Dark Times in the Midst of Great Success

Life is very interesting and can have huge ups and big downs. Most people think that if they make a lot of money all their problems will be solved. I certainly thought that. At least until I made a few million dollars.

I can’t really complain but, I have to say, I was surprised by some of the feelings that came up after making my fortune. Instead of finding all my problems solved, I found myself struggling emotionally. I still struggle a bit now, but it’s nothing compared to when I reached my financial peak. I didn’t, and still don’t, have any problems with money or trying to manage all my properties, but something else popped up. I was getting depressed, a lot, and way too often.

In the last year, however, I have made some great progress in that part of my life. First, I identified where most of the depression seemed to be coming from. Probably the biggest thing that brought on the depression was the huge change in my routine. We humans really do need some routine in our lives and when I had reached a very high point in my business life, I thought, okay, now I need to make some big changes so I could better enjoy my success.

I started by putting my kids in charge of my property management and some of the money management. At first, I was very satisfied with this new arrangement, but not too long after that I found that I missed the routine associated with managing my properties and money. Playing tennis and working out was helpful, but only a bit.

I knew I had to do something about this, so I started reading many books on the challenges of retirement and what can be done to overcome them. One of the best books I read was Mood Cure written by Julia Ross. This book pushed me to look into vitamins and supplements as well as pushing myself to set up a new routine. So, I did that and got a huge lift from the supplements and vitamins. They really do wonders for the brain and can help a person overcome depression, lifting the mind and spirit to a much higher level!

I also found studies that show how much serotonin can lift you out of depression or just low moods in your daily activities. Part of the problem for most of us is that we are surrounded by enemies that lower our serotonin. Things like too much caffeine, chronic stress, a lack of exposure to natural light, and a lack of physical activity can all throw your serotonin off. So, I work on relaxing, getting outside, and staying physical.

Depression can be really tough because once you’re in it, you can lose the motivation to work on getting out of it. But you can do it. Just take one small step at a time. Starting with vitamins and supplements is a great way to do that, as well as reading some great books that will help you figure out what is best for you.

Focus on Flexibility

I’ve always been impressed by people who are very, very flexible, probably because I’m not flexible at all! I did a little research and discovered that some flexibility is inherited. I know I’m not one of those people. Even as a kid, I was quite stiff and, to this day, I still have a hard time touching my toes. My wife, on the other hand, is super flexible and, yes, I am always asking her to pick up things that I have dropped, and she helps me put on my socks every morning.

The good news is, I can work on that. It helps that I have constant reminders, much of them from myself, because anything I write about—especially self-improvement stuff—helps me big time. When I wrote about how important it is to have a routine, I noticed that I began setting more routines for myself. It is so interesting to me that when I preach or advise people, I see that I start doing more of whatever I’ve been preaching about. So, let’s talk about flexibility so that I can help you, and myself, improve.

Even though I was a good pole vaulter in my younger years and even played basketball for my high school and a little in college, that wasn’t enough to gain a ton of flexibility. But not too long ago, I decided I needed to do something about my lack of flexibility. I got a book called The Genius of Flexibility by Bob Cooley and, wow, that was a great move on my part.

The author gives excellent advice on what to stretch, how to do it, and how often. One of his big points is that when you stretch, you should use your muscles to resist a bit to the stretch you are doing. That never occurred to me and, I think, that might be news for a lot of people.

This book has lots of pictures showing how to stretch different parts of your body with resistance stretching. This kind of stretching is so much more beneficial for the body than standard methods. Quoting from his great book, Cooley says, “Anyone who has ever tried Resistance Stretching continues… they NEVER stop. They continue not only because they see immediate improvements in their flexibility but also because as time goes on, they discover the other benefits that come from feeling, looking, and behaving like the person they were intended to be!”

If you are interested in becoming more flexible, I would highly recommend Cooley’s book, The Genius of Flexibility. Even if you don’t think you need it now, you want to be careful not to lose your flexibility as you get older. It happens to almost everyone, but there are things, like this book, that can help you maintain your flexibility as your age.

