“Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.  Remember that what you now have, was once among the things only hoped for.”    – Greek Philosopher Epicurus

I was reminded recently by reading my journal from five years ago, how I used to write down three things every day as an awareness tool:

1. What I really, really want to happen today.
2. What my best moment was from yesterday.
3. What have I been telling myself lately?

When I think about what I really, really want more than anything right now, it is to find peace with my own productivity.  I naturally pressure myself about almost everything.  Sometimes I think it’s a good thing because it makes me more productive.  Sometimes I think I’m just driving myself crazy slowly with this behavior!

What is the proper or needed amount that we each should produce everyday?  Do we need to have “something to show” for each day of our lives?  What do you think?  Can you give me advice about how you have found peace with your own productivity?

Openness to new experiences is one of the five major aspects of personality development discovered and studied by psychologists.  Researchers found that openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.

Personality tests measured six facets of openness:

• Fantasy: A tendency toward a vivid imagination and fantasy life.
• Aesthetics: A tendency to appreciate art, music, and poetry.
• Feelings: Receptivity to inner emotional states and valuing of emotional experience.
• Actions:  The inclination to try new activities, visit new places, and try new foods.
• Ideas:  A tendency to be intellectually curious and open to new ideas.
• Values:  A readiness to re-examine traditional social, religious, and political values.

According to research, it is possible to assess openness by examining people’s homes and work spaces. Individuals who are highly open to new experiences tend to have distinctive and unconventional decorations. They are also likely to have books on a wide variety of topics, a diverse music collection, and works of art on display.

Psychological aspects

Openness to experience correlates with creativity, as measured by tests of divergent thinking. Openness is also associated with fluid intelligence, abilities which may come more easily when people are naturally curious and open to learning. Openness to new experiences is related to a desire to understand new things, a natural tendency to think about ideas, scrutinize information, and enjoy solving puzzles.

There are social and political implications to this personality trait. People who are highly open to new experiences tend to be politically liberal and tolerant of diversity.  As a consequence, they are generally more open to different cultures and lifestyles.

Genetics and physiology

Openness to experience, like most other personality traits, is believed to have a genetic component. Identical twins show similar scores on openness to change, even when they have been adopted into different families and raised in very different environments.

Geography

People living in the eastern and western parts of the United States tend to score higher on openness to change than those living in the Midwest. The highest average scores on openness are found in the states of New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, and California. Lowest average scores are found in North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Alabama, and Wisconsin.

Openness tends to be normally distributed with a small number of individuals scoring extremely high or low, and most people scoring near average.  I think of myself as being on the high side, especially since I hit midlife!  It’s amazing what a few fortuitous misfortunes can do to open your mind to ALL of your POSSIBILITIES!  Especially when you come to the conclusion that nothing you tried before ever really worked!

Time to peruse the longest running boomers’ carnival on the PLANET! It’s my turn to tickle your fancy with my own edition of the Blogging Boomers Carnival!!! For some reason, most of the entries this week are on health-related subjects.

Devour them slowly and savor every bite!

Barbara Weibel at Hole in the Donut Travels brings us news of a brand new hotel review website. Read about Oyster Hotel Reviews unique concept, which includes on-site reporters and zillions of photos!

John at So Baby Boomer tells us:  Gluten is a vegetable protein–most commonly known as wheat protein.  Boomers who are sensitive to it may become chronically sick or disabled.

The Glam Gals ask: Don’t know what to wear on your vacation to look classy and still feel comfortable? Visit Fabulous after 40 to find out how to wear one of summer’s most popular travel choices.

Everyone knows that stress is a silent killer. But what to do about it? In addition to ridding yourself of the underlying causes of stress, experts advise exercise, sleep, and mindful relaxation.

LifeTwo covers these and other stress busting tips.

The Boomer Chronicles gives you 8 reasons to eat grass-fed meat and eggs.

Janet Wendy, over at Gen Plus, joined the ranks of those 50-plus recently and shares her thoughts on this somewhat staggering benchmark birthday.

Don’t get left behind!  Ann at Contemporary Retirement has a fascinating food-for-thought video on the progression of information technology!

Cindy Samuels at Don’t Gel Too Soon recalls Robert McNamara’s impact on the US. Especially for boomer-aged folks.  It was considerable!

While studying business practices, Dina of This Marriage Thing discovers her formula for a happy marriage.

Vaboomer has Book Giveaways!  Featured:  ”On Our Way Home” by Sebastien Braun, a fabulous illustrated children’s book.  Click here for more info.

