We all are playing it, whether we accept that or not. The game is Life and how well it goes isn’t just a function of luck.  And no, I am not talking about the Milton Bradley board game.

Real life–what goes on for each of us all day every day–is better or worse depending on how thoroughly we engage with it.  The two obviously bad strategies are dwelling on the past and obsessing about the future.  But there’s another, more subtly bad idea that deserves some scrutiny.

You can’t live life well if you don’t get involved in it.  Staying on the sidelines and watching is a pretty sparse version of living, but it’s easy to take that road because it’s looks like it’s the safest route.  But it’s a shortcut to a desert of frustration, not the wisest way to Nirvana.

Get in the game.  Take personal action about what’s going on in your life.  Waiting for someone else to make you happy is silly–most of us are already well aware of that.  But so is waiting for someone else to trigger what you need to happen or for someone besides you to make things exciting.

There’s a balance to the game of life.  If you don’t see that and learn to achieve it, things will be out of whack for you emotionally most of the time.  We do need to put ourselves in the center of our own lives.  But that doesn’t mean ignoring a loved one when they need help.  What you get out of helping is different, but it is still about helping yourself be really alive.  That helping may give you a sense of connectedness and the softness of compassion rather than a good night’s sleep–or an interrupted workday, but you still gain from getting involved in what’s going on around you.

It’s not always about meeting someone else’s needs instead of your own.  Sometimes, it’s being willing to do things a new way.  Take haggling for example.  Much of the world does business with this technique.  The first few times I tried it–after being coached by the travel professionals running the trip, I felt like I was bullying the person I wanted to buy something from.  It seemed like a heavy-handed way to prove I was a more savvy bargainer than my “adversary” on the other side of the shop table.

Eventually I realized that those who do business this way see it as part of the fun.  It’s definitely a more engaged way to purchase than simply taking something off a shelf, running it through the self-serve checkout, and leaving the store.  I was at the bazaar near the New Mosque in Istanbul after I’d gotten comfy with this aspect of the Game of Life when I learned an important lesson about making it work.

On one of the less-travelled alleys, we found a vendor with a table of knit and lace ladies tops.  They were beautiful and much as I really didn’t need one, I wanted one with more passion than I typically have for clothes.  I asked the vendor how much he wanted for one I liked best.  He ignored me.  A younger vendor nearby said something to him in Turkish and then asked me in English to ask the question again.  I did, and the older vendor traced “15″ on the palm of his hand. His friend said “That is American dollars.” That was reasonable, but I wanted to do it right.  This was a haggling situation.  So I said that was too much and offered half–just like I’d learned.  When his friend translated, he shrugged.  After a few minutes of just looking at each other, I turned to leave.

His young friend gave him a quick flurry of instructions in Turkish and called me back.  He explained that the older man was just starting and asked me to try again.  I again offered half of his asking price.

The way it’s supposed to work is that he then counters and we reach a price between his high and my low.  Instead, he shook his head “yes.”  I turned to his more experienced friend.  The younger guy sighed.  “It is yours for that price.”

The shirt I bought was lovely–a deliciously soft, heathered knit with pretty lacework dyed in the same gentle teal blue.  I loved the shirt when I saw it.  But once I owned it, I felt bad wearing it.  We hadn’t played the real game and I had accidentally stolen it.

I can see now that it was a round in the Game of Life where I’d come to play and my vendor had not.  I felt gypped even though I’d gotten the “deal.” More often, I am on the other end of that fulcrum.  Either way, when you don’t ”get in the game,” everyone loses.  That moment in life is less because of your reluctance to play an active role.

Engage in life.  Roll up your sleeves and get involved.  Give. Take. Try. Make a difference.  That’s the only way to be really alive.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

As we age, we like living where people are all like us and activities are ready-made. Active retirement communities are built on those two assumed needs. The whole thing is a tragic loss of vitality for those who buy in.  Diversity is essential to good mental health.  And when you fill your days with “something to do” that has no impact beyond your own entertainment life gets confusingly empty after a while.

Playing all day every day is not all that satisfying for competent adults.  And that is why this leisure-centered mentality we have about retirement is all wrong.

Writer Calvin Trillin easily noticed the “frantic busyness” of Sun City, Arizona residents when he visited in the early 1960’s.  He observed that there was little to delineate the value of their assorted activities when the Golden Years model was still new. Yes, there were a lot of things to do, but few were meaningful.  Over fifty years later, we’re trying to wring blood out of the same turnip.

