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for February, 2010.
By Gwen
Editor’s note: The following article by David Bank, vice president of Civic Ventures, appears in the Fall 2009 edition of Generations, the journal of the American Society of Aging. See below for more information about the issue.
The Great Recession is over, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and other officials have declared. It might not feel that way to the 10 percent of Americans who are officially unemployed, including the more than 2 million out-of-work Americans over age 55 whose ranks have more than doubled in two years.
If it’s back to business as usual for bankers and traders, it’s anything but for those at or near what used to be called retirement age. Nearly two-thirds of those ages 50 to 61 expect to delay their retirement because of the recession, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. Nearly four of every 10 adults who are still working at age 62 have already delayed their retirement plans.
The loss of nearly $3 trillion in retirement assets since September 2007 has turned what once was hotly debated into conventional wisdom: Most Americans, of all income brackets, will work longer, not only longer than their own earlier expectations, but longer than recent generations have worked.
For many, working longer will mean not just a few more years on the job, but a whole new stage of work in later life. And for many of them, that stage could be long enough to provide a chance to change their priorities, live their values, fulfill their dreams, or leave their legacy; that is to establish “encore careers” that combine financial security with personal meaning and social impact.
With jobs of any sort scarce for older workers, it may seem paradoxical to predict that this downturn will establish encore careers as the new norm for the period between the end of our midlife careers and the advent of true old age. And it sounds downright pollyannaish to suggest that older adults could play a key role in the response to national challenges, in education, health care, environmental sustainability and other urgent areas.
The only thing more outlandish would be to expect the revival of the late-20th-century-model of ever-earlier retirement spent entirely in the pursuit of leisure.
Indeed, the economic crisis has accelerated the emergence of the encore career by driving a stake into the heart of the old vision of the Golden Years. Traditional retirement – which itself was invented only in the 1940s and 1950s – was in decline well before the current meltdown. Secure pensions have been replaced by inadequate 401(k) and IRA savings. Retiree health insurance coverage has faded while out-of-pocket health care costs have soared. Even without additional benefit cuts, Social Security is set to replace an ever-smaller percentage of preretirement income. The Pew survey found that financial worries spanned the economic spectrum, with 69 percent of those with family incomes under $30,000 and 76 percent of those with incomes of more than $100,000 saying the recession is making it harder to take care of their retirement finance needs.
All that has produced a near-consensus that longer working lives are the most practical way to restore a semblance of personal financial security, and perhaps save the federal treasury as well. As Alicia Munnell and her colleagues at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College point out, working even two to four additional years increases current income, boosts both 401(k) balances and Social Security benefits, and reduces the number of years to be covered by retirement savings, all of which can dramatically increase standards of living.
But there is little consensus among policy makers and experts about how to restructure institutions to encourage such a result. For individuals, the urgency of finding a job, restoring lost income, or salvaging life savings often means short-term crisis management trumps long-term personal planning and priorities. Claims for Social Security benefits at the early retirement age of 62, for example, have been surging, a reflection of the immediate financial pressure facing millions of older adults.
As economic growth gradually returns and short-term responses give way to long-term thinking, however, we have an opportunity to reshape the job market for older adults around a new vision of personal success and social impact.
If economic necessity is the push toward longer working lives, social purpose is a pull. The 2008 MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Encore Career Survey found that between 6 percent and 9.5 percent of Americans ages 44 to 70, or between 5.3 million and 8.4 million people, are already in their encore careers, even if they don’t yet use that term. Of those people not already in encore careers, 50 percent said they want to use their talents to improve society by working in public service or the nonprofit sector, in education, health care and similar fields. That is, more than half of the huge baby boom population have or want to have social-purpose encore careers, and interest is even higher among younger boomers, ages 44 to 50.
Chuck Spayne, 59 years old, embodies both the challenge and the potential. In April, Spayne was laid off from Intel Corp., where he had worked for 27 years, mostly fixing and installing heating and cooling equipment at Intel’s facilities. “I thought I would retire there,” he says.
Getting little response to his job inquiries, Spayne rekindled an earlier interest and enrolled in a two-week solar-energy training course. The growth in clean energy, he figures, will create opportunities. Rather than become an installer himself, however, Spayne now plans to use his job experience and building skills to train inner-city youth for green-collar jobs. “I love to teach,” he says. “You teach them something new, and they in turn come back and teach you.”