And finally, keeping with the overall theme, here’s one of my own recent posts about what it feels like to cut all the sweets out of my diet! I’ve learned so much from having a Candida overgrowth! So much I didn’t really want to learn, but I’m still glad I did!

“The hardest battle you will face in life is to be no one but yourself in a world which is trying its hardest to make you like everybody else.”

Have you ever noticed how many “experts” there are out there today?  Seems like there are more than ever!  Everywhere we turn someone is trying to convince us that they know better than we do what is the right path for us to take.  “If you’ll only sign up for this workshop, I promise to give you ALL the answers!”

I’m also tempted by the “experts” at times until I stop and ask myself exactly who is the expert on me and what I need to do next?  Then I  try to switch gears, respect my own self-knowledge, and begin to practice self-ownership instead.

What is that?

Up to a certain point in our lives, we allow others to own us.  What does this mean?  This means that others control our lives.  Either out of guilt or self-esteem problems, we do not take control of ourselves and believe on some level that others might do a better job of running things.

That is not to say that we enjoy or even appreciate the job others are doing.  We are generally frustrated, angry or depressed because they are doing such a bad job of it.  So why do we let this go on?  Because it is so much easier to blame others than take full self-responsibility!  Chances are, we have watched our parents be controlled by others their whole lives.  This is considered “normal”.

For example, most people are owned by their employer to some extent.  We are also owned by our parents and significant others.  We are even owned by our churches, and local, state and federal governments.  And many of us are most definitely owned by the advertisers in America. What this means is that we do what they tell us to do.  We also often think like they tell us to.  Why?  Because we don’t see another way to live.

Since birth we have been told what to feel, how to act, what to think, who to live with, and what to value.  For many of us this is a result of not valuing our own innate self-knowledge and instead giving our power away.

Very early on we decided that taking full responsibility for all of our choices was too much of a burden.  We decided, perhaps unconsciously, to let others: our parents, our friends, our spouses, our churches, even our children to make some of our major decisions for us.

The good news is that we didn’t have to stress out over making so many choices.  The bad news is that we rarely got what we wanted because we removed ourselves from the decision making process.

When I read this excellent post about taking control of your food choices, I thought that’s a great summary of how so many of our important daily choices are made.  I like Marsha’s advice to:

“become aware and then take ownership of your beliefs, attitudes and behaviors…Listen to yourself. If you notice you’re giving away your power — relying on someone else to tell you what, when and how much to eat or exercise — consider what that does to your ability to make choices that feel right to you.”

Some of you may understand what I’m talking about here.  If so, perhaps we could learn together how to take back full responsibility for our lives.   No more blaming anyone else for our own unhappiness.  The buck stops with you!

Keep drinking your coffee out there!

Here’s some more good news about how it can help reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s…

A lunar eclipse is a time for beginnings, endings, exposure and major changes. It always has to do with “relationships.”  The changes are tied to how we relate and will have a lasting impression.

Emotions run high, causing upsets and feelings of disorientation.  Actions taken often do not have the expected results, but they do bring awareness and enlightenment.  The energy of an eclipse is strongest during the two days before and the three days after its occurrence.

At lunar eclipse we merge, unite, announce, contact, present ourselves, bring something out into the open, make decisions, engage, rise to the challenge, make an effort, change, get a new perspective, join with others, take on greater challenges, travel at a faster pace, feel restless, feel pressured by deadlines and a buildup of emotions, and experience excitement and crisis.

This lunar eclipse is a supercharged full moon.  The blocking of the Moon’s reflection of the Sun’s light by the Earth suggests that our material viewpoint stands in the way of our “seeing the light.” It serves as a reminder that we need to realize how we are held in the dark by virtue of our perspective.

Eclipses always arrive in pairs two weeks apart, and they always coincide with a new moon and full moon. Eclipses have three times the power of a new moon or full moon rolled into each one, and are felt over a much longer period.

The eight eclipses of this new family of eclipses, that begin with this present one, will come over the next two years and will fall in different, quite random, mathematical degrees. This means that not all the eclipses in this family will affect us in an equal way. In fact, depending on your birth time and date and the other planets in your chart, you may not feel too much of an effect at all, but others could be incredibly dramatic.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the many fortuitous misfortunes which happen in our lives, detours which often lead to some amazing bouts of self-discovery and positive transformation.

For example, I saw Garrison Keillor on PBS the other night.  He told the story of his early years.  His dream job at that time and only goal as a young writer was to work at the New Yorker Magazine.  Then fate stepped in with a timely and “fortuitous rejection” from the New Yorker, a rejection which lead to a very different future for him.  He greatly appreciates the results of that misfortune today!

