Sixty Is The New Ten

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on by

Sixty is the new ten! What?! Yes, I do mean as in 10-years old. Bear with me and take a trip down memory lane to the 1960’s and 70’s.

Where the idea began

Getting ready for the day today, I had on Disc 2 of Neil Diamond’s 50th Anniversary Collection. When “Play Me” began, I traveled back to the early 1970’s. I was in my parents’ den, in my father’s recliner, with his headphones on, hooked up to his stereo set listening to my favorite artists. That would be either Neil Diamond or Barbra Streisand.

I grew up loving the melodies, harmonies and words of ballads. As a preteen and teenager they carried me away to a world of my own creation. By the time I was ten I had the habit of imagining what kind of teenager I might be someday. Sometimes I wondered about life as an adult – way off in the future – but mostly I was curious about my future as an American teen.

Teens are groovy

In my life most of my favorite people were teenagers – from babysitters to those my mom taught in Sunday school to the older siblings of my friends. My young life was full of “The Pepsi Generation” and I wanted to be just like them!

I wanted to be so much like them that when I was nine my best friend and I convinced our mothers to get us Gogo boots for Christmas, which they did! They were really cheap plastic white Gogo boots. The left one of mine got torn early on. I never said a word. I kept wearing mine anyway because looking and feeling like the teens in my life was everything to me!

Eventually Mom noticed, that was the end of the Gogo boots but for a brief shining moment I was cooler than cool!

45 RPM, 33 1/3 RPM

One of my favorite forms of play, as an introspective child, was listening to music and day dreaming. I’d done it for as long as I could remember. By the time I was five I’d been given my dad’s record player that played singles and had inherited his 45 RPM record collection. I could sit on my bedroom floor for hours listening to the music. I learned the tunes and words to songs from the 1940’s and 1950’s. It makes sense, then, that on the verge of the magical teen years, my musical tastes leaned in the direction of Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand even more than the considerably cooler James Taylor or Carol King.

So now I’m ten. Daddy has taught me how to use his stereo equipment and I’m free to put on the head phones and disappear in reverie. Or I can play the music over the speakers in the living room where I sit in a rattan swinging chair, gaze out the window into middle space, and live in the daydreams in my head. That world, inside my head is full of creative ideas and plans, hope and yearning.

That was then

At the same time that I’m enamored with teenagers and look forward to becoming one, I am actually becoming one. With early menses, by the time I’m twelve I’m sexually awakening. I have strong opinions about how I want to dress, how much I hate my naturally curly, frizzy hair, spending hours figuring out how to tame that mess, and my day dreams veer closer and closer to wondering what it might be like to be a full grown adult one day. I “borrow” my mother’s Cosmopolitan magazines on a regular basis. (To be clear, by “borrow” I mean she doesn’t know I read them.) They are certainly educational.

Observations of the lives of others, magazines and television inform my daydreams. And so when as a preteen I listen to Neil’s albums, I am the beautiful, popular, accomplished young adult that I create in my imagination.

I will never, ever become her in real life. As an adult I will finally have grown my hair out long in an era that is very kind to naturally curly hair. This accomplishment will bring such joy to my inner preteen. Scholastic and work achievements will never stack up to what it means to her that, at least as an adult, “she” finally got long hair.

This is now

So what does the messiness of the preteen years have to do with being 60 and why in the world would I say 60 is the new 10?

Because when I transported back in time to Neil’s music this morning; I felt hope and yearning for the decades in front of me. At 60 that was new. I felt like I was ten again with the glorious potential of the future within my grasp.

I’ve been looking at the years behind me with intense interest for a long time. When I’ve looked at the future I’ve had apprehension. During the past fifteen years I’ve collected the losses in my life and held on to them tightly.  These losses have been that of family and friends who have died, the loss of my own good health and vitality, and the loss that comes with the discovery that I have become irrelevant, even invisible, to certain age groups. This focus has often dampened my enthusiasm for the future…until this morning.

I always transport back in time whenever I listen to Neil Diamond or Barbra Streisand. It’s yummy to travel like that! But this morning was different. In that moment, I felt oomph – the energy of hope and yearning.  The hope and yearning point to the time I have left to be creative in every single aspect of my life.

Perspective

Years ago women’s magazines began shouting, “30 is the new 20! 40 is the new 30! 50 is the new 40!” And then it got worse. I was seeing, “40 is the new 20! 50 is the new 30!”  

I scoffed, “You’re full of it. That is so stupid.” Nowhere inside my body did I feel anything approaching a decade younger and now they’d added another decade!

In the interim, though, I’ve been working on what ails me. I’ve made use of allopathic medicine, alternative medicine and psychotherapy. As a result, currently my aches and pains don’t get me down. I’ve made inroads in easing my discomfort (physical, mental and emotional). I believe the work I’ve done is why this morning I felt that oomph when the opening notes of “Play Me” began.

