Grappling with Opposing Political Views

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors reinvent themselves in this new stage of their lives called retirement. Her blog, public lecture, and new self-help book on senior reinvention are titled: Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire. Her memoir is: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class. Books descriptions follow her blog below. Both books are available at Amazon.com by clicking here and here. Her website is: LeeGaleGruen.com

Now, on to my blog:

In today’s politically charged climate, what happens if a friend, relative, or anyone else in your immediate and frequent sphere has a different take on politics than you do? Considerations of that sort didn’t seem so important in years past. However, in modern times, they’ve increased by magnitudes. Relationships of all sorts have split due to such differences in political inclinations.

I had an experience in my own life. I am very close to a family member. We were having a talk, and the subject shifted to politics. Well, she certainly had a very different slant than I did. I was surprised as I hadn’t expected it. Soon, the discussion became heated and uncomfortable. Subsequently when we’d see each other, the same thing happened. 

We both valued our relationship and didn’t want to ruin it. Without a spoken plan or official peace treaty, we just deleted politics as a potential topic of discussion when we got together. That worked very well for us.

Usually we choose our friends because we share things in common, politics being only one of a plethora. Nevertheless, we won’t agree on everything with everyone, and we don’t have to. When you feel a connection with someone and find a point of disagreement, avoidance is often the best solution. There’s nothing wrong with that.

The trend these days is to reveal our innermost thoughts and feelings. “Don’t hold it in” is the advice we hear from mental health professionals. Yes, that can be therapeutic. However, sometimes, it may not be the best course of action on certain subjects. Things such as politics, religion, and culture form our core beliefs. Do you really want to spend a significant portion of your valuable time trying to change another to be in lockstep with your particular version of how to live life?

If you are in a close relationship and you want it to thrive because it offers each party so much, you might want to consider avoidance as a way to slide over those areas where you are not in agreement. Avoidance is also a handy tool for less intimate yet still meaningful interactions that you do not want to damage such as employer/employee, teacher/student, coworkers, and the like. You must get along for those relationships to be successful, and avoidance of certain areas of potential conflict might serve you well. Must you really discuss your political leanings in the break room at your job? The chances are that it will only stir up animosity with someone, and you risk damaging productive teamwork.

Make the relationship work for you both, benefit from the things that attracted you to each other in the first place, and disregard the rest. Seek the wheat and let the chaff just drift away.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey on Visualhunt.com / CC BY

SYNOPSES OF BOOKS BY: LEE GALE GRUEN

Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy, Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire (self-help): Not a one-size-fits-all approach, this self-help book for retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors offers an individualized, detailed guide to assist readers in discovering activities and pursuits in this new stage of their lives called retirement, based on their own likes and comfort level. I learned the secret the hard way transitioning from retired probation officer to actress, author, public speaker, and blogger. Audience members at my lectures on senior reinvention requested a book on the subject. This is the result, and it contains the content of those talks and six years of posts from this blog. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.

Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class (memoir): After retiring at age 60 from my 37-year career as a probation officer, I mistakenly enrolled in an acting class for seniors.  A few weeks later, my mother died, and I invited my grieving, 85-year-old father to come to class with me.  This is the true story of our magical journey attending that class together for three years, bonding more than ever.  I wrote the comedy scenes we performed onstage twice a year in the acting class showcases, and all six scenes are included in the book.  I eventually transitioned into the world of professional acting.  As my fledgling, second career started going uphill, my dad’s health started going downhill.  I would recount to him each of my new experiences while I sat beside his bed at the nursing home where he resided in his final years. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.

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Please forward my blog in its entirety to anyone who might be interested and post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. To reprint any material, contact me for permission at: gowergulch@yahoo.com. 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 blog posts, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. To opt out of receiving this blog, contact me at the aforementioned email address, let me know, and I’ll remove you from the list.

