on depression scales, one of the risk factors for aging. 
 

I recently interviewed Louise Weinberg for my TV show, "Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age." She is an encore careerist who switched in her middle years from being a psychotherapist to being an artist. Always interested in education, she started teaching classes to beginners at the local senior center. People have flocked to these classes - now we have clues as to why they do, based on the research by the Center for Creative Aging.

What are you doing to stimulate the parts of your brain that engage in creative experiences?

Your Longevity is Due to Lifestyle Choices That You Can Control

Do you know that 75% of your longevity is based on lifestyle choices that you can control, not on your genetic heritage? In this epidemic of obesity in the US, longevity of children went DOWN compared to their parents' generation. Yikes! How do we turn this around?

I always think I take after my paternal grandmother, who lived to 102, but I could just as well have the genes of her 2 sons, my father included, who died "young," 70 and younger. So, I take care of myself - exercise, eat well. 

What if your whole community were dedicated to this concept of vitality, of living well until the (late) end of your life?

Albert Lea, MN is just such a town. AARP and the Blue Zones Vitality Project sponsored programs that crossed all the boundaries in this small mid-western town. 3464 residents of all ages participated. Listen to what they did and what happened.   

Joel Spoonheim, Director of Health Initiatives, Blue Zones, spoke to an audience at the Positive Aging Conference. This is what people do who live long healthy lives, he said:

• Keep moving
• Downshift for 15 minutes every day
• Eat a plant-based diet 
• Stop eating when 80% full
• Eat meat like a condiment Photo by Allen Brisson-Smith
• Drink 1 glass of red wine daily
• Create a healthy social network
• Engage in spiritual activities
• Make family and friendships matter 
• Find sense of purpose and pursue it with passion

What did Albert Lea, MN do?

• 2/3 of locally owned restaurants pledged to offer 1/2 size portions at 75% of cost (win-win!)
• Employers pledged to offer healthy or no snacks at meetings, to have standing or walking meetings, to offer healthy choices in vending machines, and to make stairways inviting
• Friends formed teams for walking and gardening together

The life expectancy of the sample of people who took an evaluation increased by 2.9 years. But, even more impressive are the stories of people who tell how differently they feel - their bodies, their souls, their sense of community. See The Miracle Makeover in Jan/Feb 2010 AARP Magazine.

What is your community doing to increase healthy longevity??

What Calls You For This Next Stage of Your LIfe?

Gregg Levoy, author and speaker, asked us at the Positive Aging Conference to find our callings for this next stage of life by posing 20+ questions. Here are a few that called me to my callings:

•       What is the 1 problem you were born to understand or figure out?
•       You approach a crossroads. There are 2 signs – what words are on the signs you face?
•       What 1 profession would you like to test-drive?
•       When you hear “just go for it,” what’s the IT?
•       Rate yourself on each of these forms of "intelligence." Did anyone ever tell you that you're really smart at this but really challenged about something else? 

- Linguistic or word smart

- Logical/ mathematical

- Visual or picture smart

- Body smart

- Musical

- Interpersonal

- Intrapersonal or self reflective

- Naturalist or environmentally smart

As we face our next decades, Levoy challenges us to make choices that will allow us to be both resilient to the losses we inevitably must face and also to be creative in expressing ourselves in ways that we haven’t before. Are you up for this challenge?

 

Making Flow Happen

Have you found yourself being completely absorbed in what you're doing, so much so that time passes effortlessly? When you are focused on what you're doing so much that you are not in the least self-conscious? You have a sense of control and know what your goal is ... but you're totally involved in the moment?

This describes a "flow" state, one that athletes and performers experience when they're in their best state. It's one that you and I can get into via many different kinds of activities. And, it exponentially increases our enjoyment of life, the more we can create those flow times. 

I'm reading a book called Flow in Sports: The Keys to Optimal Experiences and Performances,  by Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the man who created the idea of "Flow."   I decided to read this because I have a book coming out in a few weeks about high level equestriennes, called Women Riders Who Could... and Did - and their life stories portray this flow state.

I, in my lowly state as an intermediate rider who started riding at age 50, get to experience the wonderful state of Flow almost every time I ride my horse, whether I'm taking a lesson, riding on country trails of our New England town, or practicing in the ring.

