As a kid, it was how many weeks of allowance would buy what you yearned for. But as you move through life, the complexities of financial planning increase. That’s not bad, just something to be aware of.

It’s hard to know how much is “enough” for what might come along after you stop working. And it’s hard not to get sucked into valuing yourself by the number of digits in your investment account–if you have one–once work no longer provides an identity.  But if you have determined what’s enough and are fortunate enough to have more than that, why are you sitting on the rest?  

Those of us over 50 hold over 75% of all the financial assets in the US. What are we doing with that?

I’m not stumping for the non-profits with that question. It’s a quality of life issue that each of us answers a different way.  Those answers depend on the money available, sure.  But the effectiveness of these decisions also depends how well we assess our priorities as we make money decisions.

Are you telling yourself you “don’t need” that new furniture  you really want when there’s money available for it? When you do that, you’re living from a scarcity mentality that impoverishes your whole life, not just your financial decisions.

The flip side of this issue deserves a good look, too. Do you need to get your teeth fixed but can’t because you “don’t have the money for it”–while you continue to smoke or head for the casino three nights a week?  It’s all too easy to make decisions based on childish emotions or miserly adult ways when neither serves you well.

These aspects of financial planning are important to consider no matter how much or how little money you have to work with.  “How much” isn’t the operative phrase here.  “How well” works better.  As in “How well will doing this meet my needs?”

I grew up in a large family that didn’t have money to spare. ” We just did things a bit differently than some of the other families in the neighborhood. Mom made the soup we ate. (We naively assumed Campbell’s was a luxury.) We created many of our toys and came up with our own games complete with rules. The Mother Lode in all that is that every single one of us is creative as an adult–in how we decorate our homes, how we solve our problems, how we live our lives.   Our parents blessed with wisdom on how to use our money well rather than savvy on how to amass a lot of it.

Financial planning is not just a matter of “having enough money.” It’s about balancing what you have with what you believe in and want to do–whether it’s a world cruise, starting an heirloom vegetable seed business, funding a school in a Third World village, or treating yourself to a cookie. 

Give yourself the gift of good thought in all this. it’s not about how much money you have. It’s a about what you choose and how it enhances your life.
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Mary Lloyd is a speaker, consultant, and coach and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more see her website.    She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

Well-being is more dependent on the way you see things than most of us realize.  Being mindful instead of letting someone else’s labels define you, your health, your challenges, even your strengths can make a major difference in the quality of your life.

At the moment, I’m into Ellen Langer’s book Counterclockwise:  Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.  This isn’t a New Age exhortation to do affirmations and expect blessings.  Langer is a social psychologist who’s been researching the mind/body link scientifically for decades.  She and her students at Harvard have done study after study with amazing results about the power of little things that are conveyed in words. 

In the study for which the book was titled, they took groups of nursing home men on a weeklong retreat where they recreated the year 1959.  One group of men was treated as if it were that time.  The other was asked to reminisce about that year while the same music, movies, etc. played. 

Both groups came out of the experience with their hearing and memory improved.  On many measurable dimensions, they “got younger.”  Astounding results, to be sure.  But even more amazing, those who actually re-lived the year improved more than the others–on intelligence tests, posture, gait, height and weight.   Photos of them taken at the end of the week were judged by people unaware of the study to be younger than the ones taken at the beginning of the week. 

In Langer’s words, “It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us, but rather our mindset about our physical limits.”  What are you doing about that?  What are you thinking?

Henry Ford’s famous quote, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” is another way to consider this phenomenon.  We set ourselves up to succeed or stumble, sail through challenges or become chronically ill with what we tell ourselves.  That’s why some people can live through Dachau and some have a heart attack just dealing with traffic on Monday morning.

One of the places that has a lot of potential for a better life is how we perceive control.  Are you the only one who knows the right way to do things?  Does everyone else need your perspective to get things done?  That’s not reality, but some of us take on a lot of stress assuming that.

How about the opposite—where you assume you have no control?  If you tell yourself that someone else has to make you happy, improve your work situation, help you eat better, or make you lose weight, you’re eliminating the one person who can really make any of those things happen—YOU.

The truth is, you don’t have all the control and never will.  But you do have more than “none.”  All of us do.

Another perspective that works against our well-being is the idea that aging is linear and inevitable.  Once one piece of your body starts to have problems, the rest will follow.  The path is inalterable.  Studies support that people who see health problems as a temporary blip recover better than those who see their illness as the first step in the staircase down to total infirmity.

