In case you missed it, there was an interesting article in the February 16, 2010 issue of U.S. News & World Report by Emily Brandon, entitled “10 Ways Baby Boomers will Reinvent Retirement.” It is a good article, and I hope you will read it, as well as some of the related articles to which the article includes internal links. There are some helpful insights and references to how we will cope with our very different needs.

This article is largely focused on the ways the Baby Boomer generation will “Re-invent retirement.” In most cases, we will have no choice but to re-invent retirement in the ways noted. These re-inventions of retirement all have more to do with how boomers will adapt to a different environment than that into which our parents retired. So necessity will be the mother of most of these reinventions, such as having no pension plans, needing to manage our money and investments, coping with being the “sandwich generation,” receiving less in social security support, and being in debt when we retire.

While these “re-inventions” will certainly be facts of life for Baby Boomers as we grow older, I think the tone of the article fails to recognize some very important characteristics of this generation.

First, boomers are the wealthiest generation in history.

Second, receiving less money from social security depends upon the age at retirement. If we work until age 70 or 72 (which the vast majority of us say we plan to do), we will receive more money.

Third, needing to work two extra years to recover what our retirement accounts lost in the recent economic crisis is, again, not a problem, because we don’t want to stop working at age 65.

Finally, the Boomer generation is not just defined by our financial situation. We will respond to the necessities we are faced with, and we will respond in ways that are both effective and that make us happy.

Boomers are a generation that has been learning how to respond when life hands us lemons. We have learned how to make spectacular lemonade!

I would like to hear from you. Tell me what you think.

Are you sitting in a chair with a handful or lemons? Or are you making lemonade?

If you are making lemonade, what recipe are you using?

“It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.” — Henry James

How often do you laugh in each day?  As you are beginning to see a few wrinkles appearing on your face, are they laugh lines or scowl creases?

Laughter is good for us, according to several medical studies. Laughter has been demonstrated to reduce pain, relieve stress, restores hope, lowers blood pressure and is easily transmitted to others. Have you ever seen an argument come to an immediate halt when someone starts laughing or says something funny?

Our world is a difficult place to be living for many people. We are dealing with an economy that is struggling to turn around, with wars and rising violence, and with prices rising much faster than our raises in income. We can sit and feel sorry for ourselves and worry or we can learn to find humor in life and face the world with hope.

The next time you begin to feel overwhelmed or stressed out or frightened or in pain, find something to laugh about. Whether it is the antics of a child or a pet, a silly movie or television program, or even something totally inane, learn to laugh. Laughing helps us gather ourselves to cope with the bad times and heighten the joy of the good times.

If you can’t find anything else to laugh about, try laughing at yourself.  Try to see yourself as others might see you over the course of the day. I can almost guarantee you will find a source of laughter.

“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs, jolted by every pebble in the road.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

I don’t know or know of any human being who has not made mistakes. Some of us think we make more than others; some think we make less. Mistakes are simply a fact of life. Like failure, the question is not if it happens – the question that matters is what we do with it. We can allow our mistakes to be teaching or learning moments or we can dwell upon them and become paralyzed by fear and doubt.

No one likes to admit that she or he is not perfect. I don’t know where the notion came from that allowed people to think they are perfect. I’ve found nothing in the writings and teachings of any religion or philosophy that argues that people are intended to be perfect. Until we can recognize our fallibility and learn to handle mistakes with grace, we will never learn.

You can move beyond your mistakes by recognizing them, learning from them, relegating them to the past and moving forward with hope and confidence. This is the path that will lead you to fulfilling your dreams.

Tell us how you moved on after a mistake.

“Anyone who never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
– Albert Einstein

If you have implemented the first three keys to building confidence, you should be moving along the way to living more fully in the present and not allowing past mistakes and the negative messages of others to undermine your confidence. Now it is time to change your thinking from a focus on failure to a focus on success.

Don’t allow yourself to be or become one of the millions of people who always see the negatives. Everyone has flaws, the world is not perfect and everyone makes mistakes and experiences failures. Instead, look for the best in others, align yourself with the positive things happening in the world around you, and look for what you and others do successfully. Become a success-oriented person.

Try the next three steps:

4. Make a list of your successes. Get others to help you make the list. It will be fun and uplifting for you. Those who help you with the list will feel better about themselves, too.

5. Practice looking for the positive and the success in every person and every action or activity. You will still recognize failure and flaws, but you will also learn to look for the positives even there.

6. Reward yourself every time you succeed. It is fine to match the reward to the success and celebrate bigger successes in bigger ways.

Share your list of successes here.

“Your success and happiness lie in you. . . . Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
– Helen Keller

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

A focus on accomplishing your goals and fulfilling your dreams is essential to success. We all know that; but that focus is difficult for many of us to maintain. There are often voices in our memories or in our lives telling us we cannot succeed, calling us failures, or undermining our self confidence in other ways.

Here are the first three key steps to moving beyond the paralysis of memory and demoralizing messages:

1. Remember that everyone has experienced failure at some time in her or his life. Failure feels bad at the time, but it can be a very positive experience for the rest of your life. If you are constantly reviewing your failures, stop and think about what you learned from each failure and how it made you a better person.

