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.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver LLC

This article initially appeared in the November edition of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

 We’ve reached my least favorite month of the year–“dreaded November.”  Growing up in Wisconsin, January was the daunting month.  But snow and subzero temperatures pale in comparison to what November dishes up in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s dark enough to develop photographs at my dining room table at noon and the rain and wind just keep on coming.  Ah, November…  The perfect time to look at the wisdom of learning to wait.

The gloom and cold and Mother Nature’s nasty fits have sweet purpose for everything in the yard that has either died or gone dormant and for us, as a reminder that resting is an important part of living well.

The “fun” parts of cycles are easy to get used to—the growing, the flowering, the fruit.  But this is the time of year that reminds us that things die.  The lovely blue lobelia.  The crimson leaves of the maple.  The zucchini plant (finally!).  Quite a lot stops being what it was–some permanently and some until next spring.  The idea that “it’s over” is not so uplifting for most of us.  But it’s every bit as important in the cycle as the flashier parts.

Nature going dormant reminds us that parts of our lives need to die sometimes, too.  Friendships, pastimes, jobs we thought we’d have until we retired.  The reasons for the end of each are more complex than with plants.  But they have reached that same point in the cycle–an ending.  Endings come just slightly before the next beginning if you let them. 

Maybe the friend moved away.  Maybe the hobby got boring.  The person you can’t love anymore may have died in the real sense or just in how you saw him or her.  The job—and maybe the whole company—may have gotten eliminated.   It’s easy to get comfy with what we like and expect it to go on forever.  But that’s the natural progression of things.

Most of us aren’t very good at dealing with these little deaths.  Instead of seeing them for what they are–necessary transitions—we dwell on what was, convinced that’s what still should be.  Every time we do that, we miss the point, and the chance to savor that quiet time that comes before starting again.

Being still and waiting is not easy in this age of instant everything.  We flip a switch and have light and move from place to place on seventy-miles-per-hour freeways.  We can buy or learn anything we want at any time of day online.  But the downtime that comes when something ends has lots to offer.

First, of course, we get to rest.  But we tell ourselves we don’t have time for that.  This rest is important for more than relieving weary bones though.  Getting clear of what was before you move on to what’s next streamlines the process in the long run.  Letting an idea steep for a while often gives it additional depth and breadth.  Waiting instead of jumping into the next thing as soon as the last one is finished can give you much needed perspective that makes it easier to get things to go right once you do get going.

But how do you wait? 

With patience.  Much as we want to believe we have total control, we don’t.  Things happen when they are supposed to not when we think they are supposed to.   The simple act of accepting that notion is powerful.

With hope.  Wise waiting includes believing that good things are on the way.  Getting things to grow involves trusting they will.  When you don’t believe what you want, need, and are focused on will come, you keep changing course—sort of like planting different seeds in the same spot the garden every other week. 

And with gratitude.  Being grateful you’re part of something bigger than your personal timetable is the fast route to serenity.  Let life be what it is and you will automatically slow down when the chance presents itself.

Whether it’s kids or carrots, growth is never uniform and consistent.  There are spurts and there are plateaus.  There are times when you wonder if you really did plant what you thought you did because nothing’s coming up.  Respect those times.  Let that part of you be dormant.  Wait.  Trust that growth will come again.  That your efforts will bloom and bear fruit.  

Even when it’s dark and cold and wet outside, the warm fire of promise burns inside you.  That makes resting good.

 ************************************************************************
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 September edition of Barbara Morris’s oline newsletter, Put Old On Hold.

A few weeks ago I had the chance to go on a weekend bicycle trip with a group that included a new friend.  He rode a recumbent bike because of a neck injury that would have otherwise ended his cycling fun.  He taught me something that I’m realizing relates to far more than riding a bike.  I asked him if it hurt when he rode.  He said, “I’ve reached the point where it’s important to distinguish between ‘pain’ and ‘discomfort’.”  That’s a good thing for all of us to know. 

Pain is when something hurts so bad you can’t keep doing what you are doing. 

Discomfort is when something about the situation creates less than a perfect experience. 

