10 Reasons to 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 and regulars readers of this blog will have seen me use it before …)

So what’s holding you back? Please let me know and perhaps we can work together to move forward.  Join The Mid Life Opportunity where this will become a major theme when the main site launches at the end of the summer.

You’ve got in you, I’m sure!

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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? Complete the form on the right hand side of this post…Tx

The 2010 MidLife Lifestyle Survey – Results

Note: this is a long post, you may only want to read  the main points!

As we’ve reached the mid point of the year, it’s time to review the results of the 2010 MidLife Lifestyle survey. So here are the headlines:

Survey Respondents’ Profile:

Male: 36%,  Female: 64%

Age: 30-40: 5%, 40-50: 32%, 50-60 49%, other: 14%

Location: UK 47%, USA 42%, Europe 5%, other 6%

Q1 - Happiness with Life:

55% of respondents were either happy or very happy with their lives at the moment. A further 32% were ‘OK.’ The remainder were either unhappy or very unhappy

Q2 - How is your Relationship?

26% of respondents said that they were happy and an encouraging 32% said that they were in love. Perhaps more worryingly, 19% said that ‘they don’t do relationships’. 22% were just ‘OK’.

Comments in this section included:

‘I've been divorced for about 20 years. I don't long for a relationship. I'm so busy with kids and grands, I never think of "being alone." In fact, when folks ask if there are any singles in the group... I look around to see who they might be talking about. I'm not single. I'm not married. I'm just a very happy me!’

‘31 years of marriage both now have a PHD in marriage’

‘I feel fortunate to have a partnership that works. Not that there are not disagreements, there are. We just know how to solve them.’

‘I find it ironic that the biggest decision you make in your life happens for most in their late teens. I wish I could have been the person I am now making relationship decisions.’

‘but it's with myself!’

Q3 – Will your Pension provide for you?

A worryingly high 26% of respondents don’t have a pension, while 22% felt that their pension would cover their needs in later life. A huge 32% regretted not saving more during their earlier years. 18% had other investments, either instead of, or as well as, a pension.

Comment in this section included:

‘We are never retiring but hope to get refired!’ (love it!)

‘I saved like heck and had a wonderful retirement. The down turns in the stock market have wiped me out. Now I feel I'm starting from scratch.’

‘I do not plan to retire. I believe in being productive right up to the end.’

‘I'm hopeful that my financial situation will change. However, I know it is up to me to make it change’

‘I am still saving and investing’

‘I am working on passive income and believe it will cover expenses plus more.’

Q4- How Healthy are you?

43% said that they were OK for their age and 28% felt they were Pretty Fit. 25% were overweight, to some extent. 4% said that they could ‘Run a Marathon’.

One respondent had a problem this question, as they felt that someone who is overweight could still run a marathon. I completely accept that this is quite true and I wasn’t trying to mislead when I wrote the questions.

Q5-Is your life better or worse than your parents lives?

This question caused confusion for several people and when I rerun the survey I will reword it. Some respondents felt that there should be a distinction between the financial side of their lives and the emotional/satisfaction side of things.

Overall 87% felt that their lives were better than their parents’ lives.

Comments in this section included:

‘There should be "about the same" choice here. My parents had a nice life, and mine is nice too. Not really better or worse. I did not have children, and they raised myself and my siblings - so their young life might have been worse than mine.’

‘My dad made enough for my mom to stay home w/the 2 kids, but they went without a lot of stuff. Both my husband and I work (I'm in my own business, coming up on year 2) so the money's not always there, and that adds a lot of stress to him.’

‘My dad was a happy person and my mother was very unhappy. It was a big division they could never figure out.’

‘Much more emotionally healthy but not better financially yet.’

‘That's a tough question...I don't see it as worse, I see it as different. I chose worse because of financial situations.’

