Tip 1.
How it is everything keeps changing?
One moment you’re happily ensconced in a job with family around you and the next you’re in a land of new, where what you do is up to you.
It should seem wonderful and liberating to now be retired; how come it is so new that you feel at times like you’re in a foreign land and don’t know the rules!
It is like all stages of life we go into, there are different requirements made of us. When we retire or go into what is known as the third age
The body changes are quite dramatic and an internal push to discover some of the big questions comes upon us.
In a nut shell we are asked to confront the fear of aging and of course our transition or what we know of as death. The end of these cycles!
What we understand as death can be unknown and therefore cause fear, and the reaction can be to attempt to avoid either thinking or talking about.
Stages of the Life Cycle
Where a season's length is determined by the time from solstice to equinox, the length of each lifecycle phase is determined by the span of time between birth and the coming of age into young adulthood. In American and most western societies, the ritual acknowledgment today occurs at 21, the age of college and university graduation and initial career launch. Afterwards, a person is deemed to be an autonomous adult. The length of life’s first phase fixes the length of the other life phases as well. Once one batch of children has fully come of age, it and it alone comprises the society’s young adults, casting its next-elders into a midlife social role. This now happens when the latter reach age 42. And, in turn, the group entering midlife pushes another into an elder role, now starting around age 63, today’s median age for receiving one’s first old-age benefit check from government, varies from country to country as governments declare their inability to finance all ageing citizens.
Since the share of people able to survive the elderhood phase of life has grown enormously over the last fifty years, it may make sense to define a new phase of life: late elderhood (age 84 on up). The social role of late elders is pure dependence, the receiving of comfort from others. Well earned, and time for peace and nurturing, by younger folk.
The phases, and social roles, of the modern lifecycle can be though of as
Childhood; age 0-18 Social role: growth, receiving nurture, acquiring values, strength of character. Generally we live within a family context with parents or carers overseeing our well being.
Young Adulthood age 18-41 Social role: vitality, serving institutions, testing values, creating families. Having careers that we build and upsetting the powers that be with new ideas and the dynamic forces of young sexually energized and bodily strong people.
Midlife age 42-62 Social role: power managing institutions, applying values, guiding, giving, passing on to children, the business, the ability to run things. Beginning to embrace our aging and looking to the last third of life.
Elderhood age 63-83 Social role: leadership, leading institutions, transferring values, mentoring, guiding. Now we can if we wish truly come into the mentoring role, continuing to use our knowledge and wisdom to guide.
Late Elderhood (age 84+). Social role: dependence (receiving comfort from institutions, remembering values, using meditation and contemplation to prepare for the transition. Forgiving the body for having to fail as this is our natural time for death.
Since each stage of life has its own unique gift to give to humanity, we need to do whatever we can to support each stage, and to protect each stage from attempts to suppress its individual contribution to the human life cycle.
So letting young people be young, remembering that if you are anything like me, my young years were full of rebellion finding out new things and exploring. Even if you didn’t do rebellion, if you look back you will have to laugh at some of your decisions. I do find myself being challenged by younger people and often want to judge. It has been a discipline for me to remember that I don’t have all the answers for all the people. So let younger people grow up the way they need to, not my way.
We should protect the wisdom of the aged. We ought to take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants. For by supporting each stage of the human life cycle, we will help to ensure that all of its members are given care and helped to blossom to their fullest degree.
Tip 2.
BELIEFS
Have you ever wondered why you believe the things you do? And more importantly have you ever wondered how these beliefs affect the outcomes of your daily life.
You learn beliefs from childhood upbringing some useful some not, family patterning, school experiences and the dominant culture in which you live and have been observing all your life. These cause and effect relationships have all left ideas with you of how things are and aren’t. I recently had a client who firmly believed she could not achieve a good career role in her life, even though she was a bright competent woman. During our sessions it became obvious
she was holding a belief that had been passed from both her mother and father that women should never take the jobs of men. She consequently released and recontexualised this belief to one that served her and went on to achieve her goals.
When you observe a pattern several times, especially during formative years, and so on, you will create a rule for yourself. This rule then becomes an unconscious program or pattern of the mind. These patterns are often the result of painful situations or circumstances where scares have left a defensive block to expansion and moving forward, with whatever it is you wish for your life.
Most of us have been bombarded with images of aging as “decline”, non-achievement, depression, loneliness and fear of death. A lot of our forbearers played out these scenarios before our eyes, as our culture turned toward youthful faces for inspiration; our elders turned to shame and internalized punishment for growing older.
The thing is, nature doesn’t get it wrong!
