John and I spent part of our autumn vacation giving retirement a test drive.
Vacation is typically synonymous with the “not working” part of retiring, so what was noteworthy was staying in a Santa Fe retirement community with our neighbor, Charles.
Category: health and well being
Inside Out and Mama Gena gave me timely reminders that the whole range of human emotions is valid. Even at holiday time.
Once I stopped coloring my hair, I began to understand I was defying the cultural expectation that we not age, like Peter Pan, and that challenging social norms is unnerving to some.
“People don’t learn from experiences, they learn from the reflection on their experiences.”
According to Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, “The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
Nan Sanders Pokerwinski weighs the winter options: Stay in and make progress on projects she’s been itching to get into or go enjoy activities with friends?
Seven Spiritual Laws has been such a touchstone for me that I’m going to recap each of these laws over the coming weeks. The first law is pure potentiality.
How can you prioritize making and maintaining friendships? Is there something you’re doing that you could ditch to make room for friendships, or could you make better use of downtime? Can you combine socializing with something else that’s already on your calendar?
Tony Marceda shares a deeply personal story of learning to manage his anxiety and panic attacks in a way that leaves him feeling like himself.
Allison Tray writes: I did something really radical: I decided that I did not have a sleeping problem. I used the power of my thoughts to convince myself that as a living creature, I required sleep and it was going to happen.
Lately I have been pondering what else I can do with our living room concerts — showing art on the walls while musicians perform, hosting writers for a reading in between music sets? Or maybe I try something different entirely — a home-based supper club idea with food or cocktails as the focus instead of music?
Lara Zielin was inspired by reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic” and running into Josh Gates from “Expedition Unknown” to overcome fear and have adventures again.
Amanda Enayati tells us that when it comes to stress, it’s less about what’s actually happening to you and more about how you think about what’s happening. Perception is everything.
Set yourself up to succeed this year by not trying to make too many changes at once, by focusing on your goal but not giving up if you slip, and by remembering why you want to make the change.
An article on Business Insider headlined “A neuroscience researcher reveals 4 rituals that will make you happier” summarizes some key findings of UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb and his book The Upward Spiral.
Let’s not forget about giving thanks — really giving thanks and meaning it, on Thanksgiving and beyond.
If you aren’t a morning person, you’re like about 40 percent of people who aren’t the early bird that catches the worm. Research says your body clock is unlikely to change, so best to embrace your night owl preferences.
The cliche of the middle-aged guy buying a sports car and ditching his wife for a girl half his age always struck me as a desperate move to avoid aging — when the pressures of parenting and career collide with the increasing aches and pains and wrinkles of a body in decline, hook up with someone who knows nothing of those…
We don’t all have a choice about our circumstances in life — where and when you were born, your skin color, gender and medical condition when you were born, the resources your family had were all dealt to you. We do have a choice about how we view our circumstances. For everything I can think of to complain about in my life,…
I have been using my meditation time to work on the notion of letting go of the past. If someone hurt me in the past or I made mistakes, it’s time to move on. I can learn from those experiences while not dwelling on resentment or regret. If I behaved in a certain way because I felt it helped me in an earlier phase of my life, I don’t need to continue that behavior if it no longer serves me.
My mom was the opposite of a helicopter parent. I’ve heard terms like free-range parenting and no-rescue parenting, all of which sound like my mom. Though she expected me to excel in school and respect my elders, she left it to me to figure out much of how to live my life. I often went out to play for hours unsupervised, and as…
Lately I’ve been toying with letting my natural color, including the gray, grow in.
I’ve read a number of fashion stories saying there’s a trend in women going gray intentionally. I subscribed to a blog called Revolution Gray that gives pointers on how to do it, including adjusting your makeup and hair products accordingly.
But I struggle more with giving up being a redhead, which has been part of my identity my entire adult life, than I do with going gray.