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.  

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 

Are You Infected With the Money Disease?

Although we live in a world where a certain amount of money is necessary for survival and most of us, of course, want to go beyond simply surviving to a place of thriving.  There is a lot of talk in the spiritual world about abundance, but abundance is not simply about having lots of money.  It's about having all the friends, family, serenity and work that you need to make you happy.  People who focus on money as the means to that abundance are missing the point of soulful living.

Money like many things in life can become a disease if not handled with consciousness and wisdom.  It's much like food, alcohol, sex  or any other substance or activity that becomes addictive. By the way, this can happen whether you have lots of money or are barely surviving financially.  People with addictions think about their substance or activity in unrelenting ways.  It is always on their minds and is their constant companion. Addictions, of course are not good for the soul.

Any addiction will in time, make you sick and will destroy your soul and kill off your spirit and the joy in your life.  Now some of you may argue with this as a certain amount of money is necessary for life on this planet as it is now lived - few of us live on farms or out in the country where we can grow or hunt our food.  In the modern world money has to be earned, inherited or given to us in some way so that we can survive.  So yes, we need money.  But just as we need food, we don't need to become obsessed with eating to the point of obesity.  Nor is a beer on hot afternoon or a nice glass of wine with dinner a problem either, but if you can't go without alcohol or you abuse it to the point of drunkenness or use it to medicate yourself out of dealing with life's challenges, problems and difficulties, then that's not a healthy relationship to alcohol. The challenge of living a soulful and purposeful life, the point of this blog, is to balance your actions, your thoughts and your focus on what what your soul calls you to do with your life and it never calls you to an addiction, regardless of what kind it is.  Too strong a focus on the material things of life can throw you off your soul's course. Money is one of the more insidious ways to go off course, since we need it to live and yet we know in our hearts, if we just go there and listen for the call of our souls, that we can be happy and satisfied with life regardless of how materially rich or poor we happen to be.  As the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus said, "Happiness resides not in possessions, not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul."   So take this quiz and see how you are doing where money is concerned.

Take this quiz to see if you have a money addiction

1. Your daily thoughts and conversations are about money or what money can buy - 10 Points
2. You have fears around money either that you don't have enough or that somehow you will lose it or you will be ripped off by someone or some financial disaster will happen - 20 Points
3. You judge other people by how much money they have or don't have - 10 Points 
4. When you meet someone new you look for signs of wealth - cars, jewelry, fine cloths, home, career, who they know and where they are going in terms of money - 20 Points 
5. When you talk about other people you always mention them in terms of their money and status -10 Points 
6. You worry about family money - either by talking about it or trying to control how it is spent by the elders in your family - 20 Points 
7. If you have parents with money, at some point you begin to push for some kind of control or say in it - 20 Points
8. If you are not financially well off you envy those who are and see them as better than you - If you are financially well off you see those who are not as less than you -
   30 Points 
9. Your self-esteem is tied to how much money you have or don't have - 30 Points
10. If you know wealthy people or people who are celebrities you name drop and call attention to the fact that you know them in your conversations -10 Points
11. You have a fascination and even an obsession with what money can buy or how it can elevate your life 10 Points
12.  The magazines and books you read feature people with wealth or are money magazines such as Money and Forbes - 10 Points

If you score high on this test then money is your God and your addiction and this is not a soulful and balanced way to live.  Now of course, if you have a certain amount of money, what we used to call "being comfortable" or even if you are wealthy like Oprah or Bill Gates this does not mean you have the money disease - you may or may not.  The way to know is to honestly assess your relationship with money.  Use the above list as a test - answer yes to the things that you truly do in terms of money and no to those things you don't do.

People who get a high score on this test are obese with the disease of money just as someone with a food addiction is obese with rolls of fat and clogged up arteries.  The difference is that a food addiction is not pretty to the eye - many of us see these people as gluttons with weak self control.  I see them and those with other addictions as having an unconscious relationship with their souls.  A money addiction, on the other hand does not offend the eye, but it does offend the ear.  People who are focused on money and have conversations that always come back in some way to money are not enjoyable to be around.  They zap the spirit of others with a kind of poisonous gas that leaks out of them from every pore.  Make sure you are not a zapper of energy in this way.  As Martin Luther King once said, "It's the content of one's character that counts, not the color of one's skin."  Well, I say, it's the content of one's character and not the number on your bank statement that says what kind of person you really are, so take this quiz and see how you're doing.

Scoring:  This test is worth 200 points - the lower your score the better.  Total your score - 200 -170 points major addiction.  150 - Serious addiction.  120 - You need to look at and make changes in your attitude toward money.  100 or less points is in the gray area - I suggest a thoughtful consideration of your beliefs about money.    

Blessings,  Lorraine