Put a Little Magic, Mystery and Romance into Life

There's something about Fall that makes me think of magic, mystery and romance.  Maybe it's the leaves turning yellow, gold, red and orange.  How does it happen?  Why does it happen?  What makes it happen?  Of course, there is a scientific answer to these questions, but for me, these answers leave me feeling unconnected to anything other than cold hard science.  I prefer a more spiritual way of viewing life. Fall reminds me to pay attention to how I name things, how mystery is a beautiful thing even though we don't understand it and how putting a little romance in our lives can bring unexpected rewards.

The Magic of Naming

One of the ways to bring some magic into your life is to think about the idea of naming as magic.  When we name something we give it a flavor, a description, a way of being looked at and experienced.  If we name it something that reflects a positive image then we are using magic for good.  If we name it something negative or bland then we are using magic to bring about more negativity or blandness to our lives.  If we have done that in some area of our lives, then today is a good day to change that.  As the fall leaves change color and bring beauty to our world, so too you bring some beauty to yours by naming or re-naming something in a positive way.  I use the word perfect a lot - not in a perfectionist way - but in a way that makes me feel good about my life.

Here is an example.  I hurt me knee last winter and since then I have had trouble getting down onto the floor. I found cleaning my bathtub a problem.  But I came up with a solution.  I went to the Dollar Store and bought a long handled sponge mop -it cost a dollar - that in itself was perfect.  I then sprinkled Comet around the tub and used the mop to clean it - it worked perfectly!  It took only a few minutes, it didn't require me to get down on my hands and knees and when I was finished, I said to myself, "Perfect, that was prefect!  I re-named it from a chore that hurt my knee to one that made me feel like a genius.  You can do this too - find something you have named an ugly name and find a way to do it differently so you can re-name it in a way that makes you feel like a genius as well.

Allowing for the Mystery of Life

We live in a world of solutions and how to do things.  Everywhere we look from the morning paper, to our computer's home page to Facebook we are bombarded with what to do, where to do it and what the consequences will be if we fail to do it - whatever it is.  Even this blog is about that.  But we live in a mysterious world, regardless of what the scientists tell us. Sometimes we just don't know why things happen or what we should do about them.  Sometimes we simply need to trust in a higher power or simply in the idea that we can't know everything.

Here is an example.  I know someone who applied for a job last year. She had all the qualifications, she did a phone interview where she was asked all these questions - this interview took about three quarters of an hour.  Then she got called for an in person interview and she again answered a ton of questions and believed she had done an excellent job of answering them.  She was then called in for a final interview and she felt she did great on that one too.  She felt very certain that she was going to get offered this job.  But three weeks went by and she heard nothing.  Finally wrote and ask them what happened.  They said they were not going to hire her based on the feedback from the team.  They did not say they hired a more qualified candidate or one that suited them more.  She was mystified.  She wondered what in the world she had done to make the team not like her.  She reviewed all her answers and how she had answered them and she simply could not figure it out.  Eventually she let it go and simply trusted that the right thing WOULD come along.  Then one day about six months later an opportunity presented itself that was far and away better than this job would ever have been for her.  She still could not figure out how this all came about, but what she knew was that she trusted that something had prevented her from getting that job and now she could take advantage of this new thing.  It was a mystery she simply accepted and moved into the new thing with an open and thankful heart.  Is there some mystery in your life that you need to accept so you can move into something better for you?  Think about it.

Romancing Your Life

To me, romance is like decorating - you put some color, some spice, some flourishes, some embellishments, some beauty into your life just as you would in decorating your home.  My daughter is in the midst of doing a major re-decorating project for her home.  Her teenage son asked me the other day why she was doing this. He said the old furniture and furnishings worked just fine.  He didn't understand why she was going to so much trouble.  I told him that this is what women do - we build nests because women by nature want to have a  home that is not only comfortable but beautiful so that the people who live there with her will be happy and will stay there with her.  I told him it was in our DNA.  She is romancing her home and it is turning out beautifully.  But you can romance your life in other ways as well.  It's simply a matter of paying attention and adding a few romantic things to the mix.

