Baby Boomers and the Holidays - Less Stress and More Cheer
In your daydreams about the upcoming holidays, do you envision universal goals like sustaining our planet’s resources and gaining energy independence? Or do you fantasize about having less stress? For many Baby Boomers, this time of year tends to be more exhausting than inspiring.
Stress is the body’s response to any stimulus, either external or internal, that is perceived as taxing personal resources. Is gift giving your source of stress, as you look for the perfect necktie or worry that a better blackberry will be released next week? Does food become your comfort, and challenge, while you’re eating the cookie dough instead of baking it? Will you be focusing on the buffet table rather than chatting at the annual office party? You may be creating more stress for yourself by sticking to the old familiar routine and operating on automatic pilot.
Be on the lookout for symptoms of stress. They can appear at any time in any variety of forms: Read more
The Boomers Future
The term “late bloomer” is the perfect way to describe me. I had to hit 50 before I admitted that I was not enjoying my life. I had a good job, nice car, traveled all over the country and had more friends than I could count. What was wrong with me? Read more
The Practical Side of Wellness - Are Your Ducks in a Row?
As adults, we all know the importance of getting our ducks in a row. But just knowing is not enough – we need to actually get it done! Whether single, married, parent or not, there are things in our lives that need to be addressed and that’s called life planning.
In my lectures and workshops, I talk about life planning being more than just the financial and legal side of life; it’s our basic moral and ethical obligations to our family and loved ones. Let’s consider these examples:
If you and your spouse go out to dinner tonight, chances are you’d leave your cell phone numbers with the baby sitter just in case something happens to one of the kids. But don’t you think something is more likely to happen to one or both of you? After all, you are the ones out on the road. And should disaster occur, does the babysitter know who to call if neither of you return home?
Perhaps you have a full time position with a company that requires your total concentration. Then your Mother falls and breaks her hip. All of a sudden, she’s no longer able to live on her own and you are faced with bringing her into your home or placing her in an assisted living arrangement. Now you are a working caregiver whose concentration is pulled in different directions at all hours of the day. The sheer juggling act of getting your job done along with ensuring Mom gets to her doctor appointments is creating havoc in your life. Read more
The Great American Social Security Bamboozle by Patricia L Johnson and Richard E Walrath
David Broder, who writes for the Washington Post, recently had a column about Social Security. If you can find it, it’s worth a look–not for what it says, but for what it fails to say. As Broder gets older, he loses more and more of his marbles.
“A Hearing the Candidates Should Attend” by David Broder is filled with everything anyone ever wanted to know, except the basic question - why. Why is the Social Security program in trouble?
In the following statement Broder fails to provide a clear picture of the problem “unless ways are found to reform the financing and benefits of Social Security and Medicare, the demands imposed by the retirement of millions of baby boomers will consume the federal budget and blight the prospects of the next generations.”
We didn’t just wake up one fine morning and say “Oops… there is no more money in the kitty” that’s not how government works, so what went wrong, why is Social Security in trouble? The answer is Social Security isn’t in trouble, Medicare is - and lumping Social Security and Medicare together is wrong, they are two separate programs. Read more
