Changing Circumstances seem to change our lives daily as we grow older so how can we 50- or 60-somethings cope with the common occurrences of our age?
For the last year there have been various circumstances that have completely wrecked my normal routine – changing circumstances many people of my age are going through at this time of life; sometimes earlier or later than me.
Both my husband and I have suffered a couple of health challenges each that affected our ability to keep fit for months at a time; there have been injuries too and uncomfortable diagnoses relating to our ageing bodies. Tony’s Mum suffered for a couple of years with dementia, then alzheimer’s which kept him busy and caused him to reduce to a 2 ½ day working week (if he was lucky). His Mum passed on in January but in the previous November my Mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer so we have been up and down the motorway visiting and helping however we could, reducing our hours even further.
Needless to say there has been a lot of stress involved and because of this constant stream of changing circumstances and problems, finances deteriorated in our household causing even more stress. We’re both self-employed and found we couldn’t put in the hours to keep up with the bills.
Changing Circumstances ARE Normal
Back in January I kept hearing myself say “when we’re back to normal” and realised we hadn’t been able to function normally for over a year. This made me wonder about the idea of “back to normal” and I realised that normal is whatever is going on right now. It’s not abnormal for people of our age to have these problems. So we began to look at each day – whatever chaos it brought – as “today’s normal”. We stopped looking for some nirvana in the future and decided that “normal” doesn’t mean only the easy days when things are going right.
Since then we’ve had even more stress and disruptions and our changing circumstances, though better than many others in the world, were becoming increasingly difficult.
Someone asked me this morning how things were and I found myself saying for the tenth time this week “we seem to be lurching from one crisis to another”. I heard myself say it and realised it had become a mantra. Time for a rethink.
I decided that I could change my language yet again; this time I could perhaps try out as an answer to that question “we’re gliding from one challenge to another” or “we’re managing our challenges very well, thank you” or “changing circumstances have opened so many new doors for us, it’s very exciting”.
Of course I could answer “fine” or “just great” but my friends know what’s going on in my life and wouldn’t accept that anyway. If you’ve read other articles on my blog you’ll know I decided long ago that “constructive thinking” beats “positive thinking” hands down when one is in a pit. Positive thinking is often a way to pretend nothing’s wrong or gloss over and bury problems whereas constructive thinking admits there is a problem and encourages you to take action. They both have their place but in the most difficult of situations positive thinking – when you use it to pretend what’s bad is really good – can seem so false to the subconscious (and the conscious) that it can make us feel even worse.
So when changing circumstances throw up problems for you to deal with how can you use constructive language to change those problems to challenges or your despair to some glimmer of hope?
Good luck with your quest and I’d really appreciate your ideas on how I could change my thinking and languaging to move me further forward too.
Bee
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