Currently I’m not preoccupied with the physical pain of the past or the anticipation of pain in the future. I’m at peace with the pain I currently manage. And I am psyched to embrace a number of creative outlets; which, even at 60, include how I wear my hair and how I dress.

It’s like being 10 again where the present and future are mine to create. Back then I was old enough to have increasing agency. I needed less and less adult supervision. I had growing opportunities to make my own decisions and began to comprehend that, for the most part, I could determine how each day turned out.

These days I have increasing agency over how I perceive the losses and pain in my life. I have the opportunity to embrace the creative outlets available to me. I have energy and imagination available for creative pursuits. And for the most part, I get to determine how each day turns out for me. It’s delightful!

I turned 60 in August. Today I am grateful to have been gifted with this oomph, this hope and yearning, playfully calling it “60 is the new 10,” as we greet the new calendar year 2021.  

May your New Year and mine be filled with self-awareness openings, allowing goodness and blessings in, and with oodles of scrumptious creativity at our fingertips! We need and deserve these things. Our planet needs and deserves these things.

Happy New Year!

 

An Anxiety Relief Technique: Self-Mind Control in an Era of Uncertainty

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on by

I discovered an anxiety relief technique that is essentially self-mind control for this era of uncertainty and anxiety we’re living in. This is exciting as the ability to relieve our minds and hearts of worry, anxiety, and uncertainty is needed now more than ever.

Before I share it with you I want to say this. It’s important to note that anxiety takes many forms and sometimes requires professional help.

What I’ve discovered helped me today with a bad case of the worries.

When worrying seems to be the only thing we can do, it’s hard to accept just how ineffective worrying is. What I’m about to share is helpful for those moments we are able to realize worry isn’t doing any good.

Rather than scolding ourselves or putting ourselves down because we can’t seem to just stop worrying about and overthinking something, this is a simple anxiety relief technique that has no judgement attached to it! That lack of judgment is part of what makes it effective.

Here’s what happened

anxiety relief techniqueDriving home from a lunch date with my husband, I was lost in thought concerning a situation over which I have neither influence nor control. It didn’t matter that it was a beautiful October day. Nor did it matter that the worry had long lost its flavor. Chewing on the problem was like enjoying a wad of Double Bubble Gum. I couldn’t stop!

But then, as if delivered by grace, I got some distance from the worry. It’s as if Worry,  having been in my face, got momentarily pulled away, giving me distance and some perspective.

In that moment I knew I needed to let go of cataloguing and catastrophizing everything that was worrisome about the situation on my mind.

I also knew I didn’t really want to give it up. Chewing on it satisfied the belief that, if I couldn’t do anything about it, the least I could do was worry.

Then this inner dialogue began:

“You’ve got to…”

“I’ve got to what? I can’t do anything about it.”

“You’ve got to stop worrying.”

“That’s true.”

“You’ve got to relax your face.”

And so I did.

I relaxed my face and the wad of Double Bubble Gum Worry disappeared. Poof! Gone.

Seconds later, when a touch of anxiety fluttered inside, I tried to pick up the thread of concern once more. I caught it this time and so again relaxed my face. The worry disappeared!

This is a true story but I can’t take credit for the insight of relaxing worry by relaxing my face.

An unexpected gain from Botox

In an article titled New Study Suggests Smiling Influences How You See the World: Can a smile trick your mind into a more positive mood?  Bryan E. Robinson, PhD talks about how the simple act of smiling, even if insincere, elevates mood.

He references the positive mood altering effects of Botox writing,

“An earlier study by Michael Lewis and his research team at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people who received cosmetic Botox injections (compromising their ability to frown) reported being happier than did people who could frown normally. The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting Botox injections. The Botox recipients reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s cosmetic nature.”
(Robinson, 2020)

Riding in the car with my husband today, I silently chewed over worries and concerns I couldn’t fix. When I found some separation from the worry and looked at it with some objectivity, it occurred to me to extrapolate from what I’d read in Bryan Robinson’s article, that I just might calm down if I simply relaxed my face. And there was my anxiety relief technique!

I not only calmed down, my internal worry voice went silent. Without forcing anything, or berating me, but using only the expression on my face, I acted as if life were easy and calm and my mind followed.

Uncertainty is a fact of life

The thread of my internal worry conversation was fueled by uncertainty. It didn’t have a strong relationship to the current pandemic. But in or out of a pandemic, uncertainty has always been and always will be a common running theme of every human life!

Think about it. The simple tension of wondering if you will get what you want from another person (whether authority figure, family member, or even a best friend) is filled with uncertainty. Waiting for a response from that person to bring an end to the uncertainty is a small thing. Wondering when the consequences of a pandemic and its accompanying uncertainty will end is a huge thing!

