We Are All Herd Animals

A Herd of Cows–Moo!

I’d like to restate my goal with this blog.  I want to help Baby Boomers and seniors find joy, excitement, and satisfaction in their lives after retirement.  Retirement can be from a job, career, profession, parenting, or whatever your main activity was in your younger years.  I’m starting to give public talks on the same subject.  The title of this blog is: “Reinventing Myself in My Senior Years.”  Keeping with that theme, my public talks are entitled:  “Reinventing Yourself in Your Senior Years.”

News:  Here are my upcoming talks and interviews:
1. Radio Interview: Kim Power Stilson Talk Radio Show, September 5, 2014, 12:00pm (Pacific time), Sirius XM 143 Talk Radio (BYU Radio).
2. Lecture:  “How I Wrote, Edited, Published, and Marketed My Memoir,” September 16, 2014, 9:30am to 11:00am, Savvy Seniors, 200 Civic Center Way, Calabasas, CA 91302, $5 fee and advanced registration required.
3.  Senior Seminar: (My Talk) “Reinventing Yourself in Your Senior Years,” September 19, 2014, 2:00pm to 4:00pm, Kaiser Permanente at Wateridge Office Park-Health Education Department, 5105 W. Goldleaf Circle, Los Angeles, CA 90056, Health Education/Psychiatry Building, NOTE:  Kaiser members only – advanced registration required.

Now, onto my blog:

Humans are social animals.  We have a natural instinct to stay together; we need each other.  Make it work to your advantage.  Figure out how to interact with your fellow beings so that you don’t become upset, agitated, or stressed out.  You can’t change the behavior of others.  You can only change your own behavior.  So, go ahead and change your behavior.

Analyze what you’re doing that causes you to be the loser, the victim, the ostracized one–whatever typically happens to you during many interpersonal encounters.  Try some behavior modification techniques on yourself.

If you have a hard time interacting with people, getting along with others, or making new friends, observe those who do it so easily.  What do they do?  Once you figure that out, start imitating them.  Yes, it will feel artificial at first.  But, it’s like breaking in a pair of new shoes.  Slowly, it will fit.  You’ll start to be comfortable with your new behavior, and it will become incorporated into how you act.

You must persevere to make your life better.  If you’re passive and just let life happen to you, you take what you get.  To aim your life in the direction you want it to go, be proactive.  Go ahead, give it a try.  If it doesn’t work, you can always go back to being passive.

If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blogs, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. Please pass my blog along to anyone else who might be interested.

Lee Gale Gruen’s memoir is:  Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class (website: AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com).  It is available on amazon.com.

Seek Environments That Calm and Uplift You

Exquisite mobile by Alexander Calder

I went to a wonderful exhibit recently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  I toured the display of Alexander Calder’s airy, spellbinding mobiles and was transported to a fairyland.  For those few moments, I forgot about the crushing heat here in Los Angeles, California; my personal issues and anxieties; and the world and its demands.  I hung out with Calder’s gifts to us all.  The mobiles float, they waver, they tremble like the fragile human beings we all are.

            Each was a jewel in its own right and was accompanied by a description, some poetic, which set the stage for the awe and amazement the work inspired. One I remember in particular had a vivid narrative written by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1963 after a visit to Calder’s studio. He described the magical mobiles he saw as lyrical, technical, and mathematical symbols of nature, unable to ascertain if they were a result of cause and effect or the evolution of an idea.

            Calder, who studied mathematical engineering as a young man, died in 1976.  I was in my thirties then.

The lesson I took away:  enjoy the natural and man-made beauty around you.  It transports you for an instant and enables you to take shelter from that hurricane that is your life and focus on something other than your own, self-involved self.

My memoir is: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class.  It is available on amazon.com.  My book website is: AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

If you want to be notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blogs, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. Please pass my blog along to anyone else who might be interested.