Healthy Monday

Interview

What Women In Their 50’s and 60’s Are Worrying About

Attention Better After 50 women -- are you a worrier? Do you or a loved one you know suffer with anxiety? Well you are not alone. Women in their 50's and 60's are worrying. That's a fact. And, according to Lynn Lyons, it's normal. But the way we worry, ruminate, our patterns of how we deal with our anxiety, has been embedded over the years. In her new book The Anxiety Audit, Lynn talks about identifying our patterns and how to shift them. Lynn's book is incredibly helpful for those of us who are worriers. Women over 50 know their roles are changing and we need to pivot. The tools we used as the key player in our families requires new strategies. Lynn's techniques for dealing with anxiety and worry and RPN, repetitive negative thinking, are simple to understand and incredibly helpful. Please listen in to my interview with Lynn and share with those you love and hopefully this will be helpful to you. Felice Shapiro In Conversation With Author Lynn Lyons...
Playing twister

Out Of My Comfort Zone: The Thrill Of Saying Yes

Let's face it, as convenient as Zoom is, it’s not the same as in-person meetings. I have dearly missed ā€œLiveā€ workshops. RealĀ  people, real time equals real energy and that's just what happened this week at a writing workshop I ran where I got a full dose. I'm still buzzing from the excitement and novelty of it all. Here's what happened.... Back in July myĀ friend Jill and I were talking about upcoming stuff for this Fall and that's when she asked me ifĀ I would like to run a workshop for her YPO group in Boston. My heart started beating fast right there and then....

Positive Steps: Getting Into the Growth Zone

ā€œThe comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.ā€ There is a great piece in positive psychology about getting out of the comfort zone and into the growth zone and how to do it. "The core idea is that our nervous systems have a Goldilocks zone of arousal. Too little, and you remain in the comfort zone, where boredom sets in. But too much, and you enter the ā€˜panic’ zone, which also stalls progress."...
Hands hold a beautiful empty nest of birds, made of moss and feathers, against the backdrop of greenery, in the open air. Close-up.

Empty Nesters

My husband, David, and I have two children who are two years apart. So when our oldest, Sarah, left the nest, we still had our son, Jack, at home to keep us busy. But very soon, it was about time for him to leave, too. I spent his whole senior year of high school mourning his impending move-out. I kept reminding David of all of the ā€œlastsā€ in our lives: our last time having Jack and all his buddies over for enormous quantities of homemade cookies, our last time wishing he would take a shower after shooting hoops for two hours. Our last time going to one of his band’s gigs in Phoenix. The thought of the children not living in the house seemed lonely—and quiet!...
Happy person on mountain at sunrise

Harvard Study Shows Positive Attitude About Aging Could Boost Health

A study of 14,000 adults over age 50, co-authored by experts at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that the people who had the highest satisfaction with aging had a 43% lower risk of dying from any cause over a four-year period compared with those who were the least satisfied. The study also found that people more satisfied with the aging process had lower risk for conditions such as diabetes, stroke, cancer, and heart disease; better cognitive functioning; were more likely to engage in physical activity and less likely to have trouble sleeping; were less lonely and depressed; and were more optimistic with a greater sense of purpose....
Group having dinner at restaurant

The Designated Adult Club

I was on Facebook the other day when a former colleague who has just started a new job jumped in with a query about pension plans. ā€œI need an accountant,ā€ she wrote on her wall. ā€œI need advice on what to with the multiple pension plans I’ve accrued since I started working. I’m not sure if I should combine them –  or keep them separate.ā€ Within minutes, a whole bunch of us who’d worked together with her had glommed onto this thread. Turns out, she wasn’t alone. Several of us had more than one pension plan and we all needed the same advice. At some point several comments in, someone on the thread suggested that if my colleague was able to obtain the answer to this question, she could share it with the rest of us over drinks. (We’d pick up the tab.) And then someone else had this brilliant idea: Why don’t we make a deal where one of us is put in charge of making these sorts of vital, grown-up decisions for the entire group on a six-month, rotating basis....