Peace.
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.]]>©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>If we, from a young age were more aware that time was not seemingly almost infinite, perhaps we would realize that from an early start we should make the most of every day.
I am not suggesting we have to rush rush rush, but to savour savour savour. Make every meeting with a person count, make every conversation build and contribute to the collective happiness and love of the world.
Practically, we could take where we live in the world as a starting point for our average life expectancy. We could then be more conscious as we grow older the vices we collect on the way with our lifestyles (such as cigarettes, over eating and lack of exercise) to recalculate our ‘years left expectancy’.
I am sure if we were more conscious as a society of the time each of us had left on this planet we would all do so much more to contribute positively to the well-being of ourselves, the people around us and the planet and nature as a whole.
What do you think?
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>but I have a few good pointers. But I do feel like I have under-achieved in
life very much so far and am very ambitious about making a change to make it
happen before things are too late.
Nineteen years ago I was in a restaurant, nearly ready to leave when I
noticed who had just come to sit on the table next to us. It was Simon LeBon
with wife and friend. We didn
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>ahead of us and we assume that we will live until we are a hundred. Days are
cast by, one after the other as if we are rich with time.
Yet as life goes on, we get more of a perspective. We see that the days when
we were young are not the same as when we are older. We have different
opportunities, but many can not be swapped with our younger times.
I
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>believe that? Some days I feel like a wreak! All those years of feeling
immortal when I was young… Well, now I am paying for it.
The high blood pressure is a curious one however. I am overweight. I am 6
foot high and weigh around (around = don’t believe me) 15 stone. Doctor says
I am overweight. I know. Four years ago I was 12 and a half stone. I got rid
of the weight then, I can do it again.
Yet the doctor says I will be on blood pressure pills for the foreseeable
future. He says most people start taking them and don
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.]]>Failure to create my kids a happy life with sound characters is a great
fear. I also fear that when I look back on my life I summaries it as full of
missed opportunities and misunderstandings of what really was important to
me. Fear of failing to live up to my dreams through lack of confidence in my
early years, failure to achieve something similar in later life through lack
of opportunity.
If I could say one thing to my 19 year old self it would be to never, ever
hesitate, brush your fears aside since they are only there to stop you, not
warn you of anything that can not be undone, or is there to develop you.
Follow your dreams and live your life as if every day is precious and will
make a difference to your whole life.
Explore and experience, radiate happiness and kindness, give to others on a
daily basis and build a self esteem that needs not rely on anyone else’s
disposition to feel safe and secure.
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>the routine and the life cycle all set out in front of them. I am feeling,
Like Bono once said, that I still haven’t found what I am looking for.
Its not a religious thing, its more about a reason for it all. What is the
reason for my life? I am not looking for a self-proclaimed guru to tell me,
I know I need to find it out for myself.
I just feel that the existence I have, is not enough.
I think to myself, if and when there comes a time when I look back on a long
life, could I honestly say to myself I made a difference, a positive
difference to this earth and the creatures who live on it?
Have I felt fulfilled, have I contributed positively, or, did I just exist
and go through the process of the human life cycle reproducing to then pass
on the challenge to my children to achieve where I had not.
I want to make a positive change to the world we live in. I want my
consumption of the earths resources to be a net positive rather than a net
loss.
I want to make a positive impact on not only my children’s lives but for
others in need and those around me. But not just that, I want to feel and
see that there are things I have done that have helped to steer these hearth
inhabitants and nature towards a better future than that which we currently
have.
Each generation has its own challenges. My previous generation was to ensure
that two empires did not take over and enslave the world. Since then war has
been a common activity yet we also now have the challenge of steering the
world away from destruction by our over-consumption and pollution.
I keep thinking that this is where my opportunity lies. Somewhere here,
amongst the challenges of climate change, environmentalism, human & animal
suffering and extinction.
I shall keep looking and thinking.
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>am still looking for something far more meaningful than the life I have. My
life isn’t that bad. Sure, it would be nice to have an income, but with a
plan in progress with my music publishing, things are looking promising,
albiet slow and painful.
