I've edited the original text, and I believe it's good advice for those of us in our golden years:
1. Use and enjoy the money you've saved. Don’t save it for those who won't appreciate the sacrifices you've made to earn it. Nothing is more dangerous than children with big ideas for your hard-earned money. And be prudent with your investments. An investment may seem fool-proof, but it may be risky and have a long-delayed payoff. Risky investments come with anxiety, and this is a time for you to enjoy an anxiety-free life.
2. Don't worry about your children's and grandchildren's financial situation, and don’t feel bad about spending your money on yourself. You've given them life, protection, food, shelter, an education, financial and emotional support and wonderful experiences. Now it's their responsibility to earn their own way in life.
3. Maintain a healthy lifestyle while avoiding extreme physical exertion. Enjoy moderate exercise like walking every day, eat well and get your sleep. It becomes easier to get sick, and harder to stay healthy. That is why you need to keep yourself in good shape and be aware of your medical and physical needs. Keep in touch with your doctor, even when you’re feeling well. The three great negatives in life are to be old, poor and sick. We all grow old, we may not be wealthy, but we can choose to be healthy.
4. Always buy the best, most beautiful items for your significant other and yourself. The goal is to enjoy your money with your partner. One day one of you will pass on, and the money will provide little pleasure to the other. So enjoy it now together. Remember the adage: Don't settle for what you know you can get; go for what you really want.
5. Don’t stress over the little things in life. You’ve overcome a great deal, and you have both good and bad memories, but the important time is the present. Don’t let memories of past adversities weigh you down, and don’t let dreams of the unknowable future paralyze you. Enjoy the present and go boldly and confidently into the future.
6. Regardless of age, always keep love alive. Love your partner, love life, love your family, love your neighbor and remember that we're not old as long as we have love in our lives.
7. Be proud of yourself, both inside and out. Go regularly to your physician, dermatologist, dentist, hair stylist and beauty salon. Use your favorite hair products, lotions and perfumes. When you maintain your outer beauty, it increases your inner strength and self-esteem.
8. Don’t lose sight of fashion trends for your age, but keep your own sense of style. There’s nothing sillier than a mature adult trying to wear the current teenage fashion fad. You’ve developed your own sense of what looks good on you – keep it and be proud of it. It’s part of who you are.
9. Stay up-to-date. Read newspapers, watch the news. Go online and read what people are saying. Use email and social networks. Go to your school reunions. You’ll be surprised at the new friends you'll make and the old friends you'll reconnect with. Keeping in touch with what is going on and with the people you've enjoyed in your life is important at any age.
10. Respect the younger generation and their opinions. They may not have the same ideals as you, but they are the future, and will take the world in their direction. Give advice when it's asked for, avoid criticism, and gently remind them that yesterday’s wisdom may still be applicable today.
11. Avoid using the phrase in my time. Your time is now. As long as you’re alive, you're part of this time. You may have been younger, but you're still you now, having fun and enjoying life.
12. Some people embrace their golden years, while others become bitter and surly. Life is too short to waste your days on the latter. Spend your time with positive, cheerful people. It’ll rub off on you, and your days will seem that much better. Spending your time with bitter people will make you feel older, and you'll be harder to be around.
13. If you have a choice, don't succumb to the temptation to live with your children or grandchildren. While being surrounded by family sounds great, we all need our privacy. They need theirs and you need yours. If you’ve lost your partner, find someone to move in with you and help you out. Even then, do it only if you feel you really need the help or do not want to live alone.
14. Don’t abandon your hobbies. If you don’t have any, make new ones. You can travel, hike, cook, read, dance, do yoga or tai chi, even learn to meditate. You can adopt a cat or a dog, grow a garden, play cards, checkers, chess, dominoes, golf. You can paint, volunteer or just begin a collection. Find something you like doing, and spend some real time having fun with it.
15. Even if you don’t feel like it, try to accept invitations. Baptisms, graduations, birthdays, weddings, conferences. Get out of the house, meet people you haven’t seen in a while, experience something new, or something old. But don’t get upset when you’re not invited. Some events are limited by resources, and not everyone can be accommodated. The important thing is to get out of the house from time to time. Go to theater plays, concerts, movies, museums, flower gardens, art exhibits, car shows, dog shows, horse shows, state and county fairs. Get out there and embrace life.