If we are doing it right, we’re paying attention to the pain and ignoring the discomfort.  We don’t get much encouragement for going about it that way.

In one camp are the “no pain no gain” folks, who claim you have to work through the pain.  They’ve been falling out of favor recently, and that’s good.  If you are truly in pain, it’s time to alter course, be it backing off on an exercise routine or letting go of a certain version of a life.

But the messages that suggest we need to “fix” every little discomfort do just us just as much of a disservice.  The idea that nothing should ever hurt makes great business for pharmaceutical companies and therapists, but is it realistic?  No.  And it means you miss a good opportunity to prove your mettle.

On the bike trip where I first got to thinking about this, I had the chance to feel assorted discomforts.  The second day we had rain.  We rode anyway.  It got a colder than what I was dressed for.  It was still a good ride.  We addressed the discomforts when they got to be excessive—like finding shelter in a bike-friendly convenience store along the trail during the worst of the deluge. 

But none of us gave in to the bad weather entirely—and that engendered a greater sense of accomplishment.  (The next day we were going to ride a dirt trail over high trestles and through long tunnels.  Lots of them.  When we got to the trailhead, it was 42 degrees and foggy.  That one, we aborted.  There is discomfort and there is lunacy….)

But back to the idea of living with discomfort.  Take the common cold.  I’ve had friends tell me they give it three days and then go to the doctor.  For what?  It’s a cold.  Bed rest.  Lots of fluids.  And a big dose of patience is pretty much all that’s going to work.  Instead, the expectation is that there is some medicine that will make it all go away.  Nope.  But now in addition to the cold, you’ve wasted money and time on a doctor’s visit.  Did you really need it or were you just impatient with the discomfort?

The distinction is every bit as useful in assessing a job situation.  Perhaps you have to work with someone you don’t like.  Is that pain?  Not unless you make it so.  Discomfort, yes.  But pain from such a situation is usually more a case of what your ego is telling you about how awful it is.  Learn to live with the jerk and you win twice—by mastering that skill as well as avoiding the frustrations of a job search.

Both pain and discomfort serve useful purposes if we choose to let them. 

Pain tells you it’s time to stop doing what you are doing.  Pain makes you stop doing what you are doing.  Quite often, pain requires you to seek help, whether it’s for a broken leg or an impossible business situation.  Pain precipitates change.

Discomfort, on the other hand, is a challenge to keep going.  It provides the opportunity to reaffirm your commitment to whatever you are doing.  Working through it confirms that what you’re working on is important enough that you are willing to put up with less than perfect circumstances to get it done.  And often, when you work through the discomfort, there’s a sense of achievement from it that gives you even more motivation to complete what you’re trying to do.

Given the contrast in what each offers, being able to differentiate between pain and discomfort is important.  Can you?  Knowing when to quit is good.  So is knowing when to go on.   

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.  Her website is http://www.mining-silver.com.  She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

When we are kids and we break a bone, we think in terms of “when it’s better.”  When we are young adults, we see any kind of health limitation as a nuisance to be endured for as long as you have to before it heals.  But somewhere north of 50, the culture starts to see whatever goes wrong with a human body as permanent–part of the inevitable downward spiral.   You’re a victim of aging rather than a broken foot.  “It’s only going to get worse…”

We need to stop buying that baloney.  We are just as capable of getting back into the swing of things as younger people if we commit to recovery.  Yes, it’s not automatic anymore.  But it’s certainly doable.   Too often, we accept the fate decreed by our uninformed culture and let ourselves go sliding down the resulting slope instead.

You can become MORE healthy when you are faced with a life changing medical condition.  Take diabetes.  One of the men in my family was diagnosed with it last year.  He is now 20 pounds lighter and has more energy than he’s had in years.  A woman friend decided to quit smoking and work on her fitness level after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  That was more then a decade ago.  She’s twelve years my senior but will beat me up a hill on a bicycle any day.