Even though social scientists confirm the importance of consciously choosing how we see the world and our place in it, it’s not that easy.  The vast majority of the images and ideas we hear, watch, and relate to are mind-numbing and contagious.  Each of us is different in many, many ways.  But it’s natural for a society to expect similarities.  You have to be your own watchdog on this.  Forgetting one person’s name doesn’t mean your memory is gone.  Many older people remember more than those two generations younger.  (My dad could still tell you the names of the guys he served with in WWII when he died in 2001.)

The mind-body link is a huge piece of good health.  Much of modern medicine ignores it. Society ignores it.  That doesn’t mean you have to.  Pay attention to what you are telling yourself all day every day.  Get rid of the junk that implies “less than,” “unable,” or “decline.”  It’s far worse for you than a greasy burger with fries and a giant milkshake. 

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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 about her and her work, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com/.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com. 

This article originally appeared in the July 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter, Put Old on Hold.

Our right to freedom in the US is broader than carrying guns and assemblying to protest or support something.    We also have freedom of information and freedom to pursue what we believe in.  What do we do with all that?

It’s too easy as Americans to equate our beautiful right to the freedoms we enjoy as citizens with a “don’t fence me in” attitude.  I can be what I want and do what I want (as long as I do no harm) and that’s it.   The “I can be me” of it is just the start though.  How good a “me” can you be?  In the US, we have a lot of protection for taking ourselves to the top.

But to the top of what?  Too often lately, it’s been to the top story of greed or petty bickering, to the top of who makes the most as a CEO or sports figure, to the top of what a nun I had in 7th grade aptly termed “a manure pile.”  None of that stuff is worth the effort to get it in the long run.

Here in the US, we can do more than that.  As a nation, we’re languishing because we’re not.  If we want to truly be Americans, then it’s time to accept that sometimes life is hard and that blaming someone else instead of dealing with it is cowardly.  We need to get off this bickering kick in the halls of decision-making and get serious about finding solutions.  “My” way only works when you’re the only one involved in the situation.  “Our” way is always the product of negotiation, good will, and respect–and a desire to get on with what needs to be done.

Nothing in our Constitution holds holy our right to be right.  That document–and everything this country is built on–comes instead from our right to do right.

The next time you decide someone else is wrong, remember this.  Find a solution not a fight over who’s gonna win the right to be 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.  Her current focus is on helping 50+ workers develop effective job search skills and strategies.  Her website is http://www.mining-silver.com/ She can be contacted via her website.

The “tennis match that wouldn’t end” is a lesson for all of us.  When John Isner and Nicholas Mahut played at Wimbledon this week it took three days (11 hours and 5 minutes of actual play) and 183 games to decide the winner.  By the time it was finished, people all over the world were shaking their heads.  That’s a lot of tennis.

It was sad to have a loser in that match, since both put so much into it.  But we are all winners in what they demonstrated for us.  We got a refresher course in how to keep going.  Many of us are probably thinking differently about whatever it was that we were ready to give up on:  “If those guys could play so hard for so long, maybe I can put a little bit more into this.”

Perserverance.  We learn it as we go through life, but when life is easy, the lessons are pretty rare.    Then when times get tough, it’s hard to remember how to do it.  These guys gave a great demonstration.

As older workers and members of society, it’s even easier to just give up.  When we are looking for a job, there’s often the option of “just retiring” in the back of our heads.  When we are trying to find the right volunteer niche, it’s easy to quit the first time it doesn’t go well.  When we decide to take control of our health, letting the medical establishment decide is merely a matter of getting distracted from your mission.

We need to perservere.  To chase the dreams that we’ve not yet lived.  To create a lifestyle that has meaning and joy.  To respect the uniqueness of our own bodies in how we manage our health.  To not just love but lust for being a part of something good.

We can do that–but only if we make ourselves do that.  It may not be a matter of winning at Wimbledon, but it’s a matter of winning at life.

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

Announcing a no-cost, non-surgical way to look younger!!!

Smile.

We spend a lot of time, money, and effort trying to “make the most of what we’ve got” but there really is a lot of truth to the suggestion that inner beauty improves your looks far more effectively.  And inner beauty is totally a matter of personal choices rather than medical advances.

We tend to believe that the things we want most are going to cost us.  Beauty (or “handsomeness” if you prefer) is one of those things.  But beauty is more about what you’re thinking than which face cream you are using.  Or how many cosmetic surgery procedures you can afford.

There are even more pluses to inner beauty than looking good, too.  Research has demonstrated a strong correlation between a positive attitude and both longevity and good health.  So if you want to be beautiful, healthy, and long-lived, work on your smile.