16. Become a true conversationalist; listen more and talk less. Before you speak, ask yourself how you could phrase it so it's really of value to the other person. If you bore people with your personal history, it may only reduce their desire to listen to you, so don’t begin a long story unless you're asked to. Speak courteously and try not to complain or criticize. Accept situations as they are; everyone is going through the same things, and people have a low tolerance for complaints. Remember the saying: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
17. Pain is as much a part of life as happiness. As C.S. Lewis said: The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal. Try not to dwell on the pain but accept it as a part of the cycle of life we're all experiencing. Try to minimize it in your mind. It's not who you are, just something that life has handed you. If it becomes your entire focus, you'll lose sight of the person you're meant to be.
18. If you’ve been offended by someone, forgive them. If you’ve offended someone, apologize. Don’t nurse resentment; don't carry it around with you. It only serves to make you bitter and old. It doesn’t matter who was right. A wise person once said: Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It will eat away at you and can do real physical damage, like a heart attack. Forgive them, forget them and move on with your own life.
19. If you have strong spiritual beliefs, live them, but don’t waste time trying to proselytize others. They will make their own choices no matter what you tell them, and it will only bring you frustration. Be a living example to others. If you're genuinely curious, ask them: to what great spiritual tradition do you belong? Listen courteously to their answer, and then move the conversation on.
20. Laugh. Someone once said: laughter is the best medicine. Remember, you are one of the lucky ones. You've managed to have a long, full life. Many never get to this age, never get to experience a full life. But you have. So try to find the humor in your situation.
21. Take no notice of what others say about you or of what they might be thinking. Remember the old saying: If we knew how rarely people think about us, we wouldn't worry about what they think of us. Have pride in yourself and what you’ve achieved. Other people have no idea about your history, your memories and the life you’ve lived so far. There’s still much to be written, so get busy writing and don’t waste time thinking about what others might think. Now is the time to be at rest, at peace and as happy as you can be!
There are four recognized stages of competence, in the performance of any skill, described in a number of on-line references, including these:
Wikipedia - Four Stages of Competence
The Conscious Competence Learning Model
Without repeating what's available in these excellent references, I'd like to offer a brief observation on the four stages, based on personal experience:
4. Unconsciously Competent:
This is the "Master" stage; individuals are so expert at the skill that it has become "second nature". While these individuals may be good teachers, often they have forgotten how they got to this level, and may believe that they've forgotten more than their student will ever learn.
3. Consciously Competent:
This is the "Journeyman" stage; individuals are proficient at the skill, but it is not yet "second nature" to them, they don't do it automatically. These individuals often make good teachers, especially if they can identify which stage their student is at, and which part of the skill they need to master next.
2. Consciously Incompetent:
This is the "Apprentice" stage; individuals are aware of the skill, and what they will be able to accomplish when they are proficient at it. If they've made a commitment to learning the skill, they likely will make good students.
1. Unconsciously Incompetent:
This is the stage I've characterized as "The Bliss of Ignorance" or "Blind Ignorance"; individuals are neither aware of the skill nor their deficiency, and this makes them a danger to themselves and to others, if the skill in which they're deficient is potentially life-threatening. This is the stage in which student pilots and race car drivers exhibit the greatest confidence-performance gap, and are most likely to kill themselves and their instructors. For confirmation of this, simply ask any current or former military instructor pilot.
Situational Awareness:
How Everyday Citizens Can Help Make a Nation Safe
www.stratfor.com
Being alert to developing threats, a key building block of both personal and national security, is a skill anyone can master.
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE
My comment...
If you can leave your home on a cold, dark, rainy winter night, drive to a nearly-deserted shopping mall and walk alone from your car to the mall, all without any concern for your personal safety and security, then you may not have good situational awareness. This article is for you...
One of the best-known of Jesus' sayings is known as the Golden Rule.
And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
It is sometimes expressed as:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Shared belief in the Golden Rule, also known as the Ethics of Reciprocity, seems to be universal. The guidance can be found in many of the world's spiritual traditions.
One aspect of the Golden Rule that is sometimes overlooked is the focus on DOING, on the performance of action. Too often we pay lip service to the Golden Rule, but what we really believe is that if our goals are noble enough, any action is justified. This is sometimes expressed as:
The end justifies the means.
