Your New Adventure: Make the Most of the Rest of Your Life

By Jean Maalouf

Retirement! What Retirement?




This book is not only for those who have already retired or those who are about to retire, but also for those who still are far from a retirement age. Arent we all adding more birthdays and growing older! In any case, we dont need to feel old.


In this book, you will find inspirational thoughts on what aging means to all of us -- the young, the middle aged, and those who are in their later years. Since we have one life to live, we should make of the rest of it the most and best of it. Indeed, retirement is not retirement from life, but the beginning of a new life with new opportunities for meaning and significance.


Many books have been written on retirement. Some of them focus on understanding Social Security, Medicare benefits, insurance options, and investment portfolios. Some others target the tips for best housing solutions, best travel and vacation bargains, best shopping deals, and the like. This book is different. Its direct focus is to show how even more important the other aspects of life are -- aspects such as general physical-mental-emotional-spiritual well-being, creative pursuits, social support, deep faith and sense of purpose. It offers enlightening explanations on how to enjoy life to the fullest no matter what our circumstances are, and it provides practical spiritual guidance for the ways of staying alive and blessed all our life.


With its insightful reflections, uplifting propositions, warm style, captivating quotations, and engaging personal reflections and practical resolutions, Your New Adventure: Make the Most of the Rest of Your Life invites you to make the most of your retirement and life, and offers you the suggestions that you wont get from your financial and professional advisors. Such life wisdom will help you create the conditions for a happier retirement and a fuller life than all other material means -- important they might be -- can possibly offer. Aging well is living well all our life so that we are able to say, How good it was to be here! I truly have lived the fullness of life by being what my Creator meant me to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499020021

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Jean Maalouf.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909654

ISBN: Hardcover     978-1-4990-2003-8

ISBN: Softcover       978-1-4990-2004-5

ISBN: eBook            978-1-4990-2002-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Unless otherwise indicated, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 05/31/2014

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Dedication

In memory of my father and mother

whose deep love for heaven and earth,

wisdom, trustworthiness, laughter, zest for life,

and genuine sense of true values and discipline,

are among my greatest treasures.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

— Often attributed to Abraham Lincoln

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

— George Eliot

Men are like wine—some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.

— Pope John XXIII

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world: I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled the more I gain.

— Susan B. Anthony

We live in a time when the elderly do not count. It’s awful to say, but they are discarded. Because they are nuisance to us. The elderly are those who carry history, that carry doctrine, that carry the faith and give it to us as an inheritance. They are like a good vintage wine who have this strength from within to give us a noble heritage.

— Pope Francis

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

— Samuel Ullman

For everything there is a season, and a time fore every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted… a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time mourn, and a time to dance… a time to keep, and a time to throw away.

— Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

Contents

Introduction

1. What Is Aging Anyway?

2. Ageless State of Mind

3. A Life under Stress

4. De-clutter Your Life

5. Did You Have Your Moment of Quiet Time Today?

6. Find What Matters Most for the Rest of Your Life

7. Listen to How You Talk to Yourself

8. Get Outside: The Health Benefits of Nature

9. Cultivate the Sense of Beauty

10. Hope: The One Thing You Can Never Afford to Lose

11. Loneliness Vs. Aloneness

12. The Secret Power of Gratitude

13. Laughter Matters

14. Forgiveness Is Power

15. What Does Volunteering Do for You?

16. Find Your Calling the Second Time Around: The Power of Purpose

17. 10 Ways to Create Peace Within Yourself

18. What Life Legacy You Choose to Leave?

19. Tips for a Healthy Change

20. Keys to True Happiness

21. A Time for Goodbyes

Epilogue: Retirement: A Contemplative Journey

Appendix: Insightful Thoughts for the Journey

About the Author

Also by Dr. Jean Maalouf

Introduction

Y ou can turn the middle and later years of your life into the best years you have ever lived.

Just change your mindset.

Please understand that this time of life is a great time for reviving your dreams, discovering new talents and opportunities, realizing your full potential, and becoming exactly the person you are supposed to be. It is never too late, reminds us George Eliot, to be what you might have been.

Your career may be behind you, you may be between two jobs or with no job at all, your kids may be grown and moved away, but your life is not over; a new and fuller life is beginning, and it is different from what our modern secular society wants it to be. It is not true that this time of life is a mere process of deterioration and decline, and consequently, a time of un-usefulness and un-needed-ness, therefore a time of social burden.

Let us face it. We may no longer be as sharp as we once were when it comes to hearing, vision, capacity to climb hills and stairs, or attention to details.

Although gradual undeniable changes to the senses, appearance, reflexes, weaknesses, and physical, intellectual, emotional, social, familial, environmental, and financial challenges become more obvious with age, getting older has its hidden grace and surprising blessings. A mature age may lead many of us to new bursts of spiritual intensity, creativity, and unmatched acts of kindness and generosity. In this sense, growing old is not a dis-ease, but the big time for wellness that can bring extraordinary rewards at the personal level as well as at the social level. It is another opportunity of fulfilling our lives by giving to others. This is, indeed, what can be called: the art of aging.

It is strange and even shocking how our culture deals with the chronological age of people. We rarely read a book or an article or hear a story about anyone without immediately indicating, in one way or another, the age of that individual we are talking about. Why is the age of that person much more important than what he or she is saying or doing?

