I learned yesterday that a dear friend and mentor has just been diagnosed with cancer. The exact variety is yet to be determined. Unlike mine, his looks like a more serious variety. I’m sad. Fortunately the friend has a wide and considerable population of friends, former students, colleagues and family who want to support him in creative ways. I have been invited to participate in some of these ways, electronically.

While I often question the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and whatever else exists as social networking, I’m grateful for the opportunity these new ways afford to support someone daily that I cannot physically visit (at least daily).

This works for some and not others. My mom is 89. She has never had an email account and wouldn’t have any idea what the electronic social networks above mean or how to use them. My brother lives now in the same town she does and gives me and my brother weekly updates. It is he who handles medical and financial emergencies, and it is by phone and occasional email that he informs us.

We all want (in my opinion) to be both independent (live in our own space) and interdependent (see and interact with friends, be useful in our communities, continue our life work) for as long as possible. It helps us physically and emotionally to know that we are surrounded by a network of friends and family. If we do not have that physical surrounding, perhaps the next best thing is an electronic support network.

I’ve said before that positive psychologists find us mature adults happier than our younger colleagues, friends and children. What strikes me increasingly, though, is that there is a difference between our happiness and our joy. This is an important distinction when I think about making significant personal changes.

Happiness, to me, is momentary and a gift. I’m happy when my grandson calls. I’m happy when my husband tells a joke or walks across the room just to kiss me. I’m often happy in my work, and I’m happy when I spend time with a friend or a group of stimulating people. I can cultivate these moments, as the psychologists tell me, by practicing gratitude, being aware of the great goodness in my life, and helping others.

Joy is a practice. It has persistence. We must go for joy with commitment and after deep self-reflection. I am drawn toward certain kinds of work that make me feel alive, productive, and curious. When I do that work, I feel joyful. Joy pulls me towards certain people, places, experiences, and activities; it’s the juice of my mature life. My intention when I began to make changes a year ago was to increase the amount of joy in my life, not necessarily the amount of happiness. I had happiness. I wanted full engagement with life in ways that felt uniquely mine–my work, my family, my purpose. I’m not always happy being on and doing this journey, but these days, I almost always have joy.

As some of you are beginning to know, I read a lot. I read as a way of learning about a subject and then I go out into the world to confirm or refute what I’ve learned. Recently I bought a book ( I support all book vendors–Amazon, Barnes and Noble, two local bookstores, and the discount second hand sellers). I spread the wealth. I bought a book titled The Denial of Aging by Muriel Gillick. I thought the book would be about plastic surgery–whether to have it or not, and other issues of cosmetics, eating, and exercise promoted to outwit the aging process for women and an increasing number of men. (My husband has had a face lift; I have not.)

It turns out that the book is a serious discussion of how much medicine should be applied to aging and the aged. Although I would not have bought this book if I’d known its topic, it has explained many important mysteries of the current geriatric medical profession that I had not understood. “Like what?” you may well ask. Here’s an example. I have cancer. It is not a serious, life threatening cancer now. By the time it is, I’ll be dead from something else. So when my doctor told me I had cancer but not to worry this seemed like shooting me and then telling me a joke, or something like that. As I’m reading Gillick’s book (she is a geriatric physician), I now understand that nobody is going to do something about my cancer because what they’d do would hurt a lot, possibly cause serious side effects, and solve not very much. That is the rule of medicine in an over 65 population. How much will it hurt, and how much will it compromise the general health of the patient? If it hurts a lot, but promises greater vigor, then the general rule is to go for it. If it hurts a lot (or the side effects are worse than the procedure), and it doesn’t improve quality of life, then it shouldn’t be done–particularly as we reach the oldest old period of our lives (80+). By the time I’m 80+, and I firmly expect that I will reach this age as my mother and grandmother have done, perhaps my cancer will be an issue. Perhaps not.

In a way this is comforting to me. I want to maintain my interest in life, and my ability to participate for as long as I can. When I am no longer interested, or am unable to participate, I don’t want anyone–doctor, daughter, husband, or sibling–to prolong my life. I’m having a great life, and expect, if my genes are any indication, to have many more years of engagement with my world. When that is no longer possible, I want to be allowed to go as gracefully as possible.

I’m getting older, just like all the rest of you. Even my five year old grandson has stopped wearing Spiderman pajamas and has graduated to T-shirts and shorts for sleepwear. We age, we grow, we decline in some ways. My interest in aging, my own and yours, is not so much with the physical changes we each experience, or even the mental and emotional ones, but in how our aging affects our motivation to change ourselves.

In my thirties and forties, and even my fifties to some degree, I was too busy interacting in the world to spend the time and effort it might have taken to make any significant change. Oh, I’d try to be less prickly if a boss asked me to, or more attentive when my husband told me about his day, but I had no time to make fundamental changes to my character or even to my physical self.

In my sixties I find that I do have the time suddenly. I also have the awareness that I’m mortal. Although I knew this earlier, it seemed so far off or so remote that it was easier to deny. So I’m aware that I will die sometime in the next 40 years, and I’m aware that there are things about me that I want to be different, especially if I do live that 40 years!

I’m really interested in how you feel about change as you age. Are there things about yourself that have become intolerable? What have you done about them? Are you enjoying new experiences that you’d not known about before? How does your aging link to your ideas about and actions toward change?

You can pay me for my services right here on my website by clicking on the button below. Increase the amount to 20 pay me $20. Increase it to 100 to pay me $100.

As lead author of Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change, I am often asked where coaches and managers can learn more about and practice this developmental and strengths-focused way of enabling change and growth. The first session has been completed and was jusdged a great success by the participants.

The sessions covered:

• Intro to Appreciative Coaching – how it enhances what you are already doing
• Principles of Appreciative Coaching and how they play out in sessions
• Stages: Define, Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny- what is critical in each stage, non-linear, circular process
• Focus on Dream and Destiny with coaching role plays
• Questions and discussion of course, further workshop or course suggestions for more advanced work – Questions and discussion of course, further workshop or course suggestions for more advanced work

I have been asked to offer the audio and slides for this session for those who were not able to participate. This product covers all five (5) audio session along with the associated slides/PDF’s and worksheets. If you missed the class, this is a great way to hear what went on. A $50 credit will be given to anyone purchasing this product who enrollsl in any of my future classes.

When

Session #1 was held March 17 – May 12

Where

Telephone conference call

What

Using Appreciative Coaching Effectively

Price

$100 – Audio/Slides Only