Re-Thinking Retirement After the Crash

the current financial crisis reminds me of a cartoon I saw years ago in Paris. bungee jumper is worried about getting a jump off a bridge, so he checked his armor. Fine. He checked his connection with the bungee cord. Fine. He checked the cable itself. Fine. He checked the cable connection on the bridge. Fine. Persuasion, jumps and breaks the bridge!

under the bridge financing many of us have broken. This is particularly destabilizing for retirees and those soon to retire. They followed all the rules about diversifying their investments. They checked and double checked the basics. Finally, they plunge and invested carefully. But now drowning in the river below without a life raft, and I have no idea how to get back to where they were in such a short time ago. "I did everything right, he is not fair!" they cry.

No doubt the markets will be back after this crisis is over, but it will take some time. It's like a patient in need of surgery. His health declined precipitously, he had surgery, it was successful (at least for now), his vital signs recovered, but there is still a risk of infection and full recovery is still quite far away. And older investors do not benefit from a long horizon. Many are depending on their savings and investments for current "life support." Their financial life, what it represents. how long will it take your money, just got a lot shorter.

At the time of loss, it is instructive to remember Elizabeth Kubler-Ross grief cycle. "Initially, most people enter a state of paralysis, not knowing what to feel or not. Classically, this phase is followed by denial, anger, bargaining and depression until finally, accept the new reality. Of course, nobody actually moving successively through these stages. They are more like a cycle, and thus we tend to both accept and reject, a bargain and I feel paralyzed by the repeated, often overlapping moods. However, when we accepted that our circumstances have changed forever and that is now our job to deal with new realities, we can begin to rationally analyze our current situation.

So, once you have gotten to accept, what will you do first? Counter-intuitively, you should start seeking advice from financial journals and to develop new financial strategies. Such a radical change requires a new way of thinking, re-evaluating their lives in order to determine what is truly important to you, and what is not. "All of the above" is no longer an option.

Your goal is to create a psychological base about themselves, studying how and when you proceed to give you the confidence and momentum to address your future. Start by remembering two or three situations in which you were performing at your best, you were using all their talents and so involved in what you did to lose all sense of time. Where were you? What did you do? Who were you with? Are you directing effort, or you were part of a team responding to the challenge? Or are you unique addressing and solving problems?

These "memory exercises" will give you important insights about what psychologists call your "motivational needs." From these memories, you can also deconstruct what your interests are and your style of pursuing them. If you want to go deeper, you can use and in-depth "personality profile," such as Birkman Method.

Now you have great information to help you understand what you want to do in retirement. How do you re-create his previous "flow" experience? It may not necessarily be related to the work context. But it would help if some of them can be done in a way that will result in additional revenue. Any additional income will reduce the amount of money you need to withdraw from your retirement accounts. Studies have shown that working only 30% in the first five years after retirement will result in a portfolio that is 40% higher at the end of that period.

The next step is to develop a new strategy for their retirement. Championship of those things that are most important to you. Develop for themselves "new life plan" which would include those things that will make you happy and fulfilled. Include details of your new life. Where will you be living? What will you do? Who will you be doing it with?

Finally it is time to consider the financial implications of their new life. Having made ​​your plan, you must now assess how much it will cost. Use past records to determine your anticipated spending patterns (bank accounts, credit card statements, ATM cash dispensers, etc.). Create a monthly budget, and then convert it to a year, and add in any anticipated major extraordinary expenses (vacations, property / income tax, new car, new roof, etc.). Do not forget health care costs and a reserve for unexpected contingencies. When you have a best estimate of its annual budget, divide by 12 to convert it back to the monthly average.

Now look at where your income will come from to support your monthly retirement lifestyle. Traditional sources include social security, pensions, non-retirement investments, 4% annual withdrawals from your retirement accounts, and all work-related income from part-time job, hobbies, etc. If, as expected, your income projections do not meet your needs, go to your new life plan, and memory exercises and determine what is truly important to you, and what is not. Again a strategy to make its revenues and expenditures in balance. This will put you on good footing for the future.

