The Best Exercises for Introverts and Extroverts...

Where do you get your energy? See which workout styles fit for you The ability to stick with an exercise program largely lies in finding an activity you enjoy. Extroverts and introverts each find happiness in different approaches. Forcing yourself into a workout that makes you uncomfortable isn’t likely to lead to success. “An extrovert gains energy from the outside,” says Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., author of Better than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love. “Think team sports or high-fives in aerobics class. Conversely, an introvert gets energized from within. Yoga may be a better fit.” Keep in mind that although one modality may be a better fit than another, Lombardo notes the benefits of experimenting outside your comfort zone. “While introverts may prefer working out on their own and shy away from classes, a cycling class, where everyone does their own thing on a bike, may be a great addition to their workout.” Even a situation involving a group can be good for those who prefer to keep to themselves if they can run on their own outside of the group if desired. Extroverts may also find balance in an introverted workout such as yoga or martial arts, Lombardo adds. Check out these expert tips to find the best approach for your personality. Best Extrovert Workouts Free weights You’ll likely find many extroverts in the free weight area (dumbbells, barbells, etc.), says Pete McCall, senior advisor for the American Council on Exercise (ACE). “They will be the ones lifting heavy and walking around to make sure everyone sees them lifting heavy. The free weight area allows the opportunity to stand out and demonstrate one’s strength or skill level in technical lifts.” People tend...

The Happiness Doctor Is In...

A Mayo Clinic physician offers a joyful plan based in science Dr. Amit Sood, 48, reckons, based on average life span, that he has 10,000 days more to live. That sense of finite time helps him focus his attention, show compassion, be grateful and help others — all actions that lead to happiness. Sood chooses happiness. And he wishes for you to choose it, too. His recently released Mayo Clinic Handbook for Happiness pulls together easy things to incorporate into a busy life to boost joy and fulfillment. The Mayo Clinic researcher, educator and clinician grew up in India and was a young medical student during the massive 1984 chemical spill in Bhopal. He witnessed the resulting injuries and suffering of people whose homes and lives were destroyed by the accident. When he moved to the United States a decade later, he thought he would find, he says, “the Disneyland of the world.” And yet, he saw suffering, stress and pain in this country, too. Why, he wondered, is happiness so elusive? What is it about the human condition that pulls us to the negative? The problem, his research showed, is our brains. They are not designed for peace and happiness but to constantly scan the environment for what could harm us, looking always for what’s wrong or out of place. And our minds wander — most of us spend 50 to 80 percent of our time thinking wandering thoughts. We can’t seem to help it. When Mayo gave people 174 choices of activities that made them happy, “thinking” came in dead last. Yet, it gobbles up our finite days. So how to break free of the brain’s relentless churning, its pull to the negative? “If we can do that,”...

You’re Not As Active As You Think You Are...

Most people overestimate their exercise level, studies show If I were to ask you how active you are, what would you say? Do you consider yourself to be active and productive on most days of the week? Do you meet the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week? Would you go so far as to say that you exercise frequently? Each month, the polling institution, Gallup, tracks survey data from individuals about their exercise and activity habits. One question Gallup asks is: “In the last seven days, on how many days did you exercise for 30 or more minutes?” If a respondent did so on three or more days out of the past seven, he or she is considered a frequent exerciser. Another question asks individuals to rate, on a scale from 1 to 5, how strongly they agree with the statement: “In the last seven days, you have felt active and productive every day.” A score of 4 or 5 counts them among the “Active and Productive” group for the survey. For the month of August 2015, 47 percent of respondents reported exercising frequently, while 67 percent said they felt active and productive. What’s the True Picture? Unfortunately, objectively measured data tells quite a different story. In a 2013 study published by the American College of Sports Medicine, researchers asked 1,751 adults aged 19 to 84 to complete the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), indicating their active and sedentary time, and breaking down their active time according to level of intensity (vigorous, moderate and “walking”). The researchers had the participants wear an accelerometer for seven continuous days to measure actual minutes of activity and sedentary time, as well as intensity of active minutes. The...

The New Boomerang Workers: Rehired Retirees...

How to go back to work in retirement where you had a full-time job   You’ve no doubt heard about boomerang kids who return to their parents’ homes in their 20s (maybe you have one). But there’s a growing group of boomerangers who are typically in their 60s: retirees who return to work part-time or on a contract basis at the same employers where they formerly had full-time jobs. If you’ll be looking for work during retirement, you might want to consider avoiding a job search and becoming one. Employers That Rehire Their Retirees A handful of employers have formal programs to rehire their retirees. The one at Aerospace Corp., which provides technical analysis and assessments for national security and commercial space programs, is called Retiree Casual. The company’s roughly 3,700 employees are mostly engineers, scientists and technicians, and Aerospace is glad to bring back some who’ve retired. “With all the knowledge these people have, we get to call on them for their expertise,” says Charlotte Lazar-Morrison, general manager of human resources at Aerospace, which is based in El Segundo, Calif. “The casuals are part of our culture.” The roughly 300 Aerospace casuals (love that term, don’t you?) can work up to 1,000 hours a year and don’t accrue any more benefits (the company’s retirees already get health insurance). Most earn the salary they did before, pro-rated to their part-time status, of course. Why Aerospace Corp. Brings Back ‘Casuals’ The “casuals” program lets Aerospace management have a kind of just-in-time staffing system. “It allows us to us to keep people at the ready when we need them,” says Lazar-Morrison. Ronald Thompson joined Aerospace’s casuals in 2002, after retiring at age 64. He’d worked for the company full-time since 1964,...