You can romance you image.  Let's say you are all business  You wear practical clothes with little regard for style or color and have a wash and wear hairstyle.  By the way, this can work for men as well as women. Then one day you look at yourself in the mirror and what you see bores you.  It's time to romance that image.  Get a new haircut, color your hair, buy some new more stylish clothes, wear earrings, if you're a woman, shave off that 70's mustache if you're a man,  pick a color or a special item of clothing and make it your signature.  Remember, what was romantic the first few times becomes hackneyed and old a few years down the road.   Putting some romance into your life means keeping it fresh and updated, no matte what it is, that's what makes it romantic.

So today as you go through your day, think about what you can name or re-name is a positive and uplifting way.  How can you let go of some mysterious event or situation and trust in a higher power to take care of you and last put a little romance into your life by adding some beauty and spice to it.  I'll bet you'll be glad you did.

Blessings, Lorraine

The Mask You Wear and Your Life Challenge

Mask by Amanda Banfield/Vice

We all wear them, the mask we show the world.  Did you know that this mask also holds the secret of your life challenge?   It also holds our call, our soul's call, the thing we are here to do with our lives.  In my book, Second Act Soul Calls I talk about calling as related to vocation, that is, the work we are here to do, but calling also refers to what kind of person we are and the mask we wear holds the secret of what kind of person that is.  It also holds the secret of what we are challenged to be and do in the world.  We then can take that and use it in a vocational way or we can simply be that kind of person no matter what vocation we choose. I call this our core issue or core challenge and it comes in many varieties.  Joseph Campbell called it, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the name of his famous book.  

I see and experienced many of these faces in my work as a coach and therapist.  Maybe it's the face of the conventional hero - the person who always saves the day and does the heroic thing.  Or it could be the face of the angel, the sweet and always accommodating people pleaser.   For some it's the face of a dominant and arrogant individual.  For others the face shows itself as aloof and unfeeling.  Some wear the face of the clown or jester - always making light of things and bringing humor into the situation.  Some are just plain sour and sarcastic, while others are control freaks and always want things their way or they are unflappable people who never get ruffled or out of sorts.

What Face/Mask Do You Wear?

The key to knowing what your soul is calling you to do is and to identify your core challenge is to look at and discover both the external face or mask you show the world and the face that is hidden behind that mask.  Jung called this your shadow.  The shadow is the dark side of your personality.  It's the part you don't want to show and it's the part that needs to be incorporated into the face you show the world, so that you are showing an authentic self and not a mask.  Your first task in discovering your life challenge is to identify the mask you wear and show the public.  The second task is to identify the lie the mask covers, because the mask always hides something and that something is part of the truth of you.

The face/mask we wear always has an aspect of the lie in it - no one can always be the hero, no one can please everyone, all the time, no one is a total victim, or legitimately angry all the time, or in control of everything and life is not always fun and jokes have their place but not in every situation.  Carolyn Myss has also identified many different masks in her book, Sacred Contracts, an interesting and provocative book. What I am calling your core challenge or the face you wear, Myss calls your archetypal pattern. According to the listing on Amazon, "In coming to know your archetypal companions, you also begin to see how to live your life in ways that make the best use of your personal power and lead you to fulfill your greatest - in fact, your divine - potential."  My own work is about the same thing but I like to give people some shorthand ways to get at what Myss, Campbell and Jung have said.  Below are some ways to identify both the face you wear and its shadow.  For a list of archetypes and an explanation of them use this link:  http://www.myss.com/library/contracts/three_archs.asp.

Look For Archetypes 

In order to know your core challenge and therefore the direction your soul wants you to take in life you must first identify what face you wear.  You can use the list or link above or ask your friends and significant others to play a little game with you.  Ask then how they see you and ask also that they not get into an assessment or judgement of this or how it affects them.  Also, ask them if you can do this with them.  The idea is to identify but not try to fix or get feedback of why this is a good or bad thing.  If this feels too threatening then simply do it on your own.  By the way, it's the consistency of the face you normally wear and not an occasional one that shows up that you are looking to identify.  I knew a woman once whose consistent face was that of the professor - all knowing and yet all evaluating - she was pleasant but always seemed to have a red pen in her hand ready to mark up other people's lives with corrections and a list of what was wrong and what needed to be fixed, but like a real professor it was never about her - at least not until the end of the semester when the students got to evaluate her - she was indeed a real professor.  But in her personal life, there was no end of the semester evaluations.  In fact, she was not only not open to being evaluated, she resisted any feedback anyone gave her by saying, "I don't know about that, but..." and would go back to whoever or whatever she was evaluating.

