Ageless Explorer

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“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cheshire Cat.
“I don’t much are where —” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cheshire Cat.
“— so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland…….

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I love that quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In fact, I have probably lived that quote far too many times in my life. Movement became the benchmark through which I gauged progress in my life – as long as I was moving forward, I was getting somewhere and making progress, or at least that is what I used to think.

Then I started learning about life purpose and how to find my life purpose – that quality or passion that I wanted to center my life around. That ‘thing’ that I wanted to build a career on, or spend time studying, or spend time doing. That ‘thing’ would make me feel like I was accomplishing something with my life and not just going somewhere; anywhere!

OK, so I’m not the only person that is seeking to identify their life’s purpose. Seems that there are a few other baby boomers, and Gen Y’ers that are currently searching to define their life’s purpose.

There are numerous techniques that people use to explore and identify their life’s purpose. Many techniques involve answering questions, like the one’s below.

10 Questions That Can Help You Discover Your Life’s Purpose:

source: florindasdesigns Flickr, Cretive Commons

1. What do you love to do, whether in your spare time or at work?
2. What parts of your present job or life activities do you thoroughly enjoy?
3. What do you naturally do well?
4. What are your ten greatest successes to date (in your eyes)?
5. Is there a cause about which you feel passionate?
6. What are the ten most important lessons you have learned in your life?
7. Are there some issues or perceived problems that have occurred over and over again?
8. What do you daydream about doing?
9. Imagine you are writing your epitaph? What things do you want to be remembered for at the end of your life?
10. What would you do if you know you could not fail? What would it take to achieve that?

There is another technique that I really enjoy using to identify topics that I am interested in, but that could be because I am more than just a little bit book obsessed. Try spending some time wandering around a large book store. What topics are attracting your attention? History? Architecture? Travel? Look for a pattern in what book topics attract your attention.

You can also look at the books you own. What topics have interested you enough that you have actually bought books about the topic – and spent time reading them?

And you can look at what magazines you subscribe to. What are the topics of the articles that caught your attention and you enjoyed reading?

Once you have all of this information collected, see what patterns you can identify, what topics keep popping up. These common interests and patterns will point towards your life’s purpose and will help you set life goals, help you design your lifestyle, or help you maneuver through a major life transition.

With your life’s purpose, a goal and a plan in hand, you can begin building your best life. Or at least that is what I plan on doing

TTFN

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4 Comments | In: Authentic Happiness, Baby Boomers, Retirement Coach, Retirement Lifestyle Plan, beginnings, lifestyle design | tags: Ageless Explorers, baby boomer, Baby Boomers, life's purpose, lifestyle design, lifestyle plans, mindset, Retirement Coach, retirement coaching, Retirement Lifestyle Plan, transitions. | #

A discussion on courage came up the other day, in a Mastermind Group that I belong to. We were asked to define what we thought courage was. Automatically the discussion turned to the courage that Firefighters, members of the Police Force, and members of the Armed Forces show in the line of duty.

But then the discussion took an interesting twist and started focusing on everyday acts of courage, the kind of acts of courage that we all face on a daily basis. For some in the group, enrolling in University as an undergraduate student in their forties was courageous. For others moving to a country on the other side of the world where you had never been to before and where you had no friends or family and living there for a couple of years, wasn’t so much an act of courage as it was an adventure.

The difference between what we saw as being courageous versus what we saw as be adventurous revolved around the idea of stepping outside of one’s comfort zone.

Everyone has a comfort zone, a depth and breadth of experiences that we are used to dealing with. We have our routines: we get up at a specific time most days to head to work where we do the job we were trained to do. We head home at roughly the same time every day to have dinner. After dinner we have our routines of either watching tv, or reading a book, or doing some shopping, or visiting a friend, that kind of stuff. Within this realm of experiences we know that we can deal with most things that come along, so we are fairly comfortable.

However, when our routines change or disappear (like when we retire, or begin a location independent lifestyle, or become a solo entrepreneur, or experience some other major life transition) we can lose much of our comfort zone.

I’m not a ‘fear fit’ person, and when I stopped working last year my comfort zone shrank considerably. I lost my routine of getting up in the morning, driving to work, interacting with coworkers, do my job, etc. Rather than live within this smaller comfort zone, what I decided to do was to commit random acts of courage and use this opportunity to expand my comfort zone and increase my fear fitness level.

