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Stimulation, Advice, Guidance and Support for people in midlife everywhere ... with a dash of humour along the way.

The Mid Life Opportunity blog will soon be moving to the new blog on the website - more details to follow. 

Come and see for yourself and why not register while you're there..

www.MidLifeOp.com

The Mid Life Guide to Losing Weight ...

The Mid Life Devil’s Advocate – Losing weight

Most of us would like to be slimmer and we have all (almost without exception) tried to lose weight at some point. Midlife is a time when we are prone to putting on weight and dieting becomes more important in our lives – at least for those of us who worry about these things.

So we do our research and find out which is the best diet for our own particular body and our own particular lifestyle. When I was doing my degree, some years ago now, one of my friends went on a ‘beer diet’. He didn’t eat for 5 days, but carried on drinking beer every evening. He did lose weight but this is definitely not to be recommended!

We might try the Atkins diet, the cabbage diet, the ‘this’ diet and the ‘that’ diet and we lose some weight. Hooray. So what’s the problem?

The job of the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate is to help you to understand the reality of dieting. The Advocate isn’t trying to dissuade you from dieting, quite the reverse. He just wants to give you the reality of what you’re contemplating.

So what is the Devil’s Advocate’s view of dieting? Here are some points to ponder:

• Statistically, most of us don’t keep our weight off when we finish our diets – so why bother?
• To maintain a constant healthy weight, men need 2,500 calories per day, women need 2,000 calories per day – not fair, but that’s the way it is.
• So anything more than this will be stored in the body as fat.
• All the things you like to eat are fattening – it’s one of the laws of nature:
• A Big Mac and medium fries (UK size) contains about 800 calories.
• A Danish Pastry contains nearly 300 calories
• 100g of chocolate contains about 500 calories
• 100g of popcorn contains about 400 calories
• A traditional Christmas dinner contains about 1,000 calories
• A medium size tub of potato salad contains about 1,000 calories
• A decent BLT sandwich contains 800 calories
• A Caesar Salad (which you might expect to be low in calories) contains about 750 calories (it’s the dressing)
• On the other hand:
• An apple contains about 50 calories
• A portion of carrots contains about 15 calories
• You can see where this is going …
• You need to have a calorie deficiency of 3,500 calories to lose a pound in weight – so, if you’re a man and you eat 2,000 calories per day (2.5 decent Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches) you will lose 1lb per week. It’s a long haul.
• So willpower and staying power are important. Do you have will power?
• You will start off very confidently – then you get hungry.
• You won’t lose much weight in the first few days so you lose your enthusiasm.
• You decide to keep a food diary – you conveniently forget to write down the biscuits that you eat with your coffee.
• You do very well during most of the day and then start nibbling while you’re watching TV. And you don’t nibble apples …
• You decide to have just one alcoholic drink – then two, then three. Fun, but alcohol is loaded with calories.
• A bag of crisps (fries) has about 200 calories in it – that’s a small bag though, not the big ones!
• Cereals for breakfast are a healthy option and the adverts tell us that there aren’t too many calories in a portion. True, but not the portion size that you eat!
• You will lose weight if you use more calories than you consume. So you decide to do more exercise. This makes you hungry and you eat more.
• You join a Gym on January 1^st. On February 1^st your membership lapses.
• Exercise is hard work and you decide that, rather than exercise, you will eat less. This is hard work too.
• It’s the QUANTITY of food that counts. It’s all very well eating the right type of foods but you mustn’t eat large quantities of food. You know this but you still eat Seconds, sometimes Thirds.
• When you have friends for dinner you cook a lot of food, saying that you don’t want your guests to starve and any leftovers can be eaten the next day. You eat it all anyway, because it’s there, on the table, looking at you.
• You go out for drinks with your friends and you’re really good. Slimline drinks all evening. Then one of your friends suggests going for a curry or a kebab. Oh dear, all that effort wasted!
• You will soon start to believe that the bathroom scales are broken.

If you are keen to go on a diet, don’t let the Mid Life Devil’s Advocate put you off. The points above are all exaggerated (apart from the calorie contents) to give you a real flavour of what’s in store for you.

