The Three Rules to Midlife Happiness

Rule 1: Be happy in your own Time

Some people find it hard to accept that they are growing older, they seek perpetual youth.

Some have facelifts, botox injections, boob jobs, bum lifts and other cosmetic surgery to try to keep the ravages of time at bay. This may look very attractive for a time but often ends with the person looking a parody of his or her previous self. ‘Trout pout’ anyone?

Some wear clothes that would look much better on their children (rule 1a – If you are old enough to have worn it when it was in fashion last time around, don’t wear it this time!).

Some people in midlife decide to start again with a younger partner – ‘Cougar’ women take a toyboy, midlife men might opt for a 20 something female with long legs. Whilst this might seem attractive in the short term, once the initial excitement has died down, the couple find themselves living together with little in common. They watched different TV programmes when they were children, they grew up listening to different music and they wore different styles of clothes – they come from different ‘times’ and unless they are very fortunate, they are very unlikely to feel comfortable with each other in the long term.

Rule 2: Be happy in your own Skin

We are all born with the hand of cards that we are given. Some will grow up as beautiful people, others won’t. Some will become thought leaders in their spheres, most won’t.

‘Show me the boy and I will show you the man’, a popular saying that rings very true. Most of us don’t change greatly as we get older, we play the hand that we were dealt.

Many people, though, are not happy with the cards that they were dealt and call ‘foul’. Most women (and quite a few men) are not happy with some aspects of their looks. Some go to great lengths to change their appearance. This goes far beyond trying to keep their youth (see Rule 1) and is an attempt to change their looks, to give themselves characteristics that they wished they’d been born with.

Whilst some attempts at remodelling your looks can be beneficial, particularly for self-esteem and confidence, it is important to draw the line.

A midlife crisis is often triggered by a person not being able to come to terms with living in their own skin.

Rule 3: Be happy in your own Life

Many people feel that they need to ‘fit in’, that they need to conform to a norm with which they aren’t really comfortable. Teenagers, in particular, feel that they must be part of a crowd and fall victim to peer pressure. Their friends all have tattoos, so they feel that they should have tattoos, even if they don’t like them (and will regret having them in later life, particularly if they include someone’s name!)

Midlifers are less inclined to worry about peer pressure but the ‘green-eyed monster’ of jealousy is a very real part of the life of many people in midlife. We all lead different lives and however happy we are, however well off we are, there will always be people who seem to be doing better than us. Some of them will indeed be doing better than us, either because they were dealt a better hand at birth (see Rule 2) or because they work harder than we do (often both).

The grass always seems greener in somebody else’s life. However, when the green-eyed monster rears its head, take a few moments to consider the other aspects of the person’s life – these may not be quite so rosy. Your rich friend may be doing very nicely in the big house, driving the expensive car but behind closed doors their relationship may be falling apart. Their kids might be taking drugs and mixing with the wrong ‘friends’.

Don’t try to ‘keep up with the Jones’ out of jealousy, to make yourself look better or more acceptable to your friends. You may find yourself deeply in debt if you overstretch yourself unnecessarily.

To be happy in your life, accept what you have – but don’t let that stop you from striving to achieve greatness. There is a difference between making the most of your life and trying to live your life imitating someone else.

Written by http://midlifeop.blogspot.co.uk

Embracing Ourselves at Fifty

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night jolted by the fact that I am now 50 years old. For a brief moment, I think it’s all just a big mistake, a cosmic joke, and that I am really still only 35.

I seem to be able to see my former selves so clearly at 3am…there I am at 22, rushing towards my first job, at 30, clueless and having my first child, and at 45, stumbling into midlife. I begin to wonder if I’ve wasted years, lost opportunities, missed beauty, missed the point, and I almost move into panic when an unexpected calm arrives and I suddenly know for certain that it’s all been grist for the mill, it’s all really been about growth.

My own growth is what I take with me into these golden years, it is the constant that I get to keep as time passes and youth fades. In the middle of the night, it becomes clear that I was right where I needed to be at each decade. I needed to be driven in my twenties to know how to relax at 50, to be surprised by the challenges of motherhood in my thirties, so that I could rise to the occasion and meet them, to wrestle with midlife so that I could learn to let go of one stage of life and enter another.

It’s so easy, here at middle age, to begin to pine for our youth, to have regrets, to think we missed the mark, to beat up on our younger selves.  While there is loss, and necessary grief for things past, maybe something bigger is also going on… maybe life is always moving us towards something and aging is that movement along a giant learning curve.

