The Retirement Detox Program

Get snapping to clear clutter

You're either going to love or hate this idea, but...

If you're short of storage space or you're having a clear-out, have you ever considered taking digital photos of items that have nostalgic or sentimental value for you?  The photo will still evoke the memories but will take up much less space than the original item. 

For other tips to help you get and stay organized, visit Unclutterer.com.  There's a useful section there about dealing with inherited clutter - 'objects that legally come into your possession or responsibility after the loss of a loved one or when a family member is transitioned into a retirement community or nursing home'.

Reinventing retirement

The ever-lively msn.com is currently running a whole series of articles with titles like 'The New Fantasy Retirement', 'Get Your Dream Job... at 55', '7 Common Retirement Mistakes To Avoid' and '4 Retirees Who Are Living Big Dreams'.  Check them out here.

Living in the raw

I love the idea of incorporating more raw food into my diet - no, I'm not talking about raw meat or anything like that - I'm talking about more fruit, salads, smoothies, nuts and seeds, etc.  Would you believe that you can even get raw chocolate cake and apple crumble?  Or flapjacks, cookies and ice-cream?

Karen Knowler is The Raw Food Coach.  She is also an author, presenter, former MD of The Fresh Network (The UK's raw and living foods organisation), founder of The Fresh Festival and creator of Get Fresh! magazine. Karen has appeared on LK Today (GMTV), Channel Health, The Wellbeing Channel, Rude Health, LBC radio and Radio 4, as well as appearing regularly in the press in her capacity as raw food expert and food/life coach.  She really knows her stuff and she makes the idea of raw food seem an absolute 'no-brainer' (without appearing to be the slightest bit 'crusty' or 'cranky').

This week Karen posted four different YouTube videos on her blog which, together, answer the following questions:

Q1: So what is raw food?

Q2: Why do people choose to eat more raw food or begin a raw food diet?

Q3: What does a typical raw food diet or menu plan look like?

Q4: How much of a difference would it make eating half your diet raw and going all raw?

Q5: What about eating out?

Q6: What are the biggest potential pitfalls of following a raw diet?

Q7: How do you get started?

Q8: How long does it take to start feeling and seeing a difference?

Q9: What do you consider "must know" information that anyone new to raw foods should have?

Q10: Where do you see the concept of raw foods going in the future?

To view the clips with the answers to all these questions click here.

What's your Walk Score?

The resource that I'm sharing with you today works for US, UK and Canadian readers and could prove increasingly useful as you get older...

If you're thinking about a change of location in retirement or you're keeping an eye open for a suitable location that will serve your needs as you get older, check out Walk Score.

Walkable neighborhoods offer many benefits to their residents with regard to better health, reduction in greenhouse gases, increased public transportation options, increased community activity and face-to-face interaction with neighbours, and stronger local businesses.

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live by calculating the 'walkability' of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.  The Walk Score of an address is shown as a number between 0 and 100 and the general guidelines for interpreting your score are as follows:

90 - 100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.
50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

It's a brilliant idea but, before you rush out and buy a new property based on its Walk Score, you do need to bear in mind that Walk Score is just an approximation of walkability and that the strength of an address's Walk Score is no substitute for spending time on the ground in your chosen location and really checking it out before you commit to the move.  You can check out the known issues with the system here

Do you intend to spend your kids' inheritance on your retirement?

Are we Brits a nation of SKI-ers?  (SKI = Spending Kids' Inheritance)  It certainly looks that way...  According to a recent survey from Saga Equity Release Service, 9 out of 10 UK homeowners would prefer to use the equity in their homes to fund their retirement, than leave it to be inherited by their children.

And how will we be spending this money?  Well, a quarter of people, who have equity built up in their property would prefer to spend the money on enhancing the quality of their retirement and around one third of people aged between 50 and 54 said they would consider releasing equity in order to travel around the world.  However, the nation's collective offspring can breath a sigh of relief - we won't just be disappearing without any notice - 53 per cent of people in the 50 to 54 category said they would discuss withdrawing money from their property with their family and this figure rose to 71 per cent of those aged over 65.

How to beat the fraudsters

At least once a week I receive an email purporting to be from a bank or credit card company, claiming that they are updating their records and requesting that I click through to their website and provide them with items of personal information such as a PIN number, password or account number.  And, of course, I immediately press the 'delete' key because, as we all know, the email is likely to be a con.  It will send us to a clone of a genuine website where, if we provided the information they are asking for, we would be providing criminals with all the information they need to commit some form of identity fraud.

If you're worried about identity fraud (and you probably should be...), check out How to beat the fraudsters by MSN money (and click on the links at the bottom of the page for even more information, including an article about celebrity victims of identity fraud - Steven Spielberg, financial guru George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, Oracle computer boss Larry Ellison, Robert de Niro, Tiger Woods, Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez have, apparently, all been victims of identity crimes costing tens of millions of pounds.)

Clean Pain, Dirty Pain by Michael Neill

Michael Neill of Genius Catalyst and author of 'You Can Have What You Want' and 'Feel Happy Now' had an interesting article in his newsletter this week.  I have reproduced it for you below:

CLEAN PAIN, DIRTY PAIN by Michael Neill

"Laughter is the highest form of prayer."