Even volunteer programs that could add essential meaning are too often focused on “keeping the old folks busy” rather than maximizing the use of their experience and skills for that cause.  “Doing something” for the sake of being active is a far cry from doing something that makes a real contribution.  But as a culture, we’re still stuck on the idea that “old people can’t do much and need to be entertained.”

Recent research clearly establishes the importance of meaning and purpose for both mental and physical health. Human beings do not thrive doing nothing.  In particular, we don’t thrive doing “whatever I want” all day every day when we are old enough to retire.  We are capable of much, much more and need to be finding that.

Ken Dychtwald, one of the foremost experts on aging and retirement, established the following pattern in how “the Golden Years” mindset plays out:

• 15 to 6 years before retirement – Imagination: you start to see retirement as part of your future and visualize it. You see the pluses—the adventure and empowerment that’s possible because you don’t have to show up for work every day.
• 5 years before retirement – Anticipation: you begin to realize it is actually going to happen on a specific date and start the countdown to that. Your emotions become a combination of euphoria over your impending freedom and worries about whether you really do have enough money to stop working.
• Retirement day to plus 1 year – Liberation: the freedom you’ve just been blessed with makes you euphoric. “Doing nothing” or at least doing whatever you want is fun.
• 2 to 15 years after retirement – Reorientation: Feelings of emptiness and boredom surface as you tire of the lack of meaning in your life. Self-worth begins to suffer, sometimes resulting in emotional meltdown. You search for ways to give your life value.
• 15+ years after retirement – Reconciliation: You find enough of what you need to settle into an acceptable groove as a retirement lifestyle. Your life is less exhilaring than the Golden Years model intimated, but it’s good enough.

This is Dychtwald’s summary of how it works based on research with thousands of people. You may not even be that lucky. When my aunt, who raised seven kids and held a challenging job as a civil service employee the whole time, retired, she spent the first month in her pajamas because she was too depressed to do anything else. Lee Iacocca said he lasted about three weeks before he gave up and went back to work.

The Golden Years approach was better than the empty years that preceded it. But it’s simply not enough given how our lives have evolved since it made the scene half a century ago. We are healthier and living longer. The economy has moved from manufacturing to information in terms of the heavy lifting. And there are too many of us.

It’s no longer a case of moving workers who can easily be replaced out of the picture and giving them the chance to putter for a few years. As a culture, we need to be using every ounce of talent we have the best way we can for benefit of both society and every individual—no matter how old they are.

Having a sense of purpose is critical. More and more research is coming out to support that. But to get a bead on your sense of purpose, you have to know yourself on a very intimate level. Most of us don’t ever do that work in our entire lives, much less before we retire.

Maybe you already have a five page plan of volunteer work you’re going to get involved in. Wait a bit before you give yourself a pat on the back for that. Volunteering only works when you are doing something you believe in. Your sense of purpose has to mesh with what you think is important if you want it to sustain you. Most of us haven’t had the chance to take a serious, straight-on look at what we value since we joined the work force.  You really want to do that.  Now.

This article is from  Mary Lloyd’s upcoming  book Beyond the $$$$: The Rest of Getting Retirement Right.
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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more see her website.

Old has so many definitions, but what I’m looking at here is how we advance in years. And I have become a bit of a snob about it. This surprises me since a few years ago I was rather put off with a local newspaper columnist when she pronounced “I’m not interested in interviewing anyone unless they are over 70.”

Now I’m limiting my own admiration for amazing things done in advanced age, to people not over 70…or even 80. I save my awe for what folks in their 90′s are doing.

My first dose of this was a newspaper article about a local retired teacher that came out a couple months ago. This nonagenarian is just doing what she likes to do but she’s still going strong and making a huge difference to young readers with her effort.

After she retired, she decided to volunteer as a reading tutor with kids who were having problems. But as she worked with these kids, she realized the materials available weren’t what the kids really needed. So she created her own materials.

Cool, huh? That was just the start. The materials worked so well that teachers in the schools noticed and wanted the resource themselves.  So with the help of her daughter–who did the illustrations–she made them into a formal set of materials. GoPhonics was born.

When I read the article, she was just embarking on even another step–to create a program for teaching teachers how to use those materials–because that’s what is needed now. Sylvia Davison is in her 90′s. You would never know it by how she is living her life.