Sheryl Crow also now speaks of what she calls “detours” which show us we really have very little control over what happens next in our lives, even though we think we do.  One week after she broke up with Lance Armstrong, she learned she had breast cancer.  She feels these type of detours “remind us who we are and what is important in our lives.”  After finding a cure for her cancer, she felt confident enough about her future to adopt a son and buy a ranch outside of Nashville.

These two celebrities are not experts on life.  They just call them as they see them.

My own experiences have paralleled theirs.  It seems sometimes the only way for life to get our attention when we are determined to pursue a path which may not be good for us, is by conking us over the head (sometimes literally!) with some apparently accidental happening or illness.

My fortuitous misfortunes have been many in the past few years. I now count my ex-husband and my mutual decision to divorce in 2001 to be among my luckiest.  For without that major bump in the road, I never would have learned so much more about who I am and what I need to happen before I die.

By spending much time alone with myself, studying who I am and how I relate to others, I created a true transformation within which led to my meeting many amazing and wonderful new people.  For example, I met my soul mate and life partner Mike.

Without my divorce and subsequent job loss,  I probably wouldn’t have learned how much better my life could be.  I may never have experienced the kind of boundless, unconditional love and support I have today.

Now I’m learning from some other misfortunes, a traumatic brain injury and a toxic case of Candida albicans.  The lessons are varied and many, but the student is ready to learn!

Happy Independence Day!

To escape the gloom and doom of the latest news (and the relentless gory details of Michael Jackson’s sad demise) I would like to provide you with my own version of how to cheer up your life:

1. Hug your sweetie, your pet or get a massage!
2. Eat a healthy, anti-inflammation diet.
3. Start believing in yourself today!
4. Write down your feelings, fears, frustrations, everything.
5. Clear out your work space and your head!
6. Exercise. Whatever you do is better than nothing!
7. Go have some fun. Decide what you like to do and do it!  Don’t forget to be creative!
8. Feel gratitude for everything in your life, even your difficult emotions because they are the ones that will wake you up!  Watch this short video to help you appreciate it all!
9. Ask for exactly what you want. Plan your best possible future and then create a vision board to see it now!
10. Say “I love you and accept you exactly the way you are” everyday to yourself in the mirror until you believe it!

I find the recent news story about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to be an interesting case of midlife love.  One way it MAY be different than the standard midlife philandering stories like that of Eliot Spitzer or President Clinton, is that Mark Sanford believes that he found his soul mate in this Argentine woman.  I believe that is possible.

In the end, we all seek to feel unconditional love and acceptance at some point in our lives.  That was my quest after my own divorce in 2001.  I wanted to believe it was possible in this crazy world.  We also do not choose when we will meet others we can truly share our world with on so many different levels.  It is so very rare to meet someone of true soul mate quality ever in this lifetime.

Mark Sanford did what was expected of him.  He married young and had a family.  I believe it is quite rare to find your soul mate in those we marry at an early age.  So the question then becomes, do we deny ourselves ever experiencing that kind of closeness again in our lives?

Mark has answered that question for himself.  He committed at least emotional adultery with Maria Belen Chapur.  He made his choice knowing full well the consequences of his actions.  He is willing to accept the judgment of others as well as that of his God.

I am glad that he at least took full responsibility for his choices and his actions.

After all I’ve been through, and speaking from the perspective of one who is well into her second midlife crisis (at least!), I realized today:  What could be more natural than stopping in midlife to seriously consider where I’ve been and where I hope to go next.

An elder friend of mine said to me yesterday that the best thing you can do for yourself at some point is to forget about your past and begin living for today.  I completely agree, but I have found it useful and necessary to first stop and consider how all that I have experienced in this lifetime has made me what I am today.

Imagine all the relationships you have been through and all you have learned from them.  All the good and not so good jobs with the many, varying bosses and coworkers.  All the positive things that have happened to you and the misfortunes.  This myriad experience is your life and this is how we learn.

I believe the greatest advantage there is to considering my past is to see what worked and what didn’t.  I made a list the other day of  “What works for me” because I want to quit fighting with life, trying to make myself do things that don’t work for me.  I want to start going with the flow more successfully.

Here are a few things I have found work for me:

Only spending time with those that honor and respect me

Exercise and healthy eating

Balancing the needs of my mind, body and spirit

Asking for help, love and support when I’m in need

Writing about what is important is me

Taking good care of myself

Asking for EXACTLY what I want!

I am searching once again for a kind of right livelihood that comes naturally, something I enjoy and feel useful doing in the world.  I am tired of the constant struggles and stress involved in selling my writing.  Marketing feels ugly to me and absolutely not who I am.

I am a cultural creative who struggles with her culture.