‘My parents never led spiritual lives. As a result, they never really experienced the joy that they could have, and wanted to have, yet they wonder why everything turned out the way it did. It was all due to their personal choices. I meant my life would be different and that I would break that cycle, or curse that tried to be injected into my thinking. I did so by searching for the real meaning of happiness and disregarding all of the negative circumstances that I lived in, and learned that many things I was taught while growing up wasn't my truth. I knew life was not supposed to be lived that way at a very early age. Now I feel as though God set me apart from my family as I have yet to see those changes take place within them. The sad thing about it...I cannot impart that to them. It's too late. I worry about their salvation because of this.’

‘ think I'm happier, but they are wealthier’

Q6- How do you feel about your Life in General?

An encouraging 63% are looking forward to the rest of their lives and 28% feel that ‘the best is yet to come’ (many of these will be the same people). 7% wish they’d studied harder when they were young and 18% are worried about the rest of their lives. A strong theme was a worry about the world that their children will live in with 19% indicating this (see comments below).

Comments in this section included:

‘I can't keep worrying about "what had happened", because it's in the past - so it can't be changed. It can be learned from, however, so hopefully I'll continue to grow as I ripen with age. I do worry about the world my kids are inheriting, but hopefully we'll give them the tools they'll need to make a difference :)’

‘I am concerned about the problems my kids and grand kids run up against, but I am not worried. I actively work to make it better.’

‘But I do worry about the world my children live in to some extent. Healing the planet in an emotional, spiritual sense, as well as ecologically, is important to me.’

‘Overall, pretty good.’

‘Counting my Blessings!’

Conclusions:

So what do we conclude from this survey? Overall, there was a broad spectrum of responses with the majority of midlifers feeling that their lives are going 'OK to Well' but a worrying number feel that there financial provision could be better. Given the state of the world economy, that’s not a huge surprise.

Relationships are a very mixed bag, probably reflecting the fact that many midlifers will have ended a long term relationship (either willingly or unwillingly). I was surprised to see that almost a fifth of respondents ‘don’t do relationships’. It would be interesting to probe deeper into those responses.

It’s encouraging that the majority of midlifers are looking forward to the rest of their lives. Equally encouraging is the concern over the world that our children and grandchildren will live in and the hope is that some of us will actively try to make this better.

It will be interesting to see how the 2011 MidLife Lifestyle Survey compares. If you have any questions that you would like me to include in the next survey, please let me know.

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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? Complete the form on the right hand side of this post…Tx

The Art of Making Money

I recently came across a book by P T Barnum (of Barnum and Bailey Circus fame) titled The Art of Money Getting. I have listed below the chapter headings. When you read them, bear in mind that this book was written 130 years ago …

DON'T MISTAKE YOUR VOCATION

SELECT THE RIGHT LOCATION

AVOID DEBT

PERSEVERE

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT

USE THE BEST TOOLS

DON'T GET ABOVE YOUR BUSINESS

LEARN SOMETHING USEFUL

LET HOPE PREDOMINATE, BUT BE NOT TOO VISIONARY

DO NOT SCATTER YOUR POWERS

BE SYSTEMATIC

READ THE NEWSPAPERS

BEWARE OF "OUTSIDE OPERATIONS"

DON'T INDORSE WITHOUT SECURITY

ADVERTISE YOUR BUSINESS

"DON'T READ THE OTHER SIDE"

BE POLITE AND KIND TO YOUR CUSTOMERS

BE CHARITABLE

DON'T BLAB

PRESERVE YOUR INTEGRITY

If we were writing a list today, it wouldn’t be too different, would it? OK, we’d use different words in some cases and some of the tools have changed. For example, for many businesses, ‘Location’ no longer refers to the double fronted property on the corner of the High St. Now, it’s the first page on Google.

The fact remains that to be successful in 2010, a business has to follow the age old principles highlighted by P T Barnum in 1880. The internet has changed the world but not so much that we can overlook sound business practise. Interesting.

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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? Complete the form on the right hand side of this post…Tx

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

Searching for what you really want

There was a very, very tall coconut tree and four animals:

a Lion

a Chimpanzee

a Giraffe

a Squirrel 

They decide to compete to see who is the fastest to get a banana off of the tree.

