Graceing Agefully

Savor the Day
You know the phrase "Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day".
I am suggesting something gentler.
SAVOR the day
Do you live appointment to appointment?
Is your calendar the scale on which you weigh the value of your existence?
Do you look at your calendar some days and think 'that's a LOT' 'I'm going to be very busy' as you rush around getting ready for your production?
Do you look at your calendar some other days and think 'today is an easy day' as you set off to stack the time with procrastinated ideas that have accumulated?
If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, I want you to consider this:
SAVOR the DAY.
In either of the previous scenario there is space between appointments. If there are no appointments, we tend to fill the space with JUNK.
JUNK is "productive busy work". It makes us feel justified and righteous.
Savoring the day is NOT allowing activities we might consider NON-productive to be valued LESS. These non-productive activities might be eating, meditating, drinking and enjoying coffee, exercise, napping/resting, praying or just day dreaming.
When you savor the day, each moment is precious. You are present. You are grateful. Your are at peace.
When you SAVOR the day, there is enough time for everything. You aren't rushed.
Trust me, try this. SAVOR the day. LIVE between the appointments. Be generous with yourself, not demanding productive activity in every waking moment.
You will find it reduces anxiety, inspires creative thinking and raises your vibration!

Savor the Day
You know the phrase "Carpe Diem" or "Seize the Day".
I am suggesting something gentler.
SAVOR the day
Do you live appointment to appointment?
Is your calendar the scale on which you weigh the value of your existence?

Do you look at your calendar some days and think 'that's a LOT' 'I'm going to be very busy' as you rush around getting ready for your production?

Do you look at your calendar some other days and think 'today is an easy day' as you set off to stack the time with procrastinated ideas that have accumulated?

If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, I want you to consider this:
SAVOR the DAY.

In either of the previous scenario there is space between appointments. If there are no appointments, we tend to fill the space with JUNK.

JUNK is "productive busy work". It makes us feel justified and righteous.

Savoring the day is NOT allowing activities we might consider NON-productive to be valued LESS. These non-productive activities might be eating, meditating, drinking and enjoying coffee, exercise, napping/resting, praying or just day dreaming.

When you savor the day, each moment is precious. You are present. You are grateful. Your are at peace.

When you SAVOR the day, there is enough time for everything. You aren't rushed.

Trust me, try this. SAVOR the day. LIVE between the appointments. Be generous with yourself, not demanding productive activity in every waking moment.

You will find it reduces anxiety, inspires creative thinking and raises your vibration!

Day 98 of 365 Days of I AM Letting Go

I AM LETTING GO OF ‘DEADHEADING’ IS FOR PLANTS

“Deadheading is a process of pruning by which old growth and seed heads are removed from the plant to promote new growth and re-flowering.”

I have hibiscus plants on my front step. They continually present new scarlet trumpet blossoms that greet me every day.

Every day they need to be ‘dead-headed’ and watered. The blossoms last ONE DAY. The next morning, yesterday’s blossom is closed up and withered.

I RUTHLESSLY pluck them off at the stem and discard them every morning.

As predictable as the ritual of the dying blossom is the presentation of NEW BLOSSOMS every day that have their DAY IN THE SUN, so to speak.

Each blossom is AN OPUS for the plant.

“An opus is a created work, usually musical in nature.”

BUT, the blossom is not the OPUS MAGNUM for the plant.

Opus magnum is “a great work and especially the greatest achievement of an artist or writer”.

The healthy thriving plant is the OPUS MAGNUM.

Each blossom ‘dead-headed’ re-directs the life force INTO the plant. Each NEW leaf, NEW bud and NEW blossom is empowered by the RUTHLESS DEAD-HEADING.

We are each like the ROBUST plant. Each day is an OPUS. Each day is a WORK, a COMPOSITION. It is something we PRODUCE every day.

Our LIFE is our OPUS MAGNUM. Our LIFE is our MASTERPIECE.

We have the POWER to DEAD-HEAD our obsession with YOUTH. We have the POWER to LET IT GO, there’s NEW LIFE AHEAD.

