Hi everyone.  Richatrd is offering a free session tomorrow for people who coach others.  This includes coaching professionals as well as leaders and managers who find themselves coaching people in their organizations!  The session is titled: How to Coach on Purpose in Uncertain Times.

Richard decided to offer this session after he came back from a recent training session in NYC at the Conference Board;s annual Executive Coaching Program…..he thought with the current uncertain times, that it would be great to offer a session for people who are coaching other people.

It will be LIVE session at noon Central, but YES, we will have the replay available.  You just need to register, then you will be sent a confirmatory email from us via Aweber, our communications company.  Once you confirm on the link in that email, you will be sent to the web page which is the main page for this event.

It will have all the information for accessing BOTH the live session and the replay to follow.  So, save the address for this page and feel free to use it over and over!!!

We will be pushing out a reminder email to all registrants tomorrow morning….just in case you misplaced the web page address.

Here is the link to find out more and register: http://newprimetime.com/leider111808/

We look forward to seeing you!!!

Money and medicine are indeed essential. Yet, happiness can neither be bought by wealth nor sealed by health at any age. Meaning is also essential to happiness. We need purpose-a reason to get up in the morning-in order to enjoy our good fortune. Many people classified as "old" within our culture at large, in fact, feel quite young. The media images that often devalue the older person in Western culture can be contrasted with many traditional cultures in which the eldest are viewed as the wisest and essential to healthy community life.

New elders today, are creating lives that are full of meaning, joy and vitality. Front porches are becoming obsolete and so are "old folks" in rocking chairs. With advances in wealth, health and meaning, have come major shifts in life patterns. Myriad opportunities have opened in all directions, and the new breed of elders is actively exploring them. And one major avenue of exploration is "contribution to community."

In times of change and uncertainty, notions of solidarity and togetherness often become the highest priorities-more meaningful than individual success and pleasure. In fact, society grants its highest awards to those who share their lives for the greater communal good. Among those

who value contribution to community, there is less emphasis on having a big bank account. With community connections and service, the rituals of togetherness become very simple and inexpensive. Differences in "gifts" (time, talent, treasure) lead to sharing varying gifts with one another. When one falls on hard times, others help stabilize the ones in difficulty.

More older people are engaged in community volunteer activities in the U.S. today than any other age group. For these people there is often a sense of self-efficiency, vitality and meaning that adds years to their lives. The meaning derived from contribution to community is available to all. It offers a pleasure that grows from a personal awareness of the preciousness of life, of time, and deep connections with other human beings. The new elders are not without their wealth and health challenges but they also illustrate a new meaning of the old saying, "living well is the best revenge."

Richard Leider

We look forward to your comments!!!

As the aging population expands, concern among pundits, planners and ordinary people tends to focus on the decline that used to seem inevitable with aging. The media-driven message stressed the norm of disengagement as the primary outcome of the aging process. Almost no attention was paid to the years of potential growth and fulfillment that was possible for many at midlife and beyond. The negative focus was illustrated with the common “D” words: decline, disability and dependency.

But “the times they are a changing.” The new vocabulary of aging has added the “R” words: renewal, reinvention and redirection. The new elders, often called baby boomers, are pioneers on the frontiers of reinventing the realities of aging. With the possibility of three bonus decades of life ahead of them, these pioneers are showing us both the possibilities and the challenges of a new period of life.

The biggest challenge presented by this new period of life lies in creating a new “positive aging” story. The new story takes an oppositional stand, one that attends to the great benefits that aging can provide. The new story is a hopeful one—that the second half of life need not be filled with despair at the loss of one’s youth, but can be beautiful in its own right. Aging positively is not just something for the rich and healthy, but is in the grasp of anyone, even those who might appear from some perspectives to be struggling.

Many pundits have been less than enthusiastic given that a very stable research finding asserts that happiness is positively correlated with age. Yet, much of the media remains skeptical of such notions, and claim that positive aging is out of reach for most Americans. They report that in order to have a happy and thriving old age, one must have only two critical resources—wealth and health.

Check back for Part 2 tomorrow!

What do you think? Please Comment below!!

For much of our lives, this question sounds ridiculous because we don't really have a choice in the matter.  For most of us, paid work is essential to our survival; if we don't work, we don't eat.  …

…The difference between making a living and making a life is immense.  Sadly, people who focus their lives solely on the former, on acquiring wealth, often end up living a life of regret.  They confront an ailment with no single cause or cure.  Some call it social isolation or disconnectedness.  Often, it's just plain loneliness. It all seems particularly ironic in the contemporary world where we've never been more connected by technology, and yet many people—even those society deems quite successful—find themselves feeling very isolated, alone in the crowd.  What's mission for many is a sense o intimacy with other people and the time to savor deep relationships.