Maybe we get to learn compassion for those younger selves who were doing the best that they could and bringing us to where we are right now. Maybe 50 is a grand culmination of all of those selves who fought so hard to get here. And maybe I can wake up in the middle of the night with relief that I have made it to 50 and am not 35 anymore.

Written by Amy Ruhlin

The 7 Failures That Will Make You a Better Leader

“Success Covers a Multitude of Blunders”.

That was a famous quote from George Bernard Shaw, and it has always stuck with me throughout my career as a leader and executive.

What it ultimately told me was yes, I was going to fail – multiple times. But if I was truly determined to overcome, or “cover” them, I absolutely needed to learn from every failure, and leverage that accumulated learning into success.

In so many ways, I’ve grown to appreciate my failures – as counterintuitive as that may seem.    Because I now know if I just let them go, without reflection, then they were doomed to be repeated.

There are 7 failures that I believe bring the best improvement opportunities:

• Failure to Prioritize – Many a bad decision has come from our lack of perspective on the importance of one thing over another. The key learning here is to fully grasp the concept of “opportunity cost” – the cost of NOT doing something in favor of something else.
• Failure to Decide – If the buck is going to stop with us, then we need the courage to make timely decisions, regardless of consensus or the lack of 100% of the information needed to make them.  We learn that more often than not, it’s better to “do something” then let fear and inertia overtake us.
• Failure to Progress – When a target is reached, the bar must be raised. And when that target is hit, it must be raised again. And again.  Complacency is a state that HAS to be avoided, at all costs, and the ultimate learning here is that continuous improvement is an essential focus of any enterprise.
• Failure to Praise – Great talent needs to be nurtured and retained, in a manner that goes well beyond the paychecks and bonuses.    These lessons come hard, after the loss of individuals who felt unappreciated and undervalued.  We learn that humans need to hear those simple words – “You did a great job”.
• Failure to Trust – When first taking on a leadership role, there’s always a strong “pull” to be involved in every decision, or to want to “sign off” on literally every dollar spent or contract signed.  Until we learn that trust is an essential part of great leadership, we are doomed to overwork and a huge misapplication of time and talent.
• Failure to Mediate – Every organization will have conflicts, whether it is person to person, or department to department.  Successful leaders learn that stepping into the breach to resolve them, rather than standing back or ignoring them, can avoid even bigger problems down the road, and build influence throughout an organization.
• Failure to Fire – Nobody likes to fire anybody.   It’s one of the toughest things a leader will ever do.  But when you know in your gut it’s time to cut the cord, cut it.  Don’t wait.  Your gut will usually be right.  The failures here are a lesson to the heart – it can’t get in the way of these decisions (but it certainly can come into play in the manner in which it is handled).

Remember this lesson from the baseball diamond:  You don’t have to bat 1,000% to be successful, but when you swing and miss, get out of the box, think, and then learn before you step back in and hit that home run.

Lead well!

Post written by Terry Starbucker

How To Develop & Maintain A Winning Attitude

A winning attitude is something that we need to develop on a daily basis.

It very much has to do with what we allow to pass through our lips.

Personally, I can tell a person’s attitude level by the words that they speak. So take a moment to consider the following suggestions by best selling author John Maxwell.

He suggests that instead of saying, ‘We’ve never done it before,’ say, ‘We have the opportunity to be the first.’

Instead of  saying, ‘We don’t have the resources,’ say, ‘Necessity fuels invention.’

Instead of saying ‘We’ve already tried that,’ say, ‘We learned from experience.’

Instead of saying, ‘We don’t have the expertise,’ say, ‘Let’s network with those who do.’

Instead of saying, ‘Our vendors and customers won’t go for it,’ say, ‘Let’s show them the opportunities.’

Instead of saying, ‘We don’t have enough money,’ say, ‘Maybe there’s something we can cut.’

Instead of saying, ‘It’ll never get any better,’ say, ‘We’ll try one more time.’

Instead of saying, ‘Let somebody else deal with it,’ say, I’m ready to learn something new.’

Instead of saying, ‘I can’t,’ say, ‘By God’s grace I can.’

Tags: Attitude, Positive Mental Attitude, Positive Thinking, Winning

Posted: 10/02/2012 Written by Peter G. James Sinclair