If you feel that you need to lose weight, then try to lose some of your excess pounds. Just understand that you’re in it for the long haul. It’s really about a lifestyle change more than a short term diet and you need to understand this. Try making some simple changes – stop having sugar in your drinks, use semi-skimmed milk, don’t eat after 8pm, only put butter/spread on one side of your sandwich (and not too much butter/spread either!) These are simple changes which add up.

Remember – taking in more calories than you use up will lead to weight gain. Pig out occasionally by all means, but make sure you restrict yourself afterwards to make up for it.

Good luck,

The Devil’s Advocate

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for Mid Lifers. Advice and Guidance will soon be available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join so what are you waiting for? Join hereFREE!

If you always do what you've always done...

We all know the saying 'If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got' (or words to that effect). But in today's harsh economic climate, is this still true? If we always do what we've always done, the chances are that we won't get what we've always got, we'll get less! Why? Because our competitors are trying harder. The goalposts have moved and if we don't do things differently, we'll actually be moving backwards, relative to others.

The reward for the same effort will be smaller. Make sense?

So what to do? The obvious answer is to work harder at what we do. The less obvious answer is to work smarter at what we do. Here are five ways to work smarter:

1. Set yourself ONE goal.
Yes, you want to have several goals, and that's fine, but set one primary goal. A goal that you really MUST achieve. This can be a long term goal, a medium term goal or a short term goal. If it's a substantial goal, break it down into smaller goals, with timelines, so that you can see how you are progressing towards your primary goal. Have other goals by all means, but don't lose sight of the primary goal.

2. Get organised
We all know this, but how organised are you? How many of the tasks that you do are duplicated? How often do you mislay documents (printed or electronic?) and spend too much time looking for them - or worse still, rewriting them?
Organise your filing systems, especially your electronic files. Give each of your electronic files a sensible name and the date that you saved it. Don't call it 'Jane's file', call it 'Jane's workplan - 12/2/2011' That way, you've got a fighting chance of finding it again. If you share files with other people, a sensible filename will save you both time.
Clear your desk and work with the papers that you need at that time. Don't surround yourself with papers and post it notes that will distract you from the task in hand.

3. Delegate
What tasks can you delegate to others? Do you have a virtual assistant? Concentrate on doing the things that you're good at and delegate other specialist tasks to others who can do them quicker, more efficiently and more effectively. Can't afford to do that? What about trading work - you help me and I'll help you. This doesn't work in all situations but you'll be surprised how often it can work - ask the question!

4. Plan your work
This is something else that we all know we should be doing but how many of us really plan our days, our weeks and our months? How many objectives do we set ourselves? Don't go overboard and plan everything down to the finest detail (especially your leisure time) but do give yourself a chance by thinking about what you need to do and writing a plan, however brief. If you don't know where you're going, you'll never know when you get there.

5. Do one thing at a time
This follows on from point 2 above. It's very easy to get distracted - Facebook and Twitter can eat time if you let them (and you do, don't you?!)
If you have a portfolio career, or you work on several projects simultaneously, it is very easy to get distracted. The phone may ring and someone needs to ask you a question about a project which you're not working on at the time. Answer the question, then get back to the project which you were working on without  meandering off and wondering why the person asked you the question.

Do the IMPORTANT tasks before the easy ones (and the ones you like doing). Don't put things off! So don't always do what you've always done - do something smarter!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

A post from Seth Godin

A post by Seth Godin which is relevant to people in midlife everywhere

Cashing the check

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we're capapble of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

No, the world isn't fair, and most people don't get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.

As Martin Luther King Junior spoke about a half a lifetime ago,

"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late."

See Seth Godin's blog at:  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Freedom of Expression

Freedom of expression is one of the basics of a democratic society. Today, more than ever before, the individual is able to express their views and opinions and broadcast their thoughts to a global audience. Social media enables all of us to air our views and ping them off to anyone and everyone who has an interest. So far, so good.

Moving the argument along a little, if we have this new found freedom to broadcast to the world, we also have a responsibility to think about what we are saying and doing. Whilst some extreme views or actions can be discounted, others may have far reaching consequences which we had never imagined.