The Flip Side is Your Shadow 

Once you have identified the face/mask you wear then you want to see what's hidden behind that face since all of the faces we wear have a flip side or what Jung called our shadow. The professor had trouble enjoying life because she was too busy finding fault with it.  She also was unable to take in feedback about her own life and what she might need to change, fix or see in order to fulfill her divine potential.  Instead of being someone who had knowledge to share or simply someone who knew things but did not have a need to force this knowledge on to others, she became instead someone very few people wanted to be around and when she retired and no longer had an official job teaching and evaluating others, she became a very unhappy camper.

Now Identify Your Core Life Challenge 

Your core life challenge is connected to the consistent face you show the world and its flip side, your shadow.  As you look at these two things, you may have a sudden aha! moment about this and see why and how certain things have been true for you over the years.  Or it may take some time to come to light for you since denial is a big part of being human and many of us simply do not want to see or acknowledge the dark side of ourselves.  Again, you might ask those friends and significant others - but be kind to yourself and make sure they are kind as well.  We won't be able to see this side of ourselves if it comes with harsh judgement and much blame.  But your core life challenge and your core potential is in there.  Keep looking and you will find it and if you have trouble with this give me a call - I love working with people on finding their core challenge and therefore their potential in the world.

Blessings, Lorraine 

Is it Multiple Personality Disorder or the Voices of Your Soul?

Do you ever feel like you have multiple personality disorder, I know I do.  Of course, I'm not talking about a mental illness - that's for another blog.  What I'm talking about here is when you think and say one thing and do another, or when you go in a new direction and then when you get there you wonder what in the world you were thinking.  Or when you know in your heart that something is wrong for you but you fail to leave it, change it or even give it much consideration, instead you simply live with it and make do.  Or you know there is something you want to do but again, you don't do it, in most cases,because it comes with risks and possible failure, that seem all too likely to happen.  You chose instead to listen to the "voice of reason" and get busy so you won't have time to think about it.  Or you are in a social or business setting and feel "required" to agree with the company perspective or the perspective of your social group.  A voice in your head says, "This is bullshit, I hate this." but you smile and go along with the program.  Or it could be that at work you are one kind of person and at home you are a completely different person.  Or you have this bratty demanding voice that says, "I want what I want and I want it now!"  Or it could be a dependent, needy voice that says, "Take care of me, I'm wounded and need help."  Or a blaming, victim voice that says, "It's not my fault, I'm innocent, they did it, I didn't."  Sometimes it's a charming seductive voice that tries to get it's way with all kinds of deceptive and manipulative actions and words.  It could also be a voice that pretends to know all and uses this to get what it wants via reason and logic.

We All Have Multiple Voices with Competing Needs and Desires - Our Soul's Voices 

Some people call this the committee in your head.  I call these voices, the voices of your soul, but these voices often do act as a committee.  It's the various parts of your personality and they all have important messages to provide you so that you can become a fully functioning individual, what Maslow called a self-actualizing person.  The trick is to know which one to listen to and which one you need to tell to take a back seat and shut up, at least in the moment. So how do you know which one to listen to and which one needs to be silenced?  Well, it's really not that difficult, once you figure it out, but before that, it may feel like this noisy, out of control, chaotic committee meeting you wish you could get out of attending.  But you can't.  Not until you figure out which voice has real priority and authority for you and which one is simply a trouble maker. But remember, even the trouble makers have their reasons for being. 

Name the Committee Members Using Archetypes

In order to know who which voice to listen to and which one to put on  hold, you will need to get to know all the voices and to respect them for what they have to offer you.  I like to use the idea of archetypes or character types to name my inner voices.  You can use your own ideas for this but here are some examples from the committee that lives in my psyche:  Master Sargent, Sassy Sister, Crybaby, Wise One, Sage, Loner, Intellectual Snob, Bag Lady, Wonder Woman, Foolish Franny, Smart Ass, Lost and Confused Lizzy, Funny Girl, Bitchy Witch, Arrogant Annie, Pissed Off Patty, Co-dependent Carol, Control Freak Cathy, Rainbow Mother, Helpful Hanna, Free Spirit, Soulful Sally, Artful Artist and Happy Camper.  I'm sure I have others but these are the main ones.  Each of these has a place in my psyche and contributes to the development of my self as a whole and functioning individual.  Once you name yours, you will see that yours also have a place in your psyche.  The challenge is to integrate them in a way that no one voice calls all the shots.  The key is balance and order, not chaos and disorder as those who have an actual diagnosed personality disorder will experience.