Beautiful Mindfulness

Recently, I re-read Pema Chödrön’s great book, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change. It got me thinking again about the human mind and how our thinking can be super helpful or just terrible for us.

It’s so very, very important that we try to “live in the now” as much as we can. It’s not easy but we do need to keep working at it because it really can lift our life and happiness.

In last week’s blog, I talked about meditation and how important and helpful it can be for our lives. Pema says in Living Beautifully that, “Meditation is one form of mindfulness, but mindfulness is called by many names: attentiveness, nowness, and presence are just a few. Essentially, mindfulness means wakefulness–fully present wakefulness.”

I totally agree with her.

She goes on to say that, “The specific details of our lives will, of course, differ, but for all of us, wakefulness concerns everything from how we make dinner to how we speak to one another to how we take care of our clothes, our floors, our forks and spoons. Just with other aspects of this commitment, we’re either present when putting on our sweater or tying our shoes or brushing our teeth, or we’re not. We’re either awake or asleep, conscious or distracted.”

Later she says, in reference to creating a comfortable life that this, “means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty”. Those things and thoughts are so very important to our happiness. We all need to put a lot of effort into really living in the present moment. Doing that can lift our mood and our life tremendously.

To help me with this, I’ve made a list of what I call My 10 Natural Mood Boosters:

1. Get into a routine

2. Set goals

3. Exercise

4. Eat healthy

5. Get enough sleep

6. Take on responsibilities

7. Challenge negative thoughts

8. Take good supplements

9. Do something new

10. Try to have fun

I’d like to add one extra thing that has always worked for me when I am feeling down. It’s so simple — just go outside and take a walk to anywhere, although a place that’s new for you is best. And yes, it’s very important to live in the now as much as you can—you will be glad and much happier if you do this as often as possible!

Getting On With Living

As mentioned last week, retirement has challenges that aren’t always anticipated and so I gave you some ideas to overcome that. This week, I have more ideas to help you deal with the struggles that many people have when they retire, including me. Even if you are not retiring now or anytime soon these ideas and methods can still enhance your life.

When I found that I was struggling with retirement I sought answers in a few very helpful books written on that very subject and what I learned helped me a ton. By the way, the current pandemic can have us struggling in a similar way as our routines and schedules are thrown out of whack.

Elaine St. James wrote a great little book titled, Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul. ln the book, she talks about how important it is to have a routine and follow a schedule that you set up for yourself, retired or not. Of course, before we are retired, most of us have a routine and schedule due to our job and family but most of that goes away as we enter retirement.

For St. James, “inner simplicity” means creating joy in our lives and staying connected with that joy every moment of the day. When many of us retire, along with a loss of routine, we may stop or reduce how connected we are to our joy which is due in part to our reduced connection to other people, like work associates and even friends.

St. James goes on to say, “Now that I’ve simplified my life, I find it easy to get up at the crack of dawn, or even earlier. In that quiet time, I can do you yoga and stretching, write in my journal, do some deep breathing, work on affirmations and visualizations, meditate or have some quiet time to just sit and think.” That’s some very good stuff we can learn from and follow.

Another great book is What Will I Do All Day?: Wisdom to Get You Over Retirement and on with Living!, by Patrice Jenkins, PHD. She talks a lot about energy and also notes how much we get from working with other people when we are on the job.

She asks, “How do you discover your work’s energy source? Think about what parts of your work you enjoy most. Is there one part of your work that charges you with high-octane fuel? “

She continues with suggestions and probing questions. “Maybe your energy source comes from being involved in teamwork with coworkers. If you have already retired, you may have insight on what parts of your work provided you with the most energy. Was it a chance to help people, to teach, to solve problems, or be physically active? ”

Later, she makes this great point: “Once you have identified your energy source, you will know what it is that you’ll want to keep alive in retirement.”

