Nope. I’m not talking about re-sparking old romances. It is rather heady to reconnect with your high school sweetheart or your first crush.  But there are other loves that pack as hefty a punch at this stage that have nothing to do with “boy meets girl” or “girl meets boy.” The magic I’m looking at here is the delight of coming back to things you used to love to do but lost track of.

Yes, we evolve; some of what we spent the bulk of our time on no produces a glimmer of excitement.  Listening to Beatles songs and swooning over that George Harrison poster don’t ring your chime like they did when you were thirteen.  Likewise, pitching green apples at passing cars is probably not up for renewal.  I’ve gotten three great lessons in things that you do want to resurrect in the last few days though.

I met two new friends today, in two different contexts.  Each had a story to tell about something they’d recently reconnected with that was making a big difference in their lives.

The first was a woman with a strong pedigree in finance who owns her own business and is venturing beyond the safe and familiar in what she’d doing with her career.  Simultaneously, things have been very challenging personally, particularly with her mother’s increasing dementia and her dad’s denial of that reality. The poor woman probably doesn’t have time to turn around given all her current responsibilities.  But six months ago, she decided to go back to something that had always brought her joy—ice skating—in a new way. She joined a synchronized ice skating team.

She’s not the youngest member of the team, but she’s not the oldest either.  She was like everyone else in one very important way.  She loves to figure skate.  Being part of the team is an ideal version of this joy for this time in her life.  A team effort means she has to focus on the team’s workout instead of whatever is crashing down around her ears beyond the rink.  She has teammates—wonderful people who support her.  Even better, they’re good—a great way to confirm your own worth when the personal pieces seem to be in tatters.

My second new friend is returning to an earlier version of work that he loved.  He’s not shifting his career back that way though.  He’s chosen instead to “dabble” as a strategy to move in that direction as he prepares for his version of retirement.  His passion?  Publishing.  Only now as he starts to play in that arena again, he has years of experience with business plans and management as well a deep love of books and writing to help him make things work.

You can hear the excitement in his voice when he speaks of the project where he’s currently testing his combined old and new skills.  His vision of retirement in uniquely his, and it’s already adding energy to his life.

The third example is me.  For the last seven years, I’ve focused on creating resources to help our culture create a wiser blueprint for what we do after 50.  I’m still passionate that we need a smarter approach for everyone’s sake.  But that message is now coming from more and more voices so my role can start to diminish.  My treat is to myself is to write fiction.

After a self-imposed hiatus, I’m back to the delight of “playing God” in the stories I come up with.  I, too, have had some difficult challenges of late.  Knowing I’m going spend time with my stories every day makes those challenges less difficult.

It’s hard to describe the joy of coming back to the favorite pursuits of younger years.  It’s a bit like meeting a dear but long-lost friend, learning all over again how much you enjoyed having him/her in your life, and then discovering that very special person is moving in next door to you.

We are so lucky when the things we love circle back and catch our attention and devotion again.  Usually, it’s not exact same effort as when we were so enthralled the first time.  Most often, it’s even more magical—both because of all the things learned in the meantime that make you more effective and because you cherish it more because it was lost.

You’re not living in the past if you pick up old pastimes.  You’ve had the chance to reconnect with an old friend.  Enjoy!

This article originally appeared in the May 2013 issue 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 .

Someone has stepped up to tackle the wrongness of Off Their Rockers,  and I applaud that someone–Barbara Morris, who’s been advocating for smarter aging even longer than I have.   Below is her press release about the situation.  I’ve added my own comment after hers.

By Barbara Morris:

I admire Betty White. Her energy and creative ability are inspiring. Long ago she could have joined those retirees who imagine they are living the good life, drinking, playing shuffleboard or endless rounds of golf, and reminiscing about what used to be. Instead, she continues to use her time and talent to give meaning to her life. Her vitality and competence assure every healthy midlife woman that chronological age is meaningless; that a joyful productive life, not just a passive dependent existence is possible regardless of age.

