It takes a certain kind of courage to look in the mirror and honor our wrinkles, grey hair, and other indications that we’re no longer on the sunny side of twenty. But would an elder trade the insight and (hopefully!) wisdom that accrues with years?
Continue readingRetired – Or Retooled?
Today’s retirees can retire and retool, in any number of ways. If they haven’t yet done so, it’s helpful for those approaching or in retirement to take a long look at how they might use their skills and experience for others’ benefit — or to enhance their own later years.
Continue readingBecoming the Older Generation / Part 2: Caring for the Caregivers
“Three out of five caregivers also are in the labor force. Working-age people under age 65 provide 22 billion of those 30 billion caregiving hours, and they often lose income due to reduced work hours,” reports the study. Not to mention losing sleep, quality of life and relationships, and often their own health.
Continue readingBecoming the Older Generation / Part 1: Who’s That In the Mirror?
“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”
 ~ Michael Pritchard
Once our parents die, we’re the elders. It’s a sobering thought for mid-lifers who are energetic, enthusiastic, and don’t remotely feel as if they are approaching “old age”. Many reverse mortgage professionals, as well as the clients they serve, are or soon will be facing this gateway.
How to prepare for a life stage transition when you’re 25 inside is the rub. (Years ago, on his 75th birthday, my Dad exclaimed, “I look at the number and I can’t believe it. There’s a little boy in there!”)
Maybe aging really is all in the mind. An intriguing article in The New York Times Magazine describes how, in 1981, a Harvard psychologist took eight men in their 70s back to 1959. She didn’t have a time machine, so she created a time warp by bringing her volunteers to a house that had been retrofitted in every way to resemble 1959, from the books on the shelves to Ed Sullivan on the black-and-white TV.
Before arriving, the men were assessed on various biomarkers such as hearing, vision, memory and cognition, dexterity, grip strength and flexibility. The psychologist postulated that after a week’s immersion 22 years in the past, the men would improve in many of these metrics — and she was right.
After imagining themselves two decades younger in everything they said, thought and did during the experiment, when the subjects were retested they showed greater manual dexterity, more flexibility — and improved eyesight. Independent judges said the men looked younger. Best of all, echoing the ethos of the seniors in the movie Cocoon (produced four years after this experiment — which was not published), a spontaneous touch-football game erupted among the test subjects as they waited for the bus to take them home. While the Cocoon seniors supposedly gained their rejuvenative capacities via a life-force charged swimming pool, the Harvard experiment seems to suggest they might have achieved the same effect simply by believing they were young again.
Since most of us are going to live a lot longer than we think, it behooves us to make our later years as positive and energized as possible.
The residents of Ikaria, a remote Greek Island for whom the mythical Icarus is named, are among the longest-lived people on Earth. Yet there’s no great mystery to their longevity: they have strong community ties, eat a healthy Mediterranean diet, eschew processed foods, and are insulated from most modern conveniences. They also get plenty of exercise every day doing the kinds of chores most Americans wouldn’t dream of (such as milking goats). They take naps, and enjoy a relaxed, relatively stress-free lifestyle.
Short of moving to the Greek islands, we can emulate their vital aging secrets by refusing to complain and living each life stage with grace and joie de vivre.
What can reverse mortgage professionals do to support clients and prospects in fostering this kind of attitude, especially among those seniors who may need their spirits lifted? One longtime loan originator who sees his role as broader than just business says, “When a client perceives you as being open and honest, with their best interest at heart, it paves the way for acceptance of what you have to say and offer. It also opens doors to more friendships.”
Consider, too, that service serves the one reaching out as much as the one who is helped. To last month’s post about some very elderly people who are working at dream jobs, add this 99-year-old seamstress who sews dresses for impoverished African children, turning out a dress a day! Until the media discovered her she did this work anonymously, out of the simple desire to use her exceptional sewing skills to benefit the less fortunate. Is it a coincidence that she’s supple enough to sew a dress a day at age 99?
This live painting portrayal of a woman’s life demonstrates in four minutes how beautiful a person really is — at every age and life stage.