Like the hibiscus, let the power you put INTO CLINGING to your YOUTH GO.

REDIRECT THE POWER TO YOUR LIFE EVERY DAY.

There are PLENTY of NEW BLOSSOMS ahead!!!

With Love, Jennifer

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE: Planned obsolescence is a purposeful strategy to ensure the current version of a product will become out of date or useless within a known time period.

If you’ve been following my GA group on Facebook you know I’ve been LETTING GO for 100 days.

LETTING GO is like going “on a diet” which is one of the things I AM LETTING GO. This is a MIND DIET.
Graceing Agefully™ is the TITLE of my journey through the second half of my life. For me the second half began at age 60. I began to change my ATTITUDE about getting OLD. GA™ is my JOURNAL.

I am getting OLD. I am NOT anti-aging. I will die one day—100% guaranteed physical death.
Caveat: I don’t know when, so, it’s important to me to live EVERY DAY to the fullest.
I have no children. Many of my peers consider children their legacy. I have family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc..
How many lives I will touch, and may have already touched will not fill the head of a pin metaphorically in the end.
Perhaps my words will be my legacy. Perhaps one day when archaeologists are digging up the 2020’s my words will be found. (Can you even imagine what a digital DIG might be? I’m picturing the landfill of hard drives and mother boards being unearthed...LOL!).
Meanwhile, I’m on to something.
We are PROGRAMMED to become OBSOLETE physically and mentally.
Think about it.
What comes to mind when you think about getting OLD?
MEMORY LOSS, CHRONIC ILLNESS, LOSS OF VALUE, CHRONIC ILLNESS, SLOW, BRITTLE, DEPENDENT, BURDENSOME, SHAMEFULLY CHILDLIKE and more.....
This is what I hear ALL THE TIME!! This PROGRAMMING is becoming a REALITY.
What I often hear from Baby Boomers:
“This getting OLD thing is NOT FUN!” OR “I’m just getting OLD”, followed by a sigh after they have difficulty taking the lid off a jar or their medications.

Guess what? You HAVE lost your MEMORY, it has become SELECTIVE re: YOUTH.
Being YOUNG was REALLY HARD at the time. Everyone graduated from a school of HARD KNOCKS, right? YOUTH was when we were PROGRAMMED.
Baby Boomers CREATED the YOUTH MOVEMENT.
This is an example of COLLECTIVE TRANSFORMATIVE CULTURAL CREATION.
This was NOT a conspiracy. We didn’t know we were doing it, it just happened on a group and cultural level. (Remember “Don’t trust anyone over 30”?).
So, today when you’re bemoaning the millennials and their apparent disregard or disrespect for the OLDER generation...hold your tongue, you were just as bad!
This was facilitated by the unprecedented size of our population. Baby Boomers were the largest bolus of babies born in an 18 year period just after WWII.
We became a MARKET. We changed the CULTURE of our parents to a YOUTH CULTURE. We created a DEMAND for products for the YOUNG. We drafted what became a DE FACTO EDICT to stay YOUNG.
Following youth, in our YOUNG ADULT phase, we PROSPERED and created a DEMAND for UPWARD MOBILITY and its TRAPPINGS (Appropriately named. FAST FORWARD, we are TRAPPED today by them...just sayin’).
Remember the YUPPIE? (Don’t hear much about them these days, do we?). YOUNG URBAN PROFESSIONALS which morphed into YOUNG UPWARDLY MOBILE PROFESSIONALS.
Interesting sidebar, the dictionary definition of YUPPIE now includes this unattributed comment: “stereotypical 1980’s yuppies OBSESSED with material objects and financial success”.
We PAVED OVER our parents’ generation with GOLD.
Perhaps we should take a break , go back to 1972 and read Ira Levin’s “The Stepford Wives”. Fiction is TRUTH wrapped in a good story.
Everything we’ve been through in our YOUTH has PROGRAMMED us. We’ve lived according to the YOUTH culture we created. We’ve lived according to the YUPPIE culture we created. Now we are GETTING OLD according to the PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE we created with the YOUTH culture.
GOOD NEWS: The programming of PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE is REVERSIBLE.
Graceing Agefully is a CONSCIOUS COLLECTIVE effort to DE-PROGRAM and UN-LEARN our VISION of OLD.
We have been PROGRAMMED by our own YOUTH MOVEMENT to BECOME OBSOLETE. Our experience of getting OLD is a MANIFESTATION.
In history, we may be looked back on as a CULT.
CULT: “devoted attachment to a principle”. Move over Jim Jones, we drank A LOT of ‘Kool- Aid®’.
Now that we are in our 60’s and 70’s we can DE-PROGRAM. We can LET GO of attachment to the IDEALS that WE ESTABLISHED as a COLLECTIVE ENTITY.