What do you do to experience Flow? Are you in that state of concentrated focus when you're playing with your grandchildren, when you're cooking a gourmet meal for friends, when you're doing some aspect of your work? If you're interested in finding out more about the Flow research, there's plenty of opportunity - much has been written about it.

How's Your Pillow Talk About the Next Stage of Life?

Do you and your spouse yearn for different things for the next phase of your life? In About.com: Senior Living, Sharon O'Brien wrote about how Boomers are re-fashioning retirement, based on a Merrill Lynch survey.

Men, the survey found, crave relaxation and spending more time with their spouse. Women, on the other hand, see this next stage as freeing them to pursue new careers, personal growth experiences, and to contribute to their communities.

What prompts such differences in outlook? If the man has spent 30-40 years intensely immersed in earning a living, he's ready to kick back and refresh himself, slow down, and enjoy activites with his spouse. He wants out of the public sphere and into the private.

Many women, however, because of having taken years off to take care of their family, might see this time as freeing them to use their talents in the public sphere, either in community service, in employment or in starting a business.

Since the woman is often younger, she views her empty nest as an opportunity to try new things. Today's boomers-turning-60 view themselves as much younger than what we used to call "60," and are often fit and vibrant; staying home with a newly retiring hubby isn't as exciting as the idea of making a mark on the world, using their energy and skills to start something new.

 If you are in a couple that has different frames of mind about what's next, how have you communicated about it? How have you and your spouse negotiated ways to each get some of what you need in this critical period?

Click on the comment link below to contribute to the conversation.

Artists are Role Models for Aging Well

Recently I interviewed Riva Berkovitz for my TV show, called Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age. Riva started a new "career" as a photographer 3 years ago at age 77. She discovered her love for taking pictures with a "macro" lens after gazing at a beautiful park near her house. Knowing that she couldn't draw it and do justice to the look of the early spring leaves of weeping willows, she decided to try photographing it with her digital camera. This led to her examination of minute sections of plants and flowers she bought from her florist and her experimentation with different lenses and with cropping the photos using an online program. Cropping captured her attention and she's never stopped shooting and cropping flowers, trees, and plants. She's having the time of her life.

The magazine Aging Well published an article called: "Retirement Redefined: Lessons From Aging Artists" based on a survey undertaken by Joan Jeffri, Director of the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The author, Juliann Schaeffer, sees retirement as being a fluid process. She describes Jeffri's study of aging artists to see what accounts for their immense life satisfaction. "Artists don't retire... They see life full of possibility vs. seeing life coming to a close... They are often called 'see-ers' - people that see beyond what's there," said Gay Hanna, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging.

Jeffri studies 146 educated professional artists and found that there was no disconnect with older age. They stay connected with their artistic community, they have a firm sense of self, the majority stated that their self esteem is good to excellent. They've adapted their life to fit their art; for example, when one woman could no longer manage working with safety pins because of her arthritis, she shifted her medium.

Hanna said, "Life's real happiness lies in finding some area of work that you can feel passionate about and then using it to stay connected with others and continue lifelong learning."

According to the researcher Jeffri, "The life of the aging artist is a microcosm of resilience and the artist's response to materials ... provides an extraordinarily special place..." See full article.

 

Giving Back to Remain Engaged, Use Your Skills, or Prepare to Re-Enter Job Market

Are you a boomer who is downsizing from your mid-years' career and wants to use your exemplary skill set while providing service to a non-profit agency? Are you thinking that you need/ want to get back to being employed, but need up-to-date experience and references?

SOAR55 (Service Opportunities after Reaching 55), part of a nationwide network of 750 such organizations, serves volunteers who want to engage in purposeful work, not the old style volunteer who wants to serve cookies or stuff envelopes.

Boomers have a reputation for "wanting it all" and in their post-career years, that doesn't change. They want challenge, meaning, purpose, as well as the teamwork they've been accustomed to in their employed years. And they come with the energy, vitality, contacts, and expertise that many non-profits are going begging for in this strained economy.

Enter SOAR55, which happens to serve people and organizations west of Boston, but they exist in many parts of the US. What do SOAR participants do? Many perform direct service functions.