The new vision of work will obviously vary by age and circumstance. For people who are employed, the most sensible response to the loss of savings or home equity is probably to remain in their current jobs for a few more years. But for those contemplating seven, 10 or even 12 more years of work, a career-shift may present an exciting new challenge. And for those not currently working – retirees returning to the workforce after finding their assets stretched too thin, or a worker laid off from a shrinking industry like autos or newspapers – the jump to a new field may be a practical necessity.
As it happens, many of the (few) remaining areas of job growth may be well-suited to encore careers. Hiring in health care, education and government service has held up more strongly than in most other areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A chronic shortage of nurses has persisted through the downturn, for example, though many health systems have imposed hiring freezes and some geographical areas have reported gluts. And in schools, where more than half of all teachers – 1.7 million educators – are approaching retirement age, the talent shortage is greater than current recruitment strategies can handle.
Government investment in these areas has the potential to deliver measurable gains against social challenges and to create opportunities. The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act steered investments to education, health care and creation of green jobs. The same areas are prioritized in the new Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which envisions a major expansion of national service programs and a new focus on career transitions. An important aspect of the bill is that it targets 10 percent of the anticipated 250,000 AmeriCorps positions for programs that provide opportunities for Americans over age 55, and it includes 500 “encore fellowships” designed specifically for those seeking longer-term encore careers in high-need areas.
The crush of applicants for many second-career teaching programs is another indicator of how people are thinking about their remaining years of work. The new Traders to Teachers program at Montclair State University in New Jersey, which trains laid-off Wall Street finance professionals as high-school math teachers, received 200 application for its first class of twenty five this fall despite the prospect of a steep pay cut compared to what they’d received onWall Street. Collin College, a community college near Dallas, has fielded 900 inquiries about its fast-track teacher preparation programs – twice as many as last year. In California, the EnCorps Teachers initiative recently received more than 1,000 inquiries in a three-month period.
“From my first moment back in the classroom, I have been completely reenergized,” Gordon Jones, a 54-year-old math teach in Greenwich, Connecticut, told The Wall Street Journal . After twenty-seven years on Wall Street, he says, “interacting with the students is a pleasure, and the feeling that you can help them is very satisfying. There are no regrets.”
Social purpose can be seen as a job benefit to offset lower monetary compensation, as can reduced stress and greater flexibility. The AARP Public Policy Institute earlier this year released a study of 1,705 workers who were surveyed over 14 years beginning in 1992. Two-thirds of the workers who changed jobs, or more than a quarter of all the workers, switched occupations. The new careers generally meant significant pay cuts, loss of health insurance benefits or pensions, and reductions in perceived social standing. But the career-switchers reported higher job-satisfaction, with sharp drops in stressful conditions and big increases in flexibility.
The writer Kurt Anderson , author of “Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America,” sees a broader cultural shift, toward simpler lives and practical tangible work. Wikipedia now defines “downshifting” not as something you do in a manual-transmission car, but as “a social behavior or trend in which individuals live simpler lives to escape from the rat race of obsessive materialism and to reduce the stress, overtime, and psychological expense that may accompany it.”
As encore careers become part of this new definition of success, organizations have an opportunity to reconfigure job descriptions to deploy the skills and experience of older adults in new ways. Some encore careers will provide full-time, market-level compensation – for example, for corporate managers who apply their experience to the myriad needs of nonprofit organizations.
But even modestly paid jobs can be a viable economic proposition, particularly if the time frame for an encore career is extended. In a fifteen-year encore career, for example, it’s possible to see compensation as a substitute for retirement income, rather than for peak-level earnings. There’s a solid business case for new kinds of jobs that offer satisfaction, impact, and a level of compensation that may be adequate, if not lavish. Think mentors and trainers who help young people successfully transition to college or the work force, or “health navigators” who can help reduce costs at the same time they improve health outcomes for patients leaving the hospital. By contributing program management, technical expertise, training, and mentoring, baby boomers can expand opportunities for young people, not compete with them for limited job openings and funding.