Even that seems to tell me there is a reason for it. I have never been
‘poor’ before and it is good for me to experience how tight life can be (in
the western sense of course!).
But there is more to life, surely. More to the day to day routine. Raising
kids, have some time out.. Working..
Maslow talked about Self-Actualization in his Hierarchy of needs. Jung talks
about getting to mid life and becoming more spiritual.
This seems to match, although I do recall in my late 20’s feeling just the
same.. Looking for something that would excite me and drive me with a
feeling of adventure.
I love the cinema, and find films a great escape from the normality of life.
I think many of us do this too much, living our lives mostly in a fantasy
world. I can imagine some (as sometimes I do myself) just want to live in
that fantasy instead of the dreary concrete walled, processed food life that
has become the norm as a westerner.
My new career is about following a passion, but I find the business means I
have little time for that passion. Yet the years still flow.
I am beginning to feel that I need to make some plans for definite changes
this year. I want to take the summer off to travel to all the regional
festivals. I want to make my business an online business that I can, within
reason, manage from anywhere so that I can take in the world and all its
wonders.
Maybe I don
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.]]>day. We are a little over weight. My blood pressure is a little too high
(I
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.]]>I look out through my eyes and its the same view I see ever since I stopped
growing. I wonder when this view will change because certainly if I look at
myself in the mirror I don
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.]]>feel that it is an issue that must be understood. For me, my loneliness
seems to be based around a lack of male friendships. Close trusting
relationships with men.
Maybe I don
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.]]>the moment sparkling like a star in our hands and melting like a snowflake.
Let us use it before it is too late” (Marie Beyon Ray)
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.]]>Of course this is impossible, I wouldn’t touch my ex with a barge pole so that is irrelevant. But my point is, after four years of separation, I still feel an immense loss of the family unit for my children.
My youngest is almost at an age where her years in a separated family are more than that whilst her mother was around. I can never forgive what she did to their young lives, yet accept if people don’t want to be together, its a very sorry situation but can be for the best.
I just wish I could create for them a childhood that they can look back on and not feel like they were torn between two different collections of photo albums.
©2010 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>Its a topic close to my heart and one that is part of many people’s midlife decisions. Many individuals at midlife decide that their inefficient and corrupt corporates are not great places to work, nor were they meant to give the best years of their lives to them just for a corporate salary package and a few transient perks.
So I have started a new category today from this posting that will build into a new area that I know is another part of the midlife challenge and crisis that many have. I have combined career change with lifestyle change because if you don’t change your lifestyle as part of your career change you have missed a great and important opportunity.
I have been in the Internet industry for fourteen years now. I remember when it was novel seeing an article in the newspaper about the Internet. Ironically, it is now novel again to see an article about the Internet because it is so ubiquitous to people’s lives. The importance of it, along with a few other tech things like mobile phones is that, given the right control and management these tools will enable you to create a new living and also a new way of living that will be far more natural than the corporate Victorian existence many of us are well used to.
So choosing a new career, and taking into consideration not only new technology but alternative ways of living that can come from new technology as well as simply thinking differently, is a great opportunity for you at midlife.
Choosing a new career or leaving your old job to start a new business is a big event which can be one of the biggest challenges of your life. Choosing the way you live is as important and can be integrated into the new career as a fundamental part of it. For example, I recall on a recent holiday to Cyprus seeing a man who would appear from one corner of the village I stayed at to sit by the local bar, open his laptop and connect to the wireless network of the bar. He would sit, type and sip for half an hour and then be off, laptop in rucksack.
It turned out the ruben lived in a bus near the village a few hundred yards from the beach. I don’t know what he did for a living but I got the impression much was done via the laptop and then uploaded to the Internet on a frequent basis. He had created a lifestyle around his work-style, or was it the other way around? he had created a work-style around the lifestyle he wanted.
