Humor Yourself to Lead a Happier, Healthier Life...

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.” – Michael Pritchard A couple of days ago, I was spending some time with friends, and one of them made a joke that made us all laugh so hard that we could barely breathe. It was an infectious sort of laughter, and every time we’d calm down, one of us would start giggling again and within seconds we’d all be in stitches. After about 15 minutes of this, the laughter finally died down, but the mood in the room was joyous and elevated. Personally, I felt as though my mind had been wiped clean, leaving me calm and relaxed. There’s a reason they call laughter the best medicine.  As you enter the second half of your life, laughter can be paramount to enhancing your relationships and keeping you healthy, both physically and emotionally. Here are some ways laughter can invigorate your life: Laughter Helps You Connect Socially Laughter is a great way to bond with new friends and to strengthen old friendships. When you laugh with friends it unites you and keeps relationships fresh and healthy. Resentments and disagreements are effectively healed through humor and lightness. Incorporate more play and humor into your daily interactions with your loved ones, and watch how your relationships change for the better. Laughter Increases Your Life Span (and the Quality of Life You’re Living) A Norwegian study has shown that adults with a sense of humor outlive their more somber contemporaries. By having an optimistic outlook on life, and being able to laugh at difficult situations when they arise, you not only create happiness for yourself, but for the people around you as well. People are drawn to laughter,...

Making New Friends in the Second Half of Life...

When you’re young, it is quite easy to make friends You meet people at school or during recreational activities, forming friendships over shared interests. Once you start a family and have kids, you can bond with other parents over the ups and downs of parenthood. As you enter the second half of your life, however, making new friends can sometimes be a struggle. Friends are so vital for well being emotionally, physically, and mentally. The opportunities to meet people become less and less frequent, and the friends you’ve had for a long time may start to relocate after they retire. When you do get the chance to meet new people, you may find that your social skills aren’t quite what they used to be, leaving you feeling awkward and resistant to trying to make new friends. When you enter the later years of your life, you may feel that you are too old to start making new friends, leaving you feeling lonely and isolated. With loneliness being a key contributor to stress and anxiety in older people, finding companionship can be one of the best things for your health and your mental well-being. So how do you go about making friends at this point in your life? We’ve compiled a list of suggestions below to help you build your social life and find the friendships you want. 1.    Follow Your Interests By involving yourself in the things you love – whether it be arts, physical exercise, volunteering, etc., you open yourself up to people who share a your interests. Having something you can bond over can be the first step to building a meaningful friendship with someone. 2.    Don’t Be Afraid One of the biggest obstacles people face when...

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...

How to Create Meaning in Dementia Care...

One of the most important things to a caregiver of someone with Alzheimer’s is to know their loved one is happy. However, they are often so overwhelmed by the responsibility of caregiving, that the fun of being together is lost. All engagement tends to be for survival and not for enrichment. This often results in a negative atmosphere affecting the mood of everyone, including the person with Alzheimer’s. Left unchecked, the resulting tensions will often lead to behavioral issues from both individuals. Slipping Away Unsure how to even act around each other, the care partners (the person with Alzheimer’s and his or her caregiver) may fall into a world of isolation. They may worry about what others think or feel their situation is unlike others’. They can become so uncomfortable that they may withdraw from family, friends and society. Changing these tendencies is important to the health and well-being of both individuals because meaningful human interaction, whether in a one-on-one situation or in a group setting, is important to everyone’s happiness. Finding Happiness With Alzheimer’s disease, it’s important that engagement is adapted to meet the changing needs of the individual while focusing on the things that enrich the person’s life and bring happiness. For this to work, the caregiver must accept how things are now and discover ways to incorporate meaningful activities on daily basis. While a caregiver will routinely look back at how things were, it’s vital to appreciate that the person with Alzheimer’s is the same person as in the past. It’s the disease that’s making the individual act different, and typically, the same things will still bring happiness to his or her heart. These men and women still want to be included in activities and to...

Cards That Offer Better Words for a Serious Illness...

Their cancer-survivor maker knows the pain of kind but hurtful sentiments If you have ever had cancer or another serious illness, you can probably make a long list of unhelpful things that friends, family and well-meaning acquaintances have said to you. “Everything happens for a reason.” “I read about this miraculous new treatment on the Internet!” “Oh, I knew someone who had that same thing and they died.” Emily McDowell, a cancer survivor, has heard them all. In response, the Los Angeles graphic designer came up with a set of eight “Empathy Cards” to be used when traditional “get well” cards just don’t work. She launched them this week. Another set is due out in December, she told NPR’s Ina Jaffe in an interview. A Terrifying Diagnosis McDowell learned 15 years ago, at age 24, that she had Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. “The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called ‘sir’ by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo,” she said on her company’s website. “It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.” Among the potentially offensive comments: referring to cancer as “a journey.” “With time and distance, some people do come tothat conclusion on their own that this … feels like a journey,” McDowell told NPR. “But a lot of people really feel like ‘If this is a journey, I’d like my ticket refunded,’ or ‘This is a journey to hell and back.’ ” Coming Up Empty To be fair, it is hard to know what to say. When we...