Who do you think won?

Your answer will reflect your personality.

So think carefully.  Try and answer within 30 seconds.

Got your answer?

Now scroll down to see the analysis.

If your answer is:

Lion = you're wrong
Chimpanzee = you're wrong.
Giraffe = you're wrong.
Squirrel  = you're wrong.

Because, of course, a coconut tree doesn’t grow bananas!

This is a great example of us seeing what we expect to see, or anticipating an outcome which we expect, but which was never going to happen.

In the UK, it’s often said that the High Street in every town now looks the same – same shops, same signs, same people in many cases. This is true but not if you look up. Look at the architecture of the buildings, look at the rooflines. There are some wonderful old buildings around in our High Streets and we never take the time to notice.

Or we look where we usually look. We look where we expect to find the answer.  When you’re working, how often do you look for the unexpected? How often do you walk a different path? If you work for a large organisation, or have done in the past, I bet you park in the same parking spot every day! 

So take a lesson from the Coconut tree and don’t try to find bananas growing on it. Don’t assume that you’re going to see or hear something before it happens. 

Don’t anticipate a negative response to a sales question because that’s what usually happens – prepare for a positive response. The tone of your voice will change and that alone may subconsciously direct your prospective customer to agree with you.  

Try it, you might go bananas!

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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? Complete the form on the right hand side of this post…Tx

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

The Aura of Power

Here is an excerpt from columnist Quentin Letts (recommended read if you’ve never heard of him) who was reporting an exchange in the British House of Commons between Michael Gove and Ed Balls. Conservative Michael Gove has just been appointed Education Secretary in the new Coalition government...

“For years he has cut a pigeon-chested figure, never quite seeming to fill his single-breasted suits, always looking as though he could do with some more mashed potato on his plate.

Yesterday (after his appointment) he cut a chunkier figure. It was almost as though office had bulked him out and had made him plant his feet more stoutly on the floor.

The suit looked more expensive, too.

This once spindly, now almost sleek, Secretary of State refused to show contrition for newspaper leaks about his schools policy... (etc)”

When people are in positions of power they seem to grow in stature. It’s not so much body language as an ‘aura’ around them which gives them this stature. They appear confident, positive and self-assured. If you don’t necessarily believe in them, at least you can respect them.

The reverse is true when they lose their positions of power. I have worked for two directors who, when they lost their jobs, seemed to visibly shrink in size. Suddenly, they lost their aura and they looked very ordinary indeed.

Why is this? They are the same people and their personalities haven’t changed. Yet their whole being is diminished.

Do we build them up in our minds? Are we overawed by them or is their something more?

I believe there’s something more, but I don’t know what it is!  What do you think?

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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 here FREE!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

Midlife Worries - Focus your Energy

Do you find yourself worrying over all sorts of things? Perhaps you worry about whether or not the weather’s going to be hot on your holiday. Are you concerned that peace will never be reached in The Middle East? Do you find yourself stressing that interest rates might rise, making the mortgage more expensive?

Steven Covey, in his book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People’ highlights the difference between those things that concern us and those things which we can influence. The ‘two circles’ diagram below highlights this difference.

The two circles represent the areas where you spend your time and energy. Many Midlifers focus too much time and energy in the outer circle, their Circle of Concern. This is where they spend their time worrying about things that are outside of their control, things that they can’t influence, however much they agonise over them – the weather, the Middle East and interest rates, for example. Preoccupying yourself by worrying about issues such as this is a waste of time and a waste of your energy.

Steven Covey identified that highly effective people worry about things that they can influence, they don’t waste their time worrying about things over which they have no control. They spend their time and energy inside the inner circle, thinking of ways to address the issues that they can influence, where they can actually make a difference.

Where do you spend most of your time and energy?

