Feelings of achievement

You will begin to feel a true achievement when you have accomplished a goal. A goal could be large, or it could be you heart desires. If you have a problem reaching your goal it could be that something is holding you back from achieving that goal. If you would really like to know what achievement feels like, then you will have to focus on finding the steps you need to accomplish the goal. The first step in this process is to look at how far you have come in reaching your goal. The second step is to consider the fact that it is time to act like you have reached your goals.

One way to learn how to reach your goals is by convincing yourself that you can reach it. Then once you begin to feel like you can do it and you achieve anything, and then you can open yourself up to the positive energy and receive your goals. It truly does work! You will be able to accomplish anything and do anything, but you have to have some faith in yourself.

You will find that once you have the faith, you can never lose your faith. You will be able to aim and shoot every time hitting the target every time. The thing is that you will find that the feelings of accomplishments that you will get will give you such a high. You will find that there are many things that you will be able to benefit from the feelings. When you stop saying, "I can't" and start saying, "I can" you will be able to feel and think that you truly can and that will make a difference in your life.

You will find that there is a true high when it comes to the feelings of accomplishment that you will get when you accomplish a goal no matter how small. The knowledge that it happened was all on you. No one had to help you. You did it all by yourself and that is a wonderful feeling. You will find that when it comes to this type of accomplishment will feel a lot better about yourself and about life.

Leave your empathy behind

 l was talking to a friend who was thinking of slowing down and gradually moving toward retirement. One of the questions asked was “What do you tell people who are thinking about retirement?” My friend is a person with specialized skills and a very focused expertise. There are many people like her who are now leaving or considering leaving the workforce like her. Once they leave their expertise will be lost, which is a shame. Some of those people will return once they are retired as part-time workers or consultants.

I gave my answer. Once you retire you have to find another way to self-identify. Many of us, identify who we are with what we do, and so have trouble with the idea of retirement. Many others believe that the organization or the people cannot cope without them, and the organization or people will not be the same once they leave. This idea causes many people to delay their retirement because they believe/feel they are indispensable. This is not, of course, true. Some 

My friend said, she had no problem with the idea of retirement and said she knew she was replaceable, and that she knew she would be living on a lower income once she fully retired.

We left the conversation with her thinking about how she would create a plan to withdraw gradually over the next six months. I left thinking I was missing an important idea. After thinking about this for a few hours I decided that I had missed out an important concept. I had forgotten about caring. My friend like many people cares about the people she works with, and the work she does. She believes that she is best suited to do the work. She said it is possible for her to train others but very few are interested in learning her skills.  She did say that she understood that she is replaceable, but I think she does not believe that statement.

Like many professionals she cares about her work, her legacy and her organization and worries about what will happen when she leaves. Those workers who care have the hardest time leaving.

If I don’t care about the people I work with, or the organization I work for, it is easy to leave. So, if you are thinking about retiring, discover a new way of self identifying, find new ways to fill your time and leave your empathy at the door when you leave.

 

More Funerals than Weddings

It’s a dark side of being a senior that you are going to face a higher incidence of people dying than you may have seen in other eras of your life.  While we all have the experience of someone we know passing away from time to time throughout life, because of the stage of life we are in as senior citizens, it is going to be more common as we move along in years.

The first big adjustment is when you start to see friends, relatives or others in your apartment complex or assisted living center pass away with some regularity.  When you are going to more funerals than weddings or baby showers, you need some coping skills for dealing with it.  How often have you heard another senior complain, “My friends keep on passing away”?  It’s a fair question and one all seniors have to deal with at one time or another.

The real reason why that question has a sense of alarm is that the passing of a friend reminds us of our mortality and because you are in the age group where this is the only step in life beyond where you are, death seems to be closing in around you all the time.  So what coping mechanisms can you use to combat the depression and the sense that the end is near for you?