A campaign on Twitter against an organisation or an individual may make us feel better, but what are the longer term consequences?

We might agree that Wikileaks has the moral right to broadcast secret government documents because the government shouldn’t be acting in such a covert manner. Really? Do the guys at Wilikeaks really understand what they are doing? Clearly they don’t. Being motivated by a need to expose people/governments may seem altruistic and desirable but they have completely overlooked The Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC).

In any society we have to have some order. We have to have people who lead and people who are led. We may not like or respect our leaders and we may wish to demonstrate against them but there has to be a limit to this.

Social media has allowed the individual to cross this line and the dangers are clearly visible. When launching a campaign or exposé we must ask WHY we are doing this. We must also ask ourselves WHAT we expect to happen as a result and we must never forget LUC.

We must take responsibility for our actions and understand the consequences. The alternative is anarchy and throughout history, anarchy has always ended in disaster …

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Mid Life Guide

Are you interested in contributing to The Mid Life Opportunity and developing an ongoing passive income source for yourself? Yes? No?

Do you have a specific interest, skill or expertise in a particular area that would be of interest to people in midlife? Can you write 5,000 - 10,000 words of rich, insightful copy?

We are developing The Mid Life Guide, with a number of sections which will be contributed by experts in their own areas. These areas include:

• Living your Second Half
• Fitness without Pain
• Healthy Eating
• Relationships
• Finding a new Job
• Starting on Online Business
• Starting an Affiliate Business
• Looking towards Retirement
• Being Positive
• Overcoming Adversity
• Your Health in Midlife
• Money Making Opportunities for Midlifers
• Others?

Several of the sections of the Guide are already taken and we can't accept competing copy. We are also happy to hear from you if you have something which you think will fit in with The Mid Life Guide but which isn't in the original list of sections. We're open to your suggestions :)

If you would like to contribute, please let us know by commenting below. Together, we can change the world - well, the midlife world ...

www.MidLifeOp.com

10 Reasons Why We Underachieve in Midlife

Are you in Midlife – over 35 maybe (perhaps well over 35) with lots left to offer to the world? You’re keen to make your mark and leave something behind for future generations?

Many people in midlife genuinely want to do something great but most don’t manage to do it. Why is that? What holds them back?

 

Here are 10 reasons why midlifers might underachieve (feel free to add more below):

• Fear of failure 
• Lack of money 
• Not wanting to step outside of their comfort zone 
• Concern about feeling foolish 
• Not sure about their idea 
• Underestimating their own abilities 
• Don’t know where to start 
• Don’t know where to go for help 
• Fear of starting but not finishing 
• Not having enough time

Each of these reasons is a perfectly valid reason for our midlifer to stay where they are and carry on with their usual routine. They may be perfectly happy, but they will get to the end of their lives and wonder ‘what if?’

 

As Henry Ford said, ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.’ (my favourite saying)

 

So what's holding you back? Write down your list of reasons why you are not making your mark. Start with the list above and add/subtract your own reasons until you have your own list.

 

Take each one ask WHY this is a problem. Write down the answer(s). Then ask WHY again to get more detail. Continue doing this until you really understand the reason for your underachievement. Repeat this for each of your reasons.

 

Once you have done this, you will be in a much better position to understand your motivations and have some concrete data to work with to plot your course for a more successful future. Try it, what have you got to lose?

 

You've got it in you, I'm sure!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Mid Life Campaign

As we move through the 21st century we all expect to live longer, more fulfilled lives. Longer life expectation causes problems for the government and the pensions industry and we are now required to work for more years before we qualify for a pension. The ‘statutory retirement age’ is being phased out and ‘retire when you want to’ is being phased in.

This may be welcomed by those who are in rewarding jobs and who don’t fell ready to leave. Those who don’t have a job and whose pension entitlement has been deferred for several years may feel differently.
It is one thing to remain in a job past 60 or 65 if you’ve been employed by the organisation for a number of years. But what if you were made redundant in your late 40s or early 50s and find that job openings for you are negligible to non-existent? How will you manage until you reach the new retirement age (or even the old one?)
Many Midlifers find themselves in this position, through no fault of their own. They are ‘over qualified’ (too old) for most jobs that they apply for even if they are willing to take a large cut in their salary expectations.

