Re-Inventing Your Life - Winter - The Preparing Season

What a wonderful time of the year to think about re-inventing your life.  Most of the hubbub of the holidays is over and now we can settle down into the long winter and think about what seeds we want to plant for the spring. growing season.  I like to think of life as a being like a farmer.  Winter is the preparing season, spring is the planting season, summer is the production season and fall is the plenitude season.  I call it the four P's of soulful living.  Each of these has distinct challenges and distinct aspects that need to be addressed in order for the last one, plenitude to come to fruition.  Today I will talk about winter and the preparing season as that is where we are now.  I will address the other three in other blog posts down the road.

Winter is the Perfect Time to Begin 

No farmer worth his salt sits on his duff all winter like a bear hibernating.  No, he takes the time to fix and or get all his tools and equipment into good working order,  he purchase new ones if he feels he needs to and he eliminates broken or outdated ones.  He also evaluates his last crop, what worked, what didn't.  He looks at the seeds, fertilizers, pest control systems and other products and processes he used to see what brought success and which things didn't pan out.  He or she - farmers come in both genders, of course - checks out new trends in farming by going to seminars and reading books and periodicals. He checks with other farmers to see what worked for them and he makes decisions and prepares for the up coming growing season.  His actions fall into four categories:

1. Review and Assessment - What Worked - What Didn't
2. Fixing, Repairing and or Getting New Equipment - Eliminating the Old and Outdated
3. Learning and Growing  
4. Planning the Next Crop 

1. Where Are You Now - What's Working - What's Not 

No matter who you are or how much you may want to re-invent your life, it's unlikely that everything in your life needs to change.  If you have been planting beans all your life and you hate beans or feel burned out on this crop, then planting an new crop makes sense, but that does not mean that everything you know about farming has to go out the window with that bag of bean seeds. The cold and dark days of winter provide us a perfect time to think about and evaluate what is working in our lives and what isn't.  We don't need to make any radical decisions now, but it's a great time to look at your life and start re-thinking things..  Take a piece of paper and make three columns -First column,  What I love about my life.  In the second column, What I don't love, and the third column - What I'd like to change.  Keep this list as you go through the rest of the winter.  

2. Fixing, Repairing, Eliminating and or Getting New Equipment  

Ask yourself what in your life needs fixing, repairing, eliminating or do you need to simply get rid of some of these things and get new ones?  Think of this in a metaphorical way - people, places, things, communities, work/career - all of these can be seen as "equipment" that enables you to produce the kind of crop, that is.the life you really want to live.  For example. you like, love and value your spouse or best friend, but there are things between you that need fixing or repairing, well, now is the perfect time to address these so that when you get to the planting and production seasons of your re-invented life, this relationship does not fall apart on you or create a drag on your success with it.  The same is true of your work, if it is so stressful, so time consuming and drains the life out of you so that you have no time or energy to think about anything else, then maybe this is the time to figure out a way to make it less so.  I know a man who had a very demanding job and then one day his company offered him a transfer to a less stressful one.  At first he felt diminished by this but then he thought about it and realized it was the perfect opportunity for him to re-group and begin planning and preparing for a re-invented life down the road.  

3. Learning and Growing 

Winter is also the perfect time to send off for that new book or order that new magazine or go to a seminar and hear some new ideas from people with ideas that will help bring a fresh new perspective to your life.  It's also a great time to align with others who may be thinking of re-inventing their lives or who have already done it and want to share their journey with others doing the same thing or want to share what has worked for them.  Maybe the book you pickup at the library, is a novel but is of a place and time unfamiliar to you and in the reading of it, you become inspired.  Or it could be a self help book or a book of philosophy.  It could be some kind of technical thing and you are just chomping at the bit to learn this new thing.  Maybe it's something artistic you want to try so you sign up for a course in photography or painting water colors. Maybe you have a desire to learn a new language or how to upholster furniture.  I know a woman who recently retired, but found herself at loose ends and one day she went to a garage sale and bought an old wing back chair - it was old, beat up and looked like something the cat had been sleeping in for the past twenty years.  But it was well made and she told herself she could recover it and make it beautiful.  She didn't know a thing about upholstering furniture but she knew the library had books on how to do it so checked out a book on it and low and behold, that chair turned out perfect.  Then one day she found an old table and refinished it and now she spends her time between her re-furbishing projects and her scouting garage sales, used furniture stores and flea markets.  Now she's thinking of opening a little shop and told me she was having the time of her life and didn't miss her old life one bit.  