If the markets come back faster than anticipated, you can always adjust their lifestyles accordingly. However, living within your means is important, so you do not deplete your resources too soon. You do not want to be your friends, saying: "The operation was successful but the patient died ."

Being Creative - The Right-Brain Left-Brain Myth and Flow

Most of us can hardly imagine bestselling authors struggling with their manuscripts or suffering from writer lock. Instead, we assume that something special we have to find or develop, and we look in vain for the magic formula.

In reality, this wonderful state in which the words just flow from our fingers caused by certain types of brain activity - which means that there is nothing mystical about it. You can still enjoy the euphoria in the country, but a better understanding of what happens while you're there - or until you have trouble getting there -. can help you increase your ability to get there by the will

Mihaly Csikszentmiihalyi

coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called (pronounced Me-high Chick-sent-me-high), the term "flow" applies perfectly to the creative state. Sometimes it feels as if someone ("muse") is whispering in your ear, or like you're channeling someone or something else, or even if you just write down "what is really happening" in his fictional world. Some writers have even returned to their desks to find wonderful material in their manuscripts that have no memory of the production.

"Flow" is actually the way it relates to creative dissociation, and dissociation is a natural phenomenon in which some parts of the brain disconnects or "split" away from each other. This is what happens when you do not remember your drive somewhere because you were thinking about someone else, or if you miss the part of the conversation, because you are daydreaming, or during the summer, because you're enjoying a book or movie.

The experience of flow

Flow is always a positive experience, in fact, some people refer to as "optimal experience." And the flow is not only a place for writers - Athletes call it "the zone". Chess players, surgeons, dancers, programmers, and others also experience flow when you're completely focused on what they like.

Although everyone's experience is a little different, there are certain things that many people report, including:

* irregularities in the experience of time - You realize that you're writing for three hours, when he felt like a

.

* Euphoria

* a sense of calm competence or enhanced creativity

* "softening of the borders themselves, or a sense of wholeness or spiritual unity

* Another mystical experience of some kind (basketball players, for example, will sometimes say that the hoop seems bigger when they are in progress)

Finding the "Zone"

Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as that perfect balance between challenge (task difficulty) and opportunities (personal skills ).

This means that if the task is far beyond your abilities, you will feel anxiety. For example, suppose you are computer illiterate and need to install new PC card (circuit board) on your computer. friend to talk through the process on the phone, but since I have never seen the inside of the computer before, you're afraid of you or go to electrocution or burn yourself a set piece of equipment. You are probably very anxious.

If the task is well within their capabilities, but a bit of a challenge, on the other hand, you're bored.

for washing dishes is boring because it is so simple and repetitive that you could probably do it with your eyes closed if you need it.

If the task is a challenge to your skills and you're interested in winning this challenge, you are on track to achieve flow.

Ok, cool ... Now how to achieve flow?

First, the bad news.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, "You can not make the course happen. All you can do is learn how to remove obstacles in the way ."

If you're a good typist and can type without looking at the keyboard, you know that as long as you do not think about what your fingers are doing, you're wrong. As soon as you start thinking about how fast you're hitting the keys, you can start to make mistakes. The same thing happens to athletes who were asked to explain how something so good: if they try to show soon after, they have more problems than usual, because now they're analyzing their movements rather than just doing them

The good news: Once you know what flow is and how it feels, you start to pay attention to how you got there and increase your ability to do it on purpose

.

Right-Brain/Left-Brain Myth

Neurologist Alice Flaherty argues that creativity is to balance the frontal and temporal lobe activity. In other words, did the trick, in fact, that from his "left brain" and to your right, but to increase activity in the right hemisphere (or reduce the activity of the left) to fit the activity on the other side.

Most people do not realize that if you really got all the way out of their left brain, could not write - the left brain produces language, and for many people the right brain is completely nonverbal. (That is, if we do that a severed connection between your left and right hemispheres, the corpus callosum [pronounced KOR-pus KA-lo-sum], and asked the hand controlled by the nonverbal side of your brain to write words, it was not able to Or it could just write a very simple, very familiar words, such as your name .)

brain lateralization

Both sides of brain working together at all times, but your brain develops when you were a child, it lateralized functions. In other words, put the control centers for some functions on the right side, and control centers for others on the left. People's brains are organized in a similar manner, so that we can point to a diagram as a right and say with relative certainty that your brain is organized this way, too.

musicians use the left lobe listen to music, and non-musicians to use the right - it is a good example of how experience can change brain organization. Musicians can hear and recognize the logical parts of the music, others usually just listen for enjoyment

.