The government (all governments) seem unable or unwilling to recognise that Midlifers who aren’t employed in their 50s face a severe uphill struggle to gain meaningful employment for the remainder of their working lives. Maybe the government is just naïve and doesn’t believe that the ‘over qualified’ (too old) response from recruiters and employers is the reality of life. Why should they; they are so far removed from the coal face that they believe their own rhetoric.

People in midlife have little support. People of pensionable age have a whole raft of support. Young people, too, have a host of government initiatives aimed at helping them to find worthwhile work (these initiatives may or may not be succeeding but at least they focus on the issue). Midlifers have little or no support to find a new role for themselves. They fall down between the cracks in the floorboards of life and many are unable to find a way out.

Vast amounts of experience are being wasted as talented midlifers struggle to find an outlet for their expertise. They can’t fallback on ‘early retirement’ in most cases as their pension pots aren’t sufficient to cover their needs. Neither do they want to retire prematurely – most midlifers want to carry on in the world of work, earning their living and putting their experience to good use.

There is a ticking time bomb here that is largely unrecognised.

So what’s to be done?
The government must recognise this issue and understand the implications of their changes in working policies. The Mid Life Opportunity will shortly be launching a campaign to raise the profile of midlifers. If you would like to be part of this, please join The Mid Life Opportunity mailing list and make your voice heard! Join here: The Mid Life Opportunity
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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Law of Unintended Consequences - LUC

My previous post was about decision making and the gulf between those who make decisions and those who are impacted by the decisions. One of the main reasons that decisions can have unexpected results is that LUC is ignored. LUC is The Law of Unintended Consequences and almost always affects decisions, usually for the worse.

Here are some examples:

• I live in The New Forest, which is famous for the ponies that roam free in the forest. There are many horse owners who live in the forest and who keep their animals in pony paddocks or stable yards, usually 2 or 3 fields. The forest recently became a National Park and new rules were proposed which were not well thought through. One of these was that ‘every horse must have at least one hectare (2.4 acres) of land to graze’. This was to prevent over crowding. So pony owners would have to have at least 4.8 acres to keep two ponies. Any horse owner will tell you that the amount of grass which would grow in one hectare during the summer would far exceed what the horse could eat - in fact, given that amount of grass, the horse would almost certainly go down with laminitis and possibly die. So the National Park’s decision to avoid overcrowding in pony paddocks would have had the (LUC) effect of killing off the very horses that were trying to encourage. Thanks to a local ‘uprising’ the policy was never implemented.
• Aid is given to developing countries from western governments. This may or may not be effective. An example might be the provision of fishing nets for local people to allow them to catch fish. Very worthwhile, you may think. But this action puts the local supplier of fishing nets out of business and perhaps he moves away. What happens when the new fishing nets need to be mended or replaced? There is nobody to do it. LUC has played it’s part and the locals have gone from having some old fishing nets, to plenty of new fishing nets, to no fishing nets at all.
• The welfare state was introduced to help people out of poverty. The founders little realised that LUC would ensure that millions of people now take welfare as an alternative to work.

These are all negative examples. There are positive examples too.

• The Chilean miners that were trapped underground for nearly two months were rescued by drilling a rescue shaft. Whilst drilling this shaft, LUC came into play and previously unknown deposits of gold and silver were discovered. These may even cover the cost of the rescue, which was funded by the Chilean government.

So when you make decisions, don’t ignore LUC. It’s impossible to second guess every angle but don’t assume that things will work out the way that you always expect them to!

