We are likely to live much longer and people want to lead fully healthy lives right to the end. Society might be aging but people want to wait young and healthy. Enjoyment is vital in staying healthy. We can be taught a lot from children in developing health practices that recognize and make best use of the importance and life-enriching value of enjoyment, imagination and spontaneity.
When you lose yourself in an interest you love, you find yourself. When you enjoy work, home, or play interests so mightily that you forget your problems, where you are, and what is going on around you, you come alive as a person. Inhibitions fall away, self-confidence, self esteem and sense of self worth fly, interest abounds and imagination is set free of charge. We often call it a ’state of flow’. This feeling doesn’t stop at the end of the experience. It generates a positive ripple effect through everything we do, long after the experience has ended.
The sustained health benefits of such experiences can no longer be ignored in business, public, or personal health policies and practices. People are absolutely focused on finding and pursuing ways of staying healthy, to be able to enjoy work, life and relish the view of living well into their 80’s and beyond.
Good health – like life – is making stronger by proactively accentuate and building on the positives. Enjoyment is
(1). a Three-phase experience – planning, doing and reflecting. Think about your last holiday.
(2). Deeper than fun or pleasure, the latter two being automatic responses to enjoyment
(3). a life-expanding experience.
(4). an experience created alone by each person in their own unique way for their personal benefits.
(5). Vital in any program to minimize the risk of becoming ill.
(6). Helps people not to just feel good but to feel good about themselves – a feeling that continues well beyond the experience enjoyed, affecting every part of a person’s daily life, sometimes for life
(7). is a natural means of stress management – the ‘flight’ part of the ‘fight and flight’ syndrome.
Our perception and ideals of what good health means have changed. 21st century people are now recognizing health as far more complex than simply physical fitness. We are more aware of the need for sound mind, touching and spiritual health. For mature people, the desire to keep the mind active and alert is at negligible amount as important – sometimes more – as bodily mobility. This complexity is being compounded by the end product