Working Together for Working Out

As a generation, we are tremendously health conscious.  That means that we are, as a group, highly aware of health issues and the need for plenty of exercises and a lifestyle that includes a good diet as well.  But there is a big difference between being health conscious and becoming active in a healthy lifestyle.  Many times, we may be well aware of what we SHOULD do to be healthier so we can live a longer and healthier life but following through on those goals is much more difficult than just knowing about them.

This is why having a partner in working out and making healthy decisions can make all the difference in the world.  We have seen a lot of changes to the marriage relationship occur over the years.  This is not just because of women’s liberation.  It also comes from huge changes to the way the work world functions as well as new parenting models and cultural shifts that have called for a real partnership in a marriage to cope with the new world we live in.  That is why the marriage partner is the best possible choice for someone to encourage you along in your path to a healthier lifestyle.

This is a good reason when you do make that New Year’s resolution to start working out and exercising regularly that you don’t keep your decision under your hat.  Share your goals of a healthier you with your spouse.  Almost certainly you will discover that he or she also has wanted to start a regimen of exercise and a sensible diet but they also were hiding that from you.  Why do we do that, even from our marriage partner? 

Well, part of it is that once you commit to a program of exercise and losing weight and you tell someone about it, you are stuck with going through with it.  You take away your backing out factor by giving someone else the opportunity to hold you accountable to your zeal later on when maybe sitting and watching TV is more appealing than hitting the track.  But another part of it might be that what a good workout looks like to your spouse may not line up with how you want to exercise.  So that independent spirit makes you want to go it alone rather than allow your spouse to hold that office in your life as your work out partner and accountability team member.

These are not very good reasons not to engage your spouse as a partner in a healthier lifestyle.  Disclosing to them your intentions is actually the best thing you can do because if you “stick your neck out” and let him or her know what you want to do, you will be accountable to do that next week, next month and routinely throughout the year until you hit your goals.  You will regret your decision when you feel your spouse is forcing you to go to the gym but you will celebrate your decision when you are coming home from the gym and you feel great from having a great workout.

Working as a team for a healthy lifestyle and weight loss is crucial when it comes to diet.  Exercise is great and even if you don’t lose any weight, starting and continuing an exercise program is good for ageing bones and muscles and improves stamina.  You will be delighted when you actually can squat down to pick up something off the floor and stand up again without help after a few weeks of exercise. 

But if you are going to seriously lose weight, you have to change your diet as well.  And that is impossible to do unless the spouse is helping you.  If both members of the marriage commit to a diet of healthy foods, eliminating deserts, chips and soft drinks and making foods from fresh ingredients, then you can keep each other on track by only allowing those foods in the house. 

This is good for both of you.  And as you see the scale report that you are actually losing weight for the first time in many years, you will have someone to celebrate with that the program is working.  Make it a healthy celebration but a joyful one because you both deserve it.

The plague of worry

My generations are no strangers to worry. It seems from the first decade we began to become aware of the world, there were big things to worry about. We were the generation to grow up with a reality that world destruction was possible at the hands of a man-made weapon that did exist and was pointed at them. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, the decades when we were entering youth, it was common for us to have to run drills to hide under our desks as a defence against the arrival of a nuclear bomb. Even back then, we knew those desks were a faint defence against such a devastating weapon. I remember having to stay indoors, to wait until the radiation cloud blew past when the wind blew from the East and a Nuclear Test had taken place.

So from worrying about the draft, bomb, Vietnam or about corruption in government, we grew up as a generation of worriers. Of course, worry is endemic in the human psychology. And as we grew into adults, parents and the ones who would come to take leadership in the world, those worries of youth paled compared to the new responsibilities we faced.

This century brings the advent of the retirement years for us. Over the years, many have learned good coping mechanisms to defray some of the worries of life. We have learned that worry about money, their children or whether the car needs a new set of tires should be taken in stride. That is because to some extent, most of these issues can be solved. Money woes can be fixed with better jobs and money management. Kids can be corrected and turn out fine even if they have troubled youths. And new tires for the car are easy to buy.

But the worries of the retirement years are often beyond such short-term fixes. We tend to be hands-on managers who have charged through life with the attitude of, “let me at that problem. I can fix it.” But problems of ageing are not always as easily conquered as many of the problems we conquered in their younger years. Some problems that demand a different approach in the later third of life that we are approaching include…

• Incurable illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, ALS or other forms of dementia for which the only relief is death.
• Running out of money because Social Security was not adequate and life was too challenging to really save up for retirement.
• The prospect of passing many years in an old folk’s home with no hope of release and no physical resources to save oneself can cause panic attacks in many of us.
• Dire issues with adult children such as death or illness, marital woes or the need for grandparents to raise our grandchildren present problems to us that seem beyond our physical, emotional and financial abilities to solve.

These new worries are unlike the worries of their middle age years. These very real and dire problems loom even larger if we see them on the horizon. They can be made larger by being suddenly alone by the passing of a spouse. Now one of our primary resources for staying calm and solving problems has been taken away from us.