Just this last weekend, I read of another amazingly active person who’s less that a decade from the century mark. Fred Oldfield is has been a commercially successful artist for over three quarters of a century, specializing in Western art,but also doing a lot of murals. He still paints, but even more amazing, he’s active in teaching kids painting and in raising money to help fund art education for kids.

Don’t picture this as doddering old guy who shuffles between his easel and his bed for a few hours every day. Don’t think this guy is just the facade for other, younger volunteers.  He still rides his horse regularly and makes his way around the Heritage Center where he teaches with the ease of someone much younger. Fred Oldfield is 95.

A recent AARP interview with Dustin Hoffman reveals I’m not the only one intrigued with these outliers of continued vibrance. Hoffman mentioned two whom he’s noticed. Manoel de Oliveira is still directing at 104. And then there’s the 94-year old guy who, after finishing a triathalon, was asked if he was going to run anymore. His reply, “Oh, yeah. I got to keep going until I get old.”

That’s a funny line, but it’s also the gyst of what’s going on with these folks. They do not see themselves as “old.” And that is the best way for all of us to advance in years. How many birthdays you’ve had is completely irrelevant to what you will be happiest doing with your time, effort, and resources.

These people are all deeply interested in something and spend a lot of time and effort on it. Age is a totally useless concept for them–at least in terms of themselves. (The ones who are working with kids may have age parameters for the kids they work with, but that’s a whole different thing.)

I preach a lot about having a sense of purpose–something to do that goes beyond your personal comfort and pleasure. That is definitely an essential piece of becoming a centenarian superstar. But there’s another piece to this that we all need as well.

We need to stop thinking the “old” thoughts. When I can’t get the yogurt tab off the cup, I need to try harder not find a different snack. When something aches or I don’t have the energy, I can often make it go way if I’m not excited enough about what I am planning to do.

I want to be more like Grandma Moses–who took up painting when she could no longer do needlework. And less like my maternal grandfather who stopped doing everything when he learned he a “a heart condition.”

The more energy you use, the more you have. No matter how many candles were on your last birthday cake.  Hoffman quoting Bill Connelly about the point of the movie Quartet in which they were both involved had it right: ”Don’t die until you’re dead.”

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

“Aging in place” home modifications are gaining traction as a way to “get ready” for retirement.  We do need to put some thought into what it would take to be able to live our later years in the surroundings we have come to love in the decades before. But “aging in place” changes can be way too much like “getting ready to die.”  That is a terrible waste of a lot of good years.

Have you ever ended up in the “handicapped” motel room because it was all they had left when you needed a room? When this happens to me, I fret a bit about taking it when someone else might really need it.  But that slight bit of empathy is really a disguise for something much deeper.  The message that rumbles from the depths is This is not me!  I feel like I am staying in a hospital when I end up in one of those rooms.  It’s not a place I belong and I usually don’t relax very well.

Doing a bunch of “aging in place” upgrades to your home in case you might eventually need them can creat the same dissonance.

So if someone is advocating that sort of remodel before you retire so that you are “ready” if you end up infirm, please think long and hard about what’s being recommended.  How likely is it that you will end up needing those specific things?  What is your family history?  What is your health like now?  Will you enjoy your home as much with those changes as before they were made?

One of the biggest drawbacks of this approach is that it can actually drain away things that would have kept you from getting infirm in the first place.  Gardens can be extremely soothing and gardening gets you out where you can soak up vitamin D.  Running up and down the stairs every day gets your heart rate up.  Don’t stop doing stuff you like to do until you have to–whether it’s gardening or having your bedroom on an upper floor or taking three dogs for a walk–separately– every day.  Deciding that you should  have it easier now, even though you can still do all that easily means you don’t get that exercise from here on–and the exercise may have kept you healthy enough to never need any of the modifications you made.

And if you are thinking that you need to move someplace where someone else is responsible for the lawn, run the numbers before you get in line for the newest model.  Homeowners Association dues that include lawn service also include maintaining and insuring common areas and gates.  You might be able to get all the lawn service you need for less than that if you just stay where you are and pay to get it done when you need to.

Doing a bunch of modifications to “get ready” before we actually reach the point of age-related decline can be way off base with what we end up needing, too.  It might be your sight not your back that fails.  Instead of that wheelchair, you might end up having to work standing because of back problems.  So much for those lower counters!