Encore careers that deliver personal significance, social impact, and job satisfaction can make longer working lives an attractive and accessible proposition for both higher- and lower-income individuals. The new, older working class increasingly includes what marketers have called the “mass affluent,” now stripped of much of their affluence. Even before the downturn, a McKinsey Global Institute study found twenty-four million boomer households approaching retirement with lofty lifestyle aspirations but limited financial resources. Nearly seven out of ten households of people ages 50 to 63 were financially unprepared for retirement, the study found.
But increased institutional and financial support for encore careers for less educated and lower-income workers is particularly important to democratize the “privilege” of working longer in satisfying, purposeful jobs that is already enjoyed by the affluent and educated elites. While lower-income and less-educated workers may need the continued income more, numerous studies have shown that they are less able to continue working, both because of increased health problems and because of reduced demand for their skills. As of December 2008 men age 55 and older who did not complete high school were more than twice as likely to be unemployed as those with some college education . The scarce availability and high cost of health insurance is a major impediment to encore careers, locking many people in jobs they are otherwise ready to leave, or limiting their choices to new jobs that provide such coverage.
Regardless of the circumstances, it’s rarely easy to move from the end of a midlife career to an encore career. Transitions typically require time and training or preparation of some kind, plus financial resources.
A variety of institutions are starting to respond to these challenges. Dozens of community colleges, for example, have established encore career transition programs to help boomers retool their skills for high-need areas. The stimulus bill included an additional $125 million for the Senior Community Service Employment program (SCSEP), which helps low-income older adults with job skills and placements in part-time community services assignments. But funding constraints limit SCSEP to serving only a fraction of the older adults who could benefit.
The national service encore fellowships called for by the Serve America Act were inspired by a small pilot program in the Silicon Valley launched by Civic Ventures last year. That program, backed by Hewlett-Packard and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, provides corporate managers and others seeking encore careers in education and the environment with year-long positions in high-performing nonprofits, along with modest compensation and career-transition support. Corporations, foundations, and government agencies are pursuing plans to expand the model state- and nationwide.
Employer attitudes toward older workers remain a significant barrier, but actual experience with encore employees appears to reduce employers’ concerns. Last year’s “Tapping Encore Talent” survey by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures found that half of nonprofit employers see encore employees as “highly appealing,” citing their experience, commitment, and reliability. And those who have recently hired late-career workers are even more positive. Many nonprofit employers continue to have “serious concerns” – that encore workers could cost more in salaries and benefits, would be reluctant to learn new technology and lack technical and professional skills. But least concerned are the employers with the most experience with encore workers. The survey found that seven out of ten nonprofit employers rated the experience that encore workers bring to the job as a significant benefit.
An economic crisis as deep as the one we have gone through is too valuable to waste. The collapse of the old system of retirement is ushering in an era of longer working lives. A successful transition to an encore career produces a win-win: progress against social challenges and the bolstering of personal financial security. Let’s make sure that personal meaning and social impact are at the center of the new stage of work.
Generations is Copyright © 2010 American Society on Aging. Reprinted under license.
This article originally appeared in the Fall, 2009 edition of Generations: The Journal of the American Society of Aging.
Read (pdf) “The Economic Crisis: How Fare Older Americans?” by guest editors Jennifer Hicks and Eric R. Kingson.
Purchase the entire issue in downloadable form here.
Order hard copies of the issue here.
By Gwen
Who have you come here to be? “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” In our world of busy-ness, rarely do people inquire of themselves or of each other, “Who have we come here to be?” Instead we gather at parties and PTA events and ask each other, “So, what do you do?” As a society we have become conditioned to think of ourselves in terms of what we do. And when we size each other up in an isntant, looking at clothes, cars, shoes, etc. we are defining ourselves by what we have.
The key is to be more interested in your spiritual purpose than your job or the outer evidence of fulfillment. You may be wondering what is yours to do in the world, only because doing and having seem to contain the power to complete you. You may strive, and seek, and search relentlessly to know what is yours to do, because doing leads to having, and having seems to contain a measure of relief and protection for the uncertainties and discomforts of life. Deep down inside, you may intuitively know that your happiness is not in things or in your capacity to succeed. It is somehow rooted in a more intangible knowing of your own worth and capacity to make a difference. What might your life be like if your search for what is yours to do was informed by who and what you have come here to BE?