Most Friday nights I dance to rock ‘n roll with my friend Diane.  She is a pretty woman in the commercial sense of the word.  But when she dances, she becomes ten times more beautiful—because she beams the whole time she is on the dance floor.  She also talks to everyone in the place and learns about them in neighborly terms.  (Last night, we went to a new place and the first couple with whom she struck up a conversation was from Scotland!)  This woman literally lights up the room with her attitude.  She’s one of my favorite role models.

Choosing to be happy with whatever the day brings is a major plus for health reasons.  Choosing to share a smile every chance you get is better than Botox for how you come across.

So…how do you keep that smile?

• Choose not to judge other people.  Judging is stern work.  Look in the mirror the next time you’re in the middle of deciding someone else is wrong.  You’re scowling, right?  Most of our judgments are unnecessary—no action resulted from what you decreed.  You just felt some negative thought—self-righteousness or irritation maybe—and then hung onto it like it was Holy Writ.

Even worse, we are often wrong in what we decide is the case.  One of my favorite sayings is “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance.”   It keeps me from berating someone else’s dumb choice—like cutting me off on the freeway.  “They just didn’t know any better” leaves me with an easy smile.   “That arrogant bastard in the disgusting Hummer should be ticketed for aggressive driving” doesn’t keep me as serene.  Or as attractive.

• Notice the good stuff in your day.   It doesn’t have to be huge to make a difference.  I once sat in traffic admiring the shade of red in the stoplight.  I was on my way to an appointment with a shrink—and that stoplight made me realize my world was fine and I didn’t need to see her any more.

• Hope.  Believe in the goodness of life and your own potential.  Even if your prospects aren’t promising at the moment, keep trying and keep going.  Hope is a key element of a good life but we don’t tend to focus on it until we’ve lost it.  Do all you can to keep yours in your life all the time.

• Let it go.  We tend to want to control what goes on in our lives—to be the one who decides how things are going to be.  When things don’t go the way we want, we dwell on it, replaying the dissatisfying situation again and again.  All this does is make you look ugly (really!).  Letting go of whatever happened five minutes ago keeps you ready for whatever is coming next.  It also gives your mind enough space to notice the good stuff that’s going on now. Smiling in the now is priceless.

If you want to look young forever, be happy.  There’s no predetermining gene for this.  Anyone at all can learn to smile.   It starts with being happy and being happy is a choice.  Choose to be happy and smile.  The more you do, the more you will—and the more beautiful you will be on an on-going basis.

This post originally appeared in the June 2010 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 about her and her work, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.

We’re setting ourselves–and the country–up by relegating anyone over 60 to the “discard pile.”  How long are we going to keep doing this same dumb thing?

Why are we setting these people adrift instead of using what they know and what they are good at?  As the bulge that is the baby boom moves into the “retirement” phase of life, the cost of this folly will skyrocket.  Is that what we want our grandkids paying for?

The current assumption is that as you age, you become inept, but research doesn’t support that. Seventy percent of what we blame on aging is the result of lousy lifestyle choices.

The prevailing wisdom is that those who can afford to want to retire.  But in a 2005 study of over 3000 baby boomers, the Merrill Lynch Foundation found that only 17% wanted that lifestyle.

Every time we “retire” someone, we lose their expertise.  Younger workers could be a lot better at what they do a lot faster if the “old pros” were serving as mentors.   We lose their understanding of the context in which the work got done–and the resulting problem-solving, negotiating, and customer support advantages.   We lose a ton of information about what works and what doesn’t across the spectrum of the jobs they were doing.

The system we have in place, assumes our most experienced, skilled workers want and need to “disappear”  at a specific age.  We pay them to do so.   What’s the benefit of that?

Even worse, the consequences  of not having a purpose in life are dire. People who have a reason to get up in the morning stay a lot healthier and live longer.  It’s a double whammy for the country–first we pay them not to work and then we pay for healthcare they may not have even needed if they were working.

Worst of all though, we are each setting ourselves up for this same frustrating decline into perceived uselessness by letting the system continue as is.

There a few things we need to accept:

• Every person in society deserves a purpose and needs to be encouraged to claim it.
• Not all important jobs are full time.  Some aren’t even paid.
• “Old” is not a disease.   Wrinkles don’t erase competence.
• Things don’t improve by having capable people sitting around doing nothing.

The idea that youth and progress are the only things that have value  has been around since the Second Great Awakening that began around 1825.  It’s time to let go of this outdated thinking and grab onto something more innovative. The challenge is not in chosing between young and old. The true test of our mettle as a nation and as individuals is in becoming a culture that values–and uses–both the freshness of its youth and the wisdom of its elders.

