You Will Not Get A Third Chance
Ever wonder when the time will be right?
For what?
For the time to be right for you to do the thing you always wanted to do, but never gave it enough time and attention and now the clocking is ticking more noticeably, and you wish you would have started long ago.
Ever wonder?
Crisis Town Or Celebration Bound?
Mid Life Celebration’s catalyst is to help us answer the wake up calls we get, as we journey through life.
These midlife wake up calls can happen at any time, but tend to be in the middle part of our life.
It’s possible you can experience more than one wake up call in your lifetime, and sometimes, you may have more than one at a time.
As Lorie Sheffer described yesterday, an untimely death of a loved one, or the sudden health crisis of a loved one (or even ourselves), can all lead to a reevaluation of our path.
Do you have an example of your mid life celebration (or crisis)?
Ok, So It's Not Red
There’s a midlife stereotype of the middle-aged man getting a red, convertible sports car and a younger woman.
Mid Life Celebration isn’t traveling that path.
Mid Life Celebration is for those that experience this – you spend your life pursuing your big, important goals, only to reach them.
And the first thing that comes to mind?
“This isn’t what I wanted!”
“Now what do I do?”
Play Well The Hand You're Dealt
By now, you know that Lorie Sheffer is Mid Life Celebration’s Sunday Guest Blogger. Here she is again with intriguing insight from her own experience and research:
What makes you happy? I often hear people say that they are looking for someone/ a job/ a home/ a new car to make them happy. In the past few weeks there have been announcements of celebrity divorces as well as that shocker about the Gore’s. Apparently they no longer made one another happy. Because of the loss of my dear friend, who had a very severe hoarding problem, I have been reading as much on the subject of acquisition as I can get my hands on. Several of the books deal not only with pathological hoarding, but also with this country’s seemingly endless need for things bigger and better. It seems no matter how much we have, we always want more. Perhaps this is an effort to acquire enough material possessions so that we finally feel happy and fulfilled. The constant pursuit of happiness brought to you by Visa. If only I can lose ten pounds. If only I get some Botox. If only my kids make the Dean’s list. If only.
Have you ever noticed that there are people in this world who are generally happy in spite of their seemingly bad situations? On the flip side, there are people who appear to have it all, and yet they are miserable? Unless there is some organic reason for this seeming inability to feel happy, why are they not? I have read The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama and several other books on happiness as well as having spoken to a few mental health professionals and a neuropsychologist. The general consensus may surprise you. It seems that happiness is a choice. We CHOOSE to be happy.
While I have never suffered from depression there are times that I, like all of us, am not feeling happy. Grouchy days, bad days, crabby days, call them what you will, we all have them from time to time. That is normal. However, they can become ingrained and the negative thinking can become habitual. We have the power to rewire our brains for good or for bad. It’s called forming a habit. Neuroscientists are studying the brains of Buddhist monks and how, through meditation, they can actually change the way their brains respond to stressful stimuli. It seems we have more control over our emotions than we realize. Try it for just one day and you will be amazed. Choose not to be unhappy with a situation. Every time you are tempted to respond in a negative way, find a more positive way. Choose to act like you are in a good mood, and you eventually will BE in a good mood.
I am not for one second trying to say that someone who is truly, clinically depressed can think his or her way out of the darkness. For that, they will need professional assistance. With the help of appropriate medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, they can hopefully find relief. What is cogitative behavioral therapy? Rewiring your brain, with the help of a therapist. For the rest of us who have no organic reason to feel unhappy but instead are just Debbie Downers, we really do have the ability to start thinking like a happy person.
The next time you are looking for that special someone who can make you happy, go stand in front of a mirror and take a good long look. Nobody can MAKE you happy. You have to ALLOW yourself to be happy. Choose it. Act it. Pretty soon it will become second nature.
It's An Unusual (Good) Morning
Good Thursday morning everyone. Sitting here in the office with a neighbor friend who’s interested in social media. We’ve been talking for an hour now, and it’s very different for me to begin the daily writing process with “an audience”.
You may be asking, “So?”
So, all this means is that it feels really good to find a unique way to illustrate the whole concept of waking up and writing five blogs each morning. I mean, there’s a Pastor here validating this. It’s simply an unexpected opportunity to illustrate the way this blog is different from the other 80-million blogs.
Nothing phony here. Real life in real time.
As you think about your challenges at whatever life-stage you’re in, do you like your level of motivation, or do you feel like giving up? It’s your choice. Always has been, always will be.