Unfortunately, she is not doing old people a favor with her TV show “Off Their Rockers” with its premise “A troupe of senior citizens pulls pranks on unsuspecting folks.” The “unsuspecting folks” are usually embarrassed young people. The whole idea is embarrassing to a lot of us older folks, too.

One must wonder why Betty can’t see how damaging it is to the image and psyche of her peers. It’s tragic that dementia strikes so many older people, rendering them incapable of rational behavior. It’s even more tragic when old people of sound mind deliberately engage in behavior that gives the impression advanced age is synonymous with ditzy lunacy. It’s disturbing to watch the cast of her show behave like irresponsible teenagers. Watching their often-obnoxious antics is akin to hearing a dirty joke that makes you giggle but at the same time you know it’s inappropriate and you feel demeaned by the experience.

Why did Betty decide to do this show? Is it because she is so confident and so vibrant that she can’t understand that most of her audience doesn’t grasp that she is trying to spoof the pathetic stereotype of “old” and see it as confirming it instead? Or maybe she saw it as a way for older people to get more exposure on TV, or a way to get a few dollars in their pockets. Maybe she is so focused on getting a laugh that she doesn’t see the damage she’s doing.

Regardless of her reason to create this misguided show and no matter how good her reason, it’s still damaging to all of us who ever get old enough to fall prey to the “old people eventually lose it” stereotype. She is undoing the very thing that we love her for–being vibrant and funny and “with it” in her 90′s.   We appreciate and applaud Betty White. But she needs to give us respect in return. Participating in a show that’s demeaning to older people is simply not the right thing to do. In so many ways Betty could use her talent, energy, and experience to choose projects that more accurately reflect the caliber, talent and continued competence of old people.

A positive change in Betty’s choice of entertainment projects may already be happening with her new show, “Hot in Cleveland” that has more to its premise than the horrid, longstanding stereotype of “old.” In the meantime, it’s time to retire “Off Their Rockers”. It never belonged on the air in the first place.

Barbara Morris, R.Ph., Editor, Publisher Put Old on Hold Journal Barbara@PutOldonHold.com

Comment by Mary Lloyd:

Thank you for bringing this up, Barbara.  That show has been bothering me since the first (and only) episode I watched.  It is a huge disappointment to have Betty White—someone the whole country loves for doing what she’s doing for as long as she’s been doing it—playing to ageist, stupid pranks to get a laugh. 

No one would dream of making a series based on racist jokes or even “dumb blonde” or other sexist jokes.  Why is this ageist garbage deemed acceptable?

But it goes a step farther.  She—and the show’s writers—have missed an important piece of advice I got from Jonathan Winters in a writers workshop years ago.  “Good comedy laughs with people not at them.”  Off Their Rockers is makes fun of young people and presents old people as self-centered, outrageous dingbats.  It’s wrong on many levels.  How tragic that it’s still on the air. 

Mary Lloyd, author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  www.mining-silver.com.

You can learn the most amazing things from the littlest people. Last week, my one-year-old granddaughter taught me a huge lesson about saying “Hello.” She knows how to do it right. Me? Well, let’s just say I’ve gotten a bit too complacent.

When someone Cora loves comes to where she already is, her excitement at seeing him or her is expressed with her whole body.  A huge smile spreads across her face–ear to ear, no kidding.  She throws her arms open in welcome and starts forward, a miniature version of an Italian grandma.  (She has not one drop of Italian in her.)  Then comes the best part.  She does this delighted little happy dance where she hops from foot to foot in rapid succession before she comes running toward you.

That welcome still has me smiling a week later.  In fact it impressed me enough to decide I want to do a better job of saying “Hello” to those I love myself.   The first test of that commitment came yesterday.  I wasn’t expecting myself to pull off the happy dance but I wanted to at least offer  a warm, sincere acknowledgement of my joy at seeing someone I care about.