And you don’t HAVE to be diagnosed with some dread disease to reverse that mythical “downward spiral to the grave.”  You just have to want to do something so much that you put the effort into getting fit enough for it.  For me, that was hiking.  Being able to hike up trails that take me high into the mountains is bliss.  It’s made an immense difference in my life. I had to improve my endurance dramatically to be able to keep up.  Now I just might be the one in the lead.  I started hiking when I was 59.  I will never again assume that I can’t do more and feel better tomorrow than I do today.  (And I feel pretty dang good today!)

Give this some thought.  How are you limiting yourself if you are old enough to be “aging”? (We are all aging at the same rate, incidentally…one day at a time.)   

If you are not yet to age 50, give it some thought anyway.  Are your comments, assumptions or behaviors encouraging those you love who are over 50 to think they “can’t?”

Can’t is for sissies.  We use it way too much.  Let’s get back to living and do what we want no matter how old we are.  It starts by getting yourself into good enough shape to pull it off.  Go for it!

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver LLC

This article initially appeared as an article in the online newsletter Put Old on Hold, edited by Barbara Morris.

The dramas of daily life can be painful. The snub. The really mean person. Someone else’s problem that you drop everything to solve. We think these dramas are caused by other people. But the truth is we create them ourselves–when we are too wound up in what’s going on to pay attention to what we’re really trying to do.

I got wise to this recently while trying to figure out that most difficult of challenges—how to be happy with someone of the opposite sex. I was raised in a very traditional family. By the time I was ten, I was very good at figuring out what other people needed and making sure I did what I could for them to get it. By age twelve, I was also good at constructing stories in my head about why I didn’t get what I wanted…needed…deserved in the same way. By the time I got to dating, both those behaviors were entrenched.

I’ve made great progress in getting rid of these dumb ideas, but with a guy, I regress to “terminal unidirectional giving mode” after the first date. It’s an unworkable approach, so I end up feeling blue–about something I said, something he said, something I wanted to happen that didn’t, etc. The “couple drama.”

My current goal is to be really good at living in the Now. All the baloney I’ve been feeding myself about how men and women are supposed to relate is built on old, stale information that’s completely out of sync with what I need to do to relate well now to a man—to anyone for that matter.

But knowing that mentally isn’t enough. You need to consciously FEEL the dissonance you’re creating with your negative drama on an emotional level to be able to let it go. When you catch yourself feeling blue—or angry or anxious—you can learn what you were telling yourself that triggered the feeling instantly.

After I learned to do that, an interesting thing happened. I realized the man who made me blue was not the man I was dating. The guy who left me dissatisfied was a made-up character I created myself—out of all that old, stale information that I thought was gone.

So I named him. Robert Funk. Whenever Robert’s around, I end up in a funk because of the negative ideas I hear from him. I like my man friend—he’s a pleasant, happy guy. I don’t like Robert Funk. He makes me feel bad. Now that I know I created him, I can just tell him to go away. Robert Funk doesn’t belong in my life. So long, big guy.

Have you created a Robert Funk for yourself? If you have expectations that your relationship is supposed to proceed a certain way– that he (or she) should call at a certain time or provide a certain level of financial comfort or share deepest secrets—then you’ve got your own little “couple drama” going. You don’t need it.

Once I met Robert Funk, I noticed the other characters I write scripts for. Jenny Gotta gets the lead a lot. She’s boring–all she does is work. I need to banish her, but she has such great reasons for doing it her way. “Good girls get the work done.” “Nice people do what they said they would.” “You have to do the work if you want to succeed.” Sorry, Jenny. You’re outta here.

Then there’s John Sturdy. He makes me do more work than I should be doing. John convinces me to take on massive physical projects meant for someone bigger and stronger—or that I could hire done. He talks me into finishing work at 2:00AM. John doesn’t understand the word “relax.” An excessive workload makes me feel strong and independent—but also worn out and alone. And by doing it that way, I miss one of the richest interactions available to a human—the give and take of helping. Bye, John.

There are others, but these three seem to be in the middle of most of the unhappy scenes in my life. Every one of them is fiction. Creative writing I do in useless support of emotional delusion. They aren’t real and they diminish my life with what they tell me. It’s time to send them all packing. Finally.

How about you? Any great drama in your life? If you’re doing this kind of stuff, find a better use of your creative talent. The emotional drama thing serves no good purpose. And it’s not fun. Just familiar.