Body Talk - Three Kinds of Messages

The best way to know if your committee, that is your soul,  is in agreement about what you are doing in your life, is to pay attention to your body - it will tell you when things are out of balance.  The sure way to know if you are out of balance is to pay attention to your body and your mood.  When everything is in balance and all your voices have been heard and paid attention to you will feel a sense of well-being.  When you feel otherwise this is a sign of imbalance.  I call this your body talk and there are three kinds of negative body talk, anger, depression and physical pain - not necessarily in that order.

Anger - Irritation and Annoyance 

Anytime you feel angry or irritated or annoyed, particularly in regard to something you have control over or a say in or could if you chose to change it, even if the change is to simply accept it the way it is, then this is a message from the committee that your life is out of balance in some important way.  Now, of course there is justifiable anger - injustice, some kind of violence against you or something happens through no fault of your own, getting angry about it would be normal. But having a short fuse or always getting annoyed with what happens on a daily basis is a message from your committee that you life is out of balance.  To paraphrase the Serenity Prayer - Change what you have the power to change and accept what you don't and have the wisdom to know the difference.  If you find yourself angry and irritated quite often, then it's time to listen to those voices in your head with more attention to what they may be telling you.

Depression - Disillusionment and Lack of Joy 

We live in a world that wants to medicalize and then drug every bad feeling we ever have - this is the medical model and it has high status in our world.  In this view of mood, it's all about the brain; brain chemistry, brain disorders, brain malfunctions and brain abnormalities.  The message from the media and our culture is, if you fix your brain and therefore your mood, then this will fix your life.  But moods, good, bad or ugly come from the soul - not the brain.  In his book, Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain, Dr.Elio Frattaroli, M.D says, "Healing—making whole the divided self—comes through experiencing, accepting, and taking responsibility for the dark side of ourselves ...an inward journey of self-discovery in which we allow ourselves to feel what we really feel and so become who we truly are."  So the next time you feel down and blue, or have an on-going sense of little joy in your life don't rush off to the doctor for a pill, instead check in with your committee - see what they might be trying to tell you.

Physical Pain - From Chronic to Life Threatening 

Of course, if depression doesn't get your full and undivided attention then the committee will get busy putting some physical pain in your body - you may be a functioning depressive, but it's hard to keep functioning when either chronic or life threatening pain lays you low and zaps all your energy, again, if we turn to the medical model, we may get temporary relief, but long term, we need to be checking in with our committee. The model takes the stance that disease comes from the outside and attacks you and so the cure is something from the outside that cures you.  But what really happens is the committee, the voices of your soul are in conflict with each other and there is chaos and wild fighting going on in the meeting room of your psyche.  What has to happen is the manager of your committee, and that by the way is you, has to ask each of your committee members to come into your office and have a quiet little chat or as happened when my mother was ill with cancer - you choose one or two of your committee and  have a private meeting with them and then they will go back to the committee and explain what is going to happen and which way you will be going in terms of healing this pain.

A Metaphorical Example from Real Life 

I come from a big family and when my mother had breast cancer, all of us siblings went to the hospital when she was first admitted.  We were all in her room, all eight of us - when the doctor came in to ask my mother what she wanted to do.  He began by explaining the various options she had.  At that point, everyone but my mother started talking at once and asking the doctor questions.  I must have asked an intelligent one, because suddenly he held up his hands and pointed at me and said,  "You, I will explain this to you and you can explain it to the others.  All the rest of you need to leave the room."  He then explained the options to me, I explained them to my mother and the three of us came to a consensus as to which treatment option was best for her.  I acted as the committee chair and the doctor acted as the authority figure or to use one of my committee member names, he was the Wise One, brought in to give us the options.  What this means is that in your own life, as the manager of the committee, you sometimes have to pick one or two or your committee members and ask them to advise you what to do.  Later you may go to the rest of the committee and explain your decision to them.

