(Or who do you want to be at the age of 60?)
Restarting your life (or reinventing it), sounds like an American “pull yourself together” cliché, where the only thing needed to get a better life is to get out of bed in the morning. (And preferably make your bed – like a famous general told us in a TED talk. Actually, in his obscure way he was right. I will write about why at the bottom of this blog post)
But it’s not that easy. The older one gets, the more closely intertwined one becomes with everyday life. Family, finances, health, good habits and bad habits. Bad habits in particular is something that can be challenging to change.
Who do you wanna be at 60?
I came across an interesting TED talk a few days ago. (It has been a lot of TED talks this week as you can imagine) In this “talk” one pointed to the fact that we, who live now, whether we are not affected by disease, accidents, or war, (Something that is very relevant these days, unfortunately), will live longer than anyone has done before us.
In fact, there are those who claims that the human who will live to be 150 years old, already have been born.
One thing is for sure: It will not be me. But the interesting thing is – we live longer. This means that many of us live until we are well into our ninetieth decade. What does that mean?
First and foremost, it means we get many more years on earth. Years that we can use productively and well or years that we can use to become an ever-increasing burden for our children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren and so on.)
But to start life again when you are 60? It does not sound like an easy task.
The recipe (it is always a recipe) was something I could relate to for once. Here I will list them in 3 points.
- Imagine the following scenario. You are 96 years old. You begin to feel the age and you know that in a few years, (maybe tomorrow) you will take your last breath. The question you are going to ask yourself today (when you are 60 or something) is:
Who do you want to be and who do you want to be when you are 90 (or 96) years old? This is a question that, if you spend some time on, will give you an answer on where to go from here. And maybe it will give you some sort of clarity – not only where you are going, but also where you are right now. That brings med to point 2.
Create a story
- Too many of us hold on to the past and allow ourselves to be influenced by it. I am not talking about memories and experiences. The good ones we will always take with us and the bad ones we will learn from. (Hopefully) The last point is important because it is task 2 when you are going to start life again as a 60 year old:
Make a story about your biggest successes and biggest mistakes in the life you have had so far. Creating a story means looking at the life you have had in a context. Try to do it without building up bitterness. Remember what I wrote at the beginning of this point. Bitterness is never good energy. For my part, I regard my trials, experiences in Lebanon and other less pleasant things as valuable course changes in my life. I became who I became because of what I experienced and even though I should have learned even more from it to a greater extent, I took a lot of wisdom from the events, and I carry that with me further. Sometimes I’m even proud of what I’ve learned.
Accept being av newbie
- We start at zero when we start again. An expression we have in Norwegian is that teaching an old dog to sit is difficult. Well, teaching an old man something new can be quite a challenge.
Therefore, be ready to get used to learning from others when you start over again. You will have to learn from young people who, in your opinion, should have learned from you. This is not the case when you starting something new. Suck up the banal lessons of those who are both twenty and thirty years younger than you. Start over and try not to be the one who always know best. Remember that just spending time with young people makes you younger. Not to mention what it does to the neurons in your brain.
The general, who thought that one should start by making your bed in the morning, had a point. He believed that if the day were to develop negatively, one would, if everything else fell apart – come home to a made-up bed.
In other words: order in the chaos.