**********

Mary Lloyd is author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. She offers seminars on creating a meaningful retirement and consults to businesses on how to use older talent well. She’s available as a speaker. For more on dealing well with life go to => http://www.mining-silver.com.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

As a culture, we are doing an amazingly stupid thing. So with a nod of appreciation to David Letterman here are the Top 10 Reasons to Stop Thinking “Old” is a Problem. His “top ten” lists go from the last to the first so here, in ascending order, are ten reasons to ditch the idea that advancing age means inevitable decline.

10. IT’S NOT FAIR TO ASSUME PEOPLE WHO ARE “OLD” ARE WORN OUT AND USELESS. Or, to put it more bluntly, it’s not legal—at least if you live a developed country. In the United States, denying someone over 40 fair treatment on “any aspect of employment” because of the year he was born might put you on the losing side of a federal lawsuit that involves both compensatory AND punitive damages.

9. AGE = DECLINE IS A LIE. There are no scientific studies that confirm people automatically lose their ability to think and learn as they age. Studies reporting such findings were done on compromised groups who do not represent the general population of this age range.

8. ASSUMING OLDER WORKERS NEED TO “GET OUT OF THE WAY” SO THAT YOUNGER WORKERS CAN HAVE THOSE JOBS IS SHORT-SIGHTED. Isn’t that a bit like expecting Dad to throw the checkers game when you were 10? Asking competent people to step aside so someone else who can’t do the job as well can step up is like throwing away the candy and eating the wrapper.

7. WE NEED THESE WORKERS. Yes, we are currently dealing with the mother of all recessions, but when it ends, this need will be glaring. There are 78 million baby boomers. Gen X, which follows them, only has 40 million. We are going to need some of those 78 million to stick around longer than “average retirement age” to get the same work done, even with the 70 million Gen Y’ers moving into the workforce.

6. WE NEED OLDER WORKERS’ EXPERIENCE. To compete in a global economy, developed nations need to do more than put bodies at machines. We need people with well-developed problem solving skills. Book knowledge helps, but practical knowledge trumps it. Employees who have “been there and done that” know how to avoid the pitfalls and get the job done right—the first time.

5. WE NEED THEIR WISDOM. Come on, folks. There is no way the wunderkind grad from the most prestigious tech mecca is going to get the people parts and contextual stuff right from the get-go. We need both tech savvy and experienced leadership, leading-edge conceptualizing and seasoned veteran decision-making prowess to get this right. When we choose only “new,” we have nothing to anchor it to.

4. THINKING OLD PEOPLE ARE INEPT IS SOOOO NINETEENTH CENTURY. Yes. Nineteenth century. This nonsense of refusing to marry innovation WITH wisdom began in the 1790’s. Employers from then until the 1950’s used the philosophy as justification for requiring workers to retire at a specific age. Brawn was more of an issue then. Thinking that way was wrongheaded in the Industrial Age. But now we’re in the Information Age, where KNOWLEDGE is critical. It’s corporate suicide. In a knowledge-intensive economy, it makes zero sense to send 40 years’ worth of it out the door so you can bring in someone with none.

3. THEY CAN LEAD THE WAY TO WHAT WE ALL WANT. When people old enough to retire choose not to, they pursue work arrangements the rest of us would love to have as well. Let them craft the new shapes for work that would give us all much needed flexibility so we can live the rest of our lives and work, too.

2. AGEIST THINKING IS EXPENSIVE. We want to pretend that if we don’t see them, those millions of older people we’ve marginalized aren’t there. But they ARE there…tapping the healthcare system far more than they would be with meaningful challenges in their lives, collecting Social Security, and relying on society and the government for things they could be doing for themselves given the chance and the encouragement.

1. WE ARE ALL GOING THERE. The weirdest thing about this form of discrimination is that we are all going to live it—short of dying young. But we think of OTHER people getting old and are blind to what we’re setting up for ourselves. Life expectancy right now is about 80. As knowledge workers, we are very likely to beat that. Do we really want to be invisible and irrelevant for twenty or more years of our lives just because some preacher back in 1790 decided youth and progress was better than age and wisdom?

