The #1 Strategy for
Becoming a Burden On Your Family
Photo byArmn Lotfi, Unsplash
Just yesterday, it came to my ears that a relative’s father was in palliative care: some time ago he’d broken his hip in a fall, and he’s now ‘going downhill’ fast.
It’s sad to hear, worse to see. Most of us shake our heads sadly, shed a tear or two, and move on.
I, (cold-hearted, ‘practical’ me), I use these lessons.I learn.
And often enough, put into practice.
Better still, I create useful systems, systems that buttress that practice into a lifestyle that helps people.
So I, (yes, cold-hearted, ‘practical’ me), I consider those who are 20, 30 years older than me to be “scouts”; sent ahead by the Universe to inform me about the lay of the land they’ve happened upon.
(You see, I flatter myself that I’m a leader: one who looks ahead for the good of the entire tribe, while that tribe is bums-up-busy, fossicking for tubers, greens and Bombe Alaska for the daily feast.)
And this scout (my relative’s father) has, inter alia, reminded me about the importance of keeping my bones stone-strong while I journey forward.
Other scouts have shown me the importance of working out (yes, exercising/training) regularly, consistently, to keep my musculature performing at its best, while still others have taught me the importance of cultivating a powerful mindset and an equally powerful inner-self. (But we’ll come to that in another article).
How to be/come a burden
Yeah, by this time you may have figured out what the #1 strategy (from the title of this article) is:
If you desperately want to burden your family, don’t — simply foot-down refuse to-, take care of yourself.
Be totally altruistic. Give all your time away, without keeping a tick of it to yourself.
Get into other people’s businesses, worries & problems, helping them with each one of your life’s breaths to get their stuff done. ( And hey, with you being soo-soo generous, people will remember you and thank you, centuries after you’ve shifted off this mortal coil).
And importantly to achieve this goal, you can’t be so selfish that you take care, real care, of yourself.
(You know, like look after your physical well-being: scheduling an hour each session for a workout, 3–4 days a week, while you build and energize that God-given magnificent structure of yours. After all, that’s putting Numero Uno in, umm.., the first place, and who could be so selfish as to focus on themselves?)
But irony/sarcasm aside, too many of us (as we cross over from our 40s into the ‘older years’) fall into the trap of the above strategy all the time: keeping the world around us happy-happy-happy, while we skimp on - or totally drop - our self-care, our continuous growth & evolution (hint, hint: we're called groevolve.com).
Unfortunately, too many of us choose to fill in our non-‘formal-work’ time with "consuming" instead of "development".
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain |
This is the default route that most of us older* humans take, a route that I have made my life’s goal to extinguish forever off the face of this Earth (and therefore, I’m a friend of yours, even though I may come across a bit, umm…, strong/eccentric/obsessed.)
Wonder if you are one of the majority that Twain mentions above?
Well, check out where you really fit in:
How to know if you’re a “Default-Router”
Photo by ekrem osmanoglu on Unsplash
As most people move into their older years, they find themselves slowing down. Things get more difficult, challenging, even downright impossible.
They come home at the end of a hard day’s work, and it’s like: I can’t do this for much longer; thank God retirement is in sight. (Granted, some of us have more physically/mentally challenging jobs than others, but then, yours truly is a master of generalization.)
And undoubtedly, things begin becoming tougher as we get older. But only because we’re doing as much to maintain our bodies -and minds & spirits- as the next Default-Router.
Which is nothing, zilch, zero, nada.
The fallout of doing nothing:
Recently (actually about 6 months ago as I write this), I went bouldering with my young-adult children and friends, jumped off a wall, spinning off the face (I was stuck for a way down after tapping the target ‘stone’), and dislocated my left ankle. Horrendously.
(Okay, I decided not to upload any fleshy-bloody, bone-sticking-out’y photos to testify to the veracity of the above statement, so you’ll just have to believe me.)
Anyway, that dislocation forced me to not do the right things for my body, for a period of about 4 months, while I was in plaster and rehab. (Add in the ‘excuse’ of a COVID-19 Delta-strain gym-unavailability, and it turned out to be more than a half-a-year hiatus from the sort of regime that I subject my body to.)
The point I’m making here: Just by not-working-out for 6 months had left me depleted of strength and energy. (Of course, I started back at the gym in a couple of weeks, lockdown being past and double-vaxxed status giving me the freedom to get back to my old stomping grounds. Within 6 months, I was back to where I used to be.)
But it scares me to think that the weakness I felt in my muscles, is the way the majority of my demographic feel all the time!
And they’re used to it. It’s their normal way of life, (most probably not knowing that there is a better way, a higher standard.)
Heaven help me, I could not *stand* this kind of performance from my body for any length of time.
Let me offer you a better way, …
The non-'Default-Router' way:
Without going all too-long-and round-about-y on you, let me simply say this:
You, as a gal/guy, who’s moving into the grey years, you can have a better life ahead. Even, a Version 2.0 of yourself. Yes, even as you move into your older years.
Or you can be a burden on yourself. And a bigger burden on your loved ones as you age. (That last is the bonus, the icing on the 'disability cake').
The choice is yours .
And yes, it does take work.
It does take discipline, it does take effort.
It does require you to be an out-of-the-ordinary, non-‘default-route’ kind-a person.
And it does take doing the ‘right things for yourself’ week-in, week-out for the rest of your life.
It takes some doing to engender true discipline in yourself, to build up the habits that make you a better gal. Or guy.
Is this impossible, this becoming a non-default-route kind-a person?
I’d say yes, pretty much. On your own, it’s close to impossible,this going against the grain, this doing quite the diametrically-opposite of what the mass of people (our people, our friends, our demographic) around us are doing, and doing it so consistently that it becomes a habit.
Yes, it’s pretty much impossible to not be part of the flock, doing simply what the flock does. Which is why most people need help.
A non-‘default route’ kind-a system:
You know what you should do: Look after your physical, mental and spiritual health.
Get systematic: along the lines of this info-pic.
Knowledge? Action? Well, there are a million blogs, articles, Pinterest boards and Tweets out there, all “helping” your ‘knowledge’ and action. The thing is, unorganized knowledge is like a Sargasso sea: a spectacular swirl of garbage.
(That’s the reason simply having access to the Internet doesn’t qualify you for any job, not really. Most employers want to see that you’re certified through a universally recognized body that organizes the information that you consume into a body of knowledge. Also, they want to see that you are able to action (act on) that knowledge to produce a result.)
Systematizing any body of knowledge and associated action is the trick: it helps instill self-discipline, a way of life, and habits that serve you to achieve the end-goal (yes, Version 2.0 of yourself, in this case).
Add in a solid helping of team/community and you’ve got the ideal tool -you got it: a strategically-designed system-, to help you forward.
It’s simple, yes. A solid recipe to provide you with results: You, older and Amazing.
Sometimes it’s so much simpler within a framework. (Otherwise, you’ve got your other #1 strategy to fall back on: to be a burden on your family as you journey forward).
Now is the time to decide: choose wisely, choose well.
*Older (in my book): anyone over 45.
