The Second-Half of the Game is more important than the first.
Photo by Capstone Events on Unsplash
How you finish is what counts.
Now that you’re more than a little dog-eared, worse-for-wear and burnt-out with how you’re being judged at work (or how your customers are gauging you online, if you’re a business-owner) and the constant stress about paying off that mortgage, do you feel that it’s time to lay down your burdens and rest on your laurels?
I mean, now that you’re “getting older”?
I’m here to tell you that it’s not time to lay down your trusty sword.
(An aside and a word of warning, dear reader: I speak in generalities throughout my writings (as well as this one). You: you may be special, different, quite un-slot-able, un-categorizable. Feel free to sneer and walk away at any time.
But be warned: your next few decades will take a beating if you do.
Seriously.)
Yes, I’m here to tell you that it’s NOT time to stop pushing upward and onward.
That it's not time to sit in the shade and wipe the dust of the last 30 years off your forearms.
(And not just because ‘the laborer deserves his wages’ (Lk 10:7), or even, that the others of your demographic are sweetly siren-calling out to you to slow down, to gracefully accept that golden handshake and ‘enjoy life at last’.)
I’m here to tell you that stopping your evolution and growth at any time is the most stupid thing you can do- of course, I say all this without me being edgy-harsh or OTT-straight-forward. (Far be it from me to mince words. <<Chuckle, chuckle.>>)
Look, I get it:
People retire all the time, whether at 65 (whoever chose that number), at 50 (because they swore that they’d accrue their bundle by then and would be ‘enjoying life’, working their way through their bucket-list) or at 40, because they’ve “had it” with the pressures of work, the constant tension-intensification by their ‘superiors’ to deliver bigger and better, or dealing with the obtuse around them, people they’d rather not see 365¼ days a year.
So,
retirement might be on the books for you.
“After all, I’ve got to do my own thing, at some time of my life, and I may never get a better time to do it in. Not properly, anyway.”
But it’s not what you retire from that matters.
It’s actually, what your retire *to*, that matters, more than anything in your life to this point.
Because -like it or not- you’re racing in to the finish line.
And the way you finish counts more, much more than the 40, 50, 60 years behind you.
Beause, after all, your future is more important than your done & dusted past. (What's done is done. The Future is You).
So let’s take a closer look at your (and my) future:
We humans can, in one way, be divided into two kinds: avoidance oriented, and approach oriented.
The Avoidance-oriented side of things:
Look around you, at the group 20 or 30 years before you, those older than you, those that have "gone ahead".
In one sense, they are the "scouts" the Universe has sent before you, to survey the road ahead, to send back the joyous news about the direction you yourself are taking in life, and to get you drooling about the delights and glories in the lands ahead, all a-flowing with milk and honey.
And what joyous news do your scouts have for you? Would you lurve♥-lurve♥-lurve♥ to be in their place, I ask you, you being such a connoisseur of the good things in life?
It’s my wager that you wouldn’t.
Those scouts are sending you no joy-energized doves flapping in with parchments full of stories of a bountiful land ahead, full of golden-eared harvests and paddocks overflowing with fatted-calves ready for the spit.
No Promised-Land awaits
From a physical, mental and spiritual standpoint, much remains to be desired of the land towards which you’re headed, whether you like it or not.
(And do you have a choice?). Take a delicate peek between the lines of the very positive texts you’ve intercepted from the current generation of older people.
On the physical side, those decipherings will tell you, there’s much to be desired in the promised-land:
Disease, disability/dysfunction, dependence, and too often, a sudden early death.
(I’d call them the 5 D’s in this section, but one of the 5, ‘depression’ really only fits into the next, “mental”, section).
Let's look at the mental side ...
On the mental side of this “growing older” space, depression leads the way, in fact is the way of life, virus-laden challenges aside.
- Because there’s no way out, except the ‘exit’ sign?
- Because of the challenges to a fun daily existence, brought about by physical disability?
- Because of being sidelined, irrelevant, ignored?
(Be my guest & take a guess: and yes, you’re allowed to select all the choices I've offered you above.)
And as for the spiritual side, the only growth is in hourly prayers to the Almighty for deliverance.
Witness human-kind’s spirit at its lowest ebb. (Yeah, smack-bang in the middle of a time that they used to call the “Golden Years”.)
Am I being dark, dreary, negative? Am I being too “realistic”?
Or are you and I looking at the unvarnished truth?
So if you want to avoid something (or the above-mentioned number-of-things) on this road ahead, you - as a vital, vibrant and thinking homo-sapien- would want to give the whole "getting older" thing a miss, given a choice:
- To die young (or younger).
- To call it a day, as some people do, and literally, as some coding languages suggest: (give up and)/ or die();
That’s a whole-hog-avoidance strategy that’s some people’s ‘out’.