First of all, when a friend or close relative dies, don’t let the first thought be about your own grief and other emotional reactions.  Think about the widow, and the children of your friend and what they are going through.  Ask yourself, “What can I do to be a comfort to the family?”  In that way, you are focusing outside yourself and on others and that is an excellent therapy for not letting the grim reaper steal vital time away from you through fear.

Secondly, don’t try to rationalize the passing of someone else.  It’s really easy to explain it away by saying, “Well he didn’t take care of himself like I do so that’s why he was taken early.”  That kind of thinking is paranoid and attempting to assign significance that isn’t there.  You really have no idea why one person passes on earlier than another one.  There aren’t any rules for this kind of thing.  Death doesn’t take one because he isn’t as worthy of more life than another.  Giving in to speculative explanations for why your friend passed away is what mythology is made of.  And it is really a form of selfishness because you are looking to show to yourself that you are not going to be the next one to go because you live right.

When it comes right down to it, really only one thing will give you comfort about the passing of a friend and that trend of people your age passing away so often.  That is to face your mortality and to come to grips with your eternal outcome.  This isn’t a sermon but many of us put off trying to understand the role of religion in our lives and whether there is any credibility to the concept of an afterlife.

Better men and women than you and I have given these thoughts some serious consideration.   The important thing is that you get to a place where you feel confident about your eternal outcome and that you feel you can go to the grave in peace because your spiritual “affairs are in order.”  And if you can get to that place, you will not be so alarmed at the passing of someone close to you.

A Little Wine for Your Stomach’s Sake

Sometimes the value of alcohol in the life of a senior can be a source of controversy.  If you have enjoyed a moderate use of alcohol throughout your adult life, it can be pretty insulting when someone takes that away from you as though you were a teenager without the ability to handle adult life in a responsible way.  But to look at the issue of alcohol use in seniors from the perspective of your children or caregivers, there are ways that alcohol could be a medical problem during this time of life when health issues seem to become more central to your daily life.

However, medical science tells us that one glass of red wine taken before bed can be the best medicine there is.  This is not new information even though the medical world would like us to think this was a big breakthrough.   As far back as the bible, there is advice that says we should have a little wine for the stomach and other ailments.  Maybe the modern world is just catching up with the wisdom of ancient worlds and the outcome will be healthier and happier senior years for you.

Red wine can have some very positive effects on how our bodies process foods and in dealing with the areas of health that sometimes can be a problem.  What that bible reference is saying is that wine helps digestion.  And that is what doctors are telling us as well because a reasonable serving of wine during or after supper introduces a healthy level of alcohol to the system which empowers the digestive process.  The outcome is you digest your food better which makes you healthier overall, keeps the digestive tract cleaned out and reduces the incidence of indigestion or heartburn.  That’s not bad for something that tastes so good and makes you feel good as well.

Wine has also been well known for years to be a beneficial substance for calming the nerves.  Now, this can be taken to the extreme but having a small serving of wine when you are upset is often the prescribed treatment to help you calm down and reduce nervous anxiety as the result of stress.   

Red wine in particular is often directly prescribed for patients suffering from anemia.  The beneficial vitamins and nutrients in red wine, empowered by that small serving of alcohol, can help reduce the incidence of anemic blood cells and make your blood richer and more able to do its job in your body.

Finally, wine can do a lot as a sleep aid.  Again, this can lead to abuse but in moderation, a small serving of wine just before bed helps you ease into sleep naturally and stay asleep throughout the night.  That good night’s sleep can be highly recuperative and have a positive effect on just about every aspect of health.  You will rise rested, feeling good, energetic and ambitious to get up and do something good with your day.  

It’s worth our time to take a second look at alcohol for the healthy things it does especially for senior citizens.  Too often healthy adult diet elements such as coffee or alcohol get categorized with cigarettes as evil because, in a few extreme cases, these substances caused problems.  But a mature outlook on the good that can come from moderate use of these substances can counter the “urban myth” that all alcohol consumption is bad.  After all, if that were true, it wouldn’t be in the bible that we should take a little wine each day for our health.  And, as they say, if it’s good enough for the heroes of the bible, it’s good enough for you and me today.