<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At midlife, at and in early retirement,\nand later life, people paying attention to their own life sooner or later find\nthemselves with new, evolving, and maturing questions. All sorts of questions,\nmostly difficult ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note\nhow many times the qualifier \u201cnow\u201d appears in that list. A peculiar thing about\n\u201cfulfillment\u201d<\/strong> is that it is<\/strong> a present tense<\/strong> state<\/em>\nor act<\/em> of fulfilling a dream or hope.\n It is the feeling of being\nfulfilled\u2014again, in the present moment. The point is that it is not some future<\/em> act or state of being. One\nmeaning of fulfill is \u201cto put into effect,\u201d \u201cto achieve,\u201d \u201cto carry\nout,\u201d or \u201cto realize.\u201d Although the act<\/em> or state<\/em> of\nfulfillment is a noun, getting to it is a process. A dynamic process<\/strong> of knitting active verbs together, flowing and\nunfolding as indicated by the intent and action inherent in put, achieve, carry.<\/em> The point\nhere is that fulfillment is an outcome<\/em><\/strong> of purpose<\/em>-oriented actions<\/strong>\nwe take one day at a time. More to the point, we do not and cannot think or\nfeel or pray our way into fulfillment devoid of action, and likely some\nbehaviour change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the thing about our actions <\/strong>is that they are limited by our thinking<\/strong>. Which, in\nturn is a product of our history\u2014our experience, family and social conditioning,\neducation, etc. As pertains to fulfillment at midlife, at retirement, and\nbeyond, it requires us to be conscious <\/em>of\nthat as our life changes in its 2nd<\/sup> half, repeatedly. And that we\nneed to learn and relearn new ways of living and valuing our unfolding life.\nLet me elaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of us comes to each new<\/em> today\n<\/em>with our own life-history-generated questions, concerns, and fears, as well\nas our expectations, hopes and aspirations for our unfolding future. Many\nthings interfere with, or feed, these; unexpected health or relationship\nchanges, for example. Especially challenging for many are the conscious and unconscious\ntraumatic consequences of childhood adversity<\/strong>;\nwhich often\u2014if not typically\u2014tend to resurface in adulthood to influence our\nchoices that shape the trajectory of our life. And then resurface again in\nlife\u2019s 2nd<\/sup> half when we are unable to find, or unwilling to look\nfor, suitable answers in our changed and changing circumstances. Or worse, try to ignore them all together.\nAlthough many things can and do interfere with our hoped-for future, childhood adversity so completely\nconditions, if not dominates, our life trajectory<\/strong> that many, if not most,\nadult challenges flow from it; which are often self-inflicted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although some people tend to believe\nthey can ignore, outgrow, or simply \u2018tough out\u201d childhood adversity\u2014men\nespecially\u2014there is lots of evidence that we can\u2019t and don\u2019t. What we actually\ndo is push our questions, concerns, and hurts\u2014as well as our unrealized hopes\nand aspirations\u2014as far away from consciousness as we can. Although we can\nsimply forget about and\/or outgrow some things, we typically \u201cstuff\u201d them\nsomewhere out of sight and out of mind, with our \u201cgut\u201d being a common\nrepository. (Which is why so many people have stomach issues.) But what really<\/em>\nhappens <\/strong>is that fear, shame, hurt, and unrequited hopes and dreams languish\nin our soul. Churning and festering, even as they seek release and relief. Strangely,\neven our hopes and aspirations for a better<\/em>\nlife experience get stuffed when we have learned not to trust that others will\nsupport us in our quest for them. Or distrust our own worthiness of them. And\nso, we often unconsciously self-sabotage both our dreams of, and hope for, better<\/em> aging. Along with this, our sense\nof self-esteem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I discussed in an\nearlier article, Talking About Things We\nNever Get the Chance to Talk About<\/em>, there is great value in being with and\ntalking to others who understand and share our hurts and hopes. This is why On May 11<\/strong> we will again be offering an\nopportunity for interested people to talk about making sense of their unfolding\nand maturing life in their own pursuit of better <\/em>aging<\/strong>. Our focus will be on\nthe utility of 8 Keys <\/em><\/strong>that have been identified as elemental to<\/em><\/strong>better aging and Fulfillment in Life\u2019s 2nd<\/sup>\nHalf<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em> Our four aims for this\nevent are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Click here<\/a><\/strong> to register. We hope to see you there. Feel free to contact me at paul@newfutures.ca<\/a> or at 519-820-2508 if you have any questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At midlife, at and in early retirement, and later life, people paying attention to their own life sooner or later find themselves with new, evolving, and maturing questions. All sorts of questions, mostly difficult ones. Psychological ones like, \u201cwhy isn\u2019t life working out as I expected?\u201d And what can I do about that, now?\u201d Spiritual[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newfutures.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}