More Reasons for Living in the Right-Now

Doesn’t life seem to change quite a bit as you get older? It sure does for me. Our bodies are certainly not the same at 70 or 80 as they were when we were teenagers or even at 30 or 40.

I had lunch the other day with an old friend that I’ve known for many, many years. I’ll call him Jerry. We have had so many great years together. Recently, I called him up to ask if we could meet for lunch at a restaurant or my country club. Jerry said he’d love to, but we would have to have lunch at his house since he was not very mobile. I was quite surprised to hear this since Jerry is only about a year older than me and the last time I saw him, he seemed to be just fine and had always been in good health.

We met up a few days later at Jerry’s house and I brought him lunch. I was surprised to see him with a 4-wheel walker and, on top of that, he shocked me with the news that he had bone cancer and, even worse, the cancer was also now in his brain.

Wow, that was such bad news, and I really felt sorry for my dear, long-time friend. Aside from all that bad news, I was very happy to find, after talking to him for a while, that his thinking was in excellent shape. He told me about a trip that he just got back from. In spite of his physical shape and health problems, he said he had a wonderful get away to Europe. As we talked about some trips we had taken together in the past, I was amazed that Jerry remembered so many details of our trips, many that I have a hard time recalling myself. He really impressed me!

When most of us were young, we might have thought life was an easy ride, and we figured we would live to 100 and have plenty of time to do all the things we want to do. We might also have hoped that maybe, by the time we’d reach old age, they will have invented a medicine or procedure to extend our lives by many, many more years and maybe even close to forever (I’ll hold on to that far out dream!) But even if we could live forever, we still have to deal with our older our brains and bodies not working near as well as in our younger years.

Since we most likely won’t live to be a 100 or more, we need to wrap our minds around living in the Right-Now Moment. It is true that we can’t continuously live in the present if we want to plan a big, fun getaway trip, since that takes future thinking. However, I certainly have found that as I think about going to Europe or Japan or any new place, it lifts my spirits.

Traveling to new places and seeing new things excites my mind and, I believe, it makes me healthier. It could even push off the day that I check out of life by many more years. I sure hope so!

GBAs and PBAs

Just the other day, I was going through a ton of old stuff of mine. Most of it was old paperwork including my past journals in which I wrote mainly about my thoughts and actions, from work stuff to family trips.

I began reading a journal I wrote between 2003 and 2004. That brought back both good and bad memories. I particularly liked reading of my thoughts when going to a foreign country which always lifts my brain and body. I took my kids and, later, my grandkids on these trips. They were so much fun and always pushed my enjoyment of life to a higher level. It did the same for the kids and grandkids. When I just stay home and do almost nothing, the lack of activity causes me to get depressed.

In my journal, I wrote about Martin Seligman, and was reminded of his advice. Martin Seligman is a psychologist and author who gives talks and writes about positive psychology and what it can do for our well-being. He believes we should follow our passions, the type that takes us away to that wonderful place of total engagement. For me, that is usually writing. Amazingly enough, however, I spend so little time doing it these days!

Seligman believes it is vitally important, especially as an antidote to depression, to engage oneself in activities and projects that challenge us and cause us to think. That effort gratifies us as opposed to activities that take little or no thinking and require very little effort. For me, it is obvious that writing is in the first category of gratification-based activities, or GBA. That second category is pleasure-based activities, or PBA.

Here are two lists — one of gratification-based activities (GBA) and the other of pleasure-based activities (PBA). Which one do you think lifts the mind and body to a higher level?

PBA:

• Watching T.V.
• Shopping
• Drinking at a bar
• Excessive sleeping
• Eating favorite foods
• Back rubs/massages

GBA

• Writing
• Reading good books
• Stimulating conversations
• Playing tennis
• Hiking in the mountains
• Social gatherings

There are lots more on my list, but I don’t want to bore you. I’m sure you can make a great list of your own.

I should note that pleasure-based activities are not necessarily bad. The thing to remember is that when indulging in pleasures, you should try to enhance them by being very mindful and aware of what you’re doing, taking time to savor those pleasurable moments. It also helps to spread out the PBAs as well as change them up to keep them fresh and novel. The brain really loves novelty.

Paying attention to how the things we do in our life lifts our brains and bodies, or doesn’t, can help us to make better choices in how we spend our time. Pleasurable things are nice in the moment, but doing something that leaves us feeling gratified can give us a boost for days, weeks, or even years. We humans can, in fact, choose to change and lift our minds and find greater levels of gratification in so much of what we do.

