Mid Life Celebration

Canada, April 26, 2010

Ever get to the end of your work day and feel like you gave so much you hardly have energy to be engaged later in the evening?

Was feeling like that yesterday after giving two great keynote speeches here at the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

But there were several tempting choices:

1. Run along the harbor waterfront
2. Visit the CN Tower (world’s tallest?)
3. Attend the Blue Jays vs Red Sox Baseball game

So, knowing that these opportunities will most likely never come again, I’ll share photos of what happened, after I get to Charlotte, North Carolina.  Carpe diem!

“It is an old ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way”. — Rollo May

I’m tempted to question myself.  Why?  Because many I talk with, think I’m crazy to believe that people will want to change if the right recipe comes along.

There is a secret recipe.  Everyone knows it.  But because we ignore it, it remains a secret.

The secret is, “work hard and find your purpose”.

Most people don’t want to do either.  I certainly didn’t.  Most of my life was,  “Work hard, play hard”. That’s a catch phrase for, “Hurry up, we’re lost”.

Then I regained consciousness and started looking around.  There’s much work to be done.  The harvest is great, the workers are few.

Mid Life Fanatic.  Why  yes, yes I am.

Why wouldn’t anyone want to be a mid life fanatic?  Actually, why wouldn’t anyone want to be fanatical about life? Period.

Fanatical.  Defined as excessive enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is just another word for attitude.  Attitude is up to you.  No one else. Period.

We get one chance to have enthusiasm.  It’s the time between our birth and our death.

Ya with me?  Seriously.  Are you with me?  Carpe diem

Mid Life Self-Discipline.  We may never be perfect, but we can be better.

Discipline is remembering what you want.

First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits or they will conquer you.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want now.

If we don’t discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.

You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life.

PS.  Found these thoughts on Twitter, source unknown, and put them together. They were all found separately.

“As I get older I’ve learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things”. — Po Bronson

Here’s my challenge with Po’s thought – doesn’t anybody (when listening) hear the echos of codependency?

“Oh, Uncle Joel, he sure likes his beer”, people say lovingly about a family member’s obvious addiction.

Everyone lives with it.  Everyone is privately aware of it.  Everyone acts like it’s not true. Everyone says nothing.

I sort of feel like accusing them all – of saying nothing, doing nothing.

Or maybe it’s better to let loved ones travel that path.  Then no one would be guilty of accusing anyone of anything. How cool is that?

Traveling the world, I see many of our American Military coming and going. I talk with a fair number of them. And because of this, a more present appreciation for what is “happening in the real world”.

Here’s to all of you who’ve I’ve met, and to all those I’ll never meet.  God Bless you and your Families. Godspeed.

An American Soldier, by Toby Keith.  Click here to watch it.

My Father-In-Law served in WWII and lives in Pennsylvania.  My Dad served in Japan during the Korean War, and died of a non-military disease in 2001.  I love them both.

And if you do have the time and the guts to watch it, say a prayer for our troops.

PS. And, um, it’s ok to cry.  I did.

Walking wounded at mid life?

Sleeping wounded at mid life?

Waking wounded at mid life?

Awakened wounded at mid life?

I’ve been all four. The one that works best, in my opinion, is awakened wounded.

Ever wonder which one you are?

We are all wounded.  Ever heard the phrase, “Life’s a bitch and then you die”?  Things only become cliches if they’re true.

“Are you heading home”?, I asked the women (73) in the window seat.

“No, I’m going to visit my daughter (47) who has brain cancer”.

Then she asked me the same question and I asked her, “Can you please give me a few minutes so I can comprehend what you just said”?

A routine day. A routine trip.  A routine question.

A wake up call answer.

And just the day before I was taking about “Living before you die” with another man in mid life.

It’s like someone is telling me, do it, start writing and get your book out there. Too many people are sleeping.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”. – Henry David Thoreau

Pretty good, to a point. Sort of saying I’m not buying it completely.

It seems Thoreau’s message is a bit misleading.  We all know that life isn’t fair, and therefore, expecting the life we imagine will happen, is doomed.

What I hear is,  “Go after your dreams.  Expect and be prepared for awful things to happen. But don’t let that stop you from living an extraordinary life”.

If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans.  But don’t let that stop you.  Carpe diem, jeff

I often wonder if people, other than Baby Boomers, read Mid Life Celebration.

It also intrigues me whether this blog helps you as much as it helps the author.

GoDaddy says yes.  The daily stats continue to rise at a fast pace. A pace that is quite distracting actually.

I hadn’t planned for the type of “success” the stats indicate.  So today, I just wanted to clarify something.

Mid Life Celebration is for my son.  It’s one of life’s big choices.  Our mind, and what we do with it is one of the big four.

More later.  Carpe diem, jeff noel

Mid Life Million Dollar Question:

“What’s it gonna take to move from midlife-complacency to midlife-commitment”?

There are curious people who actually ask me, “What’s your secret to get and stay motivated”?

I usually mumble something that sounds like a good answer, but actually I’m thinking, “If I have to explain it to you, you won’t understand”.

Listen, you got to mid life.  That in itself is pretty remarkable.  You have the answers.  You do.  Trust me, you do.

But maybe you haven’t yet found the courage to admit it.

When are you going to start?  If not today, when?  Seriously, when? Carpe diem, jeff noel

Good Goals & Not So Good Goals.

This jeff noel You Tube video was the first take and slightly longer (40 sec) version:

People need people to be role models. Are you brave enough and tough enough to be that type of person?

“When you find a purpose bigger than yourself.  When you you finally realize you’re not going to live forever, well, you have the power to change the world”.  – jeff noel    PS. Carpe diem

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to accept a little success and leave it that way”. — Marlon Brando

More is better, right?

I’m pretty much an over-achiever.  Hard to become a 25-year Disney Cast Member and not have excellence rub off on you.

What has rubbed off on us is what we carry into mid-life.  This is why it’s a crisis. Along the way, we weren’t paying attention to common sense.

Midlife provides a second look at common sense.  Midlife does not provide an easy choice. But it does provide one.

Carpe diem, jeff noel

It runs through my mind everyday, all day, like the water over Niagara Falls – relentless, unstoppable, never ending.

Only difference is that it’s much more subtle in our brains.

The ability to awaken our subconscious minds, which are like the roaring water.

Yet Niagara Falls is only visible to us when we get close to it.  Otherwise, it’s like it doesn’t exist.

There are thoughts, dreams, ideas, goals that are locked up in our subconscious.

If only we’d have the courage to practice recalling them, and then, just maybe, we could do something about them.

Before we die.

Carpe diem, jeff noel

PS. A visual, in case you need it: