Relish the Rest of your Life

I am researching and writing a new book about challenging and changing attitudes and beliefs of people, whom I would call middle age, that is between 50 and 70.

Generally we are all living much longer and this increase in life expectancy is unlikely to reverse in the near future.  In our 50′s or 60′s, we can realistically look forward to the expectation of another 30 or 40 years of active life.  Equally, we can look back over 30 or 40 years’ of experiences of active adult life.  So that means we are about half way through, but what comes next?

The fact is that many people do not relish the prospect of the years to come.

Can you honestly say to yourself “I truly believe the best is yet to come and I look forward to it”?  If you can say it, great!  But if you can’t and are not happy with that, what are you going to do about it?

Things ain’t what they used to be and the rate of change is not going to slow down.  Many people, including governments, are recognising that the attitudes and strategies that have brought us to where we are today are unlikely to take us where we want to go.  Big changes are needed.

Issues we need to look at can come under the headings of attitudes towards money/wealth, relationships and health.

Independence or Freedom

A satisfactory quality of life does not necessarily come with independence.  For example, when we retire, we become financially independent: we don’t need to work in order to receive an income.  However the level of income, for many, means an unsatisfactory compromise in the quality of life.  If we are to relish the coming second half of life, we need to change so that we have greater freedom to exercise choices.

Surely by mid-life, we’ve reached a level of maturity at which we can take decades of experiences and mistakes and create more of that freedom in a way that can be fun, rewarding and enable us to continue growing into better human beings.  We have the opportunity; we’ve got the time; we’ve got more resources than we had when we started out.  How are we going to take all that and create a future to be relished?

I am about to start to running a series of free workshops locally in Ipswich, Suffolk, to explore ideas and a framework for change.

The first workshop will be held very soon on Wednesday 30th November at the Quaker Meeting House, 39 Fonnereau Road, Ipswich IP1 3JH at 7.00 for 7.15 pm.
(I intend  that we finish by 8.30 – 8.45.)

This workshop is for open-minded people of any age, who want to help themselves or others find ways to add relish to life.  Places are limited, so please do book with me first.  There is no charge for this meeting and it’s not a sales pitch for anything.

Please ring 01473 – 410521 or email me at jgc@jgc3.com

You’d probably agree with me that there’s wisdom in the old saying “live as if you’ll die tomorrow, study/learn as if you’ll live for ever”.  Don’t die tomorrow or just yet!  But do come along and join me, so you can do a bit of studying of yourself and your life . . . not so that you’ll live forever (you won’t) but to learn how you can live with relish for a good few more todays and hopefully a good few more decades to come.

Thoughts and concepts around the Edge of Maturity

New Blog series to commence soon