Such finding seem to confirm Viktor Frankl's observation that the "truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided the question has emerged, ‘survival for what?'  Today, ever more people have the means to live but not meaning to live for."

In its more pronounced forms, isolation can be a serious, even life-threatening condition, heightening the risks of depression and heart disease.  Powerful feelings of isolation can emerge at any age or stage of life, but in the second half of life, when we no longer have the built-in inducements of job or school to impel us to mix with others, the risk tends to be greater.  Without a job to go to, many people lose a sense of saving the world,; friends die, family members move away, an their sense of savoring it is compromised, too.

In the best-selling Tuesdays with Morrie, author Mitch Albom provides a powerful alternative model: his former college professor, Morrie, who, even in his dying days, lives richly through his connections with friends and family and the lessons he passes on to them.  And the essence of Morrie's message: "Once yo learn how to die, you learn how to live."  In authentically sharing this message with his former student, Morrie embodies the spirit of saving and savoring the world: His joyfulness, even in the face of death, arises out of his willingness and ability to really give of himself to help another.  In doing so, Morrie more clearly identifies his own "something" to live for, his own special gift to give back to life.

Each of us has a special gift or contribution to which we alone give life-that unique trait or characteristic our loved ones will miss most deeply when we're gone.  It's that thing about us that most naturally defines us, the gift we naturally and wholeheartedly give away in all we do-our legacy.  For one of us, this may be a sense of humor or perspective; for another, an innate ability to draw people out, to listen.  It might be a talent for visualization, or for putting things into words.  Or perhaps we naturally are drawn to creating beautiful environments; or maybe we're the person who others rely on for direction.  Whatever it may be, we all have such a gift and long-term happiness in life requires that we express it.

Consequently, one identifying test for this gift is that when we fail to share it, we feel unfulfilled and ultimately disappointed with our lives.  Conversely, utilizing this gift in support of a cause we believe in represent the essence of savoring the world by saving it.

————–

From Something to Live For by Richard Leider and David Shapiro

A few years ago, on a business trip to Boston, a cabbie reminded me of how naming our life’s calling can make all the difference.

“So, whattayou in town for?” he asked me as we pulled away frorm the airport.

“I‘m giving a presentation to some business people,” I said, hoping to make it sound uninteresting so the driver would leave me alone.

He didn’t take the hint. “Oh yeah? What’s it about?”

I wasn’t interested in giving the speech twice, so I offered the Reader’s Digest abridged version. “Hearing and heeding your life’s calling. Doing the work you were born to do.”

My cabbie scoffed. “Your life’s ‘calling?’ C’mon, I drive a cab here. What’s that got to do with a calling?”

I closed my folder and caught the driver’s eyes in the rearview. “You weren’t born to drive a taxi?”

He just laughed.

“But you like your work well enough?”

He shrugged. “I guess it has its moments.”

“I’m interested. What are those moments?”

“You mean besides quitten’ time?”

I leaned forward and put my hand on the front seat. “I’m serious. I s there any time you feel like you’re really bringing all of yourself to what you do?”

He smirked like he was going to say something sarcastic but then stopped. Graduallyl, his face softened. He laughed a little and said, “Well, there’s this old lady.”

I stayed silent and he continued.

“A couple times a week, I get a call to pick her up and take her to the grocery store. She just buys a few items. I help her carry them into her apartment; maybe unload them for her in her kitchen, sometimes she asks me to stay for a cup of coffee. It’s no big deal, really; I’m not even sure she knows my name. But I’m her guy. Whenever she calls for a taxi, I’m the guy that goes. And I dunno, just makes me feel good. I like to help out.”

“There’s your calling right there,” I said.

“What?” The smirk returned. “Unloading groceries?”

“You said you like to help out. That’s a pretty clear expression of calling.”

A smile spread across his face. “Well, I’ll be damned. I guess that’s right. Most of the time, I’m just a driver, but when I get that chance to help somebody—as long as they’re not some kinda jerk or something—that’s when I feel good about this job. So, whattayou know? I got a calling.”

He fell silent for the rest of the trip. But I could see his face in the rear-view mirror and even when we hit the midtown traffic, he was still smiling.

That smile stays with me today reminds me of an essential truth: the more of ourselves we bring to what we do ad the more clearly we articulate that—by naming our life’s calling in simple, straightforward terms—the more likely we are to find satisfaction and fulfillment in all that we do.

Richard Leider and David Shapiro

Many of you have been asking for a facilitator guide to use when conducting book clubs and discussion groups about Something to Live For  So, by popular demand, Richard Leider and David Shapiro have create one for you to use. Click on the link here to download it! STLF-Facilitator-Guide01

Enjoy and please DO share any comments that you have down below this post!!!

Richard Leider offered a virtual workshop on September 9, 2008 at 6 pm Central (7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific).

