What Elders Can Teach Us in These Disruptive Times



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Elder Wisdom for today

We’re living in highly disruptive times. That’s a given. That our elders are key to elevating how we live in these disruptive times may be less obvious. But behind the scenes — and often front and center — the senior population is demonstrating our path forward. Asking your reverse mortgage clients and prospects about their interests and background could lead to some very interesting conversations. Here are a few role models who might serve as talking points:

World-changing wisdom

Deep ecologist Joanna Macy, 87, brings a lifetime of commitment to her world-changing work. The Buddhist scholar, teacher, and author of Coming Back to Life, Active Hope, and World As Lover, World As Self (among many other books) helps people transform denial, despair and grief in the face of the social and ecological challenges of our time. She has been a respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology for more than five decades, and in 2015 created Work That Reconnects, a groundbreaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application.

Macy refers to this time on Earth as The Great Turning, and has had a tremendous impact in educating and empowering people globally to awaken and step up for positive change. Now an elder in the fullest sense, Macy shows no signs of slowing down.

reverse mortgage newsAbuzz for charity

On a smaller but no less significant scale, 94-year-old Jean Bishop, known as the Bee Lady, is the queen bee of fundraising. Bishop has been raising money for charity for 25 years, dressed as, yes, a giant bumblebee (although a comparatively small one, as humans go). Over the years she has raised 112,000 pounds ($139,000).

Evincing the same joie de vivre that characterizes 98-year-old yoga teacher and ballroom dancer Täo Porchon-Lynch, Bishop says, “I didn’t want to put the costume on at first, but when I did it went down like a bomb. Of course, being 94, it does take it out of me a bit, but I won’t let it stop me.”

No failures, experiments

Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed; I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This is the wisdom a trio of British centenarians embraces that, along with an ability to look ahead — and a sense of humor — keeps them mentally limber.

Two of my favorite pieces of advice come from 101-year-old Cliff Crozier: “Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted. Be as independent as you can, but don’t be reluctant to ask for help when you think you need it.”

Crozier bakes his own bread and cakes from scratch. He says, “I don’t have many failures. If I’m making a cake and it fails, it becomes a pudding.”

Five takeaways

These elders, and many more like them, demonstrate some of the keys to healthy aging:

  • Live in the present.
  • View setbacks as experiments in life’s laboratory.
  • (En)lighten up!
  • See how you can serve others.
  • Honor the aging process by being willing to ask for assistance.

Master Mind



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How to Build Muscle & Look Younger Without a Workout

Everybody knows exercise is good for you. But how many seniors realize they can also improve their health and fitness by exercising their mental muscles as well as their physical ones? Your senior clients can imagine themselves exercising, and build physical muscle!

reverse mortgage newsWe can also laugh our way to health, as journalist Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of An Illness, described in his breakthrough memoir of recovery from a life-threatening condition. Research shows laughter decreases stress hormones, builds “good” cholesterol, and lowers a senior’s risk of heart disease by reducing arterial inflammation. So perhaps both LOs and reverse mortgage clients and prospects ought to peruse those humorous email forwards that land in your Inbox before deleting them. New research on depression also demonstrates that social isolation leads to inflammation, so laughing with others (or imagining exercising with friends) is even better for your immune system than performing a solo mental workout.

One fantastic bonus: all this imagery boosts mental muscles as well as physical ones. A new study focused on preventing cognitive decline in older adults followed one hundred people aged 55 to 86 as they pursued a specific fitness regime, measuring the effects on their brains through tests and MRI scans. Six months in, the seniors showed not only improved cognitive function but growth in key brain centers as well.

Gym and Jeans

Of course, this study assumes actual rather than virtual exercise. But mental weight training, supplemented by visits to the local fitness club, is going to pay big dividends — a nice supplement to the opportunities a HECM can open up for healthy elders to enjoy their Third Age.

Flexing their mental and physical muscles will also enable seniors to look as good in their jeans as svelte 62-year-old Christie Brinkley. An amusing survey suggests we should ditch our denim by age 53. Fortunately for the apparel industry, 78 million Boomers — the youngest of whom is now at that threshold — seem unlikely to be “retiring” their jeans any time soon. This was a British study, however. England may hold its seniors to a more exacting fashion standard.

Mental Fitness Looks Fabulous

Regardless of how seniors are attired once retired, staying inspired will keep them refired. Yes, the rhyme is intentional: longevity is often the soul of wit. Brain workouts will keep seniors’ physical, mental, and emotional selves humming, and they’re surprisingly easy to do, as this list of ten simple brain exercises illustrates.

My dad, whom I’ve referenced often as an example of unwitting positive aging techniques, learned to use a computer at 89 after my Mom’s passing, and later taught himself to cook eggs for breakfast (he’s of the generation of men who couldn’t even boil water). Number four on the list of brain exercises is, “Take a cooking class.” He simply “enrolled” in the kitchen. When I asked how he learned to make an omelet, he responded, “Trial and error.”

So whether your senior clients are more comfortable in suits and dresses or jeans and flannel shirts, encourage them to build their mental muscles. A happy hippocampus is the way to stay healthy, sharp, and in good humor — as long as those cartoon forwards aren’t in questionable taste.

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

Rethinking Aging and BeautyThe 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.