-Reinhold Niebuhr

In her wonderful new book "Steering by Starlight", Martha Beck tells the story of how her Down syndrome son Adam proudly brought his new watch to school, only to see it broken by a friend who accidentally dropped it on the floor. Their teacher felt so bad on Adam's behalf that she continued to scold Adam's friend for the rest of the day and on into the next.

As she tells the story in her book...

"...while the class was working quietly on a project, Adam approached (the teacher's) desk.

'Ms. Morrison,' he observed politely, 'it was my watch.'

'I know, honey,' Ms. Morrison groaned, feeling just awful. 'I shouldn't have let you lend it to Jared.'

'No,' said Adam, frowning with frustration. 'It was *my* watch.'

'And it was awful that he broke it. I'm so sorry.'

Adam began to laugh. Then, for several seconds, he thought very hard, the way he does when he absolutely has to make himself understood.

'Ms. Morrison,' he said very slowly, 'it... was... *my*... watch. Not... yours.'

He looked at her intently to see if she'd get it. And then, for Ms. Morrison, the light dawned.

'Oh,' she said. 'You mean I should let it go?'

Adam burst out laughing again, heaved a huge sigh of relief, and went happily back to his seat."

What I love about this story is that it so clearly demonstrates the difference between what Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) pioneer Steven Hayes calls "clean pain" and "dirty pain".

"Clean pain" is inherent in life itself - the things we love will be broken or lost, the people we love will die, and our own bodies will grow old (if we're lucky) and die. Yet along with "clean pain" comes the ability to bear it - the strength inside to bear whatever life throws at us and come out the other side
stronger than before.

"Dirty pain" is much more difficult, because it is self-generated and self-maintained. It is the suffering we create for ourselves in the privacy of our own mind, spinning stories about what it all means and why our pain is "different".

It's the pain that comes from thinking that our lives ended with the life of the man or woman we love, or the hundreds of daily assaults we put ourselves through in our thoughts when our body only had to experience one assault, one time.

"Dirty pain" is so painful in part because we are not biologically designed to combat it. All the adrenaline in the world won't help you fight an imaginary dragon, and so instead the slings and arrows of our outrageous fortune find new targets in the people and world around us.

But the good news (you did realize there was going to be good news, didn't you? :-) is that simply recognizing the difference between the essential pain of being human and the self-generated suffering of your thoughts is the beginning of the end of that suffering.

No matter how scary a movie you may be watching, the second you remember that you're in a movie theatre being "entertained" by flickering images on a screen, the bulk of that fear will drain away. And the moment you begin to notice that you're not afraid of what you think you're afraid of - you're afraid of what you think - your own fear of life will begin to fade and be replaced by the essential bliss of existence.

What I have learned since I first began to study for myself the nature of what it is to be a human being over twenty years ago is that the old adage is true:

Pain is inevitable;
Joy is available;
Suffering is optional -
But you'll have to provide it for yourself.

(c) 2008 Michael Neill/All Rights Reserved

To subscribe to Michael's newsletter or to post your thoughts on the discussion forums on his website, visit him online at Genius Catalyst.

What's on your Bucket List?

Did you see the recent film, 'The Bucket List', starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson?  It's about two men who meet in a hospital cancer ward after each has been given only six months to live.  The "bucket list" of the title refers to a list that one of the men has been advised to compile of the things he wants to accomplish before he 'kicks the bucket'.  Which leads me to a question...

What do you still want to be, do and have in life?

Could you come up with a list of 100 things that you still want to be, do and have before you get too old to be, do and have them? Try it. (You may need to leave your notebook and pen somewhere handy so that you can jot down ideas as they occur to you over the course of the next week or so.)

Once you have compiled your list, it can then be helpful to categorise the items on it. So, for example, you might have a category of things that need to be done fairly soon, whilst you're at your youngest and fittest.

Then you could have another category for things that can wait until you get older because they won't take as much energy. Another category would be things that are so important to you that you would really regret it if you didn't do them. You could have further categories such as 'things than can be done in a spare day' and 'things that can be done in a spare week' and 'longer projects' which need considerably more time and attention.

Have a go at categorising your own list and then decide how many items you want to tackle each year. It's not meant to be a stick to beat yourself with, though - even if the list only helps you to identify the things you'd regret not doing and the things that need to be done whilst you're still young and healthy, that's valuable enough in itself.

Then, the next time you have a spare 5 or 10 minutes, do some research that will help put you on the road towards achieving some of the items on your list. For example, if you've always wanted to take a trip in a helicopter, do an Internet search to find out where you can take a local flight, or, if you're about to head off on holiday, see if you can arrange to take a trip once you arrive at your destination. If you've always wanted to compile a record of your family history for your grandchildren, buy a suitable notebook or open a Word file on your computer and make a start.

Don't give yourself any excuses for procrastinating - you'll never be this young and fit again and none of us know what's waiting around the corner.

Buy The Bucket List from Amazon.com

Buy The Bucket List from Amazon.co.uk

Will your sunscreen protect you?

Great quotes - On being happy in retirement

One of the major problems with your retirement, believe it or not, will be the inability to decide what makes you happy and what doesn't...

Doing more things that we want to do makes for a happier retirement life.  Therefore, to make us happier, we have to minimise what we don't want to do and maximise what we want to do, in that order.

William S Jennings