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Decision Making

In every situation, people fall into one of two categories – the person making the decision or the person that is affected by the decision.
In every case, we hope that the person making the decision understands the implications and the consequences of that decision.
Sadly, in many instances, the person (or people) making the decision(s) doesn’t understand the situation properly and those affected suffer.
We see this at the macro level – decisions made by western governments to ‘aid’ people in developing countries or decisions made by our government which affect us directly. How often do we hear people saying ‘Why have they done this, they have no idea how ordinary people live?’
Too often this is true. Decisions are made by people in power whose lives are a million miles away from the day to day lives of all the people that the decision affects. They have very little idea how the consequences will pan out – they know what they think will happen, based on the advice that they receive from their advisors (many of whom are equally out of touch). The reality is often very different.
Those of us who are affected by these decisions are also, of course, making decisions of our own which affect other people. What about our decisions? Do we always know how the consequences will play out? How our decisions will affect our partners, our friends, our colleagues or our customers?
We can never be 100% sure of the consequences of our decisions (and neither should we – nothing would ever get done!) But perhaps we should pause sometimes and think more deeply about who will be affected and how they will be affected. Having a better understanding of this at the outset guarantees better results (for everyone) in the long term.
Next time – LUC, the Law of Unintended Consequences.

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.midlifeop.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Views on The English Language

Most people agree that English is not the easiest language to learn. Apart from the fact that those of you in the US spell some words differently to those of us in the UK, there are so many grammatical rules, exceptions and irregularities that it amazes me how well non-English speaking people pick it up.


Signs provide a great source of examples of the ‘power’ of English and how it can be misused, abused or simply misunderstood. The ‘errant apostrophe’ is well documented – the greengrocer’s “Pea’s” or “it’s” used in the wrong context. But there are other examples that are more subtle. Here’s a couple that I’ve seen recently:

A sign in a local (very smart) pub: ‘We are looking for part time staff’. You feel like adding ‘If you see them, please send them home!’

Another sign in the toilets of a large hotel: ‘Smoking is prohibited in this hotel. If you observe anyone smoking, a complaint may be made to the management’. So if I see someone smoking, somebody might complain about me …

Have you seen any similar humorous examples?

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (http://www.midlifeop.com/), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Seth Godin's View of the Recession

Seth Godin has recently identified that there are, in fact, two recessions going on. Here is what he had to say in a recent blog post:

There are two recessions going on.

One is gradually ending. This is the cyclical recession, we have them all the time, they come and they go. Not fun, but not permanent.

The other one, I fear, is here forever. This is the recession of the industrial age, the receding wave of bounty that workers and businesses got as a result of rising productivity but imperfect market communication.

In short: if you're local, we need to buy from you. If you work in town, we need to hire you. If you can do a craft, we can't replace you with a machine.

No longer.

The lowest price for any good worth pricing is now available to anyone, anywhere. Which makes the market for boring stuff a lot more perfect than it used to be.

Since the 'factory' work we did is now being mechanized, outsourced or eliminated, it's hard to pay extra for it. And since buyers have so many choices (and much more perfect information about pricing and availability) it's hard to charge extra.

Thus, middle class jobs that existed because companies had no choice are now gone.

Protectionism isn't going to fix this problem. Neither is stimulus of old factories or yelling in frustration and anger. No, the only useful response is to view this as an opportunity. To poorly paraphrase Clay Shirky, every revolution destroys the last thing before it turns a profit on a new thing.

The networked revolution is creating huge profits, significant opportunities and a lot of change. What it's not doing is providing millions of brain-dead, corner office, follow-the-manual middle class jobs. And it's not going to.

Fast, smart and flexible are embraced by the network. Linchpin behavior. People and companies we can't live without (because if I can live without you, I'm sure going to try if the alternative is to save money).

The sad irony is that everything we do to prop up the last economy (more obedience, more compliance, cheaper yet average) gets in the way of profiting from this one.

This view makes a lot of sense to me and is particularly relevant to people in midlife who are seeking their next role. What do you think?

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Overcoming Impossible Situations

Whilst on holiday recently, I was sitting on the bed working on my laptop. The bedroom was on the second floor of a lovely country hotel with views out over fields and moors to the north Devon coast.  It was very peaceful and I was easily able to concentrate on writing my website updates, which were due the following Saturday.

As I tapped away on the keyboard a noise at the window suddenly made me jump. I looked up to see a shape at the window. How was this possible, the window was 8 metres above the ground?

