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My 60th Birthday Challenge – The Life List

What’s a life list? It’s everything you want to be, do or have now – or at any time in the future. Recently, it’s been called a “bucket” list after that great movie with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, terminally ill men who helped each other achieve everything they wanted to do before they “kicked the bucket”. I prefer to not to wait, thank you, until the end of life is staring me in the face so mine is a life list. Plain and simple. And God willing and the creek don’t rise (as my grandmother used to say), the life list I’m sharing with you here has things I’d like to accomplish in the next 9 months before I turn 60, the date otherwise known as my “BEHAB” -

Big Hairy Audacious Birthday!

Before I share my list though, here’s how you can put yours together too. Think of your life as a pie cut into 8 slices. Think of each section as representing one of these critical areas of your life:

• Friends & Family
• Career/Business
• Personal Development & Spiritual
• Finance
• Significant Others & Romance
• Health
• Physical Environment
• Fun & Recreation

Take a sheet of paper and start listing what’s missing that you really want in each area. When you get through, you’ll have the beginnings of your life list. From there you start to focus in on one or two things that you want to take action on. Then these become the goals you work on step by step to turn your what your really want into reality. And that’s where I am now.

There are some dreams (big and small) that I’ve left on the back burner for far too long and I’m committed to turning them into my reality before I turn 60 years old. Here’s what’s on my Life List for the next 9 months. I’ll go into more detail on each item in future posts:

1. Knit a sweater – I knit but have never completed a project this big. But I keep thinking that I want to wrap myself in the creativity I’ve rediscovered in midlife and a sweater will be the perfect way to do this. I’ll share a picture of the sweater I’m planning to knit and the great yarn I’m using in the next post.

2. Lose 10 pounds. I’m determined to reclaim my waistline. This may not sound like much of a goal but getting rid of this 10 pounds will get me to what my doctor says is my ideal weight. That gets me to a healthier lifestyle.

3. Learn how to dance Salsa. Time to trade in those two left feet that seem to have walked into my life. Maybe it’s just from lack of use – not dancing a lot in recent years although I used to love to.

4. Plan a party for my 60th. I always get together with family and friends on my birthday, but if memory serves me correct, I haven’t had real bash since my Sweet 16 so I figure it’s time to party!

5. Grow the business. I have a social media marketing business with my wonderful sister, Paula Batchelor. It’s called Color Me Social and we help time and tech challenged entrepreneurs and small businesses use social media to create ROR (return on relationship) with their target audience. My goal will be to meet our income projections for the next 9 months.

6. Teach my niece how to crochet. My niece, who I’ll call the “Peanut” here, is only 6 years old and she’s the most amazingly creative child I’ve ever met. Recently she told me that a girl in her class knows how to crochet – and asked me to teach her how. Of course, I told her “yes”. I’m really looking forward to something the Peanut and I can do together as we both grow older.

7. Meet “Mr. Incredible”. Don’t laugh! More on this later.

8. Follow The Compound Effect.  This book by Darren Hardy contains the game plan that will keep me on track to accomplish the things on my life list.

9. Blog about my progress every week. Making my goals public is one way to make me accountable for my progress. If you want to stay tuned, subscribe to Amazing Life After 50, “like” the Amazing Life Facebook fan page or even download the Amazing Life After 50 app for your iPhone.

Next: The Sweater

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My 60th Birthday Challenge – The Game Plan

I’m just one of the many thousands, even millions who will be turning 60 in the next few years. Somehow I figured out my fifties and got through my midlife crisis on a wing and a prayer. But I didn’t have a real game plan about how to grow older, wiser – and yes, happier.

How? That’s the question a lot of us Baby Boomers are asking. Our getting older isn’t like it was for our parents or grandparents. So many of us are making up the next half of life as we go along. Like many of my generation I turned to a variety of self-help books, audios and movies to give me some guidance. And I’ve got a bookcase full to show for it but up until now – some great reading but no clear game plan.

Then this summer, I was given a copy of The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, CEO of Success Magazine. And I confess – it too sat for a while on the bookshelf with my other self-help stash. But as I started thinking about my Big Hairy Audacious 60th Birthday challenge, some gut reaction made me pick this book up again and read it cover to cover in a day. What I found was an amazingly simple and targeted game plan to help me:

1. Make better choices.

2. Change my behavior to fit.

3. Clear out habits that are keeping me from getting what I want and replace them with ones that will.

According to Darren Hardy:

The Compound Effect is predictable and measurable – that’s great news! Isn’t it comforting to know you only need to take a series of tiny steps, consistently, over time, to radically improve your life?

So what kind of tiny steps is Darren talking about. Well, for instance, tracking one of your behaviors, like eating, for a week by writing down everything in a small notebook. Everything you eat, however small, goes in that notebook. And by the time you’ve finished a week, you have a good idea of what – and how much you’re eating. Once you have this clear info, you can start to shave off just 125 calories a day by taking something out of the notebook and out of your mouth. So yes, I have started using tracking.