These ‘random acts of courage’ involve my doing things that I have never done before. I’ll tackle small things at first, then gradually build my random acts of courage to involve situations that currently illicit a fear response.

By facing new challenges and dealing with the unknown I plan to increase my self-confidence level, develop new coping skills, reduce my fears, and generally expand my comfort zone.

And, by expanding my comfort zone a little at a time I will be learning more about fear and how to:

• identify which fears I can develop coping mechanisms for so they are no longer a problem;
• which fears are coupled with excitement so that I know that I am doing something that is right for me; and
• which fears are protective, indicating things that perhaps I shouldn’t be doing at this point in time.

I have several major lifestyle transitions planned for the next couple of years. By doing these random acts of courage now, and gradually increasing the fear level involved with each random act of courage, I should be able to increase my comfort zone enough so that the transitions I have planned for won’t be too scary when it comes time to make them.

Well, at least that’s the plan.

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p.s. I wanted to thank Cath Duncan for challenging my thoughts on fear. Her new Bottom-line Bookclub has been presenting some fascinating and thought provoking ideas on fear – on how we can learn to identify different types of fear and become fear literate; and on how we can develop our coping skills so that we can become fear fit. I will definitely be making use of a number of her suggestions as I practice my random acts of courage in my bid to expand my comfort zone.

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No Comments | In: Ageless Explorers, Baby Boomers, Retirement Coach, Retirement Lifestyle Plan, beginnings, lifestyle design skills | tags: Ageless Explorers, baby boomer, Baby Boomers, change, coping strategies, lifestyle design, overcoming fear, Retirement Coach, retirement coaching, Retirement Lifestyle Plan. | #

Major change is hard!! Either its a real struggle to make the change, or its a real struggle to maintain the change.

Ask anyone who has tried to lose weight through diet and exercise alone. I’ve done it – lost a considerable amount of weight through diet and exercise then gained most of it back on again. Why? I didn’t change my lifestyle!!

Beautiful Custom Built Waterfall

When the change was working – when I was losing weight – it was actually quite easy. My thoughts were in tune with my actions. They were both working towards my goal of losing weight.

When the change wasn’t working – when I started gaining again – my thoughts were the exact opposite of my actions.

So, how can you start preparing to make a major change – listen to your self-talk, that conversation that takes place inside your head. Does it support the change you are trying to make? If not – change the self talk. which you can do.

Listen to what you are saying to yourself. If you hear yourself thinking anything negative about the change you are wanting to make, correct what you are thinking immediately, and think something positive. For example, one of my current goals is to become a travel writer. Usually, my thoughts support this goal, but occasionally I catch myself thinking something like “Oh, being a travel writer is just silly. You’ll never earn any money doing it!” I’ll stop my thoughts mid-word and think instead “Oooh, I have to get started planing that road trip, begin thinking about some of the articles I can write.”

So, take a moment. Listen to your thoughts. What are you thinking right now? Anything? Oh, good! Now stop thinking that thought and think of something else.

Did it work? OK, so maybe you need to practice that a little bit. Soon it will become easy to do.

Caution: Always think in the positive, of things you want to do, as though you are already doing them. Don’t think in the negative, of things you want to stop doing.

If I was to say “Don’t think of a pink elephant” What did you just think of? Probably a pink elephant. So if you want to, say, change you career, think about the career you want, not about how bad your current career is. If you want to lose weight, don’t think about losing weight, think about gaining health.

The other thing you need to do is to begin doing! It is not enough just to think about what you want, you have to actually begin doing something that supports your change. So its not enough for me to think about wanting to get healthy – I have to start making some lifestyle changes, begin to exercise, eat healthy, develop a more active lifestyle, etc. If I want to become a travel writer, I can’t just think about it, I have to actually begin traveling and/or writing.

When you find that your thoughts and your actions are beginning to support each other, then you know that you are ready to change.

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe via A Reader, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!

No Comments | In: Baby Boomers, Retirement Coach, beginnings, lifestyle design, powerful thoughts | tags: baby boomer, Baby Boomers, change, positive thinking, Retirement Coach, retirement coaching, Retirement Lifestyle Plan, transformation, travel writing, weight loss. | #