After my initial shock I realised what was making the noise. It was the window cleaner’s brush! He had one of those long poles and was standing on the path outside, washing each window with ‘pure water’. (Many window cleaners now use de-ionised water which leaves fewer smears on the window – today’s extra bit of knowledge thrown in for free …)

The window cleaner had been able to reach my window with his long pole. When I was sitting in my bedroom, I had no expectation of anything banging on my window to distract me. I hadn’t really thought about it, but if I had, I would have concluded that nobody would be able to climb in through my second storey window. I would have been correct in that assumption, but wrong to think that nobody or nothing could reach the window and affect what was inside (me!)

Do you ever make assumptions about aspects of your life? Do you think that something is impossible, then find that somebody else has found a way?

There would have been several ways for the window cleaner, or anyone else, to reach my window:

• Use his pole
• Use a ladder
• Use a ‘cherry picker’
• Stand on three other people’s shoulders
• Build a lift
• Pole vault
• Bounce on springs
• etc

 Do you get my drift? Edward de Bono called it Lateral Thinking. Marketing executives call it ‘thinking outside of the box’. Whatever term you choose to use, it’s all about thinking of alternatives to the obvious.

Before you write off opportunities as ‘impossible’ or ‘not for me’, spend a few minutes thinking of alternative ways of approaching the problem. Look at it from different angles, put yourself in someone else’s shoes or break down the issue into smaller chunks. Ask yourself what questions a child might ask.

You might be surprised by your own creativity! 

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Rob Horlock has established The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com), a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Midlife crises and how to deal with them

Guest post by Udo Stadtsbuchler

In my work as a psychotherapist I have come across some causes for midlife crises, and one of the most common one was that men feel dissatisfied with what they had achieved and that they feel they can no longer rectify what "went wrong" in their lives.

Women main reasons for midlife crises were the onset of menopause and the empty nest syndrome, when the children had left home and no longer can be the focus point of motherly attention.

Oftentimes midlife crises for both sexes are temporary, and then life continues almost as before. But very often it has a very negative and lasting effect on the person and their families. These were the cases I mostly dealt with. Luckily all of them were resolved successfully. Here are some examples.

George (not his real name) is a typical example. He is in his early 50s, employed in middle management position in a "young" industry. His eldest son is on a similar dead end career path, his younger son works only occasionally whenever he feels like it. His wife is working in a very well paid and secure job. George buys himself a bike – you guessed it, it's a Harley Davidson – joins a biker club and now spends all of his spare time with his fellow club members. He completely neglects his wife and shows no interest in his sons. His wife endures this for many years. Only when she no longer just threatens with divorce but indeed files for it a few days short before his 64th birthday, can he be persuaded by her and the rest of the family to see me.

Hilda is in her mid 50s, with two grown up children no longer living with their parents. She is very unhappy in her marriage, unhappy with her life as a whole; but, for her more importantly, unhappy with her looks. She sees herself as being short (correct), fat (well, yes), frumpy (yes, it's true), and ugly (not true). She is incredibly jealous and is fearful that her husband has a girl friend (not true) and considers divorcing her (not true). She is insecure, has no confidence in herself, she is shy and withdrawn.

Bob and Mary both have been through their respective midlife crises, during which they went through emotional hell.  Bob's business had gone through a terrible slump and was close to going under; they both had formed other relationships and were about to getting divorced.  Now they both are in the 60+ years age group and they resolve to stay together. Business has improved dramatically, their respective other relationships ended. They decide to sell their house and the business, to retire and to move to Spain's Costa del Sol to have "a new start". What they did not know was that any form of change presents problems and challenges, and that a strong bond between the partners is needed to overcome these problems and to face up to the challenges. A strong bond gets even stronger under adverse circumstances; a weak bong gets weaker and can even break. Bob's and Mary's bond was still very weak.

What these examples have in common is that the individuals concerned experienced challenges, real or imagined, before they went into crisis mode. I suggest, therefore, that people do not go through midlife crises if they do not experience challenges, which can indeed be only imagined, and who are content or even happy with their life as a whole.

The best way of dealing with midlife crises and life's challenges is to follow my leitmotif, which is at the core of all my work: change the way you think and change your life.