OK! Everybody wants to stay younger and forever. But since this is not possible, we are going to become older no matter what we do—even if we find the fountain of youth and we drink from it abundantly and unceasingly. The only alternative to growing old is dying. Aren’t we lucky to grow old! Why, then, don’t we make the best of the rest of our life?

This is precisely what this book is offering you. With its topics, reflections, quotations, questions, and resolutions, it wants you to fulfill your full potential, help you to make a difference that leaves a lasting legacy, and invite you to reach the greatness in you that is worthy of you and your contribution to the world.

So, disassociate yourself from those who believe that retirement means getting all kinds of ailments, doing nothing or the it’s too late to do anything excuse, and the reiterated self-talk of the I-am-too-old-tired-sick-weak-disorganized-undisciplined-uneducated-rusty-fearful-fat-too-thin-poor-far behind… . Join rather those who think energy, health, verve, enthusiasm for a yet unfulfilled or a new dream, joy, courage, purpose, persistence, full potential, others and, most of all, God. This could be the best time of your life, indeed. Cast your net off to the starboard side" (John 21:6 NAB) and you will find miracles.

I invite you to read on. You will find clearer answers ahead to your most pressing and existential questions. Please keep going, be what you have always wanted to be, and do what you have always wanted to do.

1

What Is Aging Anyway?

You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.

—George Burns

S uddenly you are in the second half of your life, but this does not mean you are old.

Aging is the result of your way of thinking and feeling more than of the number of years you have already lived. If you are convinced that you are going to live a long life filled with vitality, optimism, and positive action, then chances are that such a visceral belief becomes a reality. But if you think that old age means a time of emptiness, sickness, and depression, then this is what you most likely are going to get.

It is no wonder that positive thinking will make you younger at an old age, while negative expectations will make you older at a young age. You are old when you think you are.

Why don’t we ask, How are you old? instead of, How old are you? when we start some kind of conversation? Why in the world are we so haunted in our culture by the age of the individual rather than by one’s state of mind, health, and general wellness and capacities? Why are we in a hurry to mention the age of the author of an article, for example, before we consider the validity and corrected-ness of what he or she is saying? Could this be because of some kind of discrimination problem we may have been secretly harboring in our mind and heart, and we don’t want to admit it?

No one is going to deny that aging is related to our date of birth in the first place. But this is not the whole truth. Aging depends also on how we feel, how much energy we have, how strong our immune system is, and how much passion and purpose fuel our day. It also depends on how we view life in general and our own life in particular, and on how able we are to control our circumstances and destiny.

Aging depends on the life we put in our years more than the number of years we add to our life, or the label we get from others. George Burns (1896-1996) remarked, When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I’m labeled senile.

Forget the labels. No one doubts that certain characteristics may come with the number of years we add to our life—characteristics such as sickness, frailty, slow thinking, inflexibility, difficulty to communicate and to adapt, substantial limitation on physical and mental activity, senility, purposelessness, passivity, dependence on others, poverty, and uselessness. But it would be wrong to always ascribe such characteristics to older people. More often than we think, what Susan B. Anthony was right when she said, The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world: I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled the more I gain. Samuel Ullman is also right when he said, You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

Can you tell if you are influenced by your chronological age (the number of years since your birthday) or rather by your true functional age (how well you function physically, psychologically, socially, mentally, and spiritually)? To help you determine this, try to answer the following questions:

1. Do I feel and act old?

2. Do I live in the past or look ahead with optimism and excitement?

3. Do I feel depressed, perpetually sick, and constantly wanting to complain?

4. Do I feel stuck in my ways and reject all other ways?

5. How do I deal with obvious changes in my physical, psychological, and social conditions?

6. Am I willing to learn something new?

7. Do I consider retirement as the period of life that sets the stage of going downhill from now on, and the prelude of death?

8. What do I do when I no longer have a job?

9. Do I enjoy an active lifestyle?

10. Am I willing to replace bad habits with good ones?

11. Do I continue to be curious about things, read, explore, observe, and learn?

12. Do I continue to be physically active and do anything in my power to stay fit and healthy?

13. Do I stay engaged and socially connected?

14. Do I ever say it is too late to change and there is no longer anything to look forward to?

15. Do I like to develop hobbies, renew dormant dreams, and take on new challenges?

16. Is retirement for me a time to just relax, sit by the pool, watch television, and meet friends for coffee or tea and talk, talk, talk?

17. What are my plans for the future?

18. How dependent I am on others in my regular daily life?

19. How do I nurture my mind and spirit?

20. How do I deal with changes in the way my body looks and works?

21. Do I feel as if my age strips me down to the essentials because of the realization that my days are now numbered and that time is speeding up?

22. Do I feel that aging is taking me to the very heart of life—and death?

23. What is my answer to the question, Am I here for something more?

24. Do I really feel connected with my Creator and the very source of my being?

25. Even though my body seems to be wearing out in certain ways, am I still enjoying the capacity to love, hope, imagine, create, and sing the song that I never had the chance to sing?

Fifty! Sixty! Seventy! Eighty! Ninety! One Hundred! Hard to believe we are there. We have made it because we most likely have retained the feeling of being and acting young even if we already have many, many birthdays behind.

Did we finally get it? The lessons we learned from our long experience in life and from possibly many losses in our circle of family