This session was packed full of Richard's great teachings including a custom action guide, a copy of his presentation materials, audio files that can be loaded on your computer or iPod, AND a copy of his latest book, Something to Live For!

If you are interested in materials and recordings from this session, please contact barb@newprimetime.com!

This session was being produced by Elizabeth Harrington & Barb Reindl of The NewPrimeTime.com.  www.newprimetime.com

You are aging. But, are you maturing? Life is not simply growing old; it is also growing up. Growing old and growing up are two different things. And, growing up is maturing.
Maturity and Aging
The difference between aging and maturity is that aging belongs to the body and maturing belongs to the spirit. We are all aging. We will all become older, but not necessarily wise. Maturity is spiritual wisdom. Aging requires nothing; maturing requires a quest for inner growth. When we age with conscious awareness, we become mature. If we live without deepening our awareness we simply become old. There must be some payoff in unconscious living, however. Otherwise why would so many of us live on automatic pilot, scratching the surface of spiritual awareness. What is the investment? What is the return? We have two choices. We can live unaware and simply grow old. Or, we can walk the path of awareness and grow whole. What stands in our way?
Maturity and 24/7 Living
Time. The number one pressure on people is time. New technology encourages us to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week via laptop computers, e-mails, voice mails and worldwide BlackBerries. Technology without boundaries makes us available before, during and after work, on weekends, and during vacations. For more and more of us, our workday never ends. So, what suffers? Spirit. In particular spiritual growth. We have always had difficulty balancing work and life. What's different, today, is that everything in our lives has been racheted up a level. Pervasive technology has accelerated life and made it much more intense. The result is that we suffer from inner kill–we become emotionally numb. And spiritual growth falls by the wayside. The 24/7 syndrome is causing "dis-ease" in many of our lives. We are hardly oblivious to the issue. Walk into any bookstore or tune into any talk show. But, despite volumes of work/life balance words, many of us feel stuck in techno-limbo. We depend on technology for our livelihoods but it's stealing away our lives. We can't get along without it, but we can't live with it. The investment is not paying off. It's strange that people who don't know who they are, are racing around 24/7 trying to become somebody when they, often, don't know who they are right now. When we ignore spiritual growth we experience inner kill, burnout and alienation along with the stress symptoms of sleeplessness and the feeling of being chronically tired. So, what do we do? Enter the positive psychology movement.
Maturity and Happiness
Can we learn to be happy? The "positive psychology" thinks so. Check out the volume of literature on "happiness." The most popular and life-changing course at Harvard today is a course on happiness. Grounded in the positive psychology movement, one out of every five Harvard students has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar's lectures on that ever-elusive state: happiness. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness, is most often credited with popularizing this movement when he was President of the American Psychological Association in 1998. His widely quoted research on "optimism," plus the pioneering work of many other social scientists, turned our attention away from pathology to life satisfaction and well-being. Many pioneers like Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Carl Jung–all of whom profoundly influenced my own work–laid the groundwork prior to Seligman's bringing it to the forefront of psychology. So, what's common to all these thought leaders? It is simply this: they all agree that work and love constitute happiness. Purposeful work and a rich network of relationships are essential to our happiness. Also critical are gratitude, forgiveness and optimism. What doesn't seem to matter as much are making more money, getting lots of education, or living in a pleasant climate–all important to happiness, nonetheless . Just fifty years ago, the normal view of aging was defined by "D" words: decline, disease and dependency. Old age was perceived to begin at 60 and proceed directly downhill. "Over the hill" was a popular phrase. But times have changed. Along with the technology revolution, we have the "longevity revolution." The United Nations termed it an "agequake." More and more of us are increasingly living longer and healthier with more choices. So, aging isn't what it used to be. In our newest book, Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life, my co-author David Shapiro and I discovered that purpose is good medicine. People tend to live longer, healthier, and, happier lives when they have something to live for–a reason to get up in the morning. We describe people who are reinventing their lives versus declining. Their lives are shaped by a new vocabulary of "R" words: renewal, redirection and reinvention. They are the leading edge of the evolving "positive aging" movement.
Maturity and Meaning
As more of us in the second half of our lives choose lifestyles and workstyles very different from what we have seen in the past, science has been discovering what enables positive aging. Along with the essentials of money and medicine, "meaning" is essential happiness and well-being. Maturity is another name for meaning. Maturity does not come from aging. It comes from an inward journey–an "inventure." Maturity comes from spiritual evolution. When we clarify and settle down into our purpose in life, we have found a home, and a greater maturity arises in our moment-to-moment, day-to-day actions in the world. Purpose has little to do with genius or gender or ethnicity or age. It has to do with discovering your real, authentic gift to the world. It is discovering the gift of spirit within you and giving it away, daily. I read recently the wisdom of Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn. A young man searching for his life's purpose, wrote to the Rabbi that he had discussed purpose with every wise person he had ever come across, read every book on meaning and purpose he could find, and he had traveled away to faraway places to seek the guidance of some of the greatest spiritual teachers, but no one had ever been able to tell him what his purpose was. So, he asked the Rabbi, "Can you tell me what my purpose in life is?" The Rabbi responded: "By the time you figure out what your mission is, you will have no time to fulfill it. So just get on with it." The depth of the Rabbi's advice was to "do more acts of goodness, and your life's purpose will unravel before you, one day at a time." We can spend a lifetime philosophizing about the meaning of life, pondering our purpose in the universe, and miss out on actually living. Maturity means recognizing that we were given another day of life, and along with that we were given the responsibility to do good. Maturity is not self-absorbed soul searching. It is authentic, wholehearted quest grounded in opening our eyes. Who around us needs our help? How can we improve the little corner of the world we live in? What can I do, this moment, no matter how small to make a difference in someone's life?
The Quest for Maturity
Each of us is an experiment of one. We all have our own path to maturity. Maturing means we become more of an individual, not less. Maturing is both an inner and an outer life quest and an outer life quest. As we grow whole, the whole of humanity becomes one in our eyes. The quest for maturity requires a seeking–not a desire but a search; not an ambition to become something but a search to find out "Who I am?" For a natural example of this quest, just observe a tree. As the tree grows "up" its roots grow "down." The higher the tree grows, the deeper the roots grow. In our lives, growing up requires us to grow deep within ourselves. That's where our roots are. The deeper we grow the more we mature. Like the acorn, we have come on a long quest to maturity. We are fulfilling our true purpose in life.
–Richard Leider