Who have you come here to be? We are the ones we have been waiting for. You are the one you have been waiting for.
Gary Simmons & Rima Bonario
The Art and Practice of Living with
Nothing and No One Against You
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Who have YOU come here to BE?
Gwen
By Gwen
There is only one way to join the high-earning game. You jump right in. You set your intention, let go of the ledge, and just start — anywhere. It really makes no difference where you begin as long as you’re playing in the game To Win. Nor does it matter how gracefully you enter. Each woman I spoke to make the leap in her own unique way, some more calculated than others.
As you would expect, many of those whith an MBA under their belts jumped directly into high-paying jobs fresh out of college, often in big-ticket industries like investment banking or management consulting. Others started at the bottom in pay and position, then rose up thru the ranks. Over the years their salaries evolved along with their responsibilities.
Some of the women I interviewed were very methodical about their every move. Others leapfrogged from job to job. Still others, like Michele Page, sprang into self-employment with one simple act: She put a business card on a public bulletin oard. “Two days later I got a call from a publicist who needed a graphic designer. He fed me so much business for a year, I was working non-stop.” And surprisingly, a lot of women I interviewed literally stumbled onto the six-figure path without much forethought about which direction they wanted to go in.
The real beauty of the game To Win is that you can begin playing anytime, ready or not. You don’t need all the pieces in place or your route all mapped out. You don’t need extensive training or formal education. In fact, you don’t need to know much at all. You just need to get out and do something, anything. As one woman told me, “When I advise kids in their 20′s, I say, “When in doubt, act. Just do something. You can only sit, reflect, make lists for so long.”
In the game To Win, it is perfectly OK, and highly encouraged, to shoot for the moon, to aim for the “unreasonable.” I was amazed at first by how many brave souls dove headfirst into uncharted waters before they had any idea how to swim. Of course, sometimes they had to be pushed.
Jumping in cold can be very scary, as most of my interviewees will attest. It’s especially disconcerting at the very beginning, when you’re not quite sure what you’re doing. That’s the way the leaning curve always feels at first, as if you’re in over your head. Unfortunately, a lot of people bail out before they realize how close they are to taking the prize. The women I interviewed may have been tempted but they never backed down. They felt the fear and stayed the course.
Barbara Stanny
Secrets of Six-Figure Women
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How many times, in the pursuit to your life purpose, have you bailed out without realising just how very close you may have been to the prize? Are you playing the game To Win or just Not to Lose? It’s a powerful destinction and completely your choice. Think about it!
Gwen
By Gwen
The Navajo Indians have a prayer-chant called “The Beauty Way,” which I once learned from a Navajo friend. I’m sure there are many translations, and I’m also pretty positive that I changed it around a little in my head. Nevertheless, with apologies to the Navajo people, I’m going to teach you my version of the Beauty Way chant. It’s very simple. It goes like this:
There is beauty before me, and there is beauty behind me.
There is beauty to my left, and there is beauty to my right.
There is beauty above me, and there is beauty below me.
There is beauty around me, and there is beauty within me.
I once read a commentary on the painter Degas that said, “He had a great talent for discovering beauty.” Not creating beauty, or reproducing it, but discovering it. That was the first time I realized that an artist’s real contribution isn’t what he paints, but the way he sees. I’ve found that repeating the Beauty Way chant changes the way I see. It yanks me out of my perservations and obsessions, revealing astonishing lovelines in the present moment — beauty I hadn’t noticed, even though it was right there all along.
I often run through the Beauty Way chant when I’m out for a walk in the strangely gorgeous Sonoran Desert, and it’s obvious why the people who inhabit this landscape would come up with such a prayer. But it actually works even better in less obviously beautiful circumstances. I recently repeated it to myself as I sat in an airplane at night, I hadn’t thought of this as a particularly beautiful place — in fact, I’d been busily sending my mind other places, avoiding the tedium and claustrophobia of the trip. As I repeated the chant, I looked forward, backward, left, right, up and down, and was just knocked over by the beauty of sleeping passengers, the smell of food, the tiny lights in the black velvet landscape thirty thousand feet under my seat.
Repeat the Beauty Way chant right now, whenever you are. You’ll begin to notice beauty, all kinds of beauty, everywehre — in birdsongs and battle cries, muscles and equations, angst and oatmeal. You will discover what it is to be present.