Mother Nature doesn’t leave anyone out in the cold without a reason! So have you asked yourself what the reason might be?
It was necessary for us as youngsters to feel the way we did, for many reasons, however unless those reasons still hold, and it’s my
guess they don’t; it is time to drop most if not all the blocks to love’s presence. To being present to our greatness and achieving, not so much, now, career goals but making goals and continuing a life based on love, gratitude, wisdom and forgiveness. What will show for each of us, is ours to pursue
We usually treat these beliefs we hold dear as if they are true, and they rule our perceptions of ourselves and therefore our world and the relationships that populate our world. This goes on and on in life and underpins our daily actions until such time as we wish to change them. We do have the power to change our lives!
I recently had a client who had retired with many plans but just could not seem to either get anything off the ground or enjoy his days. Upon talking he discovered some of the amazing things he had done during his life, he recontextualized his failures and regrets into lessons learned and became a wonderful mentor to a bunch of younger businessmen. This man’s block was his belief that having retired he was on the scrapheap of life. When he let this belief go, all kinds of new and wonderful realizations occurred, and therefore opportunities.
And it is these beliefs we must challenge ourselves in inquiry. What do they mean, where do they come from and are they still useful. Or are many of my beliefs about aging detrimental to my health and well being. For instance ask yourself, what your beliefs are around the ideas of body image? Do you pine for a youthful body and feel embarrassed by an older body? Do you criticize younger people for not behaving the way you think they should? Are you afraid of your aging and don’t want to consider the outcomes of life?
This fear/belief is what fuels the multi billion dollar anti-aging industry. Looking after your body is akin to looking after and having a healthy mind. Good food, good exercise, friends, community support, giving back and being the best we can is health at its ultimate.
Then we can, if we so choose, delve a little deeper.
All these questions can be faced squarely along with the issues of death and dying as you segue into Eldership and take up the role as
the mentor to following generations.
To qualify as an elder you need your life in all its lived glory. There are no formal qualifications, you are by virtue of the fact that you have bought up a family, worked in business, travelled, built houses, succeeded, failed, tried again, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, fought in wars, changed countries, been the best and the worst you could be, learned new languages, listened, sat with the birthing and the dying, loved, cried and fought. YOU QUALIFY
This is your time to step up to harvesting the fruits of a long and eventful life.
To live the power of your wonderful life and give to your family and community!
Tip 3.
Forgiveness
To be able to jump out of bed with vigor that defies age has everything to do with how you feel about yourself and your life in general. Wouldn't you rather start your day feeling vigorous, rather than worrying about your aches and pains? This self picturing is vital, no matter what age you are. In fact - for me, it has become increasingly more important as I mature. Sometimes I don't like the images I see in the media of older people - so I use my 'self picturing' to ensure that I won't fall into believing these stereo types about the elders in our society. Through this blueprint I'm going to work with you - to show you how you can do this too. Life is so precious - I hope you will begin to celebrate each and every day with passion and vigor too.
Love is the foundation of the whole of life, to thinking in unison with your inner power and knowing with inner clarity what your purpose is.
Love therefore is the foundation of all the laws of the universal mind.
Without this Love being felt and used, its business as usual for your old sub-conscious patterns of hatred and victimization sabotage and blame.
You cannot leave any situation or release any old patterns until there is love and forgiveness, and then a completion or healing will occur as your heart opens and an alignment with the true flow of life has been restored.
The wonderful thing about time is it’s stretchable. We can always reach back and repair relationships, reframe situations and release any blame and victimization we might feel about the past.
It is learning to love and embrace all that is with an acceptance and receiving of that higher Love that brings in the power of mind for deliberate manifestation
True prosperity and abundance is learning to flow with these laws.
Abundance is the acceptance of all that is. It is the natural cause of you. It is also your natural inheritance. You can claim what’s yours now.
At different times you see all around you the manifestations of your joy and at others your fears, or for that matter the manifestations of any of your current preoccupations.
Tip 3.
Gratitude
Learning the contemplative arts is essential, to having a peaceful and forgiving life as an older person.
Learning and practicing the art of meditation
Having gratitude for all the amazing experiences you have had. To reach this realization it will be essential to reach back through your life and gently find the places you hold in your memory with bitterness and regret. All these scenarios need recontexualizing.
Easier said than done you might say! But as you would know anything worth doing has a moment of difficulty, a mountain to climb, a raging river to cross. These are the moments in life when you step up to the plate, and say yes I will. What is necessary to turn around this anger and bitterness, sadness or depression, regret or lack of
responsibility. We have all made mistakes, you are not alone, we are the best and worst of everything, and we are in this together. The joyousness of letting go is the most amazing feeling. Because it is where letting in love begins.