Other than that, there’s only one other option left to those of us who want a better ‘promised land’ in the 40+ years we may have remaining:
To address the challenge head-on and transform the land ahead to a land truly flowing with milk and honey .Yeah, some tilling, sowing, back-breaking work and the like to be called upon, an approach that I’m proposing in … |
The Approach-oriented side of things:
As I’ve mentioned, this is the ‘bit of work involved’ kind of tack, one that some of us may not want to shoulder (even given the above only-other-option we have).
But humour me by permitting me to break down my strategy and you may decide that this is what you want for yourself in the coming years, (maybe even, as the lesser of a slew of evils).
Here’s the split to taking that charging bull by the pointies:
Image©️ groevolve.comLift the physical, storm the mental, schmooze the spiritual.
a. Lift the physical:
We’ve all seen the results of abysmal health combined with poor strength in our older ‘scouts’, and decidedly, none of us wants it for ourselves.
Our physical state is what we base most (if not all) of our Quality of Life on, and if our physical state degrades, it drags the whole of us into a quagmire of unsavory complications.
While our bodies’ poor condition sometimes may not dictate the complete downfall of the other two parts of us,
poor physical condition means that a goodly percentage of our mental health gets affected by the inability of our body to do things.
Disabilities (walking, climbing stairs, getting out of chairs or up from the toilet) mean a partial or total dependence on others for the performance of our daily functions, and that in turn, leads to a drastic drop in self-esteem (which I may address in the mental part of this diatribe.)
Disability with age is not a must. It is very much a choice: yes, granted, an unconscious ‘default’ choice, a choice we make by choosing to skip the other (better) choices we have in this regard. (And yes, throughout this writing, I tend to generalize bigtime, mea maxima culpa).
While the ‘default’ path into the years before you could be to, perhaps, walk the block with/without a friend in tow, or a weekly game of tennis, these activities (and their ilk) are not enough. They do little, if nothing, to lift your physicality (and to bring about those golden-future harvests).
You, I, we all need to, very scientifically, lift our game on elevating ourselves to, (and keeping ourselves on) another level, rather than permitting ourselves to fall for the ‘default’ performance levels we see all around us.
A regular (week-in, week-out) regime of cyclic training is a base-level must if you (or I) are to have that “I’ve arrived at the promised land” feeling in the second-half we’re journeying in. This training regime must challenge our strength, and lift our energy output to a new high; consistently, cyclically and strategically. (I recommend watching the video below).
This kind of striving for growth, for an evolution of ourselves to a better physical level all through our Second-Half, will set the foundation on which the other ‘parts’ of our being can build upon, daily, yearly, through this decades-long journey.
Physical performance and energy output at this time of life positively affects many physical-mental factors, factors like dementia and even anxiety.
A physical uplift of ourselves in the older years does not, simply cannot, happen by accident (or magic).
Don’t expect your physical performance and capability to be magnificent by following the default road of doing nothing, or doing what everyone else around us is doing (you guessed it: again, nothing).
Even worse is the acknowledgement of “I know I need to work at my strength…” but not taking the steps to getting to that next level in your physicality. (That’s a recipe for the a whole stack of self-flagellation later down the track.)
And definitely, it becomes more difficult, with the passage of each day, to tear ourselves away from the herd’s communal cud-chewing in its many forms and do things that they aren’t doing; 'things' that help us to be/come better versions of ourselves.
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. Mark Twain |
Of primary importance, then, is that we all realize that
and that
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Decay seeps into spaces where there is no growth. Mel Drego |
The question “How do we lift ourselves up to another level when all that we 'know' (and do) is pulling ourselves down into the abyss?” is one we systematically address and help you with here.
(But let’s continue to address those challenges we set before us…)
b. Storm the mental:
The primary mental issue tormenting us humans during our Second Half of life is depression: lowered mood, floor-high self esteem and poor energy levels.
Guess where much of this depression stems from?
Well, think about this:
Which older person wants to be assisted in their daily shower by a young person, or have to be helped on and off a toilet by another human? Or be using a bed-pan in the same soft place they lie in for much of the day, just because there are not too many better options? Or soiling the bed-linen every week or so, because their physical condition doesn't permit them to get themselves to the toilet fast enough?
Disabilities that hamper the smooth and flawless performance of daily rituals lead to a lowered regard for self ("I can't even take a dump in the toilet without being helped by someone..."), which heralds another move towards full-blown depression.
Depression’s sibling-in-arms, anxiety, adds another layer on to this hard-to-ingest mental sandwich.
Pile on top of the preceding two the isolation brought on by becoming irrelevant, literally invisible: most older people are ignored, glossed over, their presence — even in loving-family get-togethers-- trivialized.
Having painted themselves into a corner where they have little or nothing to contribute, given their not-very-pretty present current-state, all that they can focus on, is the past. Which earns them no brownie-points with the younger crowd, while also helping build little or no concept of a future self.
Physical incapability sets you up for depression.