Martha Beck
Finding Your Own North Star
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As I read Martha’s comments about The Beauty Way and her belief that the artist Degas “talent for discovering beauty. Not creating beauty, or reproducing it, but discovering it was the first time she realized that an artist’s real contribution isn’t what (s)he paints, but the way (s)he sees.” I felt like she was describing how I feel when I work with boomer women to help them to “discover their dharma — life purpose.” It’s a beautiful thing when someone begins to step into their own authentic selves. I feel so honored to be the “see-er” in that process.
Gwen
By Gwen
Most people operate with a mindset that assumes success comes one step at a time. The unspoken but popular notion is that we must move systematically from our present level of achievement to the next. Then, the thinking goes, from that stage we can begin working toward graduating to still the next higher level in the sequence. Gradual progress.
This is an unfortunate misconception, and it’s clearly reflected in the way people function. They go about, day to day, striving to make incremental gains in their performance. That’s pretty routine. That’s the pathway of conventional growth.
But your life simply does not always have to operate that way.
Advancing at a measured pace – step by step from where you are to a little bit better – ordinarily feels easier, more natural, and even safer. But in certain areas of your life you can just as easily think in terms of skipping levels. You can move from your present level of achievement to one that is several states higher – directly.
You make the quantum leap. You become you2. Instead of accepting present circumstances or being content with gradual improvement, you go for a breakthrough.
You2 implies an “explosive jump” in your personal performance that puts you far beyond the next logical step. It’s a formula for stunning advances in achievement and the realization of your dreams. The concept is one of exponential gains rather than incremental progress. You might compare it to multiplying instead of adding – it means a geometric progression in your effectiveness.
That’s exactly as well as provocative, but it gets even better. Remember, quantum leaps can come without apparent effort,. These are high velocity moves that carry you to dramatically higher performance levels without a time-consuming struggle.
Quantum leaps seem to violate common sense…utterly! The idea of “moving to a higher orbit,” and skipping several rungs on the achievement ladder in the process, strikes people as far-fetched, maybe even outrageous.
After the fact, quantum leaps may be viewed as practical, sensible, even obvious moves, but they typically do not come to you as the obvious moves at the moment. Usually it’s in retrospect that you perceive their hidden logic and elegance. Invariably, quantum leaps are not complex or intricate maneuvers. They tend to be simple, energy efficient, and time-saving.
You2, the quantum leap strategy, can deliver those special dreams and ambitions that you instinctively feel should be yours. But the breakthrough demands a radical departure from some of your habits.
YOU 2
Price Pritchett
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Have you ever experienced a quantum leap? Have you ever had something happen that seemed so easy, so streamline and you seemed to move forward without apparent effort? I have and they are amazing! These are high velocity moves that carry you to dramatically higher performance levels without a time-consuming struggle.
Turn on your reticular activator (you know, that thing in your brain that allows you to bring into focus that which you’ve been filtering out. Like when you were pregnant, and all of a sudden there were pregnant women EVERYWHERE. Or when you bought a new car, and all of a sudden… there they were, cars just like yours every time you turned a corner! Well, they were always there, you just didn’t see them because your brain filtered them out to protect you from being overwhelmed with the MILLIONS of pieces of information that comes at you daily.
Now, that you’ve turned on your reticular activating system with awareness about quantum leaps, you’ll be more likely to see them when they happen to you.
Gwen
By Gwen
~”Less than 30 percent of people report being deeply happy.
~Twenty-five percent of Americans and 27 percent of Europeans claim they are depressed.
~The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, depression will be second only to heart disease in terms of the global burden of illness.”
Happy for No Reason isn’t elation, euphoria, mood spikes or peak experiences that don’t last. It doesn’t mean grinning like a fool 24/7 or experiencing a superficial high. Happy for No Reason isn’t an emotion. In fact, when you are Happy for No Reason, you can have any emotion—including sadness, fear, anger, or hurt—but you still experience that underlying state of peace and well-being… When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live from happiness, rather than for happiness.”
Marci Shimoff
Happy for No Reason
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Hmmm… just imagine bringing the happiness to any situation vs depending on the hit-and-miss of the the happiness of the people around you? Now that’s what I call self empowerment!! Go out and make it a happy day!