Let’s find the right balance on this.  If you are buying or doing a major remodel, assuring there’s flexiblity in what you select so you can make changes later if you need them is probably enough. Put money aside for that possibility if you can–for a the new place you are considering or the home you’ve loved for 50 years.  That makes a lot more sense than doing a bunch of stuff you might not ever need now.

When you reach the point of decline (if you ever do), you may decide there’s a better way than continuing to live where you love now, too.  You’re not going to know what you need then until you get that far.  Trying to get it all set up before you reach that point is silly–particularly since you might never need anything at all modified!

Think about this stuff, yes.  But don’t make  a lot of changes until you know what you need to accommodate.  Instead, focus on staying vibrant as long as you can.  That’s not running away from advanced age–it’s redefining it.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

No…not that word. When it comes to “F words,” the socially naughty one really doesn’t pack much punch. It’s a rude, lazy way of letting off steam and not much more. You say it in exasperation. You voice it with explosive frustration. You yell it when you feel powerless. And when you’re done, nothing much has changed. It’s just a meaningless jumble of letters with a bad reputation.

But there’s another “F word” that can make a mind-blowing difference. That word is “fear.” As a word, we don’t pay much attention to it. But as a way of life, it is devastating.

Most of us assume fear is an emotion that’s automatic and unavoidable. In some ways, that’s true. If a strange pit bull is standing guard over your mailbox and snarling, it’s probably a good idea to be afraid—and maybe even to postpone seeing what the mail carrier left for you that day. A dangerous situation rightly engenders fear. The genuine feeling makes us focus on making a decision to act—to decide whether to put up a fight or run.

But what if you spend your whole life being afraid of all dogs? That’s nowhere near as helpful as a cue. I had that fear and there were good reasons for it initially. (I had some scary experiences with dogs as a young child.) But hanging onto that into my 40’s? That’s something different than bonafide fear.

Fear that comes from danger in the immediate environment is essential to personal safety. Fear of what’s going to happen tomorrow? That’s a different thing. It’s this pervasive, ongoing state of fear that can make a mess of your life.

That fear doesn’t even come from the same place. It’s not a reaction to cues from your surroundings. It is your mind trying to convince you that there’s danger simply to enjoy the drama of it. This is “ego fear” rather than useful fear. Ego fear is built on the idea that you should be able to keep yourself safe at all times. That you can and must avoid all bad things. Sorry, but that’s just silly. Life happens. You deal with it.

Trying to keep life from happening just impoverishes your experience of it.

Ego fear steals the future—no matter what you’re afraid of. Fear of the unknown makes you unwilling to venture into it. Fear of not getting it all right makes you not try anything new. Fear of being rejected denies you the opportunity to feel accepted. This kind of fear is not your friend.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous quote “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is actually part of a longer statement that reads “So let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.

Yes. Unjustified. There is no sabre tooth tiger ready to pounce. The danger is manufactured in your mind out everyday life on the planet. It’s a personally created bad dream—no more real than the monsters under the bed when you were a kid.

This fear is a choice–a really bad choice.

This kind of fear drains the fun out of life. It makes every waking moment one of vigilance, whether the fear you’ve manufactured is of germs, success, or economic Armageddon. Being afraid of whatever is going to happen next takes the delight out of whatever really is on the horizon.

Fear creates stress, so it’s hard on your heart, your immune system, and your overall health. Buying in on unnecessary fear is irresponsible. Yep. It’s no better for you than smoking or a diet of Coke and Doritos.

Saddest of all, fear keeps us from evolving as human beings. We don’t become the happy, satisfied people we’re meant to be because we’re too worried about what might go wrong to get on with living.

The great Roman philosopher Seneca put it well: “Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer more in our imagination that in reality.”

We don’t need to suffer. We need to stop worrying and really live what each day brings. Some days might include a pit bull or two, but not always.

This article originally appeared in the February 2013 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.
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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more, see her website.

Is it social glue or manic behavior when we root for our favorite sports team?

Okay, I confess.  I spent most of this afternoon watching “my” NFL team win after 3+ frustrating hours of not-as-good-as-we-fans-have-come-expect football.  That’s over 10% of my day and almost 20% of my waking time watching someone else play a game.  I am embarrassed to admit that—or at least I was.