If you are physically capable, there's a world you could do:
Contribute by volunteering, helping the less fortunate, teaching the less knowledgeable, to mention a few.
But contribution is a must. A required. Till your last day.
No contribution equates to zero relevance. Zero relevance is what makes older folk ‘invisible’.
Even family give up on a disabled, non-contributing older person.
The children don’t find too much joy in visiting, while the grandchildren are bored to tears. Not too many people have a reason to hang around.
We can storm this mental-issue fortress (without any intent to trivialize any chemically triggered problems here), beginning with the physical side of things (addressed in the section above), a kind of therapy that keeps one grounded in the here and now, with a great big helping from the (spiritual) future-focus on the Version 2 of You that you are working each day to create.
c. Schmooze the Spiritual:
Growth in the former two parts of us (the physical and mental) must be solidly buttressed by a growth in our spirit (and I don’t mean “religion” here, be it traditional or custom-built to suit our tastes).
Our spirit especially shines at helping two highly differentiated entities:
- Ourselves: particularly in lifting Numero Uno (Me, Number One) to new heights, and
- Others: in contributing to the betterment of the world outside our immediate self-centered selves.
And funnily enough, there is no separating these two; the one depends on the other.
We help ourselves to new heights by and through contribution to external-to-"Almighty-Me" causes.
And our generosity towards our neighbors helps attenuate a too-cloying focus on self, leading to a stronger growth- trajectory for, and lower anxiety & depression levels in, ourselves.
Some call this whole spiritual package “our purpose”.
And yes, a driving purpose helps give one a ‘sense of purpose’ (ha!), while keeping one relevant, grounded in the present with a strong sense of a future state for oneself as well as for the target of the purpose.
So there you have it, Ladies & Gents… the Keys to Version 2.0 of yourself. (if everything were so easy to nutshell…)
“Oh yeah”, we tell ourselves, “now that I know, I am going to get my sh!t together and do it.”
Uh huh! Don’t bet on your ability to break away from the herd...
It’s a given:
the best-intentioned of us get swamped under a mountain of garbage information daily. (Maybe this article is one of them: well, you decide…, or time will tell.)
And as the junk information piles up around us, like a string of pearls that snaps in our hands as we stand atop that hill of garbage, those slippery round jewels of hard-won-wisdom roll their way down to the very bottom of that pile, lost to our conscious mind for all intents and purposes.
Sure. Once upon a time we knew what we should do.
(Hey, we had a string of pearls).
But we’ve lost those paid-with-blood drops of wisdom, aided and abetted by that font of all knowledge -the World-Wide-Web.
Because un-disciplined, un-structured information (even from the amazing WWW) turns to garbage.
Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).
You've heard that phrase before, but for you, in the context of your search for a better older years, it means this:
If you don't have a structured, disciplined and focused collection of information entering your brain, assisting you to get the results you desire, you will get a garbage set of results at the other end.
OTOH, if you do have a structured, disciplined and focused set of information coming in (with tools that will help you implement that information, transforming that knowledge into real action), then on the other side of the pipe, you will get a gush of great results.
And that is what the groeVolve system of Ageing via Intelligent Design (applying the science to ageing), is designed to do for you. This is the system that you need as an ever-ageing older person, to help you get the best out of the multiple decades ahead of you.
In fact, it's designed to get you to Version 2.0 of you. And the next and next, as you continue to grow and evolve upwards.
How to get ready for the years ahead
Without me penning another 10-minute-read article delineating the systems we need to put in place in our lives to ensure a better future, permit me to suggest the following:
a. Evaluate your own current physical condition with this information. Because at the very least, you get a rating of your current conditioning regime (whether it exists or not), and therefore you can foreshadow your physical condition in the years ahead. (Yes, the video below).
b. Get the Keys to a better older years (if you think those 30, 40+ years are worth worrying about). These crucial Keys to a Version 2.0 of yourself will help you thrive, instead of “just survive” the years ahead.
c. Create habits in yourself, habits that support and help you become and be the magnificent human being you were always meant to be. And seek out and use systems that help create, support and sustain those habits.
d. Community is highly instrumental in supporting our every endeavor, and (surprise, surprise), here’s a community-in-the-making with the knowledge, the action-edge, the habits and the spirit, siblings-in-arms helping shoulder each other to the next and next levels. Get in for free, if you're lucky! If the next 30, 40+ years are worth it, today is the time to start the process of change.
Closing words:
Your second-half will very likely be a total disaster if you choose to stay on that default road, like the surging masses around you. Take heed, decode the messages from your scouts up ahead, and get a system that helps you make the decades ahead better: You: Version 2.0.
| Mel Drego is an IT professional and Australian-Certified Personal Trainer, living in Sydney, Australia. His brain-child and passion, groeVolve.com is structured & designed to lift the quality of ageing of each soul therein to another level, providing habit-creating and support systems plus community to help people become Version 2.0 of themselves, even as they move into their older years. |