The Compound Effect refers to how you start and end your day as “bookends”. Do you jump up grab a cup of Joe and turn on the depressing news of the day? Or do you end the day with some couch potato time and a late night snack and Law and Order as the background for a good night’s rest (that you likely won’t get)? Then it’s time to change your bookends. I did.

Following the game plan in The Compound Effect, I’m now reading something inspirational for 30 minutes before I go to sleep and right when I wake up. And this self-professed insomniac has gotten two straight nights of 8 hours of sleep and gotten up refreshed to the alarm ringing at 6:30am. I implemented these changes immediately, am already seeing the benefits and after 21 days, my new bookends will be a budding new good habit.

See how easy this is? Well, it will be if you get the book – which I hope you will. Let me know if The Compound Effect starts to make a difference in your life.

Next: The Life List

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My Big Hairy Audacious 60th Birthday Challenge

In 9 months, I will turn sixty years old. For much of my forties and fifties, I’ve embraced and lived by the wisdom of a favorite author of mine, Mark Twain who said:

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

As I approach this next decade, though, I find myself thinking, more and more, that at this point in life – age does matter. In fact, it matters a lot!!

Now I don’t want you to think that all of a sudden, I’ve become afraid of aging. It’s not that.  It’s the realization that there are things I still want to do and this is no longer half-time or a dress rehearsal. No – it’s time to get a hustle on before I look up and find myself pushing 70 wondering how the heck I missed out on some of the things I really wanted in life.

So I’m on a mission – a mission to transform this upcoming big hairy audacious birthday of mine into the catalyst to help me achieve goals that have been waiting on my “back-burner” for far too long. And I need help!

1. First, I’m relying on this amazing book I just finished – The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, the CEO of SUCCESS Magazine. It’s all about how you can change your choices, your behaviors and your habits to position you to get what you want in all areas of your life. This book is my new game plan and the foundation of my big hairy audacious birthday challenge.

2. And I need you! Yes – you – because it helps to be accountable to some other person for my progress. It’s one of the success secrets in The Compound Effect that I’m starting to use strategy right now! If you’re reading this and any of my future posts about my 60th birthday challenge, I’m hoping you’ll cheer me on when you can and send some good vibes my way.

Next: The Game Plan

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Making and Using a Budget After Fifty

If you’re like many 50 plus women and men, making the most of your money can be pretty scary in this economy. One solution is to start using a budget to keep track of your personal finances. Even when the economy is good and you’re living comfortably, creating and using a budget keeps your finances on track. Many people cringe when they hear the word “budget”, because they think it means you can’t have any fun or spend any money. That’s far from the truth. Even a tight budget leaves room for fun and a little extra spending from time to time.

When you plan a budget, you start being realistic about what you’re spending and saving. Don’t say you spend $10 per week on lunches if you know you really spend $40. You can change the amounts later and cut back if necessary, but the first step is to get everything down on paper just as it is right now. That way, you can actually see what you’re really spending in black and white.

You Might Be Really Surprised

Usually, people who create an honest budget by tracking their spending each month and writing everything down find that they’re shocked at how much they’re paying out. It’s not just the bills, but also the little things like lunches and dinners out, coffee in the morning, and small purchases that add up.

For one month, keep track of every cent you spend. Avoid hiding anything or sweeping it under the rug. Save all of your receipts and write them down. That means bills, spending money you withdrew from the bank, and anything else that was paid out in that time frame. At the end of the month, you’ll have an accurate picture of what it’s costing you to live for 30 days.

How to Lower Your Costs

After you get over the initial shock of your tracking experiment, you’ll likely want to find ways to spend less. There are many ways to lower expenses, and they can depend somewhat on how you spend your income. Everyone is different, and not every idea will apply to each person.

• Consider these ideas in order to decrease how much you spend each month:
• Adjust the thermostat by a few degrees to save on electricity or gas.
• Skip going out for lunch and coffee by bringing these things from home.
• Change to a less expensive cable TV, Internet, or cell phone plan.
• Have a yard sale to get rid of unwanted items and make some quick cash.
• Carpool or use public transit, and sell that second car.
• Buy groceries only during sales and stock up on often-used items.

Of course, there are plenty of other ways to save. What works for one family might not work for another. However, in all likelihood, you really don’t need the latest gadgets, newest car, or brand-name clothing. You may want them, but that’s not the same thing.

How much are unnecessary things really costing you? And is it worth it? When you really think deeply about your answers, you’ll likely find that living a more frugal life can actually give you a better quality of life and freedom to do more of the things you want in this second half of life.

At first, budgeting may seem depressing and restrictive. But as you get a clear snapshot of what you’re spending, you can better decide how to spend less – or if you even want to spend less. Whatever you decide, it helps to have an easy-to-follow road-map to personal finance in your life after 50.

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