Exercise:

In the outer circle, write down all of the things that you worry about or spend time thinking about on a regular basis. Take each one and ask yourself ‘What can I do about this to change the situation?’ If there is something that you can do to improve the situation, write this issue inside the second circle, the Circle of Influence and delete it from the outer circle.
When you have completed this exercise you will have split your issues into two sections – those that you can’t do anything about and those that you can influence. It is the latter set of issues, those inside your Circle of Influence, which you should spend your time on. Ignore the rest – if you can’t do anything about them, why waste your time and energy worrying about them?

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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 here FREE!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

The Mid Life Crossroads

Many people feel as if they have reached a crossroads at some point during their mid life. They can see two (or more) paths in front of them. One path is a continuation of their current life, the other(s) lead off in different directions. The relative size of the paths will dictate which path the Mid Lifer chooses to take. If the current life path looks like a motorway (freeway) and the alternatives look like country lanes, it is likely that our Mid Lifer will continue with their current life.

They might dally for a while down one of the country lanes (change their wardrobe, take an evening class) but their life won’t change dramatically. But if one of the alternatives looks like a motorway, and the current life path looks like a gravel track, then watch out – change is coming. For better or for worse.

It may be a change of career, a new relationship or a full blown mid life crisis.

Seeing the crossroads up ahead can seem quite daunting but it can also be quite liberating, It’s very easy to be ‘stuck in a rut’ and we all know people who are stuck in their own rut. They’re not happy, they moan about most aspects of their life but they are too frightened or lazy to do anything about it. They will be the people who get to the end of their lives and think ‘if only…’

Sometimes the crossroads appear out of nowhere, like driving in the fog. You might be made redundant or your partner might decide that their relationship with you just isn’t working any longer. These crossroads are much more difficult to manage as you don’t feel in control. You feel like ‘flotsam and jetsam’ tossed around by the tide and pitching up on the shore at some point but not the point where you’d like to be.

The important thing is to take the positive view – yes, it’s easier said than done but there is always a positive angle to every situation. If the crossroads is thrust upon you and you suddenly find yourself travelling down a strange road, stop, take stock and regroup.

Understand that you’re not alone. You won’t be the first person to travel down this road (or the last). You will have friends or relatives that can help you. If not, there are self help groups everywhere which you can tap into – the internet is a wonderful, life changing development! The Mid Life Opportunity (www.MidLifeOp.com) has been set up for exactly this reason.

Questions about Facebook - help please!

This isn’t the blog that I was planning to write today, but …

I am hoping that someone in the blogosphere will read this and help me with a problem which, I suspect, affects a lot of others, not just me!

I have a Facebook personal page and my avatar is an image of my cat Coco:

I have now set up a separate page for The Mid Life Opportunity, using a picture of me, to show that I exist…J

When I ‘Like’ other people’s Fan Pages, Coco appears as the avatar, not me. This shows that I am visiting the page as my Personal profile not my Page profile.

Is there any way that I can amend my settings so that I can keep my personal ‘Likes’ separate from my business ‘Likes’?

Similarly, my blog updates appear on my personal page as well as my Fan Page, despite me having adjusted the privacy settings (as far as I can see).

If any of you Facebook experts could help me with this, to separate what my personal 'friends' see and my business 'friends' see, I’d be very appreciative!

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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 here FREE!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

Changing Jobs in Mid Life

I recently had a slightly surreal experience which set me thinking about the way that we each view our world.

We arranged to take a long weekend break in Europe that involved getting a taxi to the station, arriving at 4am – an early start! The taxi duly dropped us off just before 4 and we were blearily taking our cases out of the car when a 20something lad wandered up and asked the taxi driver if he could take him home.

So here we were, talking to the same taxi driver about the same taxi but from a completely different perspective – we were starting our day and looking forward to going to France and our 20something friend was ending a long night out and looking forward to his bed.  We were in the same place but viewing the situation from a completely different perspective.

The same is true of politics – I can see it’s the government’s fault, you blame the world crisis. We’re both looking at the same situation.

And music – we listen to the same song – you love it, I hate it.

