Tuesday, TBD in January in River Forest, IL

If you’ve been wondering how to spend the rest of your life, spend lunch with Chris Hauri and Liz Monroe-Cook as they take you through Life Sort. Using a simple card-sorting technique, you’ll identify your strengths, concerns and passions. From these we’ll brainstorm a “life plan” — ways to spend time doing the things that are most meaningful. You’ll leave with a much better understanding of yourself and your future.

$120 includes lunch, snacks and all materials

River Forest, IL

Tags: identity, workshop

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 11:00 pm and is filed under identity, prioritizing your life, workshop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I went to the retirement party of a friend who has been passionate about work for the last 40 or so years. As we walked around his house, it seemed that EVERYTHING there was a future “project”, from cleaning out the garage to installing backyard lights to getting a dog. He mentioned he’s been doing a lot of volunteer work already and he hopes to expand that. Plus weekends away with family and friends. Sounds good. I’m sure he’ll get the dog and maybe finish the lights, but we’ll never see the clean garage!

Other people commented on how they are or plan to spend their retirement time. Travel, golf, family, scrapbooks, shopping…and I started wondering about how we spend our time. And what might be a better way than frittering it away as many of us seem to do.

So I made a list of the things I get the most satisfaction doing and a list of the least. (While I’m sort of retired, I’m still trying to make a living as a consultant, so I’m not to the “golf stage” yet.)

Satisfaction… giving tours of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings to the interested public, gardening, lunch with friends, seeing great theater, cleaning out anything (PURGE!, the new Boomer war chant), hugging my dog, classes at the Apple store, Costco surprises, walking with friends

Low satisfaction… going through junk mail (including emails), sitting in meetings, watching most TV (not Project Runway or Mad Men), looking for things, talking to people I don’t find interesting or happy, doing errands, housecleaning.

Thinking about what we get satisfaction from is darn interesting. Why? What’s so cool about throwing things out, yet housecleaning is dull? Or how I can sit in a Mac class but am pained sitting in meetings?

So I took my lists and compared them to my “goal mind map” I have on things I want to accomplish and realized that things I get satisfaction from are directly connected to things I want to achieve. Goal – car in garage. Goal – learn my Mac. I have no goal of a clean house or advancing my career in the corporate world.

One of the workshops we run is “LifeSort”, basically helping you discover what you want to do for the rest of your life. We look at your strengths, passions and concerns and deep dive with interviews and visioning exercises. And I’m always so delighted when our participants leave having a real sense of how they can spend their time to achieve the most satisfaction. It’s gratifying to see them get excited about pursuing something they really care about. One woman is opening a communal art gallery, another diving into spirituality to feed her lifelong curiosity. Another woman has gone back to work, after retirement, and is so much happier. The list goes on.

My challenge to all of us over 50 is to think about what will give us the most satisfaction and then be creative about how to get more of that into our lives. And less of what is not satisfying. Some people find taking classes or starting a degree program is a way to involve themselves in new satisfying topics. Others volunteer or travel or make new friends.

I’d love to hear how you all are finding the best ways to use your time. I hope it’s for something really satisfying.

Tags: Time management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 3:20 pm and is filed under blog items, prioritizing your life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I normally think of myself as a pretty put-together friend, ear, leader, sister, cook, reader, shopper, creative thinker, pet mom, inspirer, etc. Yet when the wonderful lilacs fill the air with purple and the lawn mowers begin the drone of summer grasses, I turn into this sniveling, whining, sneezing, dizzy – pathetic – child! Who else has this Jekyll-Hyde transformation?

Sure, I know you’re supposed to stay inside (WHAT? It’s sunny out!) with your windows closed (and miss that wonderful spring breeze?) and not go outside in the a.m. (tell my dog that!). Worse yet, I choose to drive around completely in the elements with my convertible top down – because, dammit, this is Chicago and we only have so long to enjoy this!

So, I take some over-the-counter allergy pills (always too late) and carry a box of tissue with me. And wear my glasses more often than contacts. And try to go about my daily life.

But this morning, with a sore throat, dizzy head and drippy nose, I was transported back to about 3rd grade when my mommy let me stay home from school to sleep and eat sherbet. I am totally  awash in this feeling of being so vulnerable and so cared for that I’m taking the liberty of taking on this whine-y, sicky identity for just a few minutes. Sometimes it’s good to bring back that feeling of being 8 years old again.

Then I’ll take more antihistamines, etc. and grow up and get on with my life as an Allergy Sufferer. But until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

- Really creative allergy solutions

- Wonderful ways you feed your 8-year-old, 3rd grade self

Enjoy spring and support your local pharmaceutical company!
Chris

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under prioritizing your life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

While having lunch with a friend yesterday we talked about motivation to change. She knows she needs to lose weight and knows how good it feels and knows how to do it, having been successful before. But she’s looking for that “thing” that pushes her over the edge to make that behavior change.

Having been in her position for many years (that being the state of DENIAL!), we talked about things that have forced us to change in the past. We found the exercise of listing what’s helped in past changes to be helpful in cueing us into the future. So I’m sharing some of my biggest motivators:

- An African safari gave me an entirely new perspective on how I could lead my life and gave me the courage to quit my job and start my own business. I spent two weeks learning (which I really hadn’t done when I was working 70 hours a week) and seeing what’s important in the big picture. I still worked 70 hours a week, but it was much more satisfying.

- I quit smoking on a bet with a handsome man for dinner. I won but also found out I REALLY won – he was handsome but I was no longer a smoker! Plus he might not always be handsome, but I bet he’ll always be dull!

- Looming big birthdays have always woken me up to lose weight – 35 pounds at 40, 40 pounds at 50, 60+ pounds at 60. Do we see a pattern? I think I need to break it!

- Doctor’s orders have gone unheeded (”next week I’ll start”) but how I feel has driven more diet and exercise changes – sore knees, achy hips, foot problems, etc.

- Health fears. Diabetes – along with great thick hair – runs in our family and I kept putting off the fasting blood test for fear of getting bad news. Then my blood pressure started creeping up. And looming above all was my need to get my own insurance after Cobra stopped.

- Photo opps. Both when I knew pictures were going to be taken (weddings, vacations) or when I saw photos and couldn’t believe I really wore a red dress that made me look like a red whale in the picture. Hm.

- Upcoming vacations have made me think. Can I keep up on the tour? How uncomfortable will I be on the long flight? What clothes can I bring?

- Clothes! Nothing fits and I don’t want to move into the next size again!

This list could almost be the “Cosmo Quiz – Are You Ready to Change?” Score 3 points for each one of these motivators you feel. A score of 9 or more says “Go for it!” But it’s never just one reason that motivates us. And it’s often something we’re completely unaware of in our psyches that is the tipping point.

Funny how once you make a change, you realize all the benefits and wonder why you didn’t do it earlier. We realized this while writing our lists.

So take a few minutes and write your list of “What Made You Change”? What’s worked for you in the past to get you off and running to a better you? And then mine that list for insights into how your life can be better with a little change.

Feel like sharing your change list? Please post what’s worked for you , in the hopes that it wakes up change for others.

Tags: Change

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at 9:11 am and is filed under blog items, prioritizing your life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.