To quote Robinson again, “Fully surrendering to uncertainty reduces frustration and anxiety and creates an open heart, peaceful presence, and clear mind.” (Robinson, 101)

I don’t know about you but my inclination is to overthink and worry about things that are uncertain. This is true in spite of the fact that for years I’ve had a spiritual practice of perceiving uncertainty as part of the divine mystery, as something to walk toward and lean into rather than resist. I’ve had moments where I managed uncertainty best by surrendering to it.

But these days it is extra hard to not keep a handy supply of Double Bubble Gum Worry so that I can chew the living daylights out of it!

In the face of the pandemic, I want to aim for “an open heart, peaceful presence, and clear mind.”

One way to surrender to the extra uncertainty we all face these days is to sometimes simply relax our faces and even smile.

In conclusion

Long before 2020 comes to an end “uncertainty” will be on everyone’s minds as a word of choice to describe the year. Whether with intention or not, we are all learning how to deal with personal, community, country, and world-wide uncertainty. We are all dealing with worry and anxiety.

As for me, I want to deal with all of it with intention. Today, with the gift of grace, paying attention to what was going on inside, and allowing creativity free reign, I created an anxiety relief technique that I’m now sharing with you!

I find that spiritual and psychological tools plus the creative grace of putting into practice what experts say do me good works for me.

What works for you?

`*~                                                                                                                                                                                                        

References:

Robinson, B.E., (2019), #CHILL. New York, NY: William Morrow.

Robinson, B.E., (2020, August 14). New Study Suggests Smiling Influences How You See the World: Can a smile trick your mind into a more positive mood? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-right-mindset/202008/new-study-suggests-smiling-influences-how-you-see-the-world.

Structure Makes Children and Adults Feel Held. That’s Why It’s Comforting.

Grace in Light and Shadow Posted on by
Structure makes children and adults feel held.Structure makes children and adults feel held. That’s why it’s comforting. But in this fateful year of 2020, the structure of all our lives, worldwide, changed dramatically. For many of us the routine structure of our lives just went missing!
 
As with the worry and concern of getting sick and the grief of lives lost, the loss of structure in our lives causes stress. It steals peace of mind and unsettles the soul. For me it affected my appetite, sleep, and mood, bringing a persistent feeling of malaise. 
 
Recently, though, after taking a juicy bite of my favorite pizza, I woke up to a spectacular realization! I have control over creating structure in my life! In fact, I’d already begun exercising that control and felt better for it.
Date Day (before)

Our usual date day isn’t what it was before the pandemic. In those days a typical date day occurred on a Friday. It was a favorite meal out and a movie, perhaps running an errand on the way home. It’s only been six months since the last time we saw a movie in a theater, but it feels as if it’s been years!

For the past six months and counting our date day looks like this. Every Saturday, after our morning hike with our dog we get dressed for the day and dress up for each other. Then we head for our favorite pizza place. On the way I visit the restaurant’s website and place our to-go order. Joseph parks close to the door for me to run in (mask up) and get the pizza and our drinks. When I return to the car, we drive to an isolated spot in the parking lot. There we turn off the engine, turn on the radio, roll down the windows, enjoy our pizza and some light conversation!
 
That’s the date!
 
Date Day (after)
Relaxing in the car while enjoying our favorite pizza takeout, eating half in order to save the other half for Sunday lunch (when we’ll finish it off along with CBS Sunday Morning that we recorded earlier), is nothing like dinner out and a movie at the theater used to be.
 
It’s even further removed from getting dressed to go to a fancy restaurant for a romantic dinner. But it works for us right now.
 
Our Saturday lunch dates work because they provide structure to each week. They’re also ritualistic, which gives a feeling of being at home with oneself. We have other things built into our schedule that, though not like before the pandemic, provide focus and goal setting.
 
And to the degree that the structure in our lives, though different than before, provides comfort, the better we, as a couple, get along.
 
I will admit I still miss the old structure of my life. But creating new structure, relaxing into it, appreciating the new structure and appreciating my ability to create it, keep me balanced. It also gives me the opportunity to feel held by the life I create. And that, as it turns out, is good stuff.
 
What about the structure in your life?
Structure makes children and adults feel held.Whatever structure is in place for you right now, consider being present to it for deepening that sense of comfort, of being held by the world you create.
 
And if you feel like you’re still flailing in the face of the restrictions COVID-19 has placed on all our lives; imagine how you can provide some structure to your life in ways that support you, that comfort you, that make you feel held.
 
Even in a pandemic, even with social restrictions, we create the world we live in. How can you bring loving structure to your life, as it is right now, such that you feel held and supported by the life you create?
 
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