Guest Posts

David Wolfe, who blogs at Ageless Marketing, has produced a series there covering Carl Jung’s seven tasks of aging. These tasks are not like washing the car and paying the bills that you can quickly check off your to-do list and move on to the next. They are ongoing processes that enrich your understanding of yourself and your life all the way to the end.

I first read Jung on this topic decades ago, but the seven tasks are not suited to or meant for young people. They are not possible until you have lived, really lived.

David’s purpose in his series on Jung is to convince marketers that elders are not ordinary consumers. Our mindsets are different from midlife and unless marketing and advertising people understand these differences, their products will not sell.

If you are reading Time Goes By, you are probably not a marketing professional, but that should not deter you from David’s series where you will find the clearest explanation of Jung’s tasks I’ve read anywhere among the general commentary. To nudge you toward doing so, below are links and short excerpts from David for each of the tasks.

Task No. 1: Facing the Reality of Aging and Dying

“Those who have successfully carried out Jung’s first task of aging have grown ageless in their outlook. Moreover, they have discovered that the last quarter of life is not as lousy an experience as they might have anticipated at age 40.“One benefit of reaching this state is an almost adolescent feeling of being beyond harm’s way. Abraham Maslow saw this arising from a lifestyle in which “A day is a minute, a minute is a day.” It’s about living in the moment in a constructive way.”

Task No. 2: Life Review

“…the second of Carl Jung’s Seven Tasks of Aging – life review – can have a deeper effect on many people than nostalgia does, especially the older they are.“Life review involves a critical examination of one’s life leading toward reconciliation between the sweet and the sour in life. It is a process for removing regret and anger from one’s worldview.”

Task No. 3: Defining Life Realistically

“In Winter, the primary developmental objective is to develop a sense of oneness with all and reconcile the sweet and the bitter in life. The main life focus is reconciliation – finding harmony and peace with ourselves, others and life in general.“Winter’s mythic theme is irony, reflecting a persistent anticipation that the unexpected is always around the corner – though not necessarily in a negative sense. In fact, the unexpected often delights the older person as much as it does a child. Irony is particularly therapeutic in how it helps us cope with what we can’t change. And, it often provides us with a certain comedic twist to ease the burdens of old age.”

Task No. 4: Letting Go of the Ego

“Letting go of the ego enhances personal well being by taking one to new and higher levels of life satisfaction. Beyond that, research indicates that getting beyond the self to turn more attention to helping others improves the efficiency of the immune system. People who help others tend to live longer and healthier than those who stay wrapped up inside themselves.”

Task No. 5: Finding a New Rooting in the Self

“The worldviews of people in the first half of life are generally rooted in the external world. In contrast, the worldviews of people in the second half of life tend to be rooted less in the physical or mundane and increasingly in the nonphysical or metaphysical (or spiritual).”

Task No. 6: Determining the Meaning of One’s Life

“Life meaning among the young is framed by styles of appearance, language, material acquisitions, and social affiliations in the quest for a solid footing in the external world…“However, the search for life meaning undergoes a major shift in the second half of life. Whatever people’s material success, many find less and less meaning from “things.” So, they begin to look inward rather than to the outer world in their search for life meaning.”

Task No. 7: Rebirth – Dying With Life

“Jung’s last task of aging, “Rebirth — dying with life,” is a familiar theme throughout the religious genre, but he was not thinking religion when he framed that task. Success in prosecuting this task leads to loss fear of life and death alike. Rebirth after dying with life transports a person into the timeless domains of an artist lost in his or her work or a child absorbed in play when living in the time of a delicious moment is all that matters.”

As you can see even from the short excerpts, these are no ordinary tasks. Rather than doing, they require being and a conscious contemplation of unconscious changes that take place within us.

Perhaps I came to studying and writing about old age in my own old age from reading Jung when I was young. I remember then looking forward to the day when I could bring my lifetime experience to the seven tasks.

[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Kay Dennison recalls an elder relative who lived when Abraham Lincoln was president in A Great, Great Grandma – A Memory.]

The top complaints about getting older and some smart strategies for tackling them

posted by Donna Sapolin, January 4, 2013
Donna Sapolin is the VP, Editorial Director & General Manager of Next Avenue. Follow Donna on Twitter @stylestorymedia.

On the upside, growing older means you’ve accumulated a good deal of experience and wisdom as well as an abundance of instructive and entertaining stories. But there’s a sharp downside, too. Take action now to make sure that the challenges below don’t end up defining your second and third acts.