It’s time to git rid of ageism.  It’s wrong, costs money, and sets us all up for a hard time when we get that far.

by Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

This article appears in the May 2009 issue of Barbara Morris’s online newsletter, Put Old on Hold.

One of the many sad consequences of our preoccupation with youth is that we don’t pay much attention to wisdom. That’s like worrying about what color to paint the garage and ignoring the Ferrari that’s housed inside.

Wisdom, per Merriam Webster’s is “accumulated philosophic or scientific learning: KNOWLEDGE” or “ability to discern inner qualities and relationships: INSIGHT” or “good sense: JUDGMENT.” Roll it all together and you get “a wise attitude, belief, or course of action.” Wisdom is a key to living well. But aspiring to it is not typically on our lists of New Year’s resolutions or personal goal statements.

That’s probably because to acquire it, you have to accept you’re getting older.

First, let’s face one unavoidable fact. Every single day of our lives, we “get older.” It’s the normal course of events. The only alternative is to die—and I’m not voting for that option. So if we’re going to get older anyway, why not do it gracefully? Why not do it in a way that makes the reality more compelling? Why not work on becoming wise?

Going back to the definition I started with, there are three pieces to this—and then the decision to live that way (which is the attitude part).

Knowledge

Jokes about hiring a teenager because they know it all have been around forever. And we’ve all met precocious ten-year-olds who could go on for an hour on a topic they found interesting. But the knowledge that serves as a basis for wisdom has to be more comprehensive than the knowledge of youth. Becoming wise requires an accurate picture of the real world. And that means you need to have lived there a while. And paid attention.

Too often, we live in the realm of what we assume to be true instead confirming what is. Buying a car—or house—that you can’t afford is an example of that. But so is staying in a dead-end job because you’re telling yourself you’re not good enough for anything better. Not believing in ourselves is the stingiest approach of all to life. But it takes wisdom to see that–and to stop doing it.

Gaining knowledge hinges on paying attention to what’s going on around you. People who have learned “what came next” again and again are more serene about life situations. A wise person knows the bad times will end and can work patiently toward that day. She also savors the good times because they, too, are temporary. What we learn of the ebb and flow of life—by living it consciously—gives us a more solid foundation.

Insight

Knowing about life is important, but you need to find the patterns in it, too–even when they’re hidden in the shadows. Insight is combining information from the disparate sources you’ve observed and drawing astute conclusions about what’s going on.

One of my dearest family members reacts intensely to overwork. Until I understood that pattern, I found myself in the middle of emotional upheavals that left me baffled and hurt. Without a conscious assessment of previous episodes and an effort to extract what was common to them, I believed—as she was prone to insisting in those moments—that I was inadequate as a person and a loved one. Now, I just find the quickest route to the sidelines. Getting out of the way for a bit is a much better solution for both of us. This is wisdom. It’s practical. It’s loving. And it’s not going to show up unless you’re getting older. You have to watch things for a while to see patterns.

Judgment

Judgment is not about deciding you’re better than someone else. The judgment that comes with wisdom is about choosing an effective course of action.

Sometimes, it’s obvious. If the house is on fire, you get out and call 911. But if you’ve been worrying for weeks about whether to go on vacation in June or August, maybe you need to let go of it of it for a while. Wise judgment is knowing when NOT to decide sometimes. Ever spend months feeling awful that you weren’t getting to something that “had” to be done only to discover it didn’t need to be done at all?

Wisdom includes intuition when employing judgment. Knowledge and insight are essential, but so is “gut feel” if you want to really get it right. As we get older, we become more willing to hear—and honor—that “little voice.” We make wiser choices as a result.

Wise as an attitude

We don’t become wise instantaneously. Wisdom comes in small increments. But to get all the way to unflappable, ongoing serenity, we need to decide we want to become wiser now. Becoming wise is the best way to grow older. Every day.

*******

Mary Lloyd is author of Supercharged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. She offers seminars on creating a meaningful retirement and consults to businesses on how to use older talent well. She is available as a speaker. For more on how to get the best out of this stage of life go to => http://www.mining-silver.com.