Your Own Worst Critic

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors reinvent themselves in this new stage of their lives called retirement. Her blog, public lecture, and new self-help book on senior reinvention are titled: Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire. Her memoir is: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class. Books descriptions follow her blog below. Both books are available at Amazon.com by clicking here and here. Her website is: LeeGaleGruen.com

Now, on to my blog:

Why are people so critical of themselves? It starts in childhood when we become aware of the successes and failings of humans. We begin attaching that critical face and finger pointing by our elders to something bad, wrong, and unacceptable about us. We adopt the gesture ourselves, set it in stone, and turn it inward, constantly measuring ourselves compared to others. Somehow, that assessment always seems to be pitted against those who are more adept, not those who are less. The “less” we dismiss as anomalies while we hunger to be among the “more.”

As we mature, it seems that no matter how much we accomplish, there is always someone who bests us. We go on to extrapolate this to every aspect of our lives: how smart we are, how attractive, how rich, popular, accomplished, thin, tall, buff… The list is never ending. We carry this critical self-assessment into our senior years. Life is viciously competitive, and we never quite measure up. As people become adults, they get pretty good at covering up this lack of self-confidence, but it’s always there just under the surface, niggling away. It hobbles many completely.

A good friend recently sent me an email to view a video of a storytelling performance she was part of where each participant reads their own composition. Her opening comment before I even came to the link was how dissatisfied she was with her presentation. I watched the video and found her story and the telling of it to be charming as her work usually is. Yes, there were a few stumbles as she spoke, but they were minor and only added to her humanity.

I’m certainly guilty of self-criticism. No matter how hard I strive or how well I do, I never feel I’ve gotten it right. When I find blunders in my own work, my appearance (those unruly curls are always sticking out of place), or the numerous other aspects I focus on, I blow them up in my mind to giant failures.

The competition is unrelenting. I often feel I’m vying against others who appear to be wiser, more experienced, or have more college degree abbreviations following their names. Yes, I’m easing up on myself as I age, but I forever seem to be a work in progress.

Now, as a senior, that competition is often against the younger population. Is there ever a time interval where we’re allowed to be okay with who we are, where we are? The answer, of course, is yes. However, you must change your mindset. It has nothing to do with your age, sex, or any other descriptor you can attach to yourself. It’s simply a matter of making a decision that now is the moment you are just fine and in just the right time and place of your life.

Our new president, Joe Biden, misspeaks regularly in his talks before huge audiences. It stems from a childhood speech impediment. He is an inspiration to overcoming self-criticism, or if not fully conquering it, then carrying on in spite of it.

It’s time to forgive ourselves for being imperfect, folks, and to embrace our humanity. If we don’t finally get to kill off that little internal critic that we’ve carried with us all these decades into our senior years, when will we ever be able to do so?

Photo credit: Sarah G… on VisualHunt.com / CC BY

SYNOPSES OF BOOKS BY: LEE GALE GRUEN

Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy, Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire (self-help): Not a one-size-fits-all approach, this self-help book for retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors offers an individualized, detailed guide to assist readers in discovering activities and pursuits in this new stage of their lives called retirement, based on their own likes and comfort level. I learned the secret the hard way transitioning from retired probation officer to actress, author, public speaker, and blogger. Audience members at my lectures on senior reinvention requested a book on the subject. This is the result, and it contains the content of those talks and six years of posts from this blog. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.

Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class (memoir): After retiring at age 60 from my 37-year career as a probation officer, I mistakenly enrolled in an acting class for seniors.  A few weeks later, my mother died, and I invited my grieving, 85-year-old father to come to class with me.  This is the true story of our magical journey attending that class together for three years, bonding more than ever.  I wrote the comedy scenes we performed onstage twice a year in the acting class showcases, and all six scenes are included in the book.  I eventually transitioned into the world of professional acting.  As my fledgling, second career started going uphill, my dad’s health started going downhill.  I would recount to him each of my new experiences while I sat beside his bed at the nursing home where he resided in his final years. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.

***

Please forward my blog in its entirety to anyone who might be interested and post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts. To reprint any material, contact me for permission at: gowergulch@yahoo.com. 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 blog posts, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. To opt out of receiving this blog, contact me at the aforementioned email address, let me know, and I’ll remove you from the list.