As Baby Boomers we need to face the facts about our collective state:
We are: AT WAR WITH AGE
We are: ADDICTED, DEPRESSED, ANXIOUS, SICK, ANGRY and FRUSTRATED.
The war will end when we each find INNER PEACE.
I know it sounds SACCHARIN, UNREALISTIC, OVERLY SIMPLISTIC. That’s your programming speaking.

Here is my STRATEGY and the STEPS to recovery:
STRATEGY: Live a “WELL-INTEGRATED LIFE”
Definition: HONOR EQUALLY each of the 5 following categories in your life EVERY DAY.
5 CATEGORIES: PHYSICAL, MENTAL/EMOTIONAL, FINANCIAL, RELATIONSHIPS and SPIRITUAL.
STEPS:
ADMIT you have a problem (see 12-step).
START where you are, don’t STAY where you are. Become AWARE of where you are by SCORING yourself in each category on a scale of 1 to 10. Describe why you have given yourself the score you have. Describe what a 10 would feel like in each category. Get accustomed to that FEELING.
I ADMIT, the first half of my life was SKEWED toward FINANCIAL. I was PURSUING happiness in the way I had been PROGRAMMED by YOUTH culture.
I am now DE-PROGRAMMING publicly.
I hope my JOURNAL of this process will make you STOP and THINK. I hope you see even a tiny spark of INSPIRATION and DISCOVER that you can COURSE CORRECT your path on the aging journey. I hope you DISCOVER it is NEVER TOO LATE. In fact, it’s NEVER TOO EARLY either.
OLD is not a dirty word.
OLD is when you SEE more clearly, when you GAIN vision.
OLD is when you LET GO of YOUTH programming.
OLD is when you get your metaphorical license to drive YOUR OWN LIFE.
OLD is when you GRADUATE from the HARD WORK and RESISTANCE and live in FLOW.

This is Graceing Agefully™
https://graceingagefully.com

If you are coming to this page for Graceing Agefully updates, I have just figured out that I have been confused and confusing readers by posting here and in my private group. I encourage any and all of you to come to my group and you will find something every day. I'm doing 365 Days of Letting Go. I just came back to my page and found some of your comments that I have missed and I'm sorry! Please join the group and I will keep my daily postings there. My hope is at the end of the year, I will compile the 365 Days into a book...maybe more, stay tuned! Love you all for reading, Jennifer

Day 3 of LETTING GO

LET GO OF SHOULD
Now, I know you're saying, "I know that! Should is a bad word" OR "I know, don't SHOULD on yourself (I actually love that one and use it all the time).
However, I know I still have an inner voice that is screaming SHOULD at me all the time. It's very easy to submit to the SHOULDS because it feels like you will fail if you don't and someone (probably your inner voice again) will be screaming "I TOLD YOU SO!!" when you do. Another key is to notice when you are gently telling someone else what they SHOULD be doing to improve their life. It's the same voice that is telling you what you SHOULD do. It's a voice of judgement. Yes, I said it, judgement. Who's the judge? YOU. Who's being judged? YOU. Hmmmm, does that make you think twice?
To LET GO OF SHOULD....think about it first. How many times a day do you silently should on yourself? It's usually in the past tense, like, oh well, now it's too late, I SHOULD have done______! What happens next? I suggest that what happens next is far more destructive than we think. I know when I'm in that situation, I do something to avoid the feeling of defeat or disappointment or failure. I don't move on quickly and easily without the aid of a snack? a soy latte? some chocolate? a glass of wine? a spoonful of peanut butter? This is my confessional. I even have some weaknesses which appear like good things and maybe they are, but for the purpose of this post, let's lump them in to the Numbing my feelings category. So, one of mine is exercise. Maybe a half hour on the Peloton will get me back on track from my SHOULD HAVE and DIDN'T lingering judgement.