Gwen
By Gwen
Hers was a public marriage and the woman and her movie star husband’s ideal life — complete with georgous homes and beautiful children — seemed to all the world to be pictue – perfect. It certainly appeared that way on the glossy pages of the high-style magazines in which they appreared.
Her husband did not beat her with his hands but with his tongue. And while the wounds of phychic abuse are far easier to camouflage than the bruises of the physical batterer, this makes them even more dangerous. What is hidden cannot be healed. And although the woman was beautiful, kind, generous, clever, smart, and savvy, a devoted mother, and accomplished in her own field, nothing she did pleased the man she married, who belittled and berated her for her inadequacies every single day of their life together. Her mystified circle of intimates were mesmerized by this tragedy, transfixed and rendered mute, much like morbid strangers who chance upon a terrible accident. They were at a loss to explain it, except that the woman’s husband was gorgeous (in that disturbing way that upsets the natural order of things). The woman remained faithful to her own self-abuse, as well as to her marriage-in-fame-only.
Then one day, without warning, two decades of public devotion and private torture came ot an abrupt halt. The woman discovered that her husband had been having an affair with her children’s nanny for 10 years. Finally, for the first time, the humiliation was more than she could bear. Four hours after she ended her marriage, the woman went to have an astrology reading, which she did every year around the time of her birthday. The woman and her husband shared one of the most loyal, loving, and relationship centered signs in the zodiac. But, the couple were as opposite in temperment as two people could possibly be, something the woman had found curious but had never investiated further, despite the fact that she believed in astrological guidance, had had birth charts done for her children, and often gave readings to her friends as gifts. Trying to make sense of her disastrous and self-destructive marriage, she asked the astrologer to do a birth chart for her husband and give her an assessment of their compatibility.
The woman was completely unprepared for what the astrologer told her. In 40 years, the astrologer had never seen a more incompatible relationship chart. “I have to tell you,” she told the woman, “the incompatibility is so strong — violent — I thought I’d made terrible miscalculation, so I did the chart twice. If you’d only stayed together for a week I’d have been surprised at your staying power; these are the charts of mortal enemies. How you lived together for 20 years and had 4 children and survived, I can’t imagine. The psychic cost you paid had to be enormous. But what you’ve gained spiritually is beyond measure. Your husband does not share your astrological sign; he was born on the cusp. You’re complete opposites.
The woman was stunned. How could this be?
I can only guess that your soul kept this knowledge hidden from you because you union was karmic. If you had known, you would have ended the relationship as soon asyou found out. But, you couldn’t end the relationship. You needed to be together to work through the 3 most important spiritual lessons all of us must learn: passion, betrayal, and forgiveness.”
Sarah Ban Breathnach
Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self
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This story leapt out at me as I read it because so often I talk to women who have been in not so perfect, or even abusive relationships — including myself –and look back as it being a waste of time, that they “lost” all those years by being with them. Many years after the fact, I now realize that things really do happen for a reason, even sometimes abusive relationships. If we are able to see the karmic clock, the lessons that we take away, and how much stronger we are because of our experience, we will be able to experience the abundance we are here to receive. Letting go and releasing all those negative and painful memories is a critical part of healing our own souls.
Gwen
By Gwen
Have you ever heard someone assert that a lack of money was a bit of a problem? Now hear this: A lack of money is never, ever, ever a problem. A lack of money is merely a symptom of what is going on underneath.
Lack of money is the effect, but what is the root cause? It boils down to this. The only way to change your “outer” world is to first change your “inner world.
Whatever results you’re getting, be they rich or poor, good or bad, positive or negative, always remember that your outer world is simply a reflection of your inner world. If things aren’t going well in your outer life, it’s because things aren’t going well in your inner life. It’s that simple.
T Harv Eckert
Secrets of The Millionaire Mind
Ahhh… I love T Harv Eckert. He’s so BOLD and no frills. He says it like it is! When I was sitting in the audience with 1,199 other people, for 3 days, taking the Millionaire Mind Intensive and learning about my own money “blue print” I truly got this message driven home to me! Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING in your outer world, money or anything else, is just a reflection of your inner world. Once I really grasped that concept, and started looking inward, things started to shift for me. Yes, there have been many bumps over the years, and I’ve kicked and screamed a bit about it, but that one piece remains constant.