5 Secrets to Transform Your Experience of Aging...

They’ll help you shift from a sense of loss to a sense of gain My 15-year-old son Evan walked off the tennis court triumphantly, as if he had just won the U.S. Open. Up to that point, our matches had always ended in a tie: I made sure of that or, rather, I could make sure of that. Now, toweling off while feeling an unfamiliar tug on my heart, I said to him, “Hey, Ev, did you ever wonder why the score always remained the same in our tennis matches over the years?” Then, in a suggestive whisper, I continued: “Maybe you could continue that trend — gracefully?” He didn’t respond, but I knew his answer. And it was deafening. Walking back to the car, I was consumed by the thought that my relationship with Evan (and with my life generally) was clearly at a crossroads. Staying positive as I aged would require letting go of capacities that were diminishing and embracing ones that were expanding. Easy transition? No! Gratifying? Mostly! Here are five secrets I’ve learned along the way that helped turn my experience of aging from a sense of loss into a sense of gain: Learn to accept what is. There is no end to the expanding benefits of embracing life on its own terms. If I hadn’t accepted my inevitable decline in physical acuity — the awareness of which began on the tennis court that day — it would have led to nothing but suffering. Instead, by refocusing my attention on supporting, even celebrating, my son’s physical ascension from boy to early manhood, I was able to walk away from “defeat” feeling relatively good. This mindset shift allowed me to interpret the situation, and many others...

Why and When Denial Is Good For Caregivers...

Temporarily ignoring a problem might make it easier to manage The ever-witty author Delia Ephron recently wowed a mostly female boomer audience at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Women’s Conference making the crowd laugh with spot-on stories about skipping cab rides to afford a blowout for her unruly hair and wondering why kale is the new wonder food. But the mood turned more somber as she spoke of her late sister, the noted author, screenwriter and film director, Nora Ephron. The two were extremely close, not just as sisters but also as writing partners for films such as When Harry Met Sally and Hanging Up. “When Nora became ill, she told very few people,” Ephron said to the hushed crowd. Her sister didn’t want a flood of sympathy for her losing battle with leukemia or to spend her last months entertaining the mourners — those who come to dwell on your soon-to-be exit. Delia became part of a small circle who cared for Nora, emotionally if not physically, in the last months of her life. Part of that caregiving role was to keep her sister’s diagnosis under wraps. Even though Delia knew the truth, she found herself embracing the canard. Some days, she was able to forget Nora was ill. When Denial Is Healthy When caring for an older parent, ailing spouse or sibling struggling with a devastating diagnosis, denial is often a place caregivers dwell. They may be driven there because they feel overwhelmed or angry, or because they don’t understand “medical speak” and want to tune out. And while an initial state of denial is neither uncommon nor unhealthy, according to Dr. Ira Byock, a leading palliative care physician and author of Dying Well, it’s not...

6 Ways You Can Help a Friend Who is Sick...

Suggestions that let you be present and make a difference Boomers pride ourselves on our ability to handle anything that comes our way, but there’s one thing many of us aren’t prepared for: when friends in our age group get life-threatening diseases. This inescapable front-row seat to a friend’s suffering — and recognition of our own aging — are happening now and will continue for the rest of our lives. While our friendships in the past might have included vacations, gym sessions and social events, the scenario changes significantly when, for example, a friend is undergoing chemotherapy or another serious treatment. She may be housebound with no energy for outings, unable to drive or even sit at a movie. We want to be helpful, but we’re often unsure about what we can do. Plenty, it turns out. Here are six specific, kind, and helpful acts to aid a friend who is suffering: Don’t ask; do. We’re an independent generation and many of us hate being dependent. So take the initiative to be useful. Cook a meal or two your friend can eat and bring it over. Offer to run an errand or take her to the doctor or sit with her for treatment. She’ll appreciate those types of things. Pay extra attention to your sick friend. Call often, even if you just leave a message. Be sure your friend knows you will stick with him or her no matter what. Because, it turns out, some friends disappear when another gets sick, probably because they don’t know how to handle the situation or what to do. Don’t be one of those who vanish. Be there for your loved one. Visit, and don’t come empty-handed. My local grocery’s floral department will...