Wow, that’s some great advice and it has helped me a ton. I hope this will help you if you are retired or planning for when that day arrives, or even through this terrible pandemic. Routines, staying in touch with people, and knowing the source of our energy can help us through unexpected struggles and back to living a full life.

 

Bad Habits into Good

Most of us humans have at least a few bad habits. I certainly have a few. In last week’s blog, I listed 30 fairly common bad habits, but now I want to list a few proven ways to change or drop those bad ones.

1. It is wise to first take some time, maybe a week or two, thinking about your habits, which ones you want to change and why, before you begin trying to drop or alter the bad ones.
2. Try to figure out what triggers a particular bad habit.
3. See yourself as a coach and direct yourself like you think, or know, a coach would.
4. Make small changes at first.
5. Identify good reasons you want to stop that bad habit.
6. Identify the cause of the bad habit, like stress or boredom.
7. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
8. Think about what good habits you can use to replace the bad habit.
9. Focus on how much good changing that bad habit will do for your life.
10. Get a friend or relative to help coach you.
11. Try not to hang out with people that have the same bad habit. Seek out new or other friends that don’t have the same bad habit.
12. Form a new routine that keeps you away from the triggers that moves you into the bad habit.
13. Develop substitute routines, plans, and actions.
14. Reward yourself each time you resist the bad habit.
15. Visualize and see yourself succeeding.

A very dear and very smart friend of mine said this about habits:

“Habits are driven by a 3 part loop. 1. TRIGGER–the stimulus that starts the habit. 2. ROUTINE–the doing of the habit and behavior itself. 3. REWARD–the benefits associated with the behavior.

By the way, one of my rather good habits was aggressively pursuing very successful people and picking their brain about how they made their millions. One of the best, who turned out to be a very good friend, was this guy who I just quoted. His name was Zig Ziglar. He was a super successful guy in many, many ways. He motivated me and many thousands or others big time. Sadly, he is no longer with us but his legend and what he taught me, and so many others, lives on forever.

 

Refilling Your Social Life in a Fulfilling Retirement

The great thing about regular work or a job is that it gives you a good reason to get out of bed each morning and get going, and it is very important when you retire is to set something up that replaces that for you. One way to do that, as I mentioned in last week’s post, is put yourself to work in a way that can better the world.

As you push yourself to get involved with a charity, or whatever it is that you choose, you will find that you can replace what your work gave you in terms of structure and routine with the activities of your new mission. This will give you something to get you out of bed but, just as important, that structure and routine will also give you a new social aspect to your life.

Most of us develop a significant social life that revolves around work, but then, when we retire, this is often lost. So, getting involved in a charity or other organization can replace what you are missing when you leave your job or no longer work. It will do all that while you do a little something to make the world a better place.

Most of us humans really don’t realize how very important our social contacts are until they disappear or are greatly diminished when we retire. It’s not that you won’t know those same people or continue to have great friendships with some of them, but when you’re no longer working together, you are suddenly not nearly as involved in each other’s lives and you don’t see each other nearly so often. Most people will greatly miss the regular social contact if they do not replace it with another purposeful and regular activity that also involves time connecting and interacting with other people.

Each of us will have our own plan but here is what I plan on doing to push myself to create a new routine, structure, and source of social connections in my life that will make me get out of bed every morning and look forward to the day: I would like to teach grade school, high school, and university students in classes on writing, marketing, public speaking, financial methods and strategies, and maybe even tennis, on a regular scheduled time and day. I know quite a bit about all those subjects, and I do love to teach others how to do these things and show them how they can have great success and a huge sense of fulfillment and satisfaction from learning these new skills.

So, my challenge to you is to start thinking about your own retirement and start making plans on what you will do to create routine, structure, and social connections. Make a list now, even if you are many years away from retirement. You can change up that list as things come to you but just being aware of the necessity will help you create a fulfilling plan. You won’t be sorry if you do that now!