Sadly, this direct contradicts the Golden Rule, which focuses on the DOING.
The resolution to this conundrum can be found in verse 2:47 of the Bhagavad-Gita, which states:
We have control over action itself, never over the fruits of action.
Many of us seem to be willing to consider the concept of karma, and how it might apply to our own lives, but we're far less willing to consider that the concept of reincarnation might have the same applicability. But the two... karma and reincarnation... seem to go together.
The Karmic Law says something like this: What goes around comes around.
The same thing is expressed in classical mechanics, in Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction.
The Scriptural equivalent might be the verse from Galatians 6:7. It's translated in many different ways, but here is the King James Version as well as the American Standard Version:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
The verse seems to be saying that we'll reap whatever we sow; if we sow kindness and mercy that's what will return to us.
But suppose a person believes he can commit some evil act at the end of his life and not be subject to the Laws of Karma, not be liable to suffer the karmic consequences in the physical world because he's died. Maybe that's covered in the first part of the verse... the part that says:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked
This part of the verse seems to be saying:
Don't kid yourself, you cannot thumb your nose at God. You cannot escape your karma. If you don't balance your karma in this incarnation, you'll have another incarnation to do it. And another one after that... for as long as it takes.
Many years ago, Napoleon Hill wrote about the technique of sitting for ideas in his book Think and Grow Rich. It can be a very useful technique if we are trying to solve a problem, plan a future course of direction, or simply to gain some insight. We could think of it as brainstorming for one.
First, we need a quiet place where we will be undisturbed... a library, a study, or a similar place where we can sit comfortably at a desk or table and not be distracted or interrupted.
All we need are a pencil or pen and a large pad of paper.
We sit quietly, relaxed, with our eyes closed.
We mentally frame the problem or issue, in a single sentence, as clearly and concisely as we can.
We mentally repeat the problem statement softly, and then we allow our consciousness to relax, quietly centered in our own Being, our own inner Self.
Soon we will begin to experience thoughts, ideas, flashes of intuition, sensations, even images. They may come rapidly in succession. Some will be concrete enough that we can describe them in words.
We open our eyes and begin to write down these thoughts as rapidly as we can. We simply write them down. We don't filter our thoughts, we don't critically evaluate what we have written. We don't worry about fragmented thoughts or incomplete sentences or misspelled words... we just write.
Eventually the flood of thoughts and ideas will diminish and finally stop. It may take only a few minutes or even an hour. Then we look at what we have written and critically evaluate it to see if there are any useful ideas that could provide the basis for action to accomplish the goal of solving our problem.
This is a time-honored technique. Whenever I use it, I am amazed at how productive and effective it is.
Many years ago there was a wandering pilgrim who came to a remote village where, in the village square, he found a beautiful marble statue of a young woman standing on a pedestal. The statue had been carved many years earlier by a reclusive sculptress who now lived far away and whom none of the villagers had ever seen.
Over the years the villagers had grown so accustomed to the beautiful sculpture that they had come to take it for granted. They hardly ever looked at it as they passed through the square.
The wandering pilgrim fell in love with the beauty and magnificence of the sculpture and decided to settle in the village so he could enjoy it.
He spent every minute he could in the village square, admiring the masterpiece.
Months and years went by, and he came to understand and love the sculptress's creation so well that he was able to explain to others how the sculptress had done her work and why her creation was such a masterpiece. Other villagers came to listen to him talk about the grace and beauty and purity and refinement of the masterpiece, and so their own love and appreciation for the sculptress's creation grew.
Over the years, as villagers traveled to other towns and cities, they talked about the beautiful sculpture in their village square, and of the person who so loved and appreciated the masterpiece, and who understood its beauty and magnificence so well that it enhanced their own appreciation of the creation, and of the unseen sculptress who had created it. And from far and wide, people made pilgrimages to the village to see the magnificent creation and listen to this
person, this devotee, who loved and appreciated it so much.
And, ultimately, the story of the creation and the devotee who loved and appreciated it, reached the far-distant land where the reclusive sculptress lived... and she decided that she must go and meet this devotee who loved and appreciated her creation far more than anyone else ever had. And so she made the journey, and appeared before her devotee... and he was blessed and fulfilled.