I was particularly distressed once I realized that I’d done that with the time I needed to write this article.  But everything—even getting waylaid by a football game—happens for a reason.  This time around, it was to teach me that cheering for favorite team is an okay way to spend time.  So…since I have finally learned that, you get the short course.

The vast majority of us end up rooting for some team to win at something while we just watch at some point in our lives.  Many of us do it all year long, switching from team to team as the various sports seasons begin and then end.  We spend a lot of energy at it, too.  Jumping up off the couch on a good play.  Stomping out of the room when “our” team does something awful.  Yelling at refs.  Then we rehash the weekend contests at work—or wherever–on Monday… Tuesday… Wednesday…

Why do we do this?  That’s the question I asked myself after I realized I had frittered away my afternoon at it.  Why did I do that instead of cleaning the garage?  Or writing the great American novel?  Or even calling a good friend for a long phone conversation?  My assumption was that I’d chosen the potato chips rather than the veggies in how I had used my time—and that everyone who chooses likewise is just as derelict.

But when I started to research why we cheer, I came across two things that have given me a major change of heart.  The first is TJ Dawe, one of the guys behind Beams and Struts, an online magazine that carries the tagline “A Project for Hungry Brains and Thirsty Souls”.  TJ is not a sports fan.  Usually those who aren’t are rather aloof about all this cheering and whoopla.  Instead he embraced discovering the “why” of it.  It was not “How do I show how wrong all these people are for doing something I don’t do?”  It was “What makes us, as a culture, do this?” TJ and his cohorts dedicate the magazine to this kind of thinking.  It’s 180 degrees from all the “we/they” stuff we’re mired in these days and was incredibly refreshing—so much so that I ended up watching his entire TEDx Manitoba talk before I got back to the task at hand.  He wrote an article on why we cheer for Beams and Struts that’s worth checking out, too.

But I digress.  What I learned—which he learned, in part from Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich–is that our current mores around sports teams have deep, important roots.

As Dawe put it, “For hundreds of thousands of years, there’s been a strong adaptive advantage in feeling the pull to be part of a group. I am them. They are me. Their efforts are mine, and vice versa. I look out for them, they’ve got my back too.”  In other words, the grumpy guy who doesn’t bother to get involved with the rest has been, over the millenia, more likely to meet a quicker demise as a result of his separateness.

We don’t hunt woolly mammoths together anymore.  We don’t go out to gather acorns or wild rice and millet with huge wild animals on the prowl.  But that sense of banding together is still wired in.  So we gather to urge “our” team on to victory instead.  A symbolic successful hunt.

When I started this article, I had a second question in mind:  Why don’t we cheer for ourselves instead?  Why don’t we use that energy to make something happen in our own lives instead of going crazy over a bunch of overpaid jocks?  I honestly believed that’s where this article would go—to a “we can do better than this” conclusion.

I can’t say that.

When we go nuts as sports fans (assuming “nuts” is legal and that you’re not so obnoxious you get kicked out of the venue), it’s a chance to be part of a “we.”  And we need “we” opportunities.

So connect and go crazy for a few hours every once in a while.  Even the zany fan behavior is consistent with the carnival nature of the sporting events of the Middle Ages, when we were closer to those “you have my back, I have yours” days.   It really is very old, important behavior for the sake of the species.

Plus, life is not always about getting things done.  Even if they lose, you’ve been a part of something bigger than yourself for a while.  And that is good for all of us.  Besides, no one ever died saying, “I should have had less fun.”

This article originally appeared in the January 2013 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old On Hold.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

Living in a gated community is supposed to be a big plus. I am currently trying to adjust to that lifestyle and I can’t find it.  When I leave in the car, I have to wait for the gate.  When I come back, I better have the remote with me or I will have to pull around to the keypad at the main entrance (which is not the most direct route to my house) and enter the “secret code”–and then wait for the gate.  If I want to go for a real walk without doing laps (which has all the allure of watching paint dry) I have to have a key.  If I don’t, I am locked in. This gate has way too much control of my life, and I dislike it intensely.

I suspected this would be the case when I agreed to live here for a year, but it’s still good to check it out.  Okay.  I’ve checked it out.  This gate sucks.  Lucky for me, it’s a temporary problem.

My simmering resentment of this gate has brought some interesting insights.  Gates have two purposes–to control what gets out or to control what gets in.  In the developer’s zeal to keep “the bad things” out around here, we are all essentially kept in–or at least required to wait while access to the rest of the world is granted.  How many of these “gate” situations am adding to my life without really thinking about them?