This may sound complicated, but in reality, it's makes a lot of sense and has the effect of making you feel in charge of your life rather than run ragged by all the competing voices in your head.  Plus, it's kind of fun and in the long, and even the short run, a very successful way of dealing with your life.  It also contributes to your seeing yourself as a multifaceted person, rich with nuance and individuality and not some crazy person.  And that, in and of itself, is a soul satisfying way to live.  

A Caveat about the Medical Model 

BTW, I am not dismissing the medical model as useless and irrelevant, as the example of my mother shows, since once cancer is there, in most cases, it will need to be treated using the medical model.  But if the underlying soul issues are denied and dismissed, that is,  if you don' t listen to the other voices of your committee and see what they are attempting to tell you, then most likely you will get another serious illness, or become depressed or be filled with anger on a daily basis.  

So what are the names of the voices on your committee?

Blessings, Lorraine 

The Beauty of Your Ageless Spirit

When my emerging older self first showed up

No matter how you cut it, there are only three ways to go, you either die young, you die in middle age or you die old.  I've always said I was going to live to 100 but I'll admit that I never really thought about what that actually meant until recently. Once I hit my sixties I began to think about what it means to live to be one hundred years old and I'll have to say it has given me pause.  Not the pause to stop doing my work and giving my gifts to the world, I'll always do that, but it has made me stop and think about three things.  Number one, who will be there with me, number two, what I will look like, and number three, how will I feel about being that old?

I first noticed the shadow of my older self in the pictures from my daughter's wedding two years ago.  In the picture to the left, the taller one is Julie, the bride, and the other two are Mandy, my other daughter, and Ellie, my granddaughter. I'm the one in the periwinkle.   I noticed in these pictures that I did not look the way I still saw myself.  I kept thinking, who is that woman? I could see that I had entered a new era in my life, one I was not sure I was ready for, but as they say in the old childhood game of hide and seek, "Coming, ready or not."  I knew, of course, that I was no longer a young woman, but up until this point, I had always looked younger than I really was.  But now I could see that youthful looks would no longer carry the day.  I knew that if I wanted a positive, passionate, and meaningful second act, then I had better get busy figuring out how to make it as meaningful and purpose filled as my first act had been.  That's when I finished my book and began the process of reinventing my life. I also started looking for other people who had a new take on the second act of life.  

Looking For Mentors and Role Models  

In most cases, in order to feel motivated to go out into the world and do something outside the dictates of the mainstream, we require some role models and mentors to show us the way.  If at this point in time no one had ever lived to be one hundred years old then I would not be thinking I could do it.  But stories about people who are celebrating their 100th birthday are becoming common - I've even seen some birthday cards for this demographic at the local market.  But if all these stories were only about used up old farts living in nursing homes, slumped over in a wheel chair drooling, then I would certainly not be seeing this as the future I wanted to have.  So for me the stories that inspire are those of people who are living independent, active lives, engaged in some kind of passionate and productive work.  This work, whether it is paid or unpaid, gives their lives meaning and this is what makes their age just a number.  These stories are about people who live meaningful lives, who do not spend their time thinking about and worrying about aging.  They are simply too engaged in life for that.

This is Not Denial - It's Passion For What You Are Doing

When people have passion for what they are doing and what they are doing accomplishes something of value to the world, regardless of how big or small it might be, or whether they get paid to do it or not, then they simply have no mental energy for thoughts about getting old.  Do you think Frank Lloyd Wright was thinking about his age when he was building one of his most famous projects - the Guggenheim Museum - when he was in his late 80' and early 90's?  Now of course, I was not in his head and don't know for sure, but my educated guess is that he was thinking about his project and making it perfect.  The Guggenheim was opened on October 21, 1959, a few months after Wright died on April 9, 1959 at the age of 91.  He was was fully involved in his profession until the day he died.  Or what about Clint Eastwood, who just finished directing the movie, Jersey Boys at the age 84 and he's been at it all along.  But these are famous people, not all of us are famous or even want to be, but that does not mean that we cannot live a passionate life with meaning and purpose until we move on from this earthly plain.  When you get up every morning with something to do that is meaningful, productive and useful to society, then you don't have time to think about your age.

When You are 100 Your Face Will Tell Your Story

Make it an Interesting and Meaningful One 

Abraham Lincoln once said that by the time you're forty, you will have the face you deserve.  Of course in Lincoln's day forty was pretty old and no one had plastic surgery or got Botox injections and so a forty year old face represented the natural result of how a person had live up to that point in time.  What I would say now is that you will have the face you deserve when you're about fifty maybe even sixty since improvements in health and other ways of life maintenance have come into play since he made this comment. By fifty, and surely by sixty, it all starts to settle in and who you are simply shows up on your face and body for all the world to see.  But what I have noticed is that if you live a positive, proactive and passionate life then that face will show an ageless spirit in spite of any wrinkles, sags or heaven forbid, laugh lines.

But, let's get back to living to be one hundred years old.  Of course, at one hundred years old you won't look the way you did in your high school yearbook picture.  You will indeed have some lines on your face telling the story of your life, like a beautiful antique piece of furniture that has been kept in good working condition and is continuing to be used for whatever purpose it was designed for. Or, it could be that like an old piece of furniture no one cares about any more and is no longer being maintained, you could end up on the junk heap of life looking old and haggard.  To me that 's what people living in nursing homes look like. Well, we are all like that piece of furniture, we need to be kept up, maintained in good working order - working being the operative word - and be doing what we were designed to do.  Humans were designed to think, be creative and make contributions to the world via their thinking, creativity and doing. We were designed to contribute our piece of the great puzzle of life.  It's that simple.  We were not designed to sit around after sixty-five and grow old and useless.

Perpetual Vacations Are Not Good for the Soul or the Face

The way the culture sees aging at this point in time however, is that your work until sixty-five and then go on a perpetual vacation and deny your aging.  But a life focused on pleasure, comfort and security and making no contribution to the world will in the end do the very thing most people who choose this fear; decline, dementia and disorders.  And of course, this will show on the faces of these folks sooner, rather than later. But if you choose instead to live a life doing passionate work then you will express a spirit that will shine through the wrinkles and creaky joints.  People who interact with you will see the passion and the life in you and will ignore or not even notice the sags and wrinkles.  Instead they will be captivated by your authentic self and will see only the beauty of that spirit.  Authentic, passionate people will be experienced as ageless, timeless and full of life regardless of their actual age

The Beauty, Vitality and Ageless Spirit of Grace Lee Boggs 

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Grace Lee Boggs a 99 year old activist living in Detroit.  She is my new role model for aging, not just gracefully, but purposefully and with passion, purpose and possibilities. She is currently involved in helping revitalize some of Detroit's abandoned neighborhoods.  Here s a link to a Facebook page about her.  https://www.facebook.com/americanrevolutionaryfilm

So the future of your old, and mine as well, is for us to watch what we say about it, who we associate with, how we live and what we talk about.   All the jokes and little emails we all get about getting old may seem funny at the time, but they do not serve us.  Moving into age segragated neighborhoods where people are on perpetual vacations may look good on the surface but do not serve an engaged and meaningful existence. Making self deprecating remarks about your age creates a pathway in your brain that says I'm getting old and it's going to be awful.  Instead you need to welcome your emerging older self and get busy doing some re-invention planning for your future life.  If you don't have a passion now, or don't know what it could be then you are ripe for my Re-Invention program.  I have come up with a 12 week program that will help you delve deep into your psyche and discover the passion that is buried down there somewhere.  See my website at www.lorrainebanfield.com for more on my Re-Invention program.

As for me, I've decided not to worry about what I will look like at 100 years old, and as for who will be there with me, well this blog and my other work is my attempt to get some people on board with my ideas so I will have companions on the path, and the physical, well, I have creaky joints even now but I notice that when I am busy with my passion of writing and speaking on my topic - authentic soulful living - well all that just disappears and my spirit takes over and it just doesn't matter.

Blessings, Lorraine   

Investing in Your soul's Call at Midlife and Beyond

A Woman Who Answered Her Soul's Call

Recently I debated the issue of reinvention vs. reintegration at midlife and beyond on the Harvard Business Review site and in the process I asked readers to join me in forming an organization focused on the idea of reinventing this time of life.  One of the people who responded to me suggested we form a group focused on investing in stocks and bonds as a way of reinventing our lives but to me that is investing in other people's calls and not our own.

A Soul Call is a Call to Invest in Yourself

I read a book years ago called Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow - well a soul call is a call to do what you love.  Now some people love the stock market, Warren Buffet comes to mind, but unless this is truly your call, then getting together and reading the financial pages and or watching the Dow Jones reports is not going to be a satisfying time for you.  A better use of your time and your money is to invest in what your soul is calling you to do at this time of life.  If this idea seems vague and you're not sure what that call is then investing your time and energy in finding out would be a better use of this time than starting an investing group.  Here is why:

Money Provides a Comfort Zone, Not Authentic Happiness

Here is what Martin Seligman wrote about money in his book, Authentic Happiness, he says that making more money has little effect on your authentic happiness once you have enough money to buy his book and that materialistic people are less happy in general.  In other words, if you are living a more or less middle class life and not on the edge financially, then more money will not have much effect on your true happiness. What I also know is that even if at this moment in time, money is an urgent issue for you, once you have stabilized yourself financially you will go back to money not bringing you authentic happiness.

So What Does Bring Authentic Happiness?

Authentic happiness comes from doing what you love to do in terms of work and contribution, what I am calling a soul call and using that call to make a contribution to the greater good rather than simply doing something that makes you money.  Again, Seligman has a lot to say about this and describes the three kinds of lives available to us in terms of happiness; the Pleasant Life, which is filled with pleasure and ways to bring more pleasure into your life - he calls this the Hollywood Life, I call it the Hedonistic Life. The second one he calls the Good Life, this one is where you use your strengths and virtues and do all the right things and go by the rules - I call this the Good Citizen Life and finally the Meaningful Life where you use your strengths and virtues for the greater good - I call this the Soulful Life.  In my work with people and in my own personal life I see most people - about 80% - fitting into the first two categories - they are either looking at life as a pleasure trip and spend all their time on doing things for the pleasure it brings or they are good citizens and try to do the right thing and go by the rules but are not in touch with their souls and get all uncomfortable when someone mentions the idea of a soul call.   The rest, about 20% of the people, are interested in what their soul's are calling them to do but may not yet have a clear understanding of what that is - these are my people - my tribe, my potential clients and friends.

Are You Part of the Soul Call Tribe or Would You Like to Join?

I started this blog post with the idea that we need to invest in ourselves at midlife and beyond rather than creating an investing club and investing in money making ventures.  Here is what I know, if you invest in your own soul's call it will bring you life satisfaction and authentic happiness and the money you need to provide yourself with life's necessities will follow.  This could be a huge amount of money or only enough to sustain you.  I believe that Oprah heard her call early and now she is one of the richest women on earth.  Mother Theresa had little money but lived her calling until the end and was provided the necessities of life as she went along.  Between these two extremes is where you and I live. Yes, we need a certain amount of money to live and I believe we need to use our  gifts and talents to make a living for ourselves but I also believe that when we do use these gifts and talents in a way that feels like a soul call and we contributes to the greater good, the universe will provide opportunities for us to prosper.  I believe this to be particularly true in terms of midlife and beyond, this is our opportunity to reinvent this time of life and the best way to reinvent it is to listen for the call of your soul and invest in that call.  So would you like to join me in this?  If so then send me an email at lorrainebanfield@msn.com and let's get started.

Blessings, Lorraine 















 

Encore.org Gives Me Pause

I have been following Encore.org for some time now, an organization which I had thought went along with my views and my mission about people in their second acts.  This group sponsors The Purpose Prize for people over 60 doing work for the greater good.  I discovered them about two years ago when I saw a program on PPS featuring their work and some of the people who had won the Purpose Prize. The show was about reinventing your life.  Since that was a concept I was working on with my book, I was impressed and began to support and follow them.

An Extended Stay in the Work Force - Not a Reinvention 

But recently I  received a post on my Facebook page written by the CEO of this organization that made me reevaluate my continued full fledged support of them.  The CEO, Marc Freedman, wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review entitled The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention.   He says the idea of reinvention is dangerous and not even a doable thing for most people.  This gave me great pause and I wrote several responses which you can read on the Harvard Business Review blog - see link at the end of this post.