1. You’re closer to the end. Planning for the end of life — your own and that of your elder loved ones — is more urgent than ever before. Not doing so may mean enduring costly medical measures that prolong life without sustaining its quality and burdening others with agonizing decisions based on guesswork.

Solution: Have end-of-life conversations with family members soon, fill out the legal documents that make your medical wishes and estate management affairs clear and analyze long-term care insurance options.

2. Regrets? You’ve got more than a few. You’ve lived long enough to feel bad about things you should and shouldn’t have said or done. Maybe you hurt someone; failed to live up to your own expectations and talents, or to support those of others; lost contact with or neglected people you care about; didn’t visit places you wanted to see; let big dreams go unfulfilled and key opportunities slip.

Solution: Recognize that it’s not too late to change course: You can still make amends, effectively express true feelings, explore new places, connect with old friends and make new ones. Write down a list of key regrets and take a small step each day to tackle one or more things on it. Little steps are meaningful in and of themselves but they likely will lead you to even bigger ones, perhaps even leaps.

Get outside your normal routine and comfort zone — sign up for classes to learn new skills and perspectives, use Facebook and LinkedIn to contact people from your past, call and visit others and look into online dating. Ask for forgiveness and forgive others. If you need support, seek out therapists, career coaches and other experts who can help you tackle the things that are holding you back.

3. Your youthful looks are fading. Self-worth, relationships, even employment opportunities can take a beating from changes in appearance that come with age.

Solution: Cultivate things that fuel inner beauty, a quality that actually grows more powerful with time and experience. Pin down ways you can extend more kindness to family, friends, colleagues and total strangers. Start by thinking about what a loving, open heart really means and how you can translate your strengths or develop new ones to instruct, mentor and support others.

4. Your body is slowing down. Aches and pains, memory lapses, reduced energy, loss of libido and other physical issues arise as your body expresses natural, age-related changes and the results of a lifetime of not-so-healthy eating habits and a sedentary and stressful lifestyle.

Solution: Get moving any way you can, preferably in a way that feels fun — stretch, run, walk, swim, alone or with a group. Eat more foods that provide the ideal nutrients for this stage of adulthood, including vitamin D3 and omega-3s. Adopt proven strategies for getting more and deeper rest and participate in deliberate brain-strengthening games and exercises.

5. You’re losing your sense of purpose. The things that once provided satisfaction and fulfillment have undergone significant shifts, from your career to the quality and amount of time spent with children, friends, mates and colleagues. As a result, your world feels smaller and days seem more routine.

Solution: Challenge yourself to learn new things — enroll in online classes or a community college certificate program. Take up a hobby, like knitting, fishing, ballroom dancing or piano; consider individual or group lessons. Join a book, wine or supper club. Explore faith-based communities. Volunteer — give your time and donate money to your community and to causes you believe in.

6. Your career feels as if it’s coming to a close. You feel at risk of losing your job. Or perhaps you already have and finding a new position has proven difficult.

Solution: Size up the signals at your present place of employment and be willing to learn new skills, make lateral moves, collaborate with younger people, work flex hours or part-time, even accept a pay cut. But also be open to an entirely new direction — volunteer in a different field, network, take classes. Consider launching your own business and gaining the know-how you’ll need to succeed.

7. You haven’t saved enough to quite see you through. Given the soaring costs of heath care, prospective changes to Social Security and Medicare and the hits your retirement accounts have taken, your nest egg is likely not going to cover your basic needs down the road — much less travel and other special experiences you had your heart set on.

Solution: Apply an ax to your expense structure and save more. Meet with a debt expert to develop strategies for reducing the amount you owe and hire a financial adviser to analyze your assets and goals to help you devise a savings plan.

8. You’re caring for sick relatives, at your own expense. This overwhelming, if loving, task is rapidly depleting your emotional and financial resources and may be compromising your health, too.

Solution: Ask family members, neighbors, friends and your faith-based community for help, join support groups, download caregiving apps and turn to other caregiving technology that can ease your load, reduce stress and allow you to address your own needs more often.

9. You’re going to get lost in the crowd. You’ll be advancing through the second state of adulthood at the same time as many millions of others. If things proceed along present lines, there won’t be enough doctors, professional caregivers or other medical support personnel to deliver the needed care. Our cities, homes and caregiving facilities are also not equipped to handle the “silver tsunami” and ease the challenges of aging.

