What's your bicycle doing now? Just use the bicycle analogy - your front wheel takes you where you want to go, and your back wheel gives you purpose and power to keep moving. When you keep moving in a balanced way you live a full life longer. Do you believe that? {Last week there were balance tips}.
Can you say you are balanced now? Maybe a quick read on it will balance your thoughts, and you will feel/see more clearly where you want to steer the front wheel. It's your purpose put into a clear direction, which extends lifespan.
What's your comfortable pace of growth?
KNOW WHAT?
Life expectancy as a topic is really boring - until it's yours. Then you realize you need to consider it and the implications of it. Your chances as an individual that you will live until tomorrow are either 0 or 1 - Yes or No.
But averages tell you that if others are living longer because they DO certain stuff. Well, you can emulate some of the things they DO. You say to your self: "Maybe I won't croak tomorrow. maybe there's a key - something I'm missing". Your expectations about tomorrow don't need to be pessimistic and you start thinking - "What am I expecting out of life?"
What should your expectation be if you live another 10 years? You can research this yourself, but an example helps. If you are 60 now, men are expected to live 20 more years and women 23. On the average. Keep moving one beautiful day at a time, and grow a little bit each one of them.
Great you did it! Now you are 80 {M} or 83 {W}. The Good News is that the average expectancy of all people who actually lived the normal, average time does NOT drop a lot. Not as much as you think. (Google Yours Sometime).
For some reason you lived and some others didn't - that's how you get an average. Maybe you took a little bit better care than others did. Thank goodness you did it! And thank your choices. Go another 5 years. Your male life expectancy at 85 is now 91, a female just a bit longer.
SO WHAT?
Well, how much expectancy drops is largely under your control. There's always random stuff - bad drivers, trees fall on houses, etc. But you don't control those. When you think about "no control" stuff you can get afraid to go out of the house. (Agoraphobia). The fear stops your life and your growth. The tree falls anyway.
The benefit of considering risk allows balance because you can choose to DO instead of worry. The back wheel of drive and purpose moves you onwards. If you stop for too long you fall over, out of balance. The front wheel is your choice instrument. What can you control? What can you not? What can you only influence in some way? Your answers determine how close you come to your expectations. And your expectancy.
NOW WHAT?
It's time to think for a moment about the back wheel. Why would you want to live beyond the normal averages? What's out there? One thing is better medicine. If you live long enough, medicine will find something new for you. As your sight gets a bit dimmer, then the research brings it back. Today's cataract surgery is amazing, for example. Or Elon Musk could invent a robot to do all your housework.
How about walking with grandkids or playing with them at the beach? Trips you never took become possible and easier. This is the emotional base behind the bucket list. And that's a big key - how about the emotions behind the list? The list won't run itself. You have to choose to power the bike. You have to picture what you could do when you live longer and feel better than the average. If you now have a job, the "JOB" you have will phase out or just end. The job of GROWING so you can live longer never ends. Until it does. Make that event way, way out there!
Happy Days Ahead
Joe Grant , MBA, Certified Retirement Coach
The address:
Website: https://yourvantagepoints.com
Comments