Hula

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 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. The books’ descriptions follow her blog below. Both books are available at Amazon.com by clicking here and here. Visit her website at: LeeGaleGruen.com

Now, on to my blog:

How do we know when something will grab us? How do we find that passion we keep searching for? Well, there are many ways to go about it. Today, I’ll discuss one method: pure, dumb luck.

I realized that I was not getting enough exercise, but lying on the floor at home and doing a bunch of leg lifts or sit ups was just too boring. Working out at the gym was a close second. Yes, I went on occasional walks and even hikes, but those were periodic–sandwiched into time between other activities.

An acquaintance mentioned that she belonged to the Hula Club at my retirement community. I’d seen hula performed over the years, and it looked pretty but not something that beckoned to me. I didn’t even know if I could do it because it is danced barefoot, and I have some foot issues.

“Come to the class, and just watch,” she encouraged me.

So, for the sake of pursuing some body toning, I finally squeezed it into my calendar. Nothing prepared me for the hula vortex that grabbed me and sucked me in. I was indeed able to do the slow, controlled, foot movements, and the music was mesmerizing.

I am enjoying the discipline of learning the routines and moving in cadence with the other dancers. It’s kind of like hula drill team. I’m also improving on making my motions smooth versus the choppy I started out with.

Cherry one on the sundae is that my energy level has improved noticeably. Cherry two is that the class doesn’t just dance in the studio, they actually perform around our community onstage in front of live audiences, which is something I love to do.

I can’t believe how much of my life I am now devoting to hula. I’ve rearranged my entire schedule so that I can attend class twice per week, 2 1/2 hours per class. That doesn’t even account for all of it. There is the time spent at home practicing new dances to the videos the instructor makes in class. There is the time devoted to purchasing and altering my beautiful dance costumes. (That’s me in the photo wearing one.) There is the time for rehearsals at the event venues and the actual performances which we present several times a year. And, still, I can’t get enough of hula.

Who knew that Hawaiian dancing would become an addiction? I certainly didn’t. That was not the plan when I started; I just wanted an occasional workout.

Are you looking for something exciting, stimulating, or purposeful in your life? Try lots of different activities, even those that are not your usual go-to types. Throw that pot of spaghetti against the wall. You might be surprised at what sticks.

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SYNOPSIS 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.

Forgiving Yourself

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. Visit her website at: LeeGaleGruen.com

Now, on to my blog:

In my last post, I briefly mentioned forgiving yourself. Several readers contacted me suggesting a deeper discussion. So, I am devoting an entire blog to the subject.

The act of forgiveness is usually thought of as involving two sides. It might be individuals, groups, or even large institutions. “A” does something offensive to “B,” and “B” forgives “A.” However, that scenario can also be played out within ourselves.

It’s been said that we are our own worst critics. We get down on ourselves easily when we don’t meet our personal, self-imposed expectations. Such self-castigation can play on an endless loop and morph into low self-esteem and eventually depression.

Often, we carry those negative seeds from childhood. Someone or many someones in our past may have overtly or covertly conveyed to us that we are lacking and will never amount to much. These could have been parents, teachers, peers, or anyone else in our sphere. So, we spend the next decades of our lives proving them wrong by striving to excel in whatever our chosen pursuits may be. Unfortunately, in a bizarre twist, many just step into the shoes of their former tormentors and change the script into self-reprimand.

Some religions address the problem with formulaic, ritualistic acts of confession and contrition in which forgiveness is the endgame such as the Catholic Church’s confessional. Some governments have ceremonial forgiveness events such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held by South Africa in 1996 after the end of apartheid.

What do we do if those options are not available to us for whatever reasons? How do we give ourselves permission to err as all human beings do? How do we forgive ourselves? It’s a tough question, and it’s so hard to do for so many. We hold ourselves to impossibly high standards and then judge ourselves as failures when we do not meet them.

Letting yourself become weighed down in self-loathing is completely unproductive. It may manifest in such behaviors as anger, withdrawal, isolation, and the like. If you have significant others in your life, your moods splash onto them which only serves to draw spouses/partners, children, parents, and friends into your misery. Is that really what you want?

When you make a mistake, how about trying to cut yourself a little slack, just as you do with others? Don’t you deserve such treatment like everyone else? Start by being a friend to yourself rather than an enemy combatant.  When you make a mistake, notice it, learn from it, forgive yourself, and move on. The goal is to keep pressing forward. I’ve spoken frequently in this forum about being kind to others. You must also remember to be kind to yourself.

Photo credit: daryl_mitchell on VisualHunt

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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.