A Tweaking of the Status Quo But Not a Real Change

What I see after reading his article and reviewing his website and reading all his responses on the HBR site is that he is supporting and promoting the idea of extending one's work life beyond retirement and then reintegrating yourself back into it either in the same field of endeavor or to transition into a non profit with your skills, talents and gifts.  He likes the term reintegration rather than reinvention since he believes, or implies, that most people are happy with who they are, what kind of work they do or have done up until now, and are happy to continue on in it as long as they can remain employed and then to reintegrate themselves back into the workforce after conventional retirement via going to work for a non profit - as his website says, "Purpose with a paycheck".

I think this is an okay idea for the average person.  In fact I wish him luck with his work, but I realized after a week of back and forth posts on the HBR site, that this was not what I had in mind when I wrote my book. I I believe there are a great many people out there who not only want to reinvent their own lives but want to reinvent this time of life as well.  I find his ideas only a tweaking of what is already the mainstream way of doing things.  But we are being given by science, medicine, and just plain evolution up to thirty more years of life and to simply keep doing what we have been doing seems a waste of human potential given this gift?  Are there not things that need to be done that require a reinvention and not simply business as usual?

But Reinvention is What Needs to Happen 

He does not support the idea of any kind of reinvention or world view shifting except this extension of the time we now have to continue on with the same old same old.  But reinvention is what needs to happen. Even though on first glance this seems to be an organization focused on changing the world of work and the perception of people as they age, it seems to me to be an organization that supports the status quo by extending the working life of the average person.   The only change or reinvention I can see in this is that he is supporting the idea of a new phase of life between midlife and old age, but what he suggests we do with it is conventional and mainstream.   This then is the typical mindset of the average person, they just want an an extended time frame so they can keep working or if they have saved and invested their money then they will just retire and maybe do a little non profit work, if they feel like it. This is simply marketing the idea that people can work longer these days if they want to and then they can do some work for a non profit if they want to do that.  There is nothing new here.  This is the same mindset that has been around for years.  As far as I can see, he is simply encouraging people to stay in their jobs as long as they can and for them to do some good works for a non profit after they retire.  

Become a Pioneer Instead

But I say let's be pioneers instead and do what we have always longed to do and reinvent our lives to suit who we are in the depth of our souls and then to be the leaders and role models of a movement to reinvent this time of life..  There will always be people who huddle up under the middle of the bell curve and live their lives according to the values of the mainstream, but there have always been pioneers and out of the box thinkers as well, who have been the ones that have led in terms of human evolution.

Listen for the Call of Your Soul and Reinvent Your Life 

I'm suggesting that many people, but certainly not all, missed the opportunity to hear the call of their soul's in their first act and now at midlife and beyond they get a second chance to listen for it and act on its message. In most cases this will mean a reinvention of their lives, at least their work life, and not simply a reintegration back into the work world from which they came.  I am also suggesting that this call will impact the world or what I call in the book, the greater good, but it will not necessarily be philanthropic.  It could be opening a little Italian bistro, or starting a seminar business or becoming a sea captain or becoming a watch dog for abuses in your old profession.  It could be championing an environmental cause, running for office, you name it and if it's your soul's call then it is the right thing to do.  It could be owning and running a B&B as two of my friends are doing or going to Second City in Chicago and leaning to be a humor writer as one former college administrator is doing, or maybe like me, you want to write a book.  Whatever you do, if you do it with joy, gusto and passion, then this will have the effect of changing the way people see this time of life and this will indeed change the world.  

Be a Crazy One, a Maverick or a Change Agent

For people like myself and those I work with and hope to work with, we are the mavericks, the movers and shakers, the change agents, the odd balls that Steve Jobs and Microsoft were talking about several years ago in their Superbowl advertisement.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So here is to all you crazy ones out there - join me - I'm pretty crazy myself.  I'm here to help you with this most compelling and vital time of life.  So let's get busy reinventing our own lives and reinventing the world too, one person at a time.  .  

Blessings, Lorraine 

Link to Harvard Business Review post:   http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/the-dangerous-myth-of-reinvention/#comment-1195262742 .

PS - You may now check out my book at the Anythink Library in Westminster, Colorado.  Here is the link:   http://catalog.anythinklibraries.org/Record/967821/Home

You may also purchase it at the Tattered Cover in Denver - all three locations and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Get it and start changing your life and the world today.