Happy Easter!

I hope that you had a lovely Easter, celebrating what you believe in and spending time with your peeps!  (Pun intended.)  We have a lot of peeps extended family in the area and have made a tradition of getting together for the major holidays.  My siblings and I each host a different holiday and mine is Easter, which I love to do.  I mean, who doesn’t love peeps, brunch and an Easter egg hunt? 

We had 35 people over for Easter.  Fortunately, everyone pitches in with the food.  After a delicious buffet brunch, we send the young adults out with bags and bags of plastic Easter eggs to hide.  We live in the country so there is no shortage of hiding spots.  The littles wait anxiously by the door and peer out the windows to try and get a first glance at where the eggs are hidden.  Once they are given the O.K., they burst out the door in all directions.  Chaos in the very best sense.  In the summer we usually come across one or two eggs that the hunters never found.   

New growth

Easter and spring always remind me of new growth and fresh starts.  It is a chance for new beginnings. Lovely color popping through a dull brown earth.  Crocus, daffodils and wild buttercups are some of the first spring flowers we see. 

As we reach retirement age, it seems like we have less new growth and less fresh starts.  It is too easy to get comfortable and stagnated with what we have always done.  Like putting on a comfy pair of old slippers. Don’t get me wrong, I love a pair of worn, comfy slippers, but I do not want to wear them all the time.   They feel soooo much better if I put them on after a day running around in sneakers or after an evening in shining heals.  Especially then. (And this coming from someone who has a hard time finding comfortable shoes.)  Those slippers would lose their pleasure if that was all I ever wore.  I would start to feel tired, frumpy and boring.   So, it is with life.  It is the new growth that keeps life interesting and adds zest to our days.   

Why is it that, as we age, we are often reluctant to try something new?   I find it an odd dichotomy that we are less willing to try something new at the very point in life when we have more time and discretionary money to do just that.  But it is big and scary to try something new, particularly as we get older.  After all, we are supposed to be the wise sage.  The experts.  Trying something new is taking a risk.  We don’t want to be the beginner that fumbles around and has to ask questions.  Then there are the fears that creep in: fear of failure, fear of judgement, fear of looking like an old fool, and fear of using up our precious free time on something that does not turn out to be worthwhile.  But trying different things is what keeps us fresh and interesting. It is what makes us hop out of bed in the morning, ready to test a new idea or follow-up on something we were working on the day before.   

How do we begin to push ourselves out of our comfort zones to try something new that will help us grow?  Maybe it all starts with curiosity.  Quite a bit of research points to the fact that curiosity is one of the attributes of happy retirees.  How do we maintain our sense of curiosity and growth?   Here are a few ideas to jumpstart your thinking:

• Write down a list of all the things you are curious about and would like to explore.  Don’t overthink it.  Just start writing and then you can prioritize and cross items off later. 
• Add a new word to your vocabulary this week.  Maybe something from The New Urban Dictionary.  I remember reading somewhere that using a word seven times makes it part of your personal vocabulary. 
• Try out a new recipe.  Most of us have that pile of recipes we have been meaning to try.  Set a night, get the ingredients, put on some music and get creating.
• Do one thing to move you toward a new hobby you have wanted to try.  Buy the book to read about it or purchase the supplies you need. Don’t let perfectionism get in the way of trying something new.
• Take a class on something you are curious about.  Every college and university have non-credit adult learning courses.  Better yet, if you have an area of expertise, offer to teach a course.
• Tell one person, just one person, what you plan to do.  Verbalizing it makes it more real.  It also promotes a sense of commitment to follow through once you have told someone about it.
• Write down the steps you need to take to move forward.  Include the final goal.  As we all know, people that write their goals down are much more likely to achieve them.
• Plan a trip to somewhere you have not been before.   New sites and different cultures always stir our creative minds.

So, lets learn a lesson from Easter and take the steps to try something fresh and new this month.   Remember that there is no performance review or judgement.  And please, please, please, do not be your own worst critic.  Take the risk.  After all, what is the alternative…keep wearing the same old slippers day in and day out?