This is a time in life when more than ever we need to get a refresher course in stress management and learning that worry cannot solve these problems. And like our parents before us for generations, we too will learn to face retirement with grace and maturity and to live with problems with the same courage we faced down the problems of our youth.

Starting Over

The phenomenon of a worker who may have been in the workforce for 40 years suddenly starting a new career at 50 or over is a trend that is exploding as we hit that age bracket.  There has always been a phenomenon of older workers trying something new but the trend has hit such a new high in the boomer retirement picture.  So, you have to wonder about what makes us want to start new careers late in life.

Part of it has to do with the way business has functioned in the last few decades.  In our parent's working years, the norm was to work for the same company and be a “company man” for 40-50 years, get that old watch and retire with a handsome retirement package.  That formula just doesn’t work anymore.

For one thing, retirement plans supported by employers have become a thing of the past.  Savings for retirement have plummeted as the financial demands of life are all most people can keep up with.  So, the concept of working on what used to be called retirement years is now a given if for no other reason than financial necessity.

The model I just laid out of employees staying with the same company for their entire adult lives is simply no longer a reality for all but a few in the modern workforce.  Most of us have worked for dozens of companies in our adult lives so our retirement packages if they exist at all, are small.  Part of this can be attributed to our entrepreneurial spirit.  But there has been a discernable shift in the way business works as well.  Companies don’t like the idea of keeping employees that long.  Add to that the fact that so many companies have gone out of business been absorbed in huge corporate buyouts or undergone drastic downsizing that by the time most of us hit their 50s and 60s, the idea of keeping one single career moving forward is pretty hard to sustain.

But these negative explanations are not all there is to why many of us are starting over late in life.  We never did accept that the rules of life or ageing applied to them.  We are ambitious, adventurous and willing to strike on new paths with much less fear than previous generations.  As we have faced some of the challenges of the economy and the modern business world, they have responded aggressively by starting businesses or changing their careers entirely late in life.  And we are just as willing to pay our dues and stick with that new career until we are successful as they were when they were 30.

Many of us found a line of work and learned we could pay the bills and raise the kids early in life but we did not follow our dreams at that time.  So, when the time in life comes that the kids are out of the nest, the house paid off and the adventure of living has settled down somewhat, many of us see that as the chance to finally throw off that boring old career and go after their dream once and for all. 

It’s inspirational to see someone in that stage of life setting the standard for not settling for anything less than realizing their dream by launching a new career doing what they always wanted to do all along.  Who can fault us for wanting that kind of gratification of finding success in a career that fulfills their passions?  God bless those who go for the brass ring in their golden years.  They will be an inspiration for many coming behind them to be as bold about their lives as well.

On the Road

“On the Road Again” is a well-known song by Willie Nelson released in 1980 one of many songs that embraced the idea that baby boomers love to travel. In 1969 Canned Heat released a song called Going Up The Country, which is one of the first songs that gave me the travel itch. There was a famous novel by Jack Kerouac that represented the generation before the time of the boomers, but that novel very much became a bible for us during the 1960s.  As a result, there is wanderlust and a yearning to get away from it all and travel that is deeply ingrained in our mentality and way of viewing the world.

It isn’t surprising then that as adults we have created a leisure and travel industry that has reached new levels of popularity in the last three decades.  So nobody would be surprised either when in our early retirement years begin to look into becoming the ultimate wanderers by hitting the road in their RVs and staying on the go virtually nonstop.

The spirit of adventure and desire not only to see and be part of the expanse of our glorious country has a lot to do with the yearning to travel that is so common my generation. It is more than just wanting to see great sights and enjoy the huge variety of climate and landscapes that Canada has to offer that lures us out of our rocking chairs and out onto the highways.  I am sure this idea also appeals to boomers, no matter where they live. It is also the allure of meeting new people, becoming “citizens” not just of their local community but of the world and packing their retirement years with fun and new adventures that have a genuine appeal.

We have always been people of adventure.  This can be seen in the great literature that has been made popular by my generation.  The Lord of the Rings is a great example of how we see the world. As ordinary creatures, the Hobbits, go on the road to do some great thing to save their world.  No wonder that trilogy became an anthem of the boomers who have always seen themselves as adventurers with a mission in life to do good for all mankind.

Hitting the road in an RV, as tame as that may seem, also appeals to a sense of unrestrained life that helps us combat the feeling that the world is closing in around us.  Another song, “Born to be Wild” was more than a catchy tune.  It expressed a self-image enhanced by the movie Easy Rider had us believe that we were only somewhat civilized and that there is a part of our nature that could never be tamed.  The freedom of travel and the lack of restrictions is liberating to those who may have been boxed in by life’s responsibilities, jobs and families for much of their adult lives. 

In this way, we don’t see retirement as a time to cut back on the adventure of living.  Quite the opposite, we see the chance to live on the road in our RVs as a chance to release that inner bohemian wanderer, that Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy that lives in us and give the free spirits amongst us the chance to redefine the world in their own terms.

We can be an inspiration to generations to come that they can live a life of responsibility and maturity and still retain a little of that inner beatnik or hippy that truly was born to be wild.