Fit for 50 - A plan to live the way you’ve always wanted

I’ve been thinking about the good life.

Easter week is a perfect moment to contemplate yourself because we are symbolically reborn with spring. You can feel the energy. Here’s the one lesson I’ve learned about that regeneration that applies to virtually everyone. How rich and fulfilling life is can be determined by how fit and adept you are to actually live it.

You can face life with either of two views. Either you are the constant victim of circumstances, fates and pressures over which you have no control, or you decide what you want life to look like and adapt to how you take it on.

Sometimes it’s the same life being assessed.  Same tragedies. Same sorts of hardships. Same triumphs. Same achievements. The only difference is how you choose to face it.

This is especially relevant to me because I am in the health business; so I am supposed to know what pill to take; what technology to apply and what science to adopt to make life better.

And I think I do know lots of those answers.

But the longer I am part of the nursing and health staffing industries, the more it’s obvious that medicine is far less science than we’ve always thought. Science is one slice of the prism. We see reality one way when it comes dancing through that lens, but it’s not the only way to see how life works.

Now I have come to see that life is an essentially holistic experience, made up of a thousand variables and many of the most important beams of light are hidden from you because you haven’t trained your soul to see the entire spectrum. The difference between happiness and sadness in essentially the same life can be how we use these other lenses and apply them to life.

So, I will make a bargain with you about the year that starts this Easter weekend.

My goal for the year is to frame “Fit for 50.” It’s a common enough theory. At age 50, you know where life is going or at least how you’d like it to go. But up to now, you haven’t thought much about health, except for occasional mechanical breakdowns. The same for fitness and flexibility.

After age 50, those breakdowns start to occur with increasing frequency, which seems to imply your life won’t be nearly as fit and fulfilling as it has been.

We know that to be totally wrong. Erase that idea out of your subconscious.

Indeed, the years after age 50 can be the richest, most wondrous of your life. It’s scientifically valid, if you grasp the principles.

There are ways to figure out “Fit for 50” that employ science in the broadest sense, but mostly the solutions depend on mentally and physically gripping life as an experience. It’s a control thing about a series of choices. It’s like riding a large wave with a very small surfboard.

So this is the year we tackle that wave. I am tackling it for myself, as well. Let’s ride the wave together.

An example of our approach with the column this year?

Consider that you can see retirement just over the horizon, though you are not clear that you want to do in retirement, except for not working nearly as hard as you have up to now,

Here’s your first goal. Find for yourself the one activity that would become your personal passion now if your time were not consumed with simply getting from one week to the next. Fifty is the perfect age to figure out that personal mission. You know yourself well enough now. You can figure out what will make you happy.

Some people leave their career retirement party feeling like they’ve been to a funeral. Everything that counted in their lives is over. They are lost. They are uneasy that they have nothing to contribute to themselves or anyone else.

That’s why 50 is far more important for retirement than 65. It’s your launching pad. Now is when you commit to your passion and begin to build it and shape it for the most important 50 years of your life – the years after age 50.

When you start following your secret passion, important things happen. You will find your energy increases. As soon as you awaken, you will want to start the day. Your mood improves; you sleep better; you are generally fired up about life. If your passion is collecting baseball trading cards, or gardening, or sculpture, then get started now.

How? Read everything you can about your topic; work on becoming the world’s leading expert; join clubs; make a website.  Maybe your passion will make enough money so that you can retire early.

But in any case, you must choose. You decide what that joy is for yourself. Seize it. It belongs to you now, just as your life does.

There are a thousand way to approach this.

Just get up on the surfboard and catch the next wave. We’ll do it together.

Who am I, and why would a person listen to me? Both fair questions. I’m Christine Hammerlund and I’ve been a nurse for years. I have delivered babies, saved lives, and cared for hundreds of patients through their medical triumphs and tragedies. Now I run Assured Healthcare at http://www.assuredhealthcare.com. We're a multi-million dollar medical staff provider in Illinois. I live in Antioch, Ill. Got health questions for me, whether large or small? I’ll answer. Visit us at http://www.facebook.com/AssuredHealthcareStaffing  and Chrishammerlund@yahoo.com