In case of midlife crisis realize that this crisis is based on your feelings. Accept that you feel that way, do not deny it. Acceptance is the first step to change what you accept. Accept and resolve to make it better. And you make things better by changing the meaning of what is upsetting you. Reframe the circumstances that frustrate you. For example George, the chap in my first example, used his cognitive abilities – his intellect and his logic – to realize that he could not turn back the clock and become a youthful hell raiser again. He changed the meaning that he had given to his meaningless life as he saw it, to something positive and challenging. We created a new challenge for him, which he duly mastered and he runs now his own business with some 20 employees. He has shaved off his beard and sold his Harley.

The other examples that I presented - and many more - were resolved in similar manner. The sequences of how to go about it is accept, resolve, change meaning, and give yourself a meaningful challenge.

  Copyright ©2010 Udo Stadtsbuchler

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Udo Stadtsbuchler is a retired psychotherapist and lives on Spain's Costa del Sol. He is the author of Happiness Discovered.

Read an excerpt of it or buy it at http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451578784

For e-readers go to:  www.smashwords.com/books/view/20529

Follow Udo's blog:  http://udo-mindmatters.blogspot.com

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Midlife Knowledge Centre

What is the Mid Life Knowledge Centre? If you’re in midlife yourself then YOU are a midlife Knowledge Centre. The knowledge and experiences that you have built up over the years are unique to you – nobody else knows what you know! Nobody in the world has the same knowledge centre as you!

Think about what you have done during your life so far. Think about your education, the jobs that you’ve had, your hobbies, the places that you’ve visited, the people that you’ve met. Your background is unique to you and your knowledge centre is yours and yours only. Nobody can replace it.

So are you using your knowledge centre to the maximum?

If you’re in midlife and in work you have your knowledge and experience to draw on. You almost certainly know WHY something will or won’t work as well as HOW it works. You know that everything tends to be cyclical and you will have seen most of it before. You may have seen a new young brand manager join the team and immediately redesign the product’s packaging, to give the brand a ‘more contemporary identity’, perhaps. Do sales increase? Maybe, maybe not. To you, the new packaging looks very much like the packaging of ten years ago …

You’ll have seen a new team manager arrive and within weeks he/she will have re-organised the department (quite possibly back to how it looked two re-organisations previously). The new manager will have made other changes, looking for ‘quick wins’ (or, in consultantspeak, ‘Low Hanging Fruit’) to impress their boss. You will be able to guess the outcome, good or bad…

You will be using your knowledge centre to perform your role. Whether the organisation that you work for is using your knowledge centre to the maximum is another question entirely (answer – almost certainly not).

If you are currently without employment (and you’re too young to retire), then you are definitely not using your knowledge centre – or rather, you are not being allowed to use it!

Eastern civilisations understand that knowledge comes from experience and older people have an honoured role in the society. Whether it’s in the workplace, the family of the local community, the wisdom of older, more experienced, people is genuinely welcomed and acted upon.

This is not the case in western civilisations. In the west we tend to write off people in the workplace over 45 as being ‘too old’ or ‘too experienced’ (a euphemism for being too old …) The midlife knowledge centres of these people is being squandered, a terrible waste of years of experience. If 100,000 midlifers are seeking employment and they have worked, on average, for 25 years, that’s 2.5 million years of working experience going to waste!!!

So what’s to be done? People in midlife are probably the most under-supported demographic of all. Young people are offered help in many ways and any number of brands and publications focus on youth. Older people are offered support and assistance, though many are too proud to accept it. Midlifers, in the middle, are largely ignored! So, it’s up to you to use your own knowledge centre to make your mark.

Make a list of everything that you feel you know more about than the average person. It will be quite a long list if you think hard! Then consider what you really want to do with the rest of your life – career, lifestyle, relationships, etc. Then make a plan to go out and get it!

If it’s career, then start networking – online and offline – with previous colleagues and new contacts. If you’re looking for a new relationship, try online dating – it’s much easier than trying to meet someone at a club or an evening class. Try http://www.midlifelove.singlescrowd.com/ as a place to start.