We're All Looking For This
Finding your purpose in midlife is a beautiful thing. And it may be as simple as the exercise described in yesterday’s links.
As I was reading them and reflecting on them, it occurred to me why I still had a reservation about the whole idea of writing down, and re-writing until it made you cry, your life’s purpose. A brilliant idea, by the way.
It reinforced Mid Life Celebration’s approach as solid, valid, and important. I was very grateful for the opportunity to have my thinking challenged.
Here’s the secret no one wants to admit. While setting a goal as important as your life’s purpose is critical work, pursuing it with passion and tenacity for the rest of your life is a completely different story.
It reminded me of lofty and meaningful New Year’s Resolutions. They usually fail.
And that’s why this midlife blog is helpful to all of you facing an impending midlife crisis, or those of you smack dab in the center of one right now.
Here, everyday, you’ll find a small insight, tip, or story – in real time – to help you pursue your life’s purpose with passion and tenacity. Every day. Got it?
Take Shelter From Midlife?
A midlife crisis is essentially that period of time when we are faced with the reality that the path we have been traveling on all our life is no longer fulfilling or motivating -we’ve come to a dead end.
The crisis is that we have invested our entire lives on this journey and now we come to find out it’s not what we want. How is that possible? Smart people. Dedicated people. Hard-working people. All of a sudden, at a crossroads, so to speak.
Because of the fairly severe nature of our infraction, we often rush into a solution – attempting to regain lost ground, lost happiness, lost opportunity. It is far better, in my opinion, to use patience and conscious effort to rethink, reprioritize and then finally to recommit to a different path.
There are a million ways to do this. The essence, however, is to follow the three simple steps – rethink, reprioritize and recommit.
A special thank you to Petrina who commented yesterday, and shared a process that helped her rethink.
So Many Choices
Midlife distractions are everywhere, aren’t they?
And yet, life is pretty simple.
Where did all the complications come from?
Mind, body, spirit, money, plus all the day-to-day clutter.
Has anybody out there found the the answers to life’s big questions?
MIND: Attitude, Intellect, Brains
Mid Life Celebration is the opposite of midlife crisis. Not only in the words used to describe it, but in the attitude needed to be completely fair, good and decent – to be wise.
Yesterday’s post about Perez Hilton and Miss America was a controversial topic and I attempted to remain neutral.
And this is what a midlife celebration encompasses – a maturity that allows you to not judge anyone, for any reason.
Once you show intolerance to another, you can no longer ask others to be tolerant of you.
Midlife Fork In The Road?
Isn’t that what leads us to the proverbial midlife crisis?
Ambition. Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it.
Or can we? Live without it, I mean.
And maybe not live without it, but alter the course of our ambition.
I mean, alter it from selfish to selfless.
And by selfish, I don’t mean to say it’s wrong to be professionally ambitious.
And by selfless, I don’t mean we should sell all our belongs and live with just the shirt on our back.
But there is this rare opportunity, at it’s peak in mid life, that we can really get serious about where we currently are and where we ultimately want to end up.
Most likely, at midlife, these are two diametrically opposed paths.
Spring Grove, Pennsylvania
Mid Life Celebration readers, I am pleased to introduce our Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer, from York, Pennsylvania. Lorie and I graduated from Spring Grove Area High School in 1997 1977. Lorie has a spin on midlife that will entertain and enlighten you. You are in for a treat. Take it away Lorie….
My email box usually contains at least one “Stupid, clueless men” joke a week, sent by my gal pals. The most recent: Q: What is gross stupidity? A: 144 men in one room.
This is one of the kinder jokes. Most involve man parts and the use/misuse of said parts. I’m not so politically correct or dishonest as to say some of this stuff isn’t pretty darned funny. But underneath it all there is this undercurrent of a battle of the sexes as to who has it rougher, especially when it comes to aging. As a woman who has always had male friends, I seem to find myself defending men more and more often these days.
I was out shopping with my grandson a few years ago and the check out girl at the grocery store, when speaking to him, referred to me as “Mom”. “She’s my grandmother”, Carter corrected her. I actually looked into that sweet little face of his and asked him to “Shut it!” Actually, since I am trying to be honest, it was more of a hiss. Was I becoming so age obsessed that I had hoped if some kid who had an after school job checking groceries mistook grandma for mom that magically made it so? As if “Grandmother” is a dirty word. No wonder my grandson looked puzzled. To a small child, Grandma equals magic!