Age Is a State of Grace, Part 2: Dream Jobs for Elders
Do any of your reverse mortgage clients or prospects still work, not necessarily because they need the money but to continue to contribute their skills and wisdom to the world? If some of your senior contacts are experiencing low spirits, perhaps a part-time dream job could be the cure.
Continue readingRetire? Bah, Humbug!
The time is ripe for reverse mortgage to play a grander role as a possible way to fund one’s elder years, since even part-time positions after retirement are unlikely to generate the income level needed to keep pace with the rising cost of living, or unexpected health care expenses that aren’t covered under Medicare.
Continue readingAway from Home Part 1: 6 Senior-Savvy Travel Tips
Smart Ways for Your Senior Clients to Travel Safely
As a follow-up to our 4-part Safe At Home series, it makes sense to explore smart ways for seniors (or anyone, of any age) to be safe away from home — even if that’s just a trip to the grocery store or mall.
Whether a senior is traveling locally or to a distant locale, here are six tips for safer excursions:
- Hug your purse. Too often women will absentmindedly leave their pocketbook in the child seat of a grocery cart and wander down the aisle. A lot of times, the pocketbook isn’t even closed! That’s just too tempting for some people, so why help a thief give in to temptation? Keep your pocketbook zipped or snapped shut, and keep it with you when you walk around the store. If the tote is too heavy to carry around, it’s time to lighten your load, rather than have an unscrupulous person do it for you. One alternative: a fanny pak, which stays snugly around your waist and leaves your arms and hands free for shopping.
- Watch your wallet. Men aren’t exempt from clever pickpockets. If you carry your wallet in a hip pocket, be sure to keep that pocket buttoned. Better: carry your wallet in a side or front pocket. That way it won’t fall out without you knowing it, or be easily accessible to someone else. There was a recent news story of a puppy, trained to fetch, that retrieved a wallet from the lawn outside a couple’s home — except it didn’t belong to them. It had fallen from the sanitation engineer’s pocket earlier in the day when he got out of his truck to right a trashcan. Fortunately the story had a happy ending, as the couple immediately contacted the grateful worker — who hadn’t yet realized his wallet was missing!
- Lock your hotel room door. Employees, hotel guests, delivery people, maintenance crews…all manner of people come and go in public venues such as hotels, at all hours. So just as with your purse or wallet, even if you only plan to walk 30 feet from your door, lock it and take your key or door card. It’s just smart — and safe. By the same token: always know where the emergency exits are located.
- Leave your expensive (or sentimental) jewelry at home. Unless you’re going to lock your jewels in the safe at the hotel or on the cruise ship, it’s smarter to bring inexpensive watches, earrings, necklaces, etc. on a trip. Not only will you keep from drawing unnecessary attention to yourself, you won’t worry about losing something irreplaceable.
- Leave nothing of value in your car. There are “watchers” in parking lots such as at the gym or mall who wait to see if you open your trunk to put valuables inside, then break in once you’re out of sight. This has happened to me, as well as to a friend — even though in her case, the purse was tucked under her driver’s seat and not visible. It was gone when she came out of the gym. If you have something of value that needs to stay in the car, place it in the trunk before you go to your next destination. And it goes without saying: lock all car doors!
- Consider senior travel insurance. Even those with pre-existing conditions are often eligible, as long as you inform your insurance carrier. This way no minor mishap or mix-up (such as forgetting to pack a needed medication) need ruin an otherwise fabulous trip.
Now you’re prepared for a smart, safe summer vacation that your reverse mortgage helped make possible. Remember the sunscreen!
Law of “Attractiveness”? Rethinking Aging and Beauty
“My mother always used to say, ‘The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.'” ~ actress Betty White, 92
The Law of Attraction is old news. But what about the Law of Attractiveness? Though it’s not readily talked about, it definitely exists, and it definitely affects women “of a certain age.”
For reverse mortgage professionals and the seniors they serve, what follows may be a revelation. While the information can apply to men, in our culture aging and appearance is predominantly a female issue.