So, LETTING GO OF SHOULD involves pausing, really thinking about the SHOULD and asking yourself this question:

Who's the boss of that SHOULD? Is it something I keep hearing I SHOULD be doing in order to achieve some goal I think I want to achieve? OR Is it something I have established as a habit or a practice that will ultimately keep me on the path to my life goals?

Exercise is a good example here for me. I have daily MDR's for physical fitness. M=Minimum D=Daily R=Requirement. Each of these is quick, simple, can be done anywhere without equipment and is non-negotiable. I don't think about whether I SHOULD do them, I just don't NOT do them.

So, LET GO OF SHOULD and embrace the non-negotiable activities that you have defined for your personal life goals. Make sure you do the Minimum Daily Requirements for YOU. Anything else is probably someone else's idea of what will make you succeed. The damage done by SHOULDING on yourself is far greater than it seems....think about it!

Day 2 of Letting Go
Let Go of Your "OLD" Story

After all, that's all it is, a story. What is the "story" you tell about how "OLD" you are, what OLD mean to you and what you resist, avoid and just don't try because of your "OLD"story? How often do you say to yourself or others, "I'm too old to _______" OR "I wish I had done_______when I was younger, now I'm too old"?
That's a great starting point. How many times have you discovered by accident that you weren't too old to do something? Every day people are proving there's no truth in too OLD to _______. Even "I'm not getting any younger, I'd better do _________NOW." is a story.
I am not getting younger in years, but I feel my years falling away as I write this. Can you Let Go of Your "OLD" Story?

Remember today is the first day of the rest of your life? Today (which is now yesterday due to a glitch in posting that I just discovered this morning...ok that's very confusing I'm sure, LOL). Anyway, yesterday, St. Patrick's Day was Day 1 of my new daily posting" "365 Days of Letting Go". I launched yesterday with Let Go of Control.
I know that brings up a lot of resistance in us. After all, we were trained over the years to be "in control". We have been trained to "take control". We have been conditioned to "control our clients, children...anyone who may behave in a way that makes us uncomfortable". We have been taught at times that we were "out of control". That certainly made us think about how awful we could be. "You'd better get control over your life!" said our inner voice.
That's alot of years of reinforcement and conditioning to undo.

Fact is, that's the key to Graceing Agefully™! Letting go of conditioning. Conditioning has taught us to fear aging. It has taught us to accept decline as we age. Conditioning has crafted a mental picture inside each of us as OLD with each passing year. It has also taught us that OLD is inevitable, unavoidable and is a loss of YOUTH to be mourned not celebrated.

I am here to help you break that conditioning. I am going to write every day (and hopefully post the same day if FB cooperates)! Each day for a year I will plant a seed of Letting Go. I am doing it at the same time. I have been doing it for days (inspired by 40 days of Lent) before I started my New Year of sharing it on St. Patrick's Day 2023.

Maybe it will strike a chord in you that will begin to peel the layers off the magical person you are. Conditioning is a protective coating that helped us live through the first half of our lives and we are here now. I'm not dissing the importance of that conditioning. I'm saying you have outgrown the need for it.