The friend I was going to visit was one I hadn’t seen in more than a year.  She’s helped me through a very rough patch and is, truly, a dear friend.  But despite my desire to be obviously joyful when we first met, things didn’t quite work out that way.  She was taking the dog out when I got there.  You can’t interfere with a dog’s business.  And then her husband appeared from the backyard, and we got lost in conversation quickly.  So much for the delighted hello–happy dance or not.

It was wonderful to see her again and great that we had the chance to get together.  But why didn’t I greet her with open arms and obvious joy?  Was I on autopilot?  Was I too timid?  Or was the whole idea really out in left field?

Maybe it was none of those things.  I wanted to make sure my friend knew I appreciated the chance to spend time with her. That happened.  We talked about many things and enjoyed catching up with each other’s lives.  Did we both miss out by me not doing that little happy dance?  Probably not.  But I still wish my exuberance had been a little more obvious.

Ironically, since we are both grandmas, I ended up telling her about Cora’s full throttle hello.  And she asked why she hadn’t gotten that.  I didn’t (and don’t) have a good answer.  It would have been fun for me. But it’s Cora’s way to say hello.  I’m not sure I can make it mine.

Maybe it’s not Cora’s hello that I need to master here.  What I want to do better at is acknowledging the presence of a special person when we first reconnect.  That can be my kids. Or grandkids.  Or siblings. It could be friends, neighbors, or long lost cousins.

More often though, it’s my significant other.   And sometimes, when we return to each other’s company, even the basic word “Hello” gets lost in hauling in groceries or making sure the garage door closed properly.

Life would be sweeter if I remembered a happy “Hello!” though.  If I want to be happy, I need to acknowledge the things that make me happy–like returning to the presence of someone I love.  Then again, maybe I need to come up with my own dance.

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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.

Are you playing fair with your To Do list? I’ve been abusing mine for about a decade now and didn’t even know it.

I tell myself that I’m not a slave to it–I did finally see the light about the lunacy of “getting it all done at all costs” a while back.  But I’ve just discovered I’m stilling approaching that To Do list the wrong way.

I’ve been using it as a daily confirmation that I have worth as a person—salvation via getting a lot done.  And the painful truth is that this is just another perfectionist strategy—a way to avoid the pain of being deemed not good enough in someone else’s eyes by completing task after task after task, day after day after day.

To let go of perfectionism, you have to stop worrying about what other people will think.  I thought I had accomplished that–and in many ways I have.  But I still worship at the altar of “getting things done.” The wrongheadedness of this finally became clear to me courtesy of Brene’ Brown’s THE GIFTS OF IMPERFECTION: LET GO OF WHO YOU THINK YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE AND EMBRACE WHO YOU ARE.  The gifts she discusses aren’t consolation prizes.  Imperfection is actually a whole lot better way to live than all the perfectionist striving I’ve been guilty of over the years, including my worth-through-productivity mania.

Brown knows my game.  She too was devastated when she learned that a stiff dose of work ethic wasn’t a particularly evolved approach to life.  She refers to herself as “a recovering perfectionist and aspiring good-enoughist.”  She’s also a social scientist who’s been doing qualitative research on shame for much of her career.  That’s right—perfectionism is a facet of shame.  I’ve been driving 90 miles an hour down that dead end for decades!

The news was a shock, but also a big relief.  I’ve been frustrated for months about how little I get accomplished these days compared to three or four years ago.  I used to write a long list of chores for the next day every night, and then, bright and early the next day, I would get going on those things—roaring through them like I was on a mission to save the world.  Much of the time, nobody but me had decided they needed to be done.  In the vast majority of cases, if I didn’t get them done, nothing bad was going to happen.  But getting through that list made me feel like a superstar.  I was effective.

Recently, it’s gotten more and more difficult to make myself work on the list each day.  More and more often, I don’t even write one out the night before.  I’ve been worried that this meant I was losing my grip on my life. I can’t even get a simple to-do list done?