Self-described “wacky wise woman” and author Ariel Spilsbury, 70, cavorted with ceremonialist Elayne Doughty, 45, in a deliciously playful webinar about redefining reality and aging through the lens of beauty.
Here are some of the powerful points and practices the duo shared to help us reimagine aging — and to own our beauty:
- (Ariel): As you age, the energy that you are starts turning inward, so you have more energy to focus on what’s really important. You recognize life’s impermanence…so you’d better get on with it! We’re literally “reading between the lines”: wrinkles are a road map of your soul; honor them!
- (Elayne): Becoming dependent on face creams is trying to eradicate parts of yourself; negation, not love. Practice: Elayne changed her whole ritual around how she takes care of her skin. She now creates her own skin care serum with essential oils and applies it with love and gratitude, taking time to honor herself as a beautiful woman.
- (Ariel): What is the connection between beauty and shared power? When one feels beautiful, one is more likely to want to share power, because there is nothing to compete with. (Elayne): When you put people — or flowers — together, something magical happens: they enhance each other’s power. Allow yourself to commune (the energy of becoming one with); this nourishes you. Practice: Commune with beautiful flowers for a frequency and coherency boost. Take time each day for a “beauty bomb”.
- (Ariel): What detracts from shared power? Comparison and competition, and seeing ourselves as “less than”: projecting disowned parts of ourselves onto others. Practice: Embrace anyone you’re in judgment or comparison with. If you can’t let them shine in their beauty and magnificence it’s because you can’t allow yourself to shine. Loving competition into dissolution has a de-wrinkling effect!
- (Elayne): We are like Nature: Nature simply exists to be beautiful. Beauty is as diverse as everything in Nature. And while the dormant phase is not necessarily beautiful, it’s part of the process: e.g., roses before they bloom. The alchemy of bringing all stages together germinates beauty from within. Practice: Own the entire cycle of beauty. Redefine what it means to age, to be a crone, to be beautiful at any age. That’s the whole point of taking beauty back inside.
- (Ariel): Use Light Body Magic Sizing Spray to magically “resize” yourself. Practice: Buy some Magic Sizing Spray and start loving yourself just the way and the size you are.
- (Elayne): To transmute the “Beauty Queen”/Beauty Contest mentality, she created crowns of flowers for herself and Ariel that they placed on one another’s heads. Practice: Crown a woman you’ve had comparison issues with, as the beautiful goddess she is. Crowning another means, I let go of needing to be the best, of the whole paradigm that only one can be the winner. When we let go of this notion we transform our perception. In your mind, crown everyone you know as the beauty they are. Beauty is not fixed: it’s the aliveness, the life force, coming through us.
- (Ariel): How do we become REAL? From The Velveteen Rabbit:
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or who have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
(Ariel): “Perhaps we are our own children, and the rabbits we love for a long, long time are ourselves. That very realness is what makes someone love you even more. Start to discern what is real, and what you have been enculturated to believe is real.”
- (Elayne): The archetypal challenge for us all is to really look at our lives and see how we’re still trying to get the love or approval we seek. The more you let go, the more real you become.
- (Ariel and Elayne): Practice: Break the projection of outward beauty by playing with it. Play is that place where we meet the creativity and spontaneity of the moment.
Beauty is a feeling, and what’s real is a feeling. So feel into the realness of your radiance, whether you’re wearing your role as a reverse mortgage expert or simply being the beautiful woman or man that you are. Let’s turn habits into rabbits, and exchange superficial behaviors and beliefs for real appreciation of our innate beauty!
If you try any of the Practices described here, or share them with your reverse mortgage prospects and clients, please share your experiences below for the benefit of others.
A Year for Change (Part 1): Dare It!
In an earlier post, we spoke about how turning 80 can be more fearsome than skydiving. But there is a cure for the fear of aging: trying something new (and sometimes far-fetched!) often — such as once a day for an entire year.
Continue readingWhat Are You Really Afraid Of?
Fear of aging is no different, in essence, from any other fear. Yes, growing older involves loss, as does every life stage. If we’re growing — not just physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually — we’re always saying goodbye. And also hello.
Continue reading