So, what’s going on in your inner world that’s keeping you stuck and preventing you from living your life purpose? Are you wililng to take a peek?
Gwen
By Gwen
“Getting used to our blessings is one of the most important
nonevil generators of human evil, tragedy and suffering.”
~ Maslow
Here’s a ritual of mine: Often when I pay a bill or buy something or enjoy a meal, I pause for a moment to appreciate the incredible array of people who made that experience possible.
Think about it the next time you sit down for a meal. Look at the spoon or fork or knife you’re using. How did it get there on that table of yours? (And how did the table get there? And the floor? And…) Contemplate for a minute or two just WHO was involved in getting that spoon to you. Imagine the interconnected web of cooperating people who produced the raw materials, then those who shipped them to the manufacturer then those who created it (and all those who financed all that activity to begin with). Then, of course, we need to get it from the manufacturer to the store where you bought it. (Who built the trucks and boats and planes and trains that were used to ship it?) And on and on and on and on. It is truly STAGGERING when we see just how fortunate we are to have SO many people supporting us in EVERY moment of our lives.
We are so incredibly blessed. And it is so incredibly easy to forget how fortunate we are and just how much we depend on the love and service of others to do the most basic things in life.
Einstein said:
“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’;
a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his
thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest
—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion
is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and
to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison.”
Brian Johnson
Philosophers Notes
When I first read that I was amazed. I started to appreciate the comfy chair I’m sitting in, my wonderful laptop computer that is sitting in…well, my lap! Without my laptop I would be completely isolated to all the wonderful women I’m able to connect with all over the US and the world! I appreciate my cozy sweats that are keeping me nice and toasty from the early morning chill. The chair, my laptop and the sweats…all made for me, shipped to me and enjoyed by me because of someone else. Our great human supportive family. WOW! It certainly shifts your thoughts about your measley little worries, doesn’t it? What do you feel blessed about today?
Gwen
By Gwen
“There are two games in life,” motivational speaker Larry Wilson once told me in an interview. “The one most of us are playing , called Not to Lose, is an avoidance game. We’re so afraid of taking risks, looking bad, that we never really win.”
People who play Not to Lose have one intention — to play it safe. No matter how much they say they want success, if they’re, if they’re playing Not to Lose, what they’re really after is comfort, convenience, and relief. If you want to know how this game is played, just talk to any underearner. I remember a women in one of my groups moaning, “Getting out there, saying I’m an artist, promoting my work, just paralyzes me. It’s fear of rejection, I’m sure. I don’t know how else to explain it.”
The desire to avoid fear (whether it’s fear of rejection or of disapproval, of success or failure) is what keeps most of us in the Not to Lose game –and in low paying jobs.
“You know why I’m good at my job?” Karen Sheridan once told her boss after she lost a big client. “Because I love winning way more than I hate losing. I never focus on the losses, only the wins.”
To six figure women, losses are as inevitable as ants at a picnic. And they don’t let those losses ruin their plans. They focus on winning and not on defeat. Oddly enough, the object of the game is not winning per se. The whole point is to do your best and go the distance. “To win,” Larry Wilson explained, “you go as far as you can using all that you’ve got.”
Michele Page, was determined to be an artist. “I went to the art institute just to see what would happen,” Michele recalled. “The woman [in admissions] looked at me and said, “What makes you think you can be a graphic designer?” I was so upset, I went home, threw a fit and didn’t go back for a year.”
But Michele knew she had to do something. “I was scared, but I was also desperate.” Desperation, I’ve observed, is the principal reason people finally quit playing Not to Lose.
“I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and make that interviewer eat her words,” Michele said. “I went back to the school and said to the same woman, “this is what I want to do. I’ll answer any argument you give me with why your argument isn’t valid.” Spoken like a true champion who had at last gotten in the right game: To Win. Michele was granted admission on the spot.
Barbara Stanny
Secrets of Six-Figure Women
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Making the shift in what game you are actually playing, from“Not to Lose” to “To Win” changes everything. As Wayner Dyer says in one of my favorite quotes of all time, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Winning doesn’t often include comfort, convenience, and relief, but it is very often worth the effort! What game have you decided to play?
Gwen
"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