4. Planning Your Next Crop

The last thing any good farmer does is plan for his next crop by taking in all he has learned over the long winter months by making sure all his equipment is in good working order, that he has paid attention to new developments and incorporated these into his plan for this next year's crop.  You can do this too.  The new year is the perfect time to begin this process.  Start with a review of where you are.  Then do some culling out of the things that don't work for you, get new equipment where you need it and learn as much as you can about new things related to your potential new crop.  By the way, if you don't know quite yet what that crop is, not to worry, take the winter and just dream about what your re-invented life would look and feel like. As Thomas Wolfe once said, loaf and let your soul show up - you never know what it might lead you to given the chance, and winter is the perfect time for this kind of loafing.  

By the way, for those here in Denver, I will be at the Huron Anythink Library, in Westminster, on January 8th at 6:30 pm doing a talk on my book and the idea of re-inventing your life.  Check out this link for more information.  I hope to see you there.  http://www.anythinklibraries.org/calendar-day/2014-01-08  Below is the announcement.

Blessings, Lorraine 

Meet Lorraine Banfield and Re-Invent Your Life

Wednesday, January 8, 2014 6:30pm

Age: Adult

Lorraine Banfield, author of Second Act Soul Calls - Your Guide for the Re-Invention of Your Life at Midlife and Beyond with Passion, Purpose and Possibilities, for an evening of discussion and exercises designed to get you started thinking and planning for this most important and exciting time of life.

 No online registration necessary

Some thoughts on The Soul and Traditions

The holidays are the perfect time to think about creating, celebrating and maintaining traditions, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or even if you adhere to no religion, this is the time of year to think about the idea of traditions and rituals.  Rituals and traditions are soulful - they bring people together and remind them of their shared humanity, their shared life together.  We get together with our families, our friends and our loved ones and recreate, as best we can, the traditions and rituals that have meaning for us as soulful beings.    

Once a few years ago, after my divorce, I was dating a man who had no family near by and my daughters had gone off to live in California and he talked me into going skiing and then to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner  Although I didn't have a bad time, nothing horrible happened, but nothing meaningful or soulful happened either.  It was a totally forgetable experience.  It was like any other skiing and going out to dinner afterwards - it was of no consequence.  I told myself then that from that point on, I would find a way to be with family and to do thanksgiving and other holidays, up right.

Now I find myself living out my Gypsy for a Year and will not be doing my usual Christmas Eve dinner for my family.  Although I had asked about doing this when I moved in with my friend and she agreed, it turns out no one in my family wants to come out here.  I now live about 25 miles from my daughter and about a million miles from where I was up until this year.  My daughter who lives here in Denver volunteered to have the dinner at her house.  But I feel sad about this, not because she is having it, but because I am not.  I feel I have interrupted something important and soulful, something others counted on, including, of course, myself.   I feel I have messed with a family tradition and this doesn't feel right to me.

My book, Second Act Soul Calls is about re-inventing your life based on the call of your soul, but what I know is that your soul will always call you back to family and friends and even though when I moved out here, I felt I was answering my soul's call, I think I may have forgotten that the soul calls us in many ways and sometimes this does not become evident until the window of opportunity has already closed.  I will not be having Christmas Eve dinner for my family this year and that is an opportunity I feel bad about. But what I know is that next year, I will make sure I can do my thing on Christmas Eve because my soul is reminding me that this is important.  . .

So, as you think about the various traditions and rituals of your family or your friendship group make sure you remember that the soul is about connection and ritual and not simply doing your own thing.  Yes, we need to honor the soul's call to individuality and uniqueness but we also need to honor it's need to be with people and to come back, again and again to those traditions that make you part of a family or a community. This, then is the time to honor your traditions and rituals and to create new ones if the old ones are no longer available to you and to go back to them if at all possible the next year as I am going to do.

Blessings, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad and Happy Hanukkah.  Lorraine

Seeking People to Feature on My Blog

Do you know someone at midlife (50 plus) or beyond who has answered the call of their soul and re-invented their lives in some way?  Now they may not talk of it that way but if you know someone who has made changes in their life or have made their dreams come true in some way that feels to you like a soul thing, I would like to interview them and feature them here on my blog.

Here are some of the types of soul calls I would like to feature:  I will include their website if they have one or any thing that will further their call.

Championed a cause**Started a new business

Went back to school**Developed an encore career

Became a teacher**Ran for office and won

Started a non profit**Started a program to help others

Became an artist**Cleaned up the environment

Invented something**Became a minister or spiritual leader

Created and led an organization

Did what they have always wanted to do

I'm looking for people who have changed their lives by their call.  I'm not looking for people who do something on occasion or who take a trip and do some volunteer work - it needs to be a true re-invention of their life based on the soul's call or their heart's call if they see it that way instead.  

Also, whatever it is, it has to have an element of contributing to the greater good and not simply a way to make money.  Making money is fine, but the overall reason needs to be a soul or heart call to do this thing and other people need to benefit from it in some way.  

Please send me their name and email or phone number to lorrainebanfield@msn.com and I will call them and possibly include them in my series.  I look forward to hearing all the wonderful stories out there.  

Blessings, Lorraine