This was about the time the realization hit me. We women are so obsessed with our changing hormones and expanding waist, our hot flashes and our mood swings, we seem to forget that aging is no picnic for the men, either. We tend to talk about it, while men seem to remain quiet for fear of appearing weak. Notice what the overwhelming theme of the commercials are when “guy shows” are on TV. They usually involve a 50-something couple in claw foot bathtubs (I still don’t understand the tubs), baby boomers giving one another “that look” before dancing down the hallway toward the bedroom, or my personal favorite, the teenaged girls advising newly divorced Dad he would be dateable if he used some man-color on that gray hair of his. (Maybe someone should tell Mr. Clooney and Mr. Gere they would be attractive to women if only they hit the Grecian Formula.)
I honest to God have a male friend who colors his chest hair to cover the gray. If men aren’t lucky enough to have hair TO color, then surely they can send for some Rogain. Because, grand sense of humor that God seems to have, men start to lose hair where they want it around the same time women sprout hair in places that send them running to the waxing salons in droves.
Our age group is being bombarded by an industry that is literally making billions of dollars by playing to our insecurities, when in fact most times all you need is some dim light and a little patience. Most men would be thrilled to have their wives call them sexy or hot of whatever words we use to describe the above-mentioned George and Richard. I would be willing to bet most men are so concerned with their own age related issues that they don’t notice if our legs (or chins) are freshly shaved.
Test it out; say something nice to your significant other. Give a genuine compliment once a day, and let them know you appreciate them. Really, I think that’s all any of us wants. Maybe if we all just stepped outside of ourselves and tried to see through the eyes of the opposite sex, we would realize that we all have our issues. We’re in this together.
A friend sent me an email forward photo of a pretty teenaged girl, circa 1968; below the photo was the question, “Where are the cute hippie girls from the 60s?”
I scrolled down to another photo, this of a totally naked, very overweight, out shape, gray haired woman in her 60s. She was covered with stretched out and faded tattoos of Woodstock era images. She wore only flip-flops as she walked down the street, head held high. Amazingly, she looked happy.
Humor goes a long way, so long as the object of the joke is laughing WITH us. As Robert Browning wrote over a century ago, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”
Are You Ready For Today?
Lists. Top ten lists. Mid life. Midlife lists. Midlife top ten lists.
Mind, Body, Spirit, Money.
Life’s Big Four. Life’s four big decision areas.
All day long we make decisions around these four very simple concepts of mind, body, spirit and money. Mostly unaware.
Having answers to critical questions empowers us with a peace that is unknown to people still searching.
What they are searching for and why they pass by the obvious, is understandable and it is also sad. Humans are conditioned to complicate life. Complicated does not get us closer to peace.
Only discernment, organization and finally, determination to be focused and disciplined.
I know well. It’s taken me 50 years to figure it out. Ok, I’m slow. But also determined.
There is hope for you and your dreams. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times – there is no shortcut.
Rethink, Reprioritize, Recommit
Happy Monday everyone. Hope you had a great weekend. I actually worked Saturday at my “real job” – yes, I’m a career employee at a large company.
This whole five daily blogs thing is like a hobby, like growing a garden or something. And as any avid gardener will tell you, “It’s a labor of love.”
Quite literally, a labor of love – for a child.
Anyway, back to the updates:
1. Erika Liodice’s Mid Life Celebration Guest Blogger post yesterday was a first here. Please check out her site, Beyond The Gray, if you want a midlife perspective from a not yet 30-year old. Erika gave me “my first big break” as a Guest Blogger.
2. The numbers thing the other day. (gulp) Well, that was sort of like a time capsule to look back on later.
3. February is about Peace. Peace to me means – tranquility, balance, solace, contentment, harmony, simplicity, acceptance.
Midlife Is Like An Ocean
Midlife Crisis is a household name.
There are two Mid Life Celebration Guest bloggers who are not.
Up first, this Sunday, is Erika Liodice, from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
Erika found Mid Life Celebration and invited me to be a Guest Blogger at her blog, Beyond The Gray.
Lorie Sheffer is also from Pennsylvania, and from my hometown of Spring Grove. Small World After All.
You’ll find their Midlife perspectives similar, but different.
Carpe diem!
Relax and Enjoy?
“What can be added to the happiness of a person who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscious?” — unknown
If ever there was a logical goal in life, perhaps this one should be near the top.
Simple.
Elusive.
Impossible?