by Mary Lloyd, CEO,Mining Silver
 
Norman Vincent Peale was promoting positive thinking way back in 1952.  Motivational speakers have been proselytizing about it for decades.  These days you’ll find it in “The Secret.”  But even with all that, our focus now is most often on the negatives—what to avoid, be afraid of, or worry about.  That’s not so good.  Negative thinking has some really nasty side effects. 
 
Take nutrition, for example.  We’re supposed to avoid trans fats.  And high fructose corn syrup.  And genetically altered food.  To get rid of free radicals and reduce our cholesterol.  We avoid red meat and bottled water and anything that came from Mexico—or is it Timbuktu this week?  Fresh greens are the road to certain death as is peanut butter—or whatever has been most recently found to have something nasty in it  SOMEWHERE. 
 
Be careful.  Be VERY careful.  Be afraid of what you might eat by accident. 
 
There’s so much more joy in eating gorgeous food that you meet raw and cook with love.  Beautiful food is good for you. How about doing that instead of trying to avoid what isn’t.
 
Food is just one arena.  There’s stuff to avoid in every facet of life.  Scams. Toxic personalities.  Sunshine–at least without sunscreen.  Binge shopping. Crow’s feet.  Traffic jams.  Weeds.  Spam.  Mean people. Burn out…  The list goes on and on and on.  Persuasive content these days is aimed at getting you to NOT have something happen, be it identity theft or erectile dysfunction.

We pay a huge price doing it this way.
 
Negative thinking puts you on alert:  There is danger–something that’s not good for you that you need to do something about.  Something to fear.  Something to worry about.  Your entire body stays on alert, waiting for further instructions on whether to fight the thing or run like hell.  These are other words for “stress.”  By worrying, we increase our odds of a heart attack, stroke, or some other health problem. 
 
Most of what we are afraid of isn’t even real.  It’s projections of a future that hasn’t happened—and probably won’t.  If you’re afraid of the pit bull that’s snarling at you, that’s smart and it’s time for action.  But being afraid of what you might eat is silly.
 
Trying to avoid all future risk is futile.  Why not enjoy what’s going on right now, instead?  Doing that increases your immune levels, reduces your stress, and, of course, makes life more fun moment to moment.
Being happy provides an energy boost that makes life easier.

So how can you be positive in this negative world? 
 
Choose it.  Consciously search for the positive in whatever you’re dealing with. 
 
Be grateful. When you acknowledge what you have, the wisdom to see that specific blessing links to an overall sense of wellbeing.
 
Ignore the naysayers.  Even if they are people you love and live with.  Imagine an invisible wall of positive energy between you and that toxic thinking, keeping you from falling prey to the worry and woe.

Yes, it’s easy to get caught up in the negatives.   Try not to.  The benefits of being happy far outweigh this unachievable effort to be 100% safe.  As long as you’re alive, there will be risks.  They will be no greater if you choose to be happy–and may actually be far less.  Regardless, life is sweeter when you see the pluses—and there always are some.

Steve Juetten has a great post this morning titled “Six retirement traps and how to avoid them.”    He’s a financial advisor who really gets it!  His first two “traps” are lack of  a retirement map and self-limiting attitudes.  He goes on the mention four financial bad ideas, but it’s great that his post starts where those who are thinking about retirement need to start–with what they want to DO and how they want to go about it.

There are a lot of pieces to this retirment puzzle and we each have a different set to work with.  Is a move to a warmer, drier climate really what you need?  Or are you going to be oblivious of the weather of you get involved in that amazingly cool thing you thought had already passed you by?  Are you assuming  you know the answer to those–and similar –questions or have you taken the time to carefully check them out?

Mary Lloyd author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love and Brian Acker, financial advisor with Edward Jones are teaming up for a discussion of what makes sense now as a plan when retirement looms as the usual option. 

There are a whole lot more ways to go about it than “quit working” or “keep working.”

The hour-long session will be held July 20 at 7:00 PM.

Boswell Book Company

2559 N. Downer Ave.

Milwaukee, WI 53211

414-332-1181

Book signing to follow.

Come join us and help yourself make better plans!

If you can catch any of these stations, we’re talking about how to do retirement right.  Good stuff. 

KEDR-FM 88.1 Bay City, TX     

     Saturday, July 11 at 6:45a, 12:15p and 5:15p
 
KTXB-FM 89.7 Beaumont, TX  

     Saturday, July 25 at 6:45a, 12:15p and 5:15p
 
WFTI-FM 91.7 St. Petersburg, FL 

     Saturday, July 25 at 7:45a, 1:15p and 6:15p

Well, the Key Questions have been fun for me, but they haven’t created a conversation, so we’re moving on.  The Mining Silver website is about to undergo yet another renovation, so stay tuned for all the exciting new stuff that’ll be there once we get it done.

In the meantime, let’s end the Key question series with one last question here on the blog.  (For those of you who only see them here, we’ve been changing them out on the website every month as well.)

The last Key Question:

WHY DON’T RICH GUYS RETIRE?

If it’s all that great, why aren’t Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, and the like riding around in their motor homes and playing golf???