A Sign for Unconditional Self-Acceptance

A few weeks ago, I wrote about “USA”, an acronym for Unconditional Self-Acceptance, discussing how we should think about what that stands for anytime we are down on ourselves for doing something stupid or worrying about tomorrow. When a psychologist introduced me to that term and encouraged me to think about that when I’m down on myself, I put that to work on my brain. It turned out to be very, very mind boosting.

After a while, however, I realized I wasn’t thinking about that as often as I used to, so I did something to help me remember it, putting it into regular use when needed.

What did I do different? Well, I kept in mind that when I set a goal and write it down, I am so much more likely to work on that goal. I figured I could make writing things down work for this too. I took a large piece of paper and a black magic marker and wrote in big capital letters: USA. I put it on my bedroom wall where I could see it every day, many times a day.

That little step has helped a ton. The human brain can be so fantastic and little things like posting a reminder on my wall really helped my brain to keep it at the front of my mind as well as helping me to not be so hard on myself. 

Yep, positive self-talk is such a great thing for us humans and little things like a piece of paper with a message on it can help more than you might expect.

So, if you are being hard on yourself for some mistake you made, or worrying needlessly about something in the future, just take time to think about “USA”. Go a step further even and post a reminder in a location where you’ll see it often. Go ahead and do it now and see how well that works! 

Signs and Habits for Longevity

Recently, I was going through some old files, and I came across notes I wrote about living a very long life. I wrote it in 2008, but as I reread what I’m calling the “12 Signs and Habits for Longevity”, I was re-motivated to pay more attention to those 12 signs.

I thought I’d share them with you as well and I hope that they are as helpful to you as they were, and still are, to me.

1. Drink 2 cups of green or white tea every day.

2. Take 30 minutes each day to walk, bike, or run.

3. Don’t drink a lot of soda.

4. Work out your lower body and legs to give you more strength.

5. Eat more blueberries and red grapes as well as having a little of red wine here and there to reduce the risk of heart disease and Alzheimer.

6. Eat little or no beef to reduce your risk of colorectal cancer.

7. Get a college education if you can. Statistically, it increases your life expectancy by 18 months or more.

8. Reduce or try to eliminate chronic stress as it weakens the immune system and increases cellular aging, shorting life expectancy by 4 to 8 years.

9. Hang out with more healthy people.

10. Work on keeping your weight down. Don’t use housekeepers or gardeners to maintain your house, but do it yourself to burn more calories and help control your weight.

11. Work on having a very positive outlook and sense of purpose.

12. Give yourself over to helping other people, not just your family, but old friends and new friends as well.

If there are things on this list, you can do or change in your life to live better and longer, now is the time to do it!

Daily Joy

Years ago, after successfully building my wealth, I retired so I could enjoy the “good life”, including traveling and having plenty of time to spend with family. That is the kind of life everybody would love to live, right? Well, it did not end up being what I thought it would be. I was shocked at how unhappy and depressed I could get. Sometimes I didn’t even want to get up in the morning. I just didn’t see any joy in my day.

This situation was a mystery to me at first. Why would leisure make me so unhappy? I researched my symptoms and tried various methods to improve my health and my mind. Some techniques I found worked, to an extent, but if I thought back to my earlier years when I had been working really hard to build my wealth, there was no comparison.

The thing was, when I worked long days fixing up homes or, later, negotiating huge real estate purchases, I was happy, regardless of all the toil and pressure of those times. I had goals and a bright future, and I was intensely passionate about what I was doing. It was while pondering the past that I realized, for all the great things I had accomplished, for all the wealth and love I had in my life, life was not worth waking up for without a purpose and a passion.

As it turns out, I enjoy life the most when I am helping others better their own lives and knowing that led me to a solution for what I was feeling. With so many years of experience and knowledge, and having already written books on succeeding financially, writing another book, one that would help people not just become wealthy, but would help them reach any goal they desired, was just a natural choice. Once I decided to write the book, my days came alive again.

It was a long, arduous road, but eventually I published How to Ignite Your Passion for Living in 2008. It wasn’t long after publication that I began to see and hear the stories of people whose lives were changed because of the words and techniques in my book. It turned out, however, that the book would be just the beginning of a new chapter in my life, one where helping people find their passion and better their lives became a focus for my life.

To this day, I continue to work towards spreading these ideas through whatever channels I find, including this blog. I continue to hope that, through these posts, I can further inspire and motivate people. And I always love to hear the stories of struggle and success from my readers, so if you have one or more to share, please do write to me.

My readers are my purpose and passion now, the driving force that gets me jumping out of bed in the morning, looking forward to all the new day has in store. I hope you have found or are looking for that something that brings joy into your life every day as well. Joy really is working towards something you truly believe in.