At a meeting I attended, volunteer Susan Ruder poignantly described her journey from educator to retiree to finding her niche at SOAR. After extensive training, she works joyfully with a team that goes into a women's prison and tutors inmates who want to get their college degree. After a few years on this assignment, she's ready for the next one and SOAR is equipped to match her with her next dream job.

See Nancy Bloom, another enthusiastic volunteer in the photo above (in peach) with Carol Fischman, another management consultant volunteer. Nancy is a social worker, former Director of Volunteer Management at a local human services agency and was on the faculty of the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University. She was trained as a SOAR 55 Management Consultant (the very first group) and has been part of several teams that have provided pro bono operational and management expertise to area nonprofits.

David Chosiad, another volunteer at SOAR55, comes from a business background and is an adjunct consultant who loves to go into a "messy startup" and clean it up, then start work with another. He worked with an aging in place organization, playing both strategic and practical roles and loves the daily variety of his tasks and personal associations.

SOAR55 also has a grant to reach out to unemployed and underployed over-55s.They provide workshops and volunteer experiences that are destined to give them experience in a (possibly) new field, upgrade their skills, and get current references to get back into employment.

Do you see the benefits of these service opportunites for you? Let me know how you want to become involved in your community to reap some of these goodies. Click the "comment" button below this post or contact me privately at Karma@LifeSpringCoaching.com

Nourish Your Neotenous Traits for a LifeLong Youthful Spirit

I never knew the word "neoteny" until last year when I reviewed Ronda Beaman's book, You're Only Young Twice for this blog. Beaman took many of her ideas from the anthropologist Ashley Montagu's work, chronicled in Growing Young published in 1989. Neoteny refers to the continuation of youthful qualities all through the lifespan. Contrary to popular myths about aging, we are capable of "growing young" until the day we die.

Montagu provides a hopeful picture of growing older. He describes how our culture has conspired to make us believe that we need to "grow up" or grow out of our childlike wonder in order to be mature adults. He challenges that view and urges us to develop our youthful traits.

Here is a list of qualities that Montagu discusses. When you nurture and nourish them, he believed, you will stay youthful forever:

 

• Need for love and friendship
• Sensitivity to others
• Thinking soundly without stereotypes, using observation, analyses, and experimentation which babies do from Day 1

·         The need to know and learn, to become aware

·         The need to work with pleasure and freedom

·         Exercise your curiosity, your "inquisitive insatiability"

·         Express your sense of wonder and awe

·         Play at activities just for the fun of it, not restricted to a goal

·         Express your imagination through the power ofmental images of what is not present

·         Express your creativity

·         Open-mindedness

·         Flexibility

·         Explorativeness

·         Resiliency

·         Enthusiasm

·         Sense of humor

·         Joyfulness, laughter, and tears

·         Optimism

·         Honesty and trust

·         Compassion

·         Sing and dance!

Which of these traits describe you? Which do you wish to work on so that you can feel more comfortable building them into your life? Do you know people over age 50 who exemplify this picture of neoteny? Comment here and if you give me permission, I’ll interview about your neoteny.

Volunteer All Over the World... Right From Home

Do you want to feel connected to the world but prefer to work from home? Volunteering from your living room presents all kinds of possibililties you might never have considered. See "How to Make a World of Difference -- Without Leaving Home."

Whether you're still employed, working part-time, or retired, you might want to enrich your life by being a virtual volunteer. With Internet access, you can join any number of organizations to express yourself in a different way from what you did when you were employed.

VolunteerMatch.com offers a database of 50,000 remote jobs all over the world. If you speak a foreign language and would like to hone your communications skills, you can find a job that you can do without the hassles and expense of traveling to a foreign country. If you have a skill you'd like to share, there is a volunteer opportunity for you. You can establish your own hours when editing or translating documents, designing graphics, or doing research nearer home or abroad, never leaving your house.

For those less computer inclined, how about beintg a foster caretaker for ailing pets or vacationing pet owners? Or make daily phone calls to elderly who live alone anywhere in the country or world? Or knit blankets for homeless shelters?

Needing or wanting to stay close to home no longer need be a deterrant to volunteering and staying active in the global community.