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Mary Lloyd is CEO of Mining Silver LLC, a company dedicated to using the potential of those over 50 better. She’s author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. For more, visit her website.

Having enough money doesn’t mean you need to retire–look at Warren Buffet…

Check out Mary Lloyd’s May 27 guest post on Karma Kitaj’s blog Retirement as You Want It/.

Well, how much work is “enough”? And how much is too much? Or too little?  As so many of us grapple with being “out of work” these questions take on more significance.   And that’s good, because most of us look  at “work” as “whatever the boss tells me I have to do.”

Work is both bigger than that and more important than that.  How much of it you need in your life is not going to be the same as what your spouse, mom, kids, or best friend needs.  Work is a uniquely personal thing, yet we don’t often look at it that way.

We all need to work.   Much of it won’t be for  pay. but it’s still effort expended toward something bigger than your personal comfort.  So while we are waiting around for something that pays–or even better something that pays well–take a look at what work really means for you.

What’s the most important thing about work ?  The chance to excel?  The confirmation of competence that comes from getting paid?  Money to pay the bills?  The opportunity to make a difference or to solve a complex problem?  Knowing what’s the most important thing about work for you gives you a much better shot at being satisfied when you work.

It also will give you good clues about “how much is enough?”  If you are in it for the extrinsic motivators–a paycheck, a title, or recognition within a community, enough to get that will be all you need.  If you are in it for the intrinsic motivators–the chance to solve a problem, make a difference or be part of a highly productive team, the limiits are higher.  And the challenge of keeping your work  in balance with the rest of the things you want in your life is greater.

But how much is enough?  That, too, is personally defined.  The crazy thing is that we are all married to this “fulltime” mindset without any real evaluation of what would work best for us as individuals.

A lot of us are working fewer hours–for less pay–because of the downturn.  Do you like having that extra time for other things?  Could you live on that number of work hours on an on-going basis?

Others of us are working ourselves to a frazzle because we’re among the few left on board after deep and repeated staffing cuts.  Does the job do enough for you that you want to continue this pace?

Some of us were forced into retirement–or took  it willingly.    Is not working at all working for you?

We all need work.  What kind and how much is a far more personal decision than we usually make it.

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Mary Lloyd is CEO of Mining Silver and author of Supercharged Retirement:  Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote and Do What You Love.

It’s not “how much” time we have, it’s how we use it that’s the problem. Most of us spend our days trying to get more done than there’s time for. Or so it seems. When we retire, we have time in our days but we start to see the whole of our remaining lives as too short to do the things we want to do. Both of these approaches rely on the mistaken idea that “There’s not enough time.” Most of what we blame on the amount of time we have is really the result of not using what we have effectively.

Have you ever been in a tight spot time-wise where you had to get a lot of things done quickly? Your performance goes up two notches. You focus on only what must be done with laser-like sharpness. Quite often, everything gets done with time to spare. If you can do that in the extreme circumstances, why can’t you do it every day? Because we don’t take charge of our time that way on a day to day basis.

You can “have enough time” if you do these three things:

Be clear about what you really want to be spending it on.

If your ten-year-old son (or grandson) walks in the door bleeding profusely because of an accident with his bicycle, your time needs to go in a new direction. But when he asks you to drive him to the skate park? Too often, whatever anyone else asks of us gets priority over what we really want to get done. Some of those things are unhealthy along with being off path. (Office gossip, smoke breaks, and petty arguments are easy examples.) Nobody wins when we do that. Letting other people take whatever of your time they choose puts your own life on hold. Not fair—and in the case of children, a really wrong message to send about how the world works

But what if it’s your boss that’s doing the asking? Well, there are times to draw the line there, too. How much of your week should legitimately be dedicated to your job? For many of us, that number is more than “40 hours a week”–but it should not be infinity. “Okay” may need to be replaced with “I can do that, but which of these other things do you want me to leave undone to get to it?”

Be strong in saying “no” to things that aren’t part of your priorities.

Your best friend calls suggesting a Saturday shopping trip. You’ve been planning to redo your garage storage with your sweetie that day. Do you say yes to your friend because, well, she’s your friend? Or maybe your sweetie tries to opt out because one of his buddies has suggested a golf game. If you get that laser focus going, you can do both, but do the thing with the priority first.

Your success with “no” is going to be a function of how you go about it. Sometimes you don’t even have to say it—you just have to not say “yes.” Sometimes the “no” that you need will come out as “Thanks for that input. I need to get back to this project now.” Sometimes it will be “Great to see you” as you walk the person to the door. Kindness and saying “yes” aren’t synonymous. True friendship rests on mutual respect and good business relationships depend on sincerity. If you don’t want to spend time on the interruption, say so with a smile and get on with what you need to do.