When we do our contemplative work, what will arise are memories of bitterness from betrayals, guilt from unfulfilled relationships, old hatreds arising as fear. When reaching an older age we can look back and recontextualize these happenings as lessons learned from decisions that we acted out with the information we had at that time. Feeling the situation or circumstance with a forgiveness and self love that understands why and how we reacted as we did. We were neither right nor wrong, as we take a back seat look at the scenarios of our life.
Letting go of guilt and fear, looking at life from an older age gives the possibility of harvesting Wisdom from the past, connecting the dots and patterns of decisions and actions all the way through our lives.
Being self-forgiving as a way of looking at the past will bring peace of mind to the present, and gratitude for a life well lived.
This then segues our entry to Eldership, being able to pass on Wisdom learned
This is just one of many forgiveness exercises
Forgiveness exercise
1. Withdraw your projection.
Take your focus off the other onto yourself
2. Forget about the other person/s or situation
3. How does the situation make you feel?
4. How often in the past have you gone into this state?
5. Ask what lies behind the feeling?
6. What is not happening the way you want it to happen?
7. And finally what is the payoff for you? (Being unforgiving)
8. Is it that you get to remain angry and indignant?
9. The question is finally are you willing to forgive yourself?
10. The key here is to know that guilt about the past can be
transformed using spiritual technologies
Tip 4
Trusting
Integrity as action is when knowing with self confidence that you
understand your own beliefs and where they impinge on your
current everyday life. Being able to keep energetic and
ethical boundaries, while trusting the process
Knowing and trusting your intuitive “Gut Feelings”
This is such a big thing for everyone, and we will keep being given the same scenarios over and over, till we get and heed the early warning signs, whether the signs are for a go ahead or stay back and avoid.
Knowing how to trust your internal knowledge will give a great deal of peace of mind
When you have a situation of any kind whether you like it or don’t like it the outcomes may differ but being in the experience can look to you like it was all the fault of some other person, thing or situation.
Taking responsibility for what comes to us then becomes the task at hand. For instance you have a certain situation that caused you to feel angry or frustrated. You don’t want to be infected by the viruses of unfinished business.
Be aware of what you are focusing on. Is it the lack of career and work fulfillment, do you think you have lived an unfulfilled life. Do you think you don’t have enough money? Does retirement look like a foreign country? Some place you have stumbled into without planning
Because you know your 7 steps, you can check where the frustration is being held and recontextualize the particular emotion or scenario
It may be that that particular situation was not for you to participate in.
Now the letting go process can begin; letting go of blame and regret and guilt.
This is what freedom is, free from having the past dictate the future.
Simple as that; to forgive is to release the bondage we have held ourselves and others in. Listen what you think about in your contemplations, don’t try to make everything positive, let the negative feelings come forward and ask them if you still need them or can you recontexualize and come out with a new relationship to your past. Your family and loved ones will thank you for it.
Tip 5
What is Your Pupose?
What is your purpose for being here on planet earth, why do what you do? Do you sometimes feel a sense of uselessness?
A “what’s it all been for” feeling?
This is by far the most important of all tips you will ever get.
It is to ask yourself the question; what is my purpose?
The first thing I’d like to say is that the answer is in you.
As are all answers because there is nothing outside of you
So listen, learn and do!
This is a journey without end. The love we discover within has always been there. It is that it has been hidden from your view essentially by you. And revealing your inner wisdom to yourself is the falling away of much of the past “baggage” and letting in the light of reason.
The light of Love; what we are all born to both give and receive
You are the maker of your world as we all are.
This is quite a startling idea, but it is the basic premise upon which
All the ancient metaphysical texts are based.
I have a totally different understanding of what aging can be, and that is that people can live joyfully, fearlessly, and richly to the end. This a a challenge without many role models or maps. The challenge is to say no to the “decline” mentality and yes to life as we make it.
It may not fit well with your thinking, at this time and that is why it is so important, and to begin to look squarely and with honesty at what you think old age is?
Yours with love and respect
Margo Knox
http:www.babyboomerswithpurpose.com

Author's Bio: 

By Joining my 4 week bootcamp
“Baby Boomers with Purpose Balance, Freedom, Fulfillment”
You be done with anxieties and worry about aging and retirement
http://www.babyboomerswithpurpose.com

Margo works with those who have recently retired or are in the third age. She helps Elders to step up to their role as mentors for the next generation.