Retirement Can Create a Better World

I want to write a bit more about last week’s theme of retirement – how it can be good, bad or sometimes very ugly. Even if you are many years away from retirement, you can make your retirement much better and have an easier transition if you are aware of some of the pitfalls that many people stumble into when they retire. I want to share a few secrets to making your retirement transition quite comfortable and pleasant.

Part of the reason I want to share these points is that, for me, retirement came close to driving me seriously crazy. It made me feel worthless and caused me to have big mood swings. Last week I wrote about some of the great and promising ideas from Patrice Jenkin’s book, What Will I Do All Day. She points out that many people go into retirement without realizing how critically important it is for them to still have routine and structure in their lives. Most people’s work lives automatically give them those two critical things. Plus, their work usually results in a lot of measurable production which lifts the human mind and spirit and gives us great personal satisfaction. The huge problem comes when a person retires and most, if not all, of those satisfying items quickly disappear. One other thing that also goes away or is often greatly diminished is one’s social life!

So, what is an excellent antidote to the retirement blues and the great letdown? In one word it’s WORK. But it has to be much more than just busy work. It has to be meaningful and productive.  Ideally, it’s doing something that you love and something that helps other people. It should be something that helps make the world a better place because, although you don’t really need to make a dime out of doing that work, it needs to be purposeful.

For me, the answer was going for the great feelings I get from donating my time and money to charity work. What is especially appealing to me is helping kids. Even doing a little thing like reading to them or telling simple, fun stories on a regular basis is fulfilling and purposeful. Even more fulfilling for me is teaching, because of my background and my passion.

I’ve done a little of this already, but I’ve just begun this particular new mission in life. The time I spend with the kids involves simple things but it is now part of my routine and structure and is a huge mood lifter for both me and the kids. A similar mission could do the same for you no matter what charity you choose. In a small but growing way, we can make the world a better place all while staying fulfilled and purposeful in our retirement.

Three More Buried Secrets

A secret is some bit of knowledge that is kept from someone or many someones. Last week I spotlighted those truly terrible secrets … the ones we hid from ourselves! When you are trying to accomplish something that is challenging or simply hard to stick to, you need every tool you can get your hands on. But so often, we have been given these tools and then hide them away. Why is that?

Well, if you read last week’s post, you now know (or have been reminded!) what some of the most important ‘secrets’ are to accomplishing both small and large goals. But wait … there’s more! Let’s take a look at some of the other great ‘secret’ tools you have available to you to make your dreams happen!

No. 5: Establish a routine and keep with it until your routine has truly become a hard and fast ‘habit’!

This is a big one. Form the right habits and you can change your life forever.  You know as well as I do that this is true whether the habit is a good one or a bad one.  Scientist have determined that it takes anywhere between 21 and 66 days to form a solid habit, depending on the person. You and I must stick with the routines that are leading us toward our goals long enough that they become rock solid routines.  If we do that, we’ll see that sticking to our plans and reaching our goals will become easier and easier.

No. 6:  Break down those big goals into what I like to call ‘bite-sized’ steps.  For most of us, and I know for me, if I don’t break it down into small goals or bite sized tasks, those big goals can break me down. Why? Because those big, long term goals can overwhelm the mind and shut a person down. It’s easier to do the small stuff and they eventually add up to something big!

No. 7: Set up a reward system for yourself. That is, when you hit your goal and maybe even along the way as you take those bite sized steps or reach intermediate points or milestones of success, take time to celebrate your victory. You can reward yourself with a special night out on the town or a huge getaway vacation to an exotic place. Whatever it is, make it super special and something that you will always remember.

That is a long list of ‘secrets’ you can use to help you reach your goals. But one last thought–If you don’t hit your goal or you miss a deadline, don’t be too hard on yourself.  Remember, some of the most successful people on the planet had many, many failures as they pursued their big goals.  It really is okay to fail–almost everybody does at some point or another. The thing is, failure can lead to even greater successes, so if you fail and fall down be sure to get right back up, reload and reset and keep going!