The Reinvention Equation: A Boomer’S Guide to a Reinvented Life

By Howard J. Parsons

The Reinvention Equation is a practical guide for baby boomers who have lost their rhythm that they were taught growing up as to how the world works.
Howard Parsons had his first taste of life transition at age fourteen when his mother, his best friend, died. His anchor to his world, as he knew it, was gone.
Not knowing how nor having tools to navigate his life, Howard turned to isolation, hard work, and alcohol to make the journey as best as he could.
In the years to follow, Howard learned new skills and techniques to reinvent his life, providing deep satisfaction and gratitude for all that is available.
Here is a blueprint that will show you the process to reinvent your life, get past old ways of doing things, and find once again your essential self as the guiding source in your life. In the new world order, which is not what baby boomers expected, thinking, feeling, and physical actions must be aligned with your essential self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504371940

Howard J. Parsons

Howard Parsons is an author, inspirational speaker, practical teacher, and mentor to those going through life transitions. A fresh voice in the arena of reinventing your life from the inside out, Howard is passionate about helping people mobilize their essential self in order to reinvent their lives in ways they may not have previously experienced. Drawing on his personal experience as a seasoned executive working with a global organization as well as his personal experiences with a life-threatening illness, Howard guides his clients in a practical and heart-centered manner to once again find and express their essential self. When not writing, teaching, or walking his dog Toby, Howard can be found in the yoga studio. He mindfully cofacilitates programs and life with Kerry, his life partner of over thirty years.

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Copyright © 2017 Howard J. Parsons.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-7193-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7195-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-7194-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921020

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/05/2017

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Backstory

Chapter 2: An Ending Is a Beginning

Chapter 3: Neuroscience and the Hero’s Journey

Chapter 4: Courage, Determination, and Patience

Chapter 5: Doubt Is in the Air

Chapter 6: Sensory Self Amnesia

Chapter 7: Paying Attention

Chapter 8: Listen to the Impulse

Chapter 9: Love

Chapter 10: The Hero Has Roots

Chapter 11: You Can Do It!

Chapter 12: Beyond the Hero’s Journey

Chapter 13: Living Free

Chapter 14: Embrace the Journey

References

Acknowledgments

Gratitude is the word that comes to mind over and over again when I think of the people who have had an influence on my life and who have had a hand in making this book a reality.

The events of our lives shape and guide us on our journeys, so I know the essence of this book, which is based on my experiences, has been unfolding within me for many years. This book could not be a reality without all the jobs I have had, the clients I have worked with, and the traumas I have gone through and survived. It is with gratitude that I look back on my history and the richness these experiences have contributed to my life.

Thanks to Blaine Skleryk of Laser Health for realigning my body and introducing me to the study of somatics, which became a central part of my research for this book.

Martha Peterson, a guru of somatics and author of Move without Pain, has been very kind and generous with her time in helping me to deepen my study of somatics and the connection between our brains and our bodies. Thank you, Martha, for the contribution you have made to this work.

To my daughter, Nikki, thank you for being my teacher and inspiring me to be better in all respects.

Finally, my heart is alive with love and gratitude for my wife, Kerry. For over thirty years she has supported me, inspired me, and honored who I am as no other. Thank you, my love.

With the deepest gratitude for what life offers each of us, I invite you to embrace your own life journey.

Introduction

How do we face reinvention of our lives? How do we let go of all we were taught and break through to create new life patterns? How do we create lives that are way more satisfying than the ones we have lived up to now?

I have spent the last thirty years trying to find answers to these questions through my career as a corporate executive and the consulting work I have done with men and women in the middle of life transitions. I’ve noticed that such transitions are particularly difficult for baby boomers. This realization led to me writing this book, which is targeted specifically to baby boomers, those of us born between 1946 and 1964.

We baby boomers were taught to get an education, work hard for one company for our entire careers, get married, have kids, and make sure we had pension plans. If we did all this, then at age fifty-five all would be fine. We grew up in a world economically exploding in the postwar boom. People all over the world were becoming more prosperous than ever before. Advanced technology came into our homes in the form of television. Our world seemed like a place where we could have anything we wanted. All we had to do was apply ourselves to the task at hand and reap the rewards of our effort.

Over the years in which I’ve worked with baby boomers, I have experienced and witnessed the pain of living in a world that is not the one you expected. Careers have been shattered as companies reorganized to adjust to economic circumstances; divorce has become mainstream as disenchanted partners try to find new answers for their lives; and with stress levels having increased to the breaking point, health has become a major focus. Drugs and alcohol have become common tools with which to handle stress.

As one of my friends once told me, We were sold a bill of goods by our parents! Things were supposed to be straightforward, with the results of our lives matching the effort we put in to be good parents and employees. However, we must acknowledge and face the facts of the new world in which we now live. Old strategies no longer work. We cannot go looking for opportunities or relationships the way we once did … from the outside in. This book is about bringing hope to baby boomers and anyone who wants to learn a new way to live. There is a way through to a new life more satisfying and fulfilling than you have lived up until now.

This book is about learning to reinvent your life from the inside out. This new way of living is opposite to the way we were trained and how our expectations were formed. We haven’t had the language or scientific information until now to grasp how to reinvent from the inside out, but we can find hope in that there is a way to do so. In this book, I lay out a way to reinvent your life from the inside out using current technology and science. This method works, and you can learn it.

I decided to write this book based on my own experiences of divorce, job loss, alcoholism, and cancer and the pain those experiences caused me. It has taken me time to look inside myself to see what new way might be possible. In doing so, I have been honored to work with men and women seeking to create their lives from the inside out.

My dad was a hardworking doctor, and my mother was a visionary and energetic community builder. She, in particular, taught me I could be whatever I wanted to be. Success came early in my life with school and community recognition for my positive attitude and increasing sales on my paper route. These seem like simple stories, yet to a baby boomer of ten years old they were life affirming.

When I graduated from university, I went to work for the government, with my new bride by my side. She was finishing her master’s degree, and together we made plans to take on the world. She’d learned about life from her dad, a Second World War vet and a farmer. He’d taught her loyalty and dogged determination and to never give up no matter what circumstances were thrown at her. We thought we had the makings of a winning team. Our marriage lasted fourteen years. In the midst of our breakup, I came face-to-face with my old strategies of denial, blame, and emotional disconnection. However, even this traumatic event was not enough for me to see I needed to do my life differently.

We baby boomers have a particular definition of ourselves rooted in praise, hard work, and pursuit of opportunity. But the world changed while we were caught up in making the best lives we could. Local economies transformed into a global economy seemingly overnight. Companies once thought to be stable were gobbled up by bigger players in their markets, resulting in layoffs never thought possible in the past. The global price of commodities began to influence local companies, and as a result employment levels went up and down with the changing prices of those commodities. Japan went from producing junk products to producing some of the highest-quality products on the planet. Jobs were shifted overseas in a quiet but steady wave, and jobs that had existed for many years in the United States disappeared. Career planning for us boomers became a traumatic experience because we were knocked out of our comfort zone of being able to move from one similar job to another as we worked our way up the corporate ladder. The world had changed beyond what we had been taught to expect. It went from a world we knew and were comfortable in to one in which we were lost as to how to navigate in the new global economy.

The world has grown more complex and faster moving, rocking baby boomers to the core. Our hearts have been cracked open with the realization that we live in a new world not all of us understand. The need to reinvent lives we thought were going to be