Broca's (pronounced broke-ah) is a specialized area of the brain in the left frontal lobe responsible for language and speech production. Sometimes, after a stroke, patients can not talk while you're working with a speech therapist. This is because the Broca area affected by stroke.

Wernicke's (pronounced WER'-nik-ee), is a specialized area of the brain in the left temporal (side) lobe responsible for language comprehension.

critic and Muse disagree

Unfortunately, the left frontal part of the brain responsible for that little voice that tries to edit while writing, and creative drive is actually much more to do with good creative output than skill.

In other words, if your brain is functioning normally (ie you do not have cancer), have a desire to write creatively, and you can shut up that little critical voice, you have everything you need to achieve flow and produce good things. (You can get back out when the critic is actually done, but wait until then !)

So ignore that critical voice until later, because while you can not produce bad work, and it's about, you can not write good things, or, if you do not write at all.

increasing the flow in your

Life

parts of the brain that are affected by the flow experiences are also active during meditation and, for many, religious experiences. But you do not have to take up yoga to be creative. What you need to do is pay attention to any point you realize that you were able to flow. Different things work for different people, but here are some approaches you can try.

1 If there is a TV show, movie or book you love so much that the rest of the world disappears for you while you're involved in it, think about what it is shown that intrigues you so much. Writing about characters, themes or ideas that you nailed. Try to include some of them in his writing, because that part of the brain activated that you want included - they're kind of stuff that will make your writing flow

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2 Write what you think is rubbish. Seriously. Write the worst things you can think of. In fact, set a goal to write things that I never let alone write about. Write the most self-important Mary Sue story hit the Internet each (no need to post it!) to write a love scene that is so titillating shame that you'd have to leave town, if you know anyone who has ever seen. Write about what you do if you could say something that you would like your colleagues, boss or client. If you do not feel comfortable writing or keeping these things in your home, get a safe deposit box at the bank and keep them there. Safe deposit boxes are surprisingly affordable, often just $ 20 or $ 30 for small boxes. You could also get a Post Office box and mail yourself your finished pieces. Do not destroy them, though. Some of the best things you'll ever write is the stuff that bothers you the most.

3 Take time not to be interrupted by distractions. You can not achieve flow when the phone rings, keeps, stores or asking your partner when you're going to fix dinner, or you're worrying about whether the project work is done yet. Make that time sacred. Some people advocate sitting in front of the screen or writing tablets throughout that time, even if you do not write a word, but if you find that the twisting, you will not do it. So keep other things around you enjoy doing, if not overcome by inspiration.

Think of silly, because the flow is a playful kind of state, and Grimness will not get anywhere. Do not bring in work, or bills, or try to catch up on your e-mail. Many people consider the flow in a quiet, repetitive tasks they enjoy: knitting, beading, drawing (even if you're really wrong with that), or playing the piano, or even organize things - photographs, for example.

If you can not or do not want to do any of those things, think about what you enjoyed doing before you had so many responsibilities. Buy a few of those comics you never buy more ... They will help you in the flow state? Download a color picture from the internet and borrow some of your child's Crayolas. (Better yet, get one for myself. big box with lots of colors!) Play Dominos. Plant flowers. Do something that is a guilty pleasure, something that is consuming far too often. These are things that will help youto find the the flow easily .

4 Every time you find yourself in the course, spend a few minutes thinking about how it feels, and how you got there. And then, whatever it was, do it again. Soon.

References:

* Functional correlates of musical and visual ability in frontotemporal dementia, Bruce L. Miller, Kyle Boone, Jeffrey L. Cummings, Stephen L. Read and Fred Mishkin Br. J. Psychiatry, May 2000, 176: 458-463. :

* Brain Regions May Sap or Spur Creativity:

* Brain Research The Role of Creativity in a