After reading what Brene’ Brown had to say, the dawn came.  A while back I asked the Universe for help to get wiser about doing what really needs to be done.  I thought that it was a case of rededicating myself to that daily list.  Until I read about her experience, I didn’t even realize the resistance to my To Do list mania was the answer to my earlier prayer.

Who says I have to get anything done?!  Who’s keeping count?  I’ve been in an ever-accelerating role as Simon Legree, meanly enslaving myself. That’s no better than subjugating someone else.

A few days ago, I turned over a new leaf.  Instead of that long To Do list, I jot down what I really do need to remember to do.  Then I remind myself that my day is mine to do with as I choose.  Yes, I need to honor my commitments, but usually, it doesn’t all have to get done “today.”  And it’s okay to change my mind as the day progresses.
Work is a good piece of life; it’s not work that needs to be eliminated here.

What I—and maybe you, too–need to stop doing is the frenzied rush through an arbitrary list of tasks that has become the default proof that I (we) deserve to be alive today.  I need to erase the notion that work—even meaningless work that doesn’t need to be done at all—trumps the less socially acceptable stuff like play and taking a nap.

“To Do” lists are great for remembering what needs to get done.  You do want them in your toolkit.  But they aren’t inflexible marching orders, and there is no correlation between the length of your list (with everything crossed off) and your value as a person. To be really wise, you need to use a strategy that includes knowing when to ignore them.

This article originally appeared in the March 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.

“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.

“Healthy Boomers” might be a rarer breed than we want to believe, at least according to recently released study.

When researchers compared U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) of people ages 46 to 64 in the years 2007 to 2010 (Boomers) to the same information for people in that age range between 1988 and 1994 (the Silent Generation) they found 40% of Boomers to be obese compared to 29% in the prior generation. They also became chronically ill earlier in life, had a greater number of limitations in what they could do at work, and are more likely to need a cane or walker. At the same time, Boomers are living longer than the previous generation.

But is this just a case of Boomers gorging on too many Twinkies and getting sick as a result?

It’s not just Boomers who are more likely to be obese these days. The NHANES website itself states that ”Between  1988–1994 and 2007–2008 the prevalence of obesity increased in adults at all  income and education levels.”  That is alarming and we do need to mend our wayward ways, but let’s not single out Boomers for the redirection.

The fact that we are diagnosed with chronic diseases sooner and have to live with them longer is probably not really about accelerating decline either.  In the last 20 years,  there has been an aggressive effort within the healthcare system to diagnose people earlier in the hope that by doing so, chronic conditions can be more easily controlled.

Yes, people are probably being diagnosed earlier than those with the same conditions would have been 20 years ago.  But how many of those in the prior generation would have been similarly diagnosed if the technology to do it have been available and the healthcare mindset had been the same when they were that age?

This spike in obesity and chronic illness is a worry, please don’t get me wrong.  But you can’t tell people “accept this sooner so we can help you manage it” and then be alarmed that the number of diagnoses has increased.

Plus, it is far more fashionable to be chronically ill these days.  In 1988, using a cane or needing concessions at work was a sign of weakness.  People who needed them didn’t ask for them because they didn’t want to be viewed as “handicapped.”  The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 and strengthened in 2008.  Now what people ask for–and get–as concessions is mind boggling.

Is this “news” really about Boomers being a bigger mess than they want to admit?  Or is it about how far into “healthcare” we have all marched–to the point of expecting pills instead of finding ways to exercise and asking for “procedures” instead of making healthier lifestyle choices?

This kind of news article makes me angry.  It’s fatalistic and implies helplessness.  “Boomers are going to be fat and old for a long time.”  It smacks of some Millenial enjoying the deterioration of the people who are “in the way” of their own advancement.

What’s really going on here?  Let’s ask more questions instead of just assuming that Boomers have been sitting on their butts too much (which they probably have, but they aren’t alone.)