Join The Mid Life Opportunity and add your voice to the midlife community – and make new friends along the way …

Nobody said that it would be easy but if you don’t start the process yourself, nobody is going to start it for you!

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Midlife Women in September

Midlife is a time when everything changes and life is calling you to shed what no longer works and 

find what will work for your body and your mind.

Do you have a plan?

Do you even know where to turn for information you can trust?

Join Gregory Anne Cox as she interviews 13 experts in all aspects of midlife mind and body health, whose collective mission is to give you the goods to rock your second half.
They’ve got the information you can trust to bring you vibrant health, help you lose weight, ground and calm you in any situation, and bring some humour to the push-me/pull-you that is our daily struggle.
Take a look at who has agreed to be on the phone during September for a series of 60 minute interviews - nothing but honest, life-changing information!

(If you’ve come back here and have not yet signed up, what are you hesitating for? Reserve your FREE tele-spot here)

Spending time with these successful professionals will be a great gift to give yourself if you care about your health and feeling your best.
When was the last time you felt really, really great? When did you last wake up in the morning refreshed and remain feeling that way throughout the day 'til it was time to hit the hay?
Can't remember?
Do yourself a favour and listen to Gregory Anne and her guests - you know you're worth it!

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

The Midlife Jigsaw

Most midlifers will have completed their fair share of jigsaw puzzles. From 20 piece puzzles as a child, though 100 piece puzzles when you were a little older to 1000 piece puzzles when you were on holiday with the rain lashing against the windows of your holiday home. And plenty more in between.

What did they have in common? Most likely, you would have completed the outside first, then completed the ‘obvious’ patterns, then filled in the more difficult bits – the blue sky, the green grass or the tiger’s body. What your puzzles would also have in common, very often, would be the odd missing piece. Maybe some pieces had fallen under the table or perhaps a previous ‘puzzler’ had forgotten to put a few pieces back in the box (how irritating is that!)

So what?

 Have you ever felt like a lost puzzle piece? Have you ever felt that everyone else’s life is running along very smoothly – their piece of the puzzle is nicely slotted into position – while yours is going pear-shaped? Perhaps your relationship has come to its natural end. You look around and all of your friends seem happy in their lives; they are sitting comfortably in their position in the jigsaw while you feel like the missing piece of the puzzle.

Perhaps you’ve lost your job with no apparent chance of finding alternative employment in your area. You and the jigsaw piece under the table will have a lot in common. The recession of the early 21^st century is very reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle. Most people are largely unaffected (although they think they are) and are nicely placed in the correct position in the jigsaw.

Some people lose their jobs and become the jigsaw pieces that need to find their position or worse, they become the puzzle pieces that fall under the table or get lost. These are the people who have born the brunt of the recession and have struggled to find themselves back in the mix. For many, their position in the jigsaw remains elusive and they continue to struggle to find gainful employment. For others, their jigsaw piece remains outside of the puzzle but through hard work, thinking outside of the box and a fair degree of lateral thinking, they find their rightful place back in the jigsaw.

It’s a very rewarding feeling to complete a complex jigsaw puzzle. It’s even more rewarding if your piece of the puzzle is retrieved from under the table and finds its rightful place back in the puzzle through your ingenuity, resourcefulness and sheer hard work.

You don’t have to remain outside of the completed puzzle but you could choose to do so. Don’t!

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here

Ever wondered what a colonoscopy feels like?

If you've had one you'll understand and if you haven't, your time is coming. 

This is from newshound Dave Barry's colonoscopy journal: 

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a colour diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR ASS!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.  Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavour.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep.

You mix two packets of powder together in a one-litre plastic jug, and then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a litre is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humour, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you really wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom.You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another litre of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening in the John, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers or even a gold watch would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand.  Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too smashed to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house..

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere.  I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.  Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent.  I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colours. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Midlife Pulitzer Prize-winning humour columnist for the Miami Herald.  

On the subject of Colonoscopies...
Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous..... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'

5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'

6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'

7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out....'

8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!

10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'

12. "Now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all.

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

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The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) is a community for people in Midlife. Advice and Guidance is available from The Mid Life Coaching Panel. It’s free to join - click here