When I first started living here, I would just walk inside the gate because that was the obvious solution to the gate’s existence.  When I did that, I let my everyday world shrink big time. That was a very scary realization.  There I was, giving up access to things that should be in my life because of some artificial and arbitrary restricted access.

I also started seeing the world just outside the gate–which has similar houses, the same police protection, etc.–as “dangerous” simply because they were outside the gate.  Did the crime stats support that.  Not really.

The gate also severely limits who can come into my life while I am on the premises.   My friends and family have to fiddle with the keypad or call from the phone at the gate to have us let them in.  One brother used to stop at my house when he was in the neighborhood and leave his business cards in funny places if I wasn’t home.  Now, he’d have to leave it at the gate.  Delievery drivers who miss the few hours when the gate is open on  business days either have to come back or make me come get what they were supposed to deliver.  I am not seeing this as a big advantage.

Why do we have this gate?  It’s supposed to make us more secure.  The “bad people” can’t get in so we are supposedly safer.  There may be a few residents who love the ”exclusivity of it.”  I am not in that camp.  We’ve created our own little ghetto.  What is the point?

There are good places to use gates.  You need to keep the cows in.  You need to keep the baby out of the stairwell.  You need to be sure your inventory is not at the mercy of anyone who decides they need that size lumber or stone or motorcycle or bonzai tree.

But this idea that we can be kept safe from Life by a couple of gates is just plain wrong.  It’s easy to start believing that you need that protection, that going out into the world is too dangerous to attempt.  This kind of thinking–more than the real physical aging of our bodies–makes us “old.”  We worry about safety and seek the predictability of the status quo instead of searching for new adventures and fresh things to experience and learn.

It’s true, the world can be dangerous.  But it can also be wonderous and full of excitement.   Besides, that gate isn’t all that effective.

An article on the International Foundation of Protective Officers website looked at whether gated communities deter crime.  Studies they cited found only a small benefit, mostly related to car thefts.  The article noted that Neighorhood Watch programs are far more effective.

But Neighborhood Watch efforts can’t be packaged in slick real estate advertising.  We buy into that new development with the gate and stop worrying about getting to know our neighbors and staying aware of what’s going on around us when we are home.  And think we are safer because some real estate guy said so.

Gated communities are just one more way to complicate our lives while reducing their richness.  Knowing your neighbor is a whole lot more fun than waiting for a gate. Think twice before you go for the gated community–whether you’re 55, 85, or 35.

***** Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

Some people just leave you feeling a lot better about how your day is going. They are usually not the ones urging you to stay the course when everything is going up in flames or down in smoke.  The folks who do the most good are light-hearted.  They are the people who make you laugh.

Certain people  can do this no matter what you talk to them about.  When I was managing natural gas distribution for a bunch of small towns in Iowa, I worked with a corporate Public Relations person who had this talent.  For those three years of my life, it seemed like some major thing went wrong at least once a week—and usually on Friday at 5:00 PM.  But even when we were working on how to handle things like grand larceny and onsite protests, this woman would manage to say something that made me laugh. I’ve had my radar tuned for these kind of people ever since.

The kind of friend I just described is priceless, no doubt.  But there are other ways people help you laugh.  The people who are willing to do silly or outrageous things with you are a blessing, too.  My siblings do this for me.  One brother and I spent months on The Nun-of-the-Month Club—a complicated practical joke that provided on-going “laughter therapy” that whole time.

Being silly can diffuse something potentially infuriating.  After a 20-year marriage that involved losing the argument about having a “real Christmas tree” every year ended, I was keen to honor my own preferences. But my kids were not available to celebrate Christmas until January 8.  Even in the Pacific Northwest, trying to keep a real tree fire-safe that long seemed impossible.  I definitely didn’t want an artificial tree yet again.  The whole thing seemed unreasonable to me.

I was so close to exploding about it that I didn’t do anything at all—until a few days before Christmas.  Then I asked my brothers, who were both coming to dinner on Dec. 25, to help me build a tree out of odds and ends.  Bless them, they took my silliness seriously and brought supplies and ideas to add to what I’d come up with for getting on with the project.

