tara brack

Retirement – Making new friends

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Found this great YouTube video on the process of making friends. It is so good, i had to post it so you can clearly see the effort of developing a new life in retirement and how this was all taken care of by your job and family prior to retirement. Enjoy.

You thought the only thing you needed was Money.

You spent 40 plus years paying attention to and planning your Breadwinning career. Work-related issues and problems filled your mind on the job and when at home. Now that is gone, but your mind has not moved on. Just like your planning for retirement where you were given financial advice on saving for retirement. You maintained a 401K, set aside money from your family for your own future use. You may have even gotten get help by engaging a financial planner to guide your investing. You were told that hobbies and vacations will fill your days with happiness and purpose. It may, but not likely. The book “Retirement How NOT to end up Tired, Bored and Lonely” is an excellent introduction to this next part of your life. In retirement you need to rediscover yourself and your new purpose.

Retirement Surprises – Isolation, Depression, Anxiety and Suicide – Part 0 Isolation (The beginning of the end!)

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I have added a beginning to the trilogy of Depression, Anxiety and Suicide, this beginning is Isolation. It is the single event that will start the beginning of the end of your life. Yes, isolation results in greater heart disease, cancer and and is the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. Here is a National Institute of Health study that details the impact of loneliness. LINK

You have just left behind a full career, a tribal group centered around work and supporting your family. All gone in a blink. The lie of retirement is that you think it is a simple continuation of your life, it is not! It is a new beginning. Remember when you had to go out and find friends, Choose a career where you added value to others’ lives so you could earn a living. Yes, the world did not come to you, you went out to it. In every case you left your home and tried to add value to other people’s lives.

This video talks to the real life experiences of retirees. This is not an easy or small challenge to happiness. It requires your full attention.

The first time you found pleasure, happiness and purpose, your entire tribal network was there to help and support you. You are retired and they are living their lives, raising families, building careers, taking vacations. All busy as one armed paper hangers, just like you were before retirement.

This BBC video really shows how bad it will be unless you step out just like you did in the beginning to redefine your life. Not to earn money or build a family, but to have a tribal network and friends. How will you add value to your community and purpose to your life?

Scary times.

You spent 40 plus years paying attention to and planning your Breadwinning career. Work-related issues and problems filled your mind on the job and when at home. Now that is gone, but your mind has not moved on. Just like your planning for retirement where you were given financial advice on saving for retirement. You maintained a 401K, set aside money from your family for your own future use. You may have even gotten get help by engaging a financial planner to guide your investing. You were told that hobbies and vacations will fill your days with happiness and purpose. It may, but not likely. The book “Retirement How NOT to end up Tired, Bored and Lonely” is an excellent introduction to this next part of your life. In retirement you need to rediscover yourself and your new purpose.

Meditation Is it possible while under drug addition

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The purpose of meditation is to have a tool to manage all the busy thoughts generated by judgments of others and negative thinking. Judging other would be great if they wanted or cared about your opinion. Usually, they do not, and it is only you justifying your view in contrast to theirs. Agree to disagree. Accept their idea as an alternative and free your mind and body from managing it on your thought list. Negative thinking is you looking for problems. Great if walking in the forest and watching out for lions, tigers, and bears or running a company looking for future challenges to solve. These are now distractions from you seeing yourself.

Drugs, in this case, sugar and carbohydrates when eaten in excessive quantities are an addictive drug that can result in diabetes, excessive weight, and anxiety or Metabolic Syndrome. These ailments are distractions from you finding yourself and your pleasures, happiness, and purpose during retirement

Are you a sugar and carbohydrate drug addict? Try MyFitnessPal and iPhone application to measure your percent carbohydrates and sugars that are consumed as part of your daily calories. Just like smoking, caffeine and alcohol, all drugs that hamper your free will, you are a drug addict addicted to sugars and carbohydrates.

Ted YouTube video on Sugar and Carbohydrates as an addictive drug:

You spent 40 plus years paying attention to and planning your Breadwinning career. Work-related issues and problems filled your mind on the job and when at home. Now that is gone, but your mind has not moved on. Just like your planning for retirement where you were given financial advice on saving for retirement. You maintain a 401K, set aside money from your family for your own future use. You may even get help by engaging a financial planner to guide your investing. You are told that hobbies and vacations will fill your days with happiness and purpose. It may, but not likely. The book “Retirement How NOT to end up Tired, Bored and Lonely” is an excellent introduction to this next part of your life.

Meditation – List management: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD)

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Every few days you should review your list of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) issues in your life. These are items that you think about and creates anxiety. They hang around in your mind and fill your head whenever you get some free-thinking time. You try to push them away and distract yourself. But these are tough and keep coming back at you.

You need to accept them without judgement. Make them friends and “agree to disagree” with these thoughts. Bring them closer to your heart.

You have a son who is not employed and spends his days couch surfing with friends from college. He is 25 and not going anywhere fast. You are frustrated that he is not earning money and not growing up and becoming an adult. You know, job, relationship, home and children. You want to tell him how he is missing the boat, not being a contributor. Let me remind you that there are nine billion people on this planet who will tell him about which path to take, but he has only one father.

Look at him and see his goodness, strengths and his love and caring for you and you for him. Accept him and trust his choices as his, not yours. Can you feel that by not judging, by being a friend accepting him with love and caring. He can live his life and still be part of yours.

Do not judge, just agree to disagree.

Do you spend time living other people’s lives and not living your own?

Eckharte Tolle – Addicted to Thinking:

Tara Black on how we drive ourselves into anxiety loops:

During your career, you are given financial advice on saving for retirement. You maintain a 401K, set aside money from your family for your own future use.  You may even get help by engaging a financial planner to guide your investing.  You are told that hobbies and vacations will fill your days with happiness and purpose. It may, but not likely.. Meditation can help you see yourself, rather than your looking good and being right views.

Meditation – Finding pleasure and purpose during retirement

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Meditation comes in many flavors. You can go all the way from silence, isolation and deprivation of sensory to just learning how to prioritize your thoughts.
This is the first in a series on helping yourself to see what gives you pleasure and purpose in retirement. We start with the “list”.

The list works as follows:
Write down any subject that comes into your mind as you think about yourself and number them. A short example could be

1. I am overweight
2. My son does not have a regular job
3. I Wish I had more sex time with my wife
4. Garage door makes too much noise

Each item on the list is something you can wrap your mind around, world peace is too big, got it?

The next day or a day latter sit down and write the list again with the old list next to you. As you write the lists you will be able to feel each item. Your worries and woes are open for you to embrace and make friends with, not run from. Do this for 3-5 lists and you will feel that you are beginning to start to see yourself without the items on the list getting in the way. Latter we talk about list items that give you pleasure and purpose.

How do you manage your fears and frustrations?

This approach of embracing and making friends with your fear and troubles come from Tara Brack, PHD. She has many YouTube videos. Here is one you will enjoy. She is pointing out that inside you is a good person and the lists items are just stories that distract you from yourself.

During your career, you are given financial advice on saving for retirement. You maintain a 401K, set aside money from your family for your own future use.  You may even get help by engaging a financial planner to guide your investing.  You are told that hobbies and vacations will fill your days with happiness and purpose. It may, but not likely.. Meditation can help you see yourself, rather than your looking good and being right views.