Day 1 is LET GO OF CONTROL

I believed I had control of what happened in my life. I don't. I believed I could control how others feel, think and act. (Isn't that what "people pleasers" believe?) I can't. I believed if something didn't go the way I wanted, it was my fault. I could have or should have done something different to achieve a different outcome. No one to blame but me, I didn't have the discipline or control to make it happen. Sometimes I believed the universe had it out for me. I believed external circumstances and forces were just pitched against me. I didn't have control of that, poor me, bad luck, timing, whatever...out of my control. Is any of this resonating with you?
So, LET GO OF CONTROL. Is that like act crazy? Is that like run out and buy a Ferrari even though you don't have any money? Not quite.
LET GO OF CONTROL is RELAX, you don't really have control of anything except how you RESPOND to life. LET GO OF CONTROL is ALLOW. You always hear, DON'T ATTACH TO THE OUTCOME, right? What you don't hear is HOW???? I'm here to tell you...LET GO OF CONTROL. Allow the universe, God, your Higher Power, your subconscious, your higher self...to reveal what's next. Watch it, feel it, listen to it before RESPONDING. I say RESPOND specifically, not REACT. RESPOND is reasoned, thought through. REACT is pure emotion and probably based on the conditioning you are working to let go, just sayin'.
LET GO OF CONTROL is ACCEPT. You may find that what began as a disappointment or bad experience if you REACT as if. With time it may be EVEN BETTER than what you expected. It will definitely be LESS BAD if you ACCEPT, ALLOW AND RESPOND.

This is only Day 1 so Let Go of figuring it out and see what Day 2 brings. (I have let go of wanting to start my Day 1 on St. Patrick's Day and thinking I would write 2 today because of the posting error....now, I'm taking my own advice and ACCEPTING my new Day 1. I hope your day is better than you expected...This is Graceing Agefully™.

Glengarry, Glen Ross
Do you remember this movie or this book?
As I have been in sales for at least 100 years, the idea of Always Be Closing...ABC was repugnant. I am not a "pushy" sales person. I have met many and worked with many that I deemed "pushy" and I have always hated to be "pushed" into a decision. I am also very susceptible to a very persuasive person's seductive patter. I learned over the years that magically I could sell but it never felt like I was selling. I was, after all, listening to them to determine their needs and simply helping them to find the answers to their problems. Is that selling? Yes, actually it is. In fact, maybe the people I considered "pushy" were just confident. Maybe they were listening to me and guiding me to the answer or the solution to my problem.
I have learned, over the years of struggle with the concept of "selling" and trying not to be perceived as a "salesperson" that I have also hidden the true meaning of selling as stated above.

Also to consider is how I get paid. Obviously to earn income, I need to bring value to the client I serve. If I simply focus on what the client says, what the client needs and if I am able to deliver that I will get paid and my client's problem will be solved.

When I focus on how much I will earn if I "get the sale", it all falls apart. Realtors realize they are paid very well for what they do. It also makes us susceptible to evaluating ourselves by the amount we "sell". As a group it is easy to fall into the deep dark well of comparison and shame if we are not "producing" as much as someone else.

This is not just for realtors or for that matter for sales people. this is about owning our value, believing in our value and understanding what I said above. Our value is in helping our clients find the solution to their problem. The problem is not just selling a home or buying a home, it's change. Change is difficult. No one likes it. Everyone needs it and everyone does it. Even me, even you.

So, back to ABC. Life is a project, not a transaction. Always Be Closing can be reframed to highlight the true message. Always be intentional and focused on the big goals which are never achieved, btw.. Life is an ongoing project and everything you do every day can bring you closer or push you further away. It's ok. Maybe you make a mistake and can look at it as a learning experience. Maybe you hurt someone and it's you who can't forgive yourself. Forgive yourself, you are not alone, everyone is making mistakes every day all the time.

I am using ABC and I'm using Clearing for the C. Always be clearing the clutter of struggle from your mind. Comparison is clutter....comparison is using good energy for bad. Worry is clutter....we hear every day how worry is a useless expenditure of energy, believe it. Worry will not prevent anything from happening that isn't supposed to happen. Resistance is clutter. Remember, what you resist persists. I could go on, but I think you get what I'm saying.

ABC is a concept about flow. Everything you do every minute of the day moves you toward or away from your goal. My goal is a well-integrated life. I will remember to Always Be Clearing as I go through.

