Mid Life Celebration

Your Clock Is Ticking

“Aspire to inspire, before you expire.”   — unknown

Before we know it, our time will be through. No second chances. No do overs.

If tomorrow never comes, will you be ok with that?

“Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself.”   — Robert Collier

What is the difference between confidence and arrogance?

What is the difference between self-assured and boastful?

What is the difference between succeeding and failing?

Odds are we’ll fail.

But at least now we know how to increase our odds for success.

Super Hero?

Men of a certain age is the target audience for Mid Life Celebration. Baby Boomer men, and Gen X men over 40 years old.

All are welcome, of course.  Yesterday’s Mid Life Celebration Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer, recommended “Men of a Certain Age” on TNT, tonight (Monday’s) at 10PM.

Click here to view Men of a Certain Age website. Viewing it will give you a quick idea whether or not you want to check it out.  I’ll have to record it because 9:30PM is “lights out”.

Took a quick look yesterday.  Really liked what I saw.

If you’ve seen it, and feel like it, share a quick comment about the show. Happy Monday.

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.

Impossible Is Nothing

Click here to read the six steps from an Everyday Health article.

Or, simply read my list that says the same thing, just differently:

1. Make your goal impossible
2. Start small, I mean seriously small
3. Plan on it taking the rest of your life
4. Do it for someone else, someone really (significantly) important
5. Plan for set backs and mis-steps
6. Have fun and reward yourself occasionally
7. (Bonus step) Search, and find, your indomitable will along way

Ready, set, go!

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?

Spirit

Midlife heartbreak or midlife opportunity.  Pretty simple.  Two choices.  You get to pick one.

If you and your spouse (and yes, want to acknowledge some readers will not be parents), worked hard all your life and played by the rules, and you gave birth to a child without eyes and never able to walk, which would you pick?

Mid Life heartache or mid life opportunity?

Well, there was a Family that had to make this choice.  They were featured on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition as well as numerous other media pieces, including a heartwarming You Tube Video feature, about 6 minutes long, available at the end of this post.

One of my “secrets” to unspeakable  joy is the daily effort to read, listen, watch, experience, think, do and reflect on the countless blessings that surround my ordinary life.

You have all these blessings too.  But in order to feel the Peace and Contentment that are the fruit of these blessings, you must become fully aware.

You must become willing to invest time everyday.  Even if it’s only six minutes. Will today be another day to postpone your new beginning?

If it’s not, click here.

As Simple As Common Clover

Do you often feel overwhelmed?  Me too.

And if you don’t, you’re either brilliant or clueless – I’m guessing anyway.

Human tendency is to complicate things. More is better.  Keeping up with what others have or do.  Newer.  Bigger.

Here’s how I alleviate, not eliminate, the stress of our daily burdens:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Simple. Wise. Powerful.

But there is a complexity we must break through in order to get to simplicity.

And it may take us a lifetime.

Is That A Bicyclist?

Mid Life in 1980?

Hardly.  I was 21. A senior in college, and a dreamer.

There was a movie that shaped the mid life celebration vision.  A mother was videotaping herself while she spoke to her unborn child.

She was dying of cancer and would never meet her child.

She wanted her child to be able to see and hear, directly from the video tapes, what she wished for her child and what she thought her child might want to know about their mother.

It was in the following days, on the lazy, sunny, fall days in West Chester, Pennsylvania that I dreamt of writing a book for my children.

The book would contain all the secrets of life, learned through books, travels and experiences.

While the Mid Life Celebration website is two years old, the name and vision are the same, what’s morphed is Mid Life Celebration’s purpose.

And it’s more exciting than I could have ever imagined 30 years ago. Ever feel like that?

Do you have important dreams from long ago that are more exciting today than when you first dreamt them?

How did you go about keeping them alive all these years?  Or, how did you go about reigniting the flames?

Why?

Children Watch Everything We Do

Have you ever done something you weren’t supposed to do?  And in order to do it, you had to do it in a sneaky way?  And often, there was a close friend who had already done the thing, and they helped you?

Smoking, drinking, stealing, bad pranks, and so on.

Seriously, these are things adults do not make a conscious effort to teach children.  Can you imagine a Mother saying, “Come here son, it’s time you learned how to smoke cigarettes.”

Heard a Chantix commercial last night. Chantix helps smokers quit. Let me set the scene:

Mom comes on saying, “I smoked a pack a day for 25 years. I could not quit smoking, no matter how hard I tried.”

Until one day……

“I told my son to promise me he would never start smoking.”

He said, “Promise me you’ll quit.”

And the Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon.  Little boy blue and the man in the moon……he turned out just like me…..my boy was just like me….

They Could Ask You At Any Moment

“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” — Saint Peter

Perhaps hope is elusive to us during a midlife crisis.

Perhaps hope surrounds us during a midlife celebration.

All this time, I’ve been asking you to think about your answer to the simplest, but most important question a young person may ask you.

Are you inspired enough now to come up with your own unique and special answer?

Old Faithful

Humble servant.

Profoundly simple.

Easy to remember.

Easy enough for others to remember it.

But not powerful enough to get others motivated to think long enough, and hard enough, to do anything about theirs.

Was I having a midlife crisis moment a few days ago while sitting in the pew at Church, listening to our inspiring Priest?

Nope.  It was a midlife celebration moment. It filled me with joy and went something like this:

Lately, I’ve been questioning the percentage of time I write about serious and deep stuff on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

That’s when the revelation came.

My ability to think deeply and profoundly is either innate or highly developed.  My ability to laugh is similar. But reading my entries, you’d think I was just a serious person only.

And then something else happened.  The realization that I can turn on a dime and go completely comical.

And then this thought.  How many can turn on a dime and go deep and profound?

Finally, the question of is one better than the other?  No.  It’s not about better. It’s about balance.

And, it’s about preparation.  Mid Life is something that can be planned for and joyful.

Being serious, profound and deep, is a world-class way to be ready for mid life.

What exactly is a midlife crisis for women?  It has different meaning for different people.  It’s 7:00AM here in Orlando. Just finished reading today’s article from Everyday Health, which speaks about midlife crisis affecting women.

Click here to read.

Why would you want to read this, if you’re a man?  Or if you’re a woman but have never had a midlife crisis?

Simply this, know that someday, if you are like most humans, you will come to the proverbial fork in the road.  And the road you’ve been on may not be the road you want to continue traveling on.

Mid Life Celebration was created years ago in an effort to work through my own mid life crisis.  It can be the best time in your life, but only if you embrace it’s reality with a sincere desire to be thankful for it, and, an uncommon passion to celebrate it.