What about the mid life relationship crisis? Let’s say that your friend becomes involved with a young bride or a toy boy. Whether the new love interest is from Russia, Thailand or from the same country as your friend, do they really think that it’s all going to have a happy ending? You don’t, they do …

So what do we learn from this? That we all view the world with different eyes? This probably indicates that Mid Lifers typically see things differently to younger people. Mid Lifers have more experience to draw on, more real life examples of what works and what doesn’t – the generation gap, if you like. In the world of work, does this prejudice younger people (the hiring managers) against Mid Lifers?

If you’re looking to change jobs, or need to find a new job because you’ve been made redundant, ask yourself where you are most likely to be successful and happy. You will probably have a lot of transferable skills but that doesn’t mean that they can be transferred everywhere. Think about where you are most likely to be happy – that is probably going to be where you can also add most value. If you’ve worked in the customer service department of a big company and you like gardening, working in a large garden centre might strike the right notes for you. If you’re in your 40s, worked in local government for the last 15 years and play in a band at weekends, you’re very unlikely to be happy working in the media. Do you see the difference?

Working in a garden centre ticks the ‘gardening’ box, the ‘customer service’ box and the ‘midlife’ box.

Working in the media ticks the ‘music’ box but most definitely doesn’t tick the ‘mid life’ box – the media is populated with young, thrusting ‘metrosexuals’ who are unlikely to share most of your midlife views of the world.

So understand that we all view the world from different standpoints and that this may affect your chances of landing that new job and ultimately, your likelihood of being happy and productive in your new role. Think about the working environments in which your views and those of your potential new boss and colleagues are likely to coincide rather than conflict – this is where you will find happiness and fulfilment in your work.

Sounds obvious? Maybe, but how many Mid Lifers think they know better!

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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 here FREE!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

Win 1 million dollars! Your prediction is ... ?

On Friday 11^th June, football’s World Cup will kick off in South Africa; the world’s largest sporting event.

On Saturday 12^th June, England play the USA. What is your prediction for the score? 3-0 to England? 4-1 to the USA?

Predict the correct score and become the King or Queen of ‘Across the Pond Pundits!’

As a bit of fun, please add your prediction of the score as a comment on this blog. All predictions placed up until the time of the kick off will be included in the competition. The winner(s) will receive a very valuable prize of a gold crown (jpg or png) and 1 million, yes I million! Zimbabwean dollars (photocopied - rates of exchange may vary on a daily basis but the cost of conversion may outweigh the value of the prize …)

To give you some guidance, the current odds are as follow:

England 1 USA 0: 9/2

England 2 USA 0: 11/2

England 2 USA 1: 7/1

England 0 USA 1: 14/1

England 0 USA 2: 35/1

England 1 USA 2: 19/1

England 1 USA 1: 6/1

England 2 USA 2: 16/1

England 5 USA 0: 50/1

England 0 USA 5: 500/1

My prediction, for what it’s worth, is a 2:2 draw – which will give England the necessary kick up the *ss to go on and reach the final!

The name of the winner(s) will be published to millions?, thousands?, hundreds? of Twitter followers on Monday 14^th June.

Please tweet this message to all of your followers to encourage as many predictions as possible.

Happy predicting!

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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 here FREE!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

The Keys to Successful Dieting in Midlife - or not! The Mid Life Devil’s Advocate View

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!

Please take 1 minute to complete the 2010 Mid Life Survey: Click here

What is a Billion?

A Billion

A short but to the point post today:

What is a billion? The US definition is 1,000,000,000 or a thousand million. This is generally the definition which is used by politicians and bankers so when you read that the UK national debt is currently £160 billion, that’s a hundred and sixty thousand million pounds. It makes me wonder why I bother worrying about my overdraft!

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

• A billion seconds ago it was 1959. 
• A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. 
• A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. 
• A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth. 
• A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate the government is spending it. 

The last point is US focused, but you get the idea – a billion £/$/Euro is a hell of a lot of money!

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