From A Course in Miracles: "Resistance is not something that happens to you. It is something you choose because you believe you receive value from it.
When the value you perceive in wellness exceeds the value you perceive in upset, inner peace shall be yours."

From me: Inner Peace=A Well Integrated Life=World Peace

RENOVATE or TEAR DOWN? These are terms we throw around daily in real estate. We are talking about houses and we are talking about homes. I love historic homes. One of my dreams is to buy a historic "fixer-upper" and completely renovate it with my own hands. Sledgehammers, saws, jackhammers even, the destruction process feels cathartic in my vision; not something I get to do with abandon EVER. After that, I see myself learning plumbing, electricity, carpentry, learning how it all works and TRANSFORMING it with my own hands. My husband cringes when I talk like this. He's probably envisioning the detritus (thank you Dad) of projects, infinitesimal in scope compared to this, projects begun with passionate fervor only to be bagged up at the end of the day, not quite complete and abandoned. It's true, I'm a fantasizer, I'm a dreamer, I am the IDEA woman!! I am not the FINISHER.

Why do I bring this up? For one thing, I am fascinated to find that social psychologists and business consultants are starting to use this language with respect to CORPORATE CULTURE. RENOVATE corporate culture. No need to tear it down and start from scratch. I love this idea. They help leaders to MINE the value in their existing culture, to preserve the value as it is part of the unique character of the business. They are also coaching to examine and get rid of the parts that don't work, are redundant or dysfunctional over time. I LOVE THIS IDEA...renovate: restore, renew, refresh. Like a historic home, preserve the beautiful architectural details, the bubbly glass in the windows, the cornices hand-carved with care a century ago, the heart pine floors rich with scars and years of layers of wax that glow with an unduplicatable patina.
Then there's the asbestos linoleum from the mid-century renovation or the porcelain sink with the giant rust trench that consumes the drain which has been stopped for years with that moldy rubber stopper that one needs rubber gloves to touch....that's what gets torn down!!

Where am I headed?

The renovation metaphor, using the word in reference to something different, corporate culture, immediately reminded me of my mission. TO CHANGE THE "CULTURE" OF AGING. I want to live the culture I envision. That's where I'm starting. I'm starting in my own head. That's where the culture that I want to change starts, within me and within YOU. Every day, I want to chip away at the beliefs that have been laid down over years of experience, joy, pain, loss, gain, but have muddied my outlook on aging with fears, anxieties and anticipated pain. I want to clear away the debris that is left that hinders the progress of aging with hope and eager anticipation. I want to RENOVATE my own culture of aging. I want to preserve the character traits that make me unique, a seeker, an optimist, a lover of transformation, a lifelong learner, autodidact. I want to throw out the paradigms that I've always assumed were true. I want to reverse them. I want to question them. I want to challenge them. That's where I start. I am pioneering. I am exploring something that I know is ahead and its great. I know the earth isn't flat.

A lesson I am finally taking to heart and applying in this "second half" of life is one that I have been hit over the head with repeatedly in my first half. It's a lesson taught by "diet culture" (Laura Buckley do I hear an AMEN?). Diet culture says "you are fat", it says "you are TOO fat". It says "you will not be loved until you're THIN". It says "thin is a NUMBER". It says "you must be disciplined, in control at all times". It says when you get THERE you will be WORTHY of love, acceptance, success, admiration.....

What the professors of diet culture DON'T tell you (or at least didn't used to tell you in my first half) is that you're NEVER there. They also didn't tell you it was a marathon (lifelong lifestyle & mindset change), not a sprint (30 lbs. in 30 days).

Once again, this is a subject that, for me applies in SO many ways outside of diet and I will expand upon in whatever forum I choose next, stay tuned. Back to the essence of the lesson and how I finally learned after seemingly infinite tries to get to the NUMBER.