2. Once you have extracted the positive from each failure forget it. Whether you can simply tell your mind to stop reminding you or you need to do something like writing down each failure on a small piece of paper, putting it in a box, and burying it or taking it to the dump, get rid of it.

3. If someone in your life is constantly throwing your failures in your face, have a talk with that person. Explain that this behavior is hurtful and that you will not tolerate it in the future. If necessary, create a penalty system you use every time that person brings up a past failure. This will help the person recognize and correct the behavior.

Please check back next week for the next steps. Share how you handle defeating thoughts here.

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
– Marcus Aurelius

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

Achieving your dream is a matter of keeping it always in sight and making regular and steady progress toward the goal. Do not compare your dream to the dream of another. You are not the same people with the same resources of skills. Do not compare the size of your dream to that of another’s dream. What is a great challenge to one may be impossible for another.

If you encounter a failure, re-think, re-group, re-fortify, and re-start. A failure does not necessarily mean you are pursuing the wrong dream. It might just mean you are pursuing it in the wrong way. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, re-strategize, and continue on the way. You will learn something valuable from each small failure, and you will learn something valuable about yourself from each renewed effort.

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.” -  Confucius

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

How do you plan to re-start? Share your dream here.

Do you know someone who is struggling, who is coping with trying circumstances, who is suffering?  You might be surprised by the difference you can make by simply being present to and for that person. Nobody enjoys struggling or suffering alone. We all need to be loved and supported in our struggles.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I encourage you to take some time out of your schedule and spend that time with someone who is sick or in need or facing other difficult circumstances. Listen – really listen—to that person and offer the support or help you can give.

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the circumstances that surround our lives. Sometimes we are convinced that we do not have the competence or the insight to do all that must be done to work through a difficulty or to help another person. Sometimes we do all that we can, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

Never stop giving or caring. When we reach the limits of our giving, this is where miracles happen.

“When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life or another.”          — Helen Keller

Check out our upcoming Dream Big Live Big Event where you can really start putting your dreams into action www.dreambiglivebigevent.com

Tell us how you made a difference here. Even small comforts can make a big difference in the life of another.

Good news, Baby Boomers – you don’t need to give up your flip-flops! We grew up with these inexpensive, easy-on, easy-off “shoes” and millions of us still love them. Most of us were told by our parents, doctors and “science” that anything that flimsy and cheap could not possibly be good for us.

I’ve been told they are bad for my feet, bad for my legs, etc. As we grow older, many of us are developing osteoarthritis in our knees (and, perhaps, in a few other joints, as well). Some of us have been told to wear all kinds of shoes to reduce the pain in our knees.

Here’s the good news:
Researchers at Rush University in Chicago studies some adults with osteoarthritis and found that the flexibility of flip-flops are good for our knees, as is walking barefoot (which many of us also enjoy) or wearing flat walking shoes. Click here to read the whole article in the Los Angeles Times. The article also has links to the study, the abstract of the study and to the Arthritis Foundation. Then start thinking about comfort, and flop on!

Share your flip-flop stories.

Spring is a great time to clear out and clean up. Spring cleaning isn’t as popular as it was when we were kids, but it still has merit. Getting everything clean and fresh, making everything lighter and brighter, and removing clutter are great ideas.

Spring is also a wonderful time to take stock and clean up and clear out things in our lives that hold us back or bog us down. It is a good time to mend broken relationships, extend forgiveness, and deal with the problems and other baggage that is slowing our progress.

Here’s an action plan that I think can work for most of us. If there are things that don’t apply to you, just skip over them for a week. Each week, do the following:

• Deal with one problem in your life
• Make one critical decision you have been deferring Ø  Mend one broken relationship
• Forgive one person
• Celebrate how much better you feel.

“We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.”        — Simone Weil

Share with us some of your spring cleaning plans by commenting here.

News reports are fairly consistent in reporting that one of the demographic groups hit hardest by the economic crisis are women in their 50s and 60s. If you are among the group of women in this age group who have lost your previous job, you might want to read a very insightful article in Forbes.  The article by Judith H. Dobrzynski is entitled “Why Older Women Are Going Back to Work.” (www.forbes.com/2010/03/16/retirement-age-job-search-forbes-woman-net- worth-changing-careers_2.html)

Many women who are being laid off from executive management/leadership positions are losing both the job and a very good salary. Most of these women are not ready to retire. Some choose to continue to work because they want to work. Others will continue to work because they need the salary. But most of the women in this group are finding it necessary to make some major adjustments in expectations and working roles.

The article concludes, “We are at a point where we still want to work, but we want something different, like an ‘encore’ career,” she says. “I want to work and need to work, but I know myself better now. And now that my children are grown, I can look around and figure out what I really want to do.”

If you do not know what you want to do next – the nature of your encore career – or how to adapt to the loss of authority or power or control, or even how to cope with the need to make significant life changes to prepare for whatever is next, I encourage you to attend one of my seminars or the Dream Big, Live Big Event (www.DreamBigLiveBigEvent.com) in May. Even better, call me or send me an e-mail. I can help you discover what’s next in your life and embrace the future with hope and confidence.

Are you ready to start your encore career? Tell me here.