Commit to spending every single second of your time well.

We assume we need huge chunks of time to do big projects. Quite often, the small bits that are available in the everyday routine can be every bit as effective. Every big job is a collection of little jobs that need to be done in a particular order. This is just as true of writing a novel as putting in a vegetable garden. Ticking off one or two of those little things several times a week will get you a lot farther than waiting for that big chunk of time. Those rarely materialize.

Committing to using every minute well becomes even more essential when you retire. It’s easy to fritter away the remaining decades of your life doing “whatever.” Most of us have no idea how long our lives will be. It’s far better to plan for the long run and die before you get it done than die years after you ran out of things you wanted to do. Make a long list. Add to it again and again. Be bold–if you want to get a degree in paleontology the year your turn 87, go for it!

Your time is yours. Covet it. Use it on purpose.

This post originally appeared in the April 2010 issue of Barbara Morriss’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. Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50. For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com. She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

by Mary Lloyd, CEO Mining Silver

This article originally appeared in the January 2010 issue of Barbara Morris’s newsletter Put Old on Hold.

Here we are again, at the beginning of another year.  And this year, we have a zero at the end of it, which means it’s a big deal year for many of us–a year to do “great things.” 

“I resolve to be a better person in 2010.”  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.

New Year’s resolutions don’t get us very far. All those newbies at the gym Jan. 2 are usually back on the couch watching TV in a couple of weeks.  Why?  Because those resolutions are typically based on seeing something wrong with ourselves.  It’s no fun to be flawed.  Much as we’d like to do better in certain ways, when the motivation to do so is mired in negativity, it’s hard to stay at it. 

Plus we tend to be rather global in how we phrase them.  “I’m going to find my dream job.”  Or “Be a better parent.”  That’s a lot to do with very little specific direction for doing it.

The start of a new year is a great time to stop and assess where you are and where you want to be.  It’s a great “landmark of time” to help us remember to take stock.  But the kind of planning common to New Year’s Day (or somewhere near it), tends to come across as inalterable.  That’s another reason New Year’s resolutions don’t work.

You don’t need “New Year’s resolutions,” you need goals if you want to make change really happen.  Goals are based on what you want rather than what’s wrong with you.  Plus, you can construct goals out of Spandex instead of January 1 cement.  As you work toward a goal, you learn more about what’s realistic and you modify the goal accordingly.  Sometimes that’s a case of reaching higher; sometimes it’s a U-turn from where you thought you needed to go.  Goals can flex.

So what does a good goal look like?

It states specific action.    A goal is about action; resolutions are about good intentions.  A goal defines how you are going to make the change.  For example “I will take a two-mile walk at least four times a week” rather than “I’m going to get in shape.” 

It’s measurable.    One of the keys to staying at something is being able to see progress.  When the change you are trying to make has milestones to it, you get an extra boost to keep going every time you pass one—sort of like mile markers in a race.  When you set a goal to lose ten pounds, losing that first pound makes you believe you can lose the second one, and so on.  Yes/no is a measurement, too.  Did you write that query letter?  Stop having lunch with the toxic gossip at work?   Get home from work by 6:00 four out of five nights a week?

Part of your measurement is a deadline for when you are going to have the goal accomplished.  You may need to modify the deadline, but don’t leave it off.  Goals without deadlines are much harder to make happen. 

It’s achievable.  Being realistic is another key to successful goal setting.  Commit to things that you can reasonably make happen in the time frame you set.  Telling yourself you are going to lose 50 pounds before Valentine’s Day is unworkable.  Set yourself up for success by establishing a pace for what you want to do that’s reasonable to accomplish.  If you get things going faster than you expected, you c an always change the goal to reflect the faster pace.

It’s relevant.  It’s got to be important to you for you to stay with it.  If you goal is to please a certain person (e.g. boss or spouse) including things they want instead to what makes your heart sing may work, but you will find much stronger motivation in laying it out according to your own value system.  Maybe “your health” isn’t so important, but your ability to continue to play your favorite sport is.  If so, cloak your health goals in what you need for your sport.

Find goals that excite and energize you—that make you want to start right now.  Resolutions just make you feel bad when you forget about them.  Goals have power.  Now’s a great time to set some.

Happy 2010!  May it be meaningful, satisfying, and full of joy.

Mary Lloyd is a speaker and consultant and author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love.  Her passion is in capitalizing on the potential of those over 50.  For more, please visit her website http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.