My Second Act: Writing My First Musical...

This editor hopes to pursue his passion all the way to Broadway For my second act, I’m in the process of writing my first musical, with dreams of taking it to Broadway. Let me tell you how this has happened and my hopes for it — and for me. The course was charted long ago: when I was in fourth grade in Cincinnati, Ohio, my parents took me to see the national touring company of The Sound of Music and it was love at first sight. From that moment on, I spent hours listening to Broadway cast albums and reading the published scripts of plays and musicals my parents received monthly from the Fireside Theater Book Club. While other nine-year-olds memorized baseball stats, I memorized song lyrics. Turning a Pipe Dream into a Project For 50 years, the love affair continued. Every so often, I’d imagine what it would be like to someday write a musical, but I thought it was nothing more than a pipe dream. Since I also loved writing poetry and reading, I’d pursued a career in publishing, editing dozens of books running the gamut from Johnny Cash’s memoir to a new translation of The Dead Sea Scrolls. Then, about two years ago, at a friend’s birthday party I met a talented singer-songwriter named Jay Jacques, who played a few songs on his guitar. A few days later I wrote Jay, suggesting that I’d be happy to write lyrics if he ever needed a songwriting partner. He took me up on the offer and we wrote a few pop songs, including a fun bossa nova. One day, as Jay glanced at the posters and books in my apartment, a veritable shrine to musical theater, he asked:...

Fiftysomething Diet: 4 Tips to Help You Age Well...

How you can fine-tune your eating habits to live longer and healthier   A bowl of oatmeal every morning, a handful of nuts, five servings of fruits and vegetables a day — researchers seem to be slowly compiling a grocery list of foods that can extend your lifespan. At the same time, there are quite a few 95- to 100-year-olds in The Longevity Genes Project, a large ongoing study at Albert Einstein College in New York, who haven’t made healthful lifestyle changes. They smoke. They don’t eat a lot of vegetables. They don’t pay much attention to diet at all. Longevity: Diet Vs. Genes That raises a question: How much does diet influence longevity and how much is due to genes? Right now, scientists offer no definitive answer. Estimates are that genes might roughly influence 20 to 35 percent of lifespan length. And some fiftysomethings probably have genes strong enough to override negative lifestyle and eating habits, although they’re likely a small group. For the majority of us, the way we eat and live is likely going to play a huge role in the length, and perhaps more importantly, the quality of our lifespan. Rather than piece together a grocery list of specific anti-aging foods, it looks as if the best way to tap into these dietary longevity benefits is by gradually shaping and fine-tuning eating habits to make them healthier. The Mediterranean diet is one good plan. So is the Okinawan diet. So is the U.S. government’s DASH diet. But we think the following four little culinary rules, based on current research, are a good place to start: Rule No. 1: Drink wine like a Mediterranean; sip moderate amounts with meals Italian researchers suggest that part of the health...

How to Visit Your Aging Parent the Right Way...

Taking a different approach can make things better for both of you Katherine Arnup, a retired professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and now life coach, got an education in caregiving when her sister and parents got sick. She later became a hospice volunteer. She drew on those experiences for her latest book, I Don’t Have Time for This!: A Compassionate Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents and Yourself. Arnup writes about the importance of being “being present” when you visit an aging parent. The following is excerpted from one of the book’s chapters. Settle In, Look Around When you arrive to visit your parents, take the time to get settled. It might help to take a few deep intentional breaths before you open the door to their house or apartment. Once inside, resist the urge to start blathering on and on just to fill the void, or to cover up your discomfort or nervousness. Listen. Observe. How does the house or apartment look? What changes do you notice since your last visit? Is your father wearing clothes with obvious stains? Are there a week’s worth of papers stacked up beside his chair? What might this mean? Is it typical? Might it be a hazard? Not Your House Because of our discomfort, we often fall into the habit of cleaning up, putting things “back in their place,” or throwing things out that we consider to be garbage or recycling. These actions are likely to cause unnecessary frustration and confusion for your parents. They know where everything is now, and you’re only disrupting that order. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that it’s their house, not yours. I’m not suggesting you ignore signs of distress or mental confusion. But...

Recrafting a Life After a Stroke...

A survivor and his wife offer advice for coping   At 71, Bob Seiter was an active guy. After retiring from Kaiser Aluminum, where he worked in sales, he played golf three times a week, playing at a 14 handicap and striving to regain his 4. When he wasn’t on the fairway, he spent a lot of time volunteering. Then one morning, he had a hemorrhagic stroke, and everything changed. His wife, Sue, found him in the garage, alarmingly disoriented, called 911 and prayed. Bob was rushed to the hospital, where he spent three weeks in intensive care, clinging to life. The doctors warned Sue that Bob wasn’t expected to make it. But one day he opened his eyes and awareness began, slowly, to return. Coming Back to a New Life Then came 5 1/2 grueling weeks in a rehab facility. Then came reality. Bob recovered from the acute phase of the brain trauma, but he may never get back to normal. He doesn’t have some of the cognitive capabilities he used to have. He can’t, for example, immediately recall numbers, such as age or quantity. Ask him his own age, and he can’t answer until he first counts 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 72, 73. His short-term memory is poor. He might forget where the TV remote is, whether he turned off the stove or where the newspaper he’s reading is. (He can’t manage reading a book yet.) He still has trouble to recalling specific words or places, such as the cities where his children and grandchildren live. “I’ve had to recraft myself,” he said. “And that means learning how to do basic things again — and accepting that I’ll never be able to do some things I...