And thus started one of my best Christmas memories to date.  My sister-in-law said we sounded like a bunch of little kids.  After the design and structural support phases were done–where we acted like intelligent adults, we attacked the challenge with the exuberance of five-year-olds.  We even put a name on the thing, using leftover mailbox letters that had been hiding in my garage.

Sometimes, the angels who make you laugh are very young.  The first time I babysat my first granddaughter overnight, both her parents and I were a bit concerned about how it would go.  As my “secret weapon,” I’d brought along a bin of silly stuff (mostly hats) that I started collecting after reading Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet.  My pint-sized charge very carefully put sixteen strings of Mardi Gras beads around her neck and then donned a plastic Viking helmet that was also hiding in the bin.

Not only did the little Mardi Gras Viking Princess make me double over with laughter, the photo I texted to her anxious parents helped Mom and Dad relax and enjoy their getaway.  Sometimes it’s what a child says. Sometimes, it’s what she does.  But so often they are the perfect tonic for an otherwise hard day.

Yes, we are blessed when there are people in our lives who make us laugh.  But it’s about more than just having a special friend or a happy child that can get you guffawing.  It’s not just a case of having someone who helps you laugh.  We’d all be a lot better off if we could help others laugh, too.  It’s a great form of giving.

At one point in my life, I decided I needed to study humor.  I got a lot of books on it and started working through them methodically.  That proved absolutely lethal–I killed the very essence of “funny” by approaching it so rationally.  So let’s not get too serious about this.  Humor is delicate, highly situational, and personal.  Just stop fretting about everything and say—or do–what seems funny to you.  With that strategy, you can even make yourself laugh.

I did confirm one really important universal truth about this funny business at a writers’ conference a while back.  Jonathan Winters, one of the wackiest guys on TV at one point, was a surprise guest speaker at the humor workshop one day.  His advice:  Laugh with people not at them.  Laughing with people says “We’re in this together and we can handle it.”  Laughing at people says “I’m better than you—or him.”  That’s not humor; it’s meanness.

So that’s your homework for this week—find a way to make someone you love laugh.

This article originally appeared in the December 2012 edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

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Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

And now, for a non-political, non-denominational nod to the value of gratitude…

Thanksgiving Day is upon us–at least for those of us who live in the United States.  What Mom or Dad or Grandma used to say is true.  We do have a lot to be thankful for. Even when things aren’t going so very well at all, a lot of stuff is going right that we often don’t take the time to acknowledge.

This year I’m being thankful for the very act of being thankful.  It’s like a wonder drug.  When I take the time to look at all the good things in my life and utter a prayer of gratitude, I raise my happiness index into the ozone.  Yep.  Be thankful; be happy.

So what am I thankful for this soggy Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving?

I’m thankful for where I live–in a warm house in a place that hasn’t been ravaged by hurricanes or wildfires or horrendous snow storms.  But I’m also thankful that I live in a culture that helps when those bad things happen.  And that gets itself up, dusts itself off, and gets on with getting back on its collective feet when it does.  Generosity and grit build a pretty solid community, and I am lucky indeed to be in a country like that.

I am thankful for what I get to do with my time.  I love what I do.  It doesn’t always go the way I want, but it’s the right path and I can feel that to the bottom of my soul.  But I’m also thankful for the years (yes, years!) that I’ve spent wandering around in the emotional dark trying to figure it out.  That painful time was an important step in assuring that where I walk so happily now is solid ground.  I’m also thankful that I already know I will likely circle back around through that trying territory again at some point in the future.  That is okay–because the trip will come with reconfirmation of all I value and how to best use my time in this life.

I’m thankful for family and friends.    Loving and being loved is the glue of a good life.  But I’m also thankful for the times I’ve been in that space of “alone.”  Connection keeps my world warm, but sometimes, I need a splash of solitary “cold water” to help me get back on track with how I am treating the people in my life.

I am thankful for sunshine, blue skies, lovely warm weather, and the chance to hike high in the mountains of this beautiful place I’m blessed to live when the weather allows.  But I am also grateful for these truncated days of late fall when it’s dark before dinner and the rain just keeps coming.  The short days remind me that one of the greatest gifts of being human is the need to believe when things are dark and slow.  We live “not knowing” and have to learn to trust that the sun will bring the long days back, that all is well, and that we can get through the hard times if we just keep going.

Yes, I am thankful.  And that makes me happier than anything else I can think of to do.  An attitude of gratitude cuts a clear path to enjoying life–regardless of whether what’s coming down at the moment is wonderful or not-so-grand.