Solution: Join your generation in doing what it has always done — be innovative. Gain an understanding of what needs to be done and what’s being discussed and proposed in your town and county as well as on the national level. Support community advocacy groups and participate in appeals to political leaders.

From one of my favorite bloggers – ENJOY

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.’ ~Taisen Deshimaru

Post written by Leo Babauta.

In many ways, I close myself off to life in all its fullness. I close myself off to others, as a form of self defense.

It happens to all of us. When you left yourself open in the early part of your life, you likely would get hurt from time to time. That pain taught us to close ourselves off in different ways: don’t let others in, use humor to keep some distance, hurt others before they hurt you, back away from anything new, and so on.

I close myself off, and miss the world. I miss out on life when I do that.

And so I’m learning to become more open. It’s a slow process, but in many small ways I’ve learned a lot, and am much more open now than I’ve ever been.

What does it mean to be open? It means that I accept more of life without judgment, and am happier no matter what comes. It means I judge others less, criticize less, accept others more, and learn more about their wonderful particularity.

It means more than ever before I am fully experiencing life.

I’ll share a little about becoming open to life, and to others, in hopes that you’ll find it useful.

1. Judge less, accept more. It seems natural to judge others, but in doing so we close ourselves the truth about these people. The same is true when we judge all the things around us — we close ourselves to finding out more. If judgment is automatic, we should get off autopilot and be more conscious. When we notice ourselves judging, instead, pause, seek to understand, and then to accept. And then to love, and to ease suffering. We should let go of our expectations of everyone around us, and of the world around us, and accept people as they are, and see them as they really are. Does accepting mean we never change things? No, it means we don’t get upset, irritated, frustrated when things aren’t as we’d like them to be, but instead seek to ease suffering.

2. Let go of goals. Many of you know I’ve been experimenting with having no goals, but not everyone understands why. One of the biggest reasons is that when we set a goal, we limit the range of possibilities, because we are setting a fixed destination (the goal). For example, if you say, “I want to run a marathon in six months”, then you will focus your actions on the things it takes to get to that destination (marathon training). But what if someone asks you to go surfing when you’re supposed to do marathon training? Or a new race opens up that you didn’t realize would be there when you set your marathon goal — and it’s even better? If you remain fixated on your goal, then you’ll close yourself off to the surfing, or the new race. This is only one example — it becomes much more subtle (and less clear) when the goals are work goals, because the possibilities are so much broader and wide-ranging. I’m not saying you should never set goals (though that’s a possibility), but you should develop the flexibility to let them go depending on the changing circumstances of each day, each moment.

3. Recognize defense mechanisms. The defense mechanisms we build up over the years in response to painful experiences are many and varied. More importantly, we don’t realize they’re there most of the time, so they are automatic and thus powerful and hard to beat. So learn to recognize them. When you find yourself not doing certain things, ask why. Maybe it’s because you’ve had a bad experience in the past. When you find yourself hurting people, ask why. When you find yourself shutting people or experiences out, ask why.

4. Be like the sky. Suzuki Roshi had a great metaphor … the sky has substance (gases, dust, water), but it is open to accepting everything. This “empty sky” allows other things, like plants, to grow into it. Our mind should be like the sky — accept things as they are, not discriminating. By saying, “this is beautiful, this is not beautiful”, we reject some things. Instead, we can be empty. We can treat everything like it’s part of our big family. We can treat anything as if they were our hands and feet.

5. Watch your fears. Fears are the basis for our automatic defense mechanisms, and similarly, they have power when we don’t know they’re working, when they lurk in the backs of our minds in the dark. Fears close us off to others, to the world, to experiences. Watch your fears, by learning to be quiet, by listening to yourself talk in that quiet. Pay attention to the fears, shine a light on them, and they begin to lose their power. Then you’ll be freed to be open to new things, to anything.

6. Let go of control. We constantly strive for control — of others, of ourselves, of the world around us. Goals, planning, measuring our work, expectations and more — we try to control things in so many ways. Of course, we know that control is an illusion. It’s also a way of shutting out most of the world: if we can control the world, and the future, we are fixing the course of events … and shutting out other possible courses. What happens if we let go of that control? The possibilities open up.

7. Open hands. Walk about in the world with open hands. It’s a simple practice. Your hands are open, and they are empty, ready to receive the world and all that comes, as it is. Your hands aren’t closed,

‘Walking along the edge of a sword,
Running along an ice ridge,
No steps, no ladders,
Jumping from the cliff with open hands.’
~Zen verse