The life course has changed dramatically during the past century. The UN calls this sea change an agequake"! The reality is that in about 25 years we're going to be experiencing an international transformation where the number of older persons in the world will exceed the number of young for the first time in history. This "agequake" will shake up our social customs and our economies.
While this is going on largely unnoticed, many of us are coming to terms with the realities of our own lives at midlife and beyond. We are noticing the inner voices–voices from other rooms"as writer Truman Capote aptly called them–that are trying to awaken us to the positive possibilities in the second half of life. Just 30 years ago, the standard view of aging was confined to D words: decline, disease and dependency. But "the times they are a changing." My observations and experiences have shown that people are now using or yearning for the R words: renewal, redirection and reinvention. In our book, Something To Live For: Finding your Way in the Second Half of Life, David Shapiro and I focus on people who are pioneers on the frontiers of reinventing the reality of aging. These pioneers are showing us both the possibilities and the challenges of a new period of midlife. This new period is a 20-year space between midlife and real old age. It's a time when we're no longer young, but won't be elderly for some time.
The biggest challenge presented by this new stage lies in listening to a new "positive aging " story– listening to the "voices from other rooms." The process of reinvention in midlife involves a yearning to become more wholehearted and authentic than we, perhaps, ever allowed ourselves to be before. These voices from other rooms speak even more loudly to us now. Some of us attempt to silence the voices by filling the room in which we live with distractions and endless busyness to drown them out. New technology encourages us to be available 24/7 via laptops, e-mails, PDA's, and Blackberries before, during and after work, on weekends and during vacations. For more and more of us being connected never truly ends. We're always "on." So what suffers? Reflection. In particular, our spirit. By midlife, the constant running has caused us to become fugitives from ourselves.
Such a a silencing strategy rarely works, for if the voices are not heard and acknowledged at some point we become exhausted, even burned out. The unheard voices or unlived lives carry the potential to destroy our happiness and health in the second half. So we ought to welcome those voices, scary though they may be. We must realize that the liberation that our reinventions will set into motion is less to be feared than to be welcomed, because it frees our creative potential for new vitality. It allows us the space to find new purpose and passion inside ourselves. In contrast to the conventional views of older adults, it opens us "up" to learn about alternative models of positive aging.
In December 2007, I had the privilege of speaking to the First National Positive Aging Conference in St. Petersburg, FL. Sponsored by AARP and other organizations, it brought together several hundred professionals and researchers to explore new models for aging well. Like many baby boomers, the attendees were increasingly rejecting the conventional story of retirement, which has meant not working. With the longevity revolution and subsequent agequakes, conventional retirement is simply less relevant. The presenters on positive aging often redefined retirement as a graduation or a commencement to something new and different–and that includes new ways to work. Those of us engaged in second half of life programming and research are learning about the plethora of different options available after the age of 50. You can learn more about these options by attending the Second Annual Positive Aging Conference, November 12, 2008, at the University of Minnesota's Mayo Auditorium. Sponsored by the Center for Spirituality and Healing you can discover more information: www.csh.umn.edu
In addition to many people living much longer, some have begun to transform the story and process of aging itself. What does it mean to be old today? How can we reinvent ourselves for the second half? How can we continue to produce the income and financial security needed to sustain us while we are in the process of reinvention?