As you prep the turkey or sit down to the feast, wind your way to Grandmother’s house in bumper to bumper traffic or wait in line for TSA at the airport, give thanks.  And be thankful most especially for the times and things in your life that don’t seem like pluses.  They’re there for a reason, and the reason is good.  You  just have to understand it.

To those of you with an official holiday for giving thanks in the offing, Happy Thanksgiving!  To those of you who don’t have it on your calendar, give thanks anyway.  It will make you happy.  (And then you have one more thing to give thanks for.)

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Mary Lloyd is a writer, speaker, and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  For more, see her website.

You can become a blimp by accident. A recent move of mine confirms this.  The house I owned for the last eight years was two-stories and on a quarter acre.  Where I live now is single-story with very little yard. And lawn service for that!  If I don’t turn this around soon, I will be shopping for clothes in ever larger sizes.

It was the right decision, and it’s a nice place.  But I miss my stairs.  My workroom was up, my kitchen down.  Bedroom up, TV and entertaining spaces down.  All day every day for 16 hours or more, those stairs were part of my life.  Between that and yard work (or on rare occasion shoveling the driveway), I got a good workout without ever needing to call it “exercise.” Now?  The most exercise I get without naming it as such is watering the potted plants on the front porch every other day.

Usually, I’m pretty good at anticipating things that are going to be difficult when I make a change.  I totally missed this one.  I’m accustomed to having my exercise hidden in my lifestyle.  Sure I can go to the gym and get on a stair-stepper, but that’s not who I am.  I’d much rather run up to check my calendar or down to take meat out of the freezer for dinner.  I’d rather lift bags of steer manure in the garden than free weights at some workout place.

Much as the move is right as part of a long term strategy, I’m not relishing the need to consciously create “exercise” for myself every day.  Now that I’m really looking at the situation though, I can see there’s more to this than “oh poor me.”

We’ve seen stories about older people who died after they were placed in senior housing after living in more physically demanding homes their whole lives.  Most of the stories I’ve heard assumed they died of homesickness.  Perhaps there’s more to it than that.

My new place was built as part of a 55+ community.  (Go ahead.  Point your fingers and laugh.  I said I would never do this.)  Everything is on one floor and “easily accessible.”  Outside of some extra shelving we added that I need to use a step ladder to access, I don’t even have to bend or reach very much.  That’s all by design—the perfect home for an “aging boomer.”

Are we right in assuming that as we age we should plan to do less physically?  Are we really doing ourselves the favor that builders and real estate agents claim we are with the “all on one floor” concept?  Is lawn service really a plus when we have the time and could still be doing that physical activity ourselves? Does it make any sense at all to give up stuff we could still do ourselves just because we are “getting older?”

My mom resisted getting a clothes dryer for decades. She didn’t want to lose the exercise and fresh air she got hanging clothes outside.  (In case you are envisioning this buxom farm wife, please note my mom was a willowy city girl with a degree in intellectual history.)  She was right on with this one and I should have been paying better attention. Now I understand. I want my multi-purpose movement (exercise I don’t consciously have to plan) back.

I can still fix this.  Luckily, the move I just made is a temporary one.  I don’t own this house.  When we buy together a year or two down the road, I’ll be aware of this need.  For now, I can make an effort to get “exercise” into my daily routine and accept being a gym rat for the short term.

But far more often, this “less demanding” new environment is permanent.  How many of us are losing our vitality way before we need to by downsizing to places that are designed to take physical activity (aka “work”) out of our lives?

The challenge of doing those daily tasks may be part of what keeps us going.  My dad was diagnosed with heart disease in his 40’s.  Later in life, that included congestive heart failure. For virtually his entire adult life, he went up a full flight of stairs each night to take his shower.  When he died at age 85, he was still taking a daily walk, working on his writing every day, and fully engaged in his community.   Doesn’t that seem like a better way to do this?

We need to rethink this notion that less physical work is good for us as we get older.  Sure, we probably won’t be pitching hay or digging trenches.  But there’s middle ground between the two extremes where we would be much better off.  For me, that includes a flight of stairs.

This article originally appeared in the July 2012 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

***** Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  She has also recently released an e-book on Kindle titled 39 Bites of Wisdom:  Little Lessons on Getting Life Right.  For more, see her website www.mining-silver.com.