Contrast this to a dull day in the winter of a northern European or American day in a city. Millions of us travel for hours to work in crowded conditions to then work alongside others who are equally frustrated at having to travel and spend so much money doing so, only to get the salary to pay the bills we don’t feel any fulfilment in paying. Compare that to this guy; he has no need for heating bills, he sits under shade when it is hot, goes for a swim when he wants to. Lives off of fruit and vegetables that keep him healthy. He also doesn’t need to bust his butt working long hours to make enough money just to survive. I want to think about those last words for a moment. “Just to survive”. That’s what it feels like for many people. Paying bills for heating and electricity, tv, insurance & house loans or rent, just to survive.
Why not consider a skill you have that could give you a modest income and find somewhere you could live that required little monetary challenge?
I spent years trying to work out what I really wanted to do with my life. It came my permanent thought process for everything I looked at and interacted with. I read books and even read books of lists of careers to find something that met all my needs.
I was so frustrated with the corruption and negligence in the corporate I was working in (in the telco industry) that I wrote 90,000 words of a book I never completed to possibly get published. It was therapy in its own right.
Choosing what is right for you is not easy but starts by taking a review of who you really are, stripping away at the scales you have built up over you over the years to understand who you really are and what really excites you. What were you born to be?
At midlife, as part of a crisis and after a long term relationship separation and divorce, there is a time when you think to yourself, ‘what now?’
That is the time to think to yourself, ‘what was I born to be on this earth?’ its not meant to be a religious calling, it is meant to trigger within you a desire to understand what really excites you, and no, I don’t accept any corporate job as being the thing that really does that. A corporate job is just a mask that gives some reward and satisfaction and maybe hints at what you really have a passion for that makes your life unique and worth living.
I will begin to write more about this category over time but for now, back to Clay at the Growing Life.
Clay has written an article that proposes a new manifesto for living and working. Go check it out and please let me know what you think right here.
Soon I will tell you about the man from Thailand I met on the beach one day and how I think he has got it made.
p>If you feel this article has helped you, please donate to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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.]]>In midlife our metabolism slows. We have to accept and adjust perhaps for the first time, that we can not, and do not need to eat like we are growing teenagers anymore. Obesity is all around us and affects many of us simply because we choose to eat too much and exercise too little. Its as simple as that yet we try to avoid the truth of it. We all need to look at ourselves and be honest. We don’t need to eat so much, we don’t need vitamins as much since we can get them from a good diet. We need to exercise more.
What is wrong with simply eating fruit and vegetables, minimising processed food and other foods that don’t offer much nutritional value?.
What’s so hard about getting out and exercising once a day? just going for a walk, or bike ride, you don’t even need to spend money on an expensive gym either.
Why are we trying so hard to avoid just doing this? fruit, veg, exercise? are we so deluded that we have to now spend more money on vitamin tablets when the natural vitamins in fruit and vegetables are far more valuable to us?
Here is an interesting article on the issues around taking vitamin tablets. Stop today, throw them away and just eat more fruit and vegetables unless you feel morally committed to keeping the drug industry very healthy instead.
If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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.]]>Interesting article recently posted here about requiring self-esteem for building success. Essentially you have to believe in yourself to achieve anything that is worth succeeding in, from being a good parent to building your own business.
Essentially, you have to believe in yourself to continue to work at something, if you have low confidence your self esteem will break and you will find you give up on everything in your life that is ‘too hard’.
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.]]>I have experienced a person doing just this and it is a sad and selfish existence. Selfish because those that act this way are using others when they could be getting on with their lives with the knowledge that they are just a place holder.
I wouldn’t trust someone who had done this, keep an eye out for yourself here. You might find your midlife crisis’ed partner has a similar issue and is not being honest with you.
o check it out here at Divorce Issues, Lawyers, and Headaches.
 |
Guy
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.]]>Go check here:
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.]]>“Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence.
The new generation of antidepressant drugs work no better than a placebo for the majority of patients with mild or even severe depression, comprehensive research of clinical trials has found.”
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.]]>