I finally understood (I was 51 when it finally sank in) that diet culture had me REACHING every day for something I didn't have or wasn't. I was never wholly appreciative of where I was at that moment. For example: if I had lost 17 lbs and I was 'striving' to lose 25, I was FAILING until I reached 25 lbs. lost. No surprise, I never did lose 25, and eventually, the tail of the diet and my diminishing discipline were SHAMING me every day and I would throw in the towel and go back to my old ways, with the NUMBER inching back up regularly.

At 51 I hit the number for the first time in my life---it had taken a year or more than may have been suggested at the outset. What really changed was ME. I changed the lifestyle and choices I made every day permanently. There were days that I was indulging in things that were prohibited, but they were the natural detours on the road to the rest of my life.

Mostly, I had learned and applied LOVING what I have RIGHT NOW. I had learned that the number was not important, acceptance of myself was the goal. Self-acceptance is a state that can be achieved in a moment and maintained forever. It has nothing to do with a NUMBER.

A Marathon: One of my inspirational touchpoints for Graceing Agefully was a marathon. I ran my first full marathon (26.2 miles) when I was 58. At the time, the completion was one of my most thrilling moments. On reflection, the process I went through and the achievement taught me many of the values that I now hold dear for the second half of life. I was surrounded, at the time, by my community of aging Baby Boomers (many of whom were having joints replaced or suffering from severe arthritis) who would look at me with that knowing look and warn me that if I continued on this silly path I too would be on the surgery table eventually having accelerated the deterioration of my joints. I scoffed and silently gloated "not me!".

I had been running since my early 50's (late starter as with many things in my life) and had been self-trained. I considered I was disciplined, that I LOVED running for running's sake and it kept me "fit" and allowed me to eat more than I probably "deserved" to eat without gaining weight. That was a big carrot considering my lifelong "struggle" with weight.

I decided to run a marathon on a challenge....someone else I knew had decided to run their first and I stepped up and said "ME TOO!". I definitely didn't know what I was in for, but I figured, I had run for years, I had done and finished even half marathons..."what's the big deal?" I silently remarked (BTW, I talk to myself ALOT!). As I began the journey, I was encouraged to join and did, a First Time Marathoner group (FTM...props to FTM in Montgomery County Road Runners and BTW...most of the members are NOT first-timers, LOL!!). I started with the group in late Spring targeting the People's Marathon, aka "The Marine Corps Marathon" which would be taking place 2 days after my 58th birthday on October 28th. That seemed like a significant and worthy objective.

I am not going to expound on all the lessons and hardships and triumphs of the journey HERE. I will be musing on Graceing Agefully in other media in the near future. HOWEVER, I will list the lessons that have formed the basis for the ethos of GA and my personal framework for my second half of life:

1) Life IS a marathon, not a sprint. I don't want anyone to imagine that I'm coming up with all new creative ideas about the second half of life. Au contraire, I am learning that everything worth knowing has been said before dating back to ancient wisdom.
2) It's not the destination (ie, finishing the marathon), it's the journey (ie, the training, the will every day to get up and do it, to get up again when you fall down, to feel and appreciate WHERE you are now...not always striving for a different you, a faster you, a thinner you, a younger you.......)
3) Nothing in life worth doing is done alone, our power is amplified by others (connection, relationships, encouragement, comraderie)
4) ASK for help....I'm a lifelong independence addict and this has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn and apply.
5) In the end, it's cheering for yourself and FEELING your true satisfaction in the achievement, the culmination of the work and the internal glory. I am also a long-suffering approval addict (my own term, I will talk more about this condition in another forum, which I believe is an epidemic). Every day give yourself a pat on the back and mean it, cease looking for external approval in order to justify your goodness.
6) When I am down, nothing restores me more than lifting someone else up who is down. It's kind of selfish on the surface, but it is SO powerful.
7) Face your detractors with love and acceptance, appreciate they care but follow your own North Star.

I hope we will be a team on the Graceing Agefully journey. Thank you again for "liking" (I don't assume that's real approval ;-) ) and for "following". I especially thank those who are engaging and talking back to me. That will be the catalyst for whatever this is going to become and we are going to become in the second half. LOVE YOU ALL!!