•  Boomers are the first generation to have “careers” and face the unrelenting stress of this version of a job market.  How does job stress fit into the situation?
• Boomers are the first generation to live with the advertising that popularized the notion that you’re not supposed to have pain–and that if you do, you need to pop a pill to make it stop.  Does that thinking result in overuse of the healthcare system?  Does that overuse mean over-diagnosis?  Does the over-diagnosis create health problems in and of itself?
• Boomers are the generation that first tasted diet soda, “lite” entres stuffed with chemicals in lieu of calories, baked goods with more fake ingredients than real ones, and chemicals of all sorts in everything from bottled water to underwear.  What is that doing to our bodies?  And are those of Boomers simply the ones that have had the most time to accumulate all that crap?

Is this just about Boomers being a mess or is this about the way we are all taking care or (or not taking care) of ourselves?

As a nation, we need a heavy, across the board dose of “natural.”

1. We need to eat food that still looks like what it was when it was alive. (vegetarians included–What’s with the Gardenburgers??!)
2. We need get outside and move our bodies doing something positive–whether it’s walking the dog, rock climbing, or joining a cause that gets you hip deep in mud.
3. We need to slow down enough to notice our own breathing.
4. And we need to stop saying “tomorrow” to all things things our hearts yearn for–like peace and harmony and some fun now and then.

This is not about Boomers in decline.  This is about all of us in decline.  The thing we need to take away from this article is not “Boomers are losing it.”  The thing we need to understand is that the route we’re all on is not a good one.  But we can change.  All of us.  Boomers included.

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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.

Mom was right. But sometimes it takes a good physical therapist to get you to heed what you were taught when you were six.  Case in point”  SIT UP STRAIGHT.  And for that matter, stand up straight, too.

For the last three weeks, I’ve been working with an amazing physical therapist to get rid of pain I’ve had in my hip for years.  I thought it was arthritis.  I thought it was hip degeneration.  I thought is was a total hip replacement in my not-too-distant future.  All I actually needed was a refresher course in what I got from mom before I went off to first grade: Slouching is not acceptable.

For Mom, it may have been the need to raise a kid who looked half way interested in what was going on.  For my physical therapist, it’s a simple solution to avoid surgery, cortisone shots, and other expensive medical procedures.

I’m living in a 66-year old body.  Things are going to hurt every once in a while.  I’m going to do dumb stuff like clobbering myself with a shovel handle or treating my finger like part of the shish kabob.  You just assume it will get better after you do that kind of thing–and it does.  Except that’s not how it works with my back.  That is not just a “wait and it will be fine” situation.  It happens a little at a time and when it starts to hurt, it’s usually not in my back.  Confusing, right?

Not if you are paying attention to what’s really going on.

The truth of the matter is that most back problems come from poor posture.  I assume that I am standing straight when I’m not, believe I’m sitting up square when I’m twisted into the curve of a too cushy chair, and that I do my work looking straight at it when at least half the time, I’m torqued around so I can do two things–or more–at once.

Believe me, being good to yourself by maintaining good posture sounds simple but is not.  It takes ongoing effort and commitment.  It doesn’t even feel natural for me to stand with my feet equally weighted because I have a very long-standing habit of weighting my left leg more.  (Thus, the pain in my right hip….)

You might not be blessed with the same luck as I had in terms of ending up with a great physical therapist.  But you might not have to if you remember this one thing:  If you are having pain on a recurring basis, check your posture.

This is one of those “easy fixes” that we don’t hear about often enough.  Back surgery is invasive and not always successful.  It’s a whole lot harder to deal with than reteaching yourself how to sit on the couch when you watch TV, how to sit at your computer, how to stand correctly.

I am living proof of how much of a difference this can make.  The first time this physical therapist coached me, my life had degenerated into long days of laying on the bed the most of the time because my leg hurt so much.  I could not walk a block.  (Yes, this is the hiker who considers anything under five miles “just a walk.”)  I was firmly convinced that it was my leg that was the problem–and I do have a genetic peculiarity that I could blame it on.  It was severe enough that I fully expected that surgery or cortisone were the only options.

But this physcial therapist would have none of that and just went to work seeing how to make the hurt move around.  Once she did that, we knew what exercise I needed to do to get the pain to go away entirely.  And it did–in a matter of a few weeks.

This second round I did the same wrong thing again–assumed the pain was not in my back.  This time, we moved a lot faster because I didn’t wait so long to get help and was ready to get to work when she said we could fix it.  Hopefully, there will be no next time since as part of this most recent work, she taught me how to localize and then centralize the pain myself.  This stuff works so well it seems like magic to me.

It is way too easy to buy in on the invasive, expensive solutions to common healthcare problems.  Before you do that for leg, back, or hip pain, see what improving your posture will do. (Others have found this also to be true for shoulders and neck.) You might be as pleasantly amazed as I am.

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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.

Not all tax preparers are created equal. If you decide to get help with your filing this year, pay attention to more than what it’s going to cost.

By the time we are close to–or in–retirement, we’ve spent a lot of time filling in the blanks for the IRS.  A lot of us have been filing our own returns since our first paychecks.  But there are times when getting some help might be a good idea.  And if you decide to get help, be sure you are getting the real deal.

Many times, what looks like the real deal is a lot less than what you need.  Here are two examples.

When I married and moved to Colorado, we used the accountant that my new husband had been using before I made the scene.  Every year when tax time came around, we’d sort and organize and document and then take the whole carefully orchestrated pile of numbers to him, and he would “do his magic.”  Actually, it wasn’t magic at all because my spouse was a bulldog about catching his mistakes.

A few years later, we bought a business and the accounting got more complex.  Again not a problem because said spouse knew when things didn’t add up.  We did need an accountant though, and every year the bill kept getting higher. That problem was “solved” by my spouse complaining and the accountant reducing his fee a bit each time he did.  I usually get along fine with people, particularly in business settings, but I didn’t like this accountant and I couldn’t really say why.  The whole thing seemed slightly off to me.

Finally, the amount he wanted for the work he was doing got to be too much.  Period.  Said spouse started looking for a new accountant.  And what he found was amazing.  The new guy was proactive. He asked questions.  He explained alternatives.  He made recommendations about the smartest way to do things in terms of tax implications and business planning.  He got the actual filings right the first time.  He was, in a word, a resource.  This is the kind of help you need if your taxes are complicated.

In case you are telling yourself “I don’t own a business and the guy down the street is good enough,” here’s another example.  This happened just a few weeks ago.  A good friend got caught trying to sell his longtime residence when the housing market collapsed.  To deal with the situation, he decided to rent the house out for a while.  That complicated his tax return since he had to claim the rent as income.  He’d been using the person who took over when his long-time accountant retired a few years earlier without ever checking what she knew and how she did things.

The advice he got from her was way short of what he needed.  By current estimate, now that he’s using a more competent tax preparer, he should be getting over a $1000 refund for 2011 alone.  Even more jaw dropping, this same “accountant” mis-advised him on how to file the long-term resident new home purchase tax credit paperwork on the house he’s living in now, so he didn’t get that the year prior either.  That was $6500 he was due but did not get.

This man is not a high roller.  He’s an ordinary guy on an ordinary pension living in a modest home in a modest neighborhood.  That was a lot of money for him.  He might have lost it, just because of the choice he made for who to use as a tax preparer.

Put good thought into who you ask for help on this stuff.  Ask friends if they are satisfied with who they use.  Check to see if there are complaints.  Figure out who to go with before the last minute.  And if whoever you go to says “I don’t know” or “I haven’t done this kind of filing before” think twice before you put your trust in them.  And trust your gut.  If something doesn’t feel right, keep looking.

It would be nice if our tax forms were simple and the rules easy to comply with.  They aren’t.  Take the time to find the right person if your tax situation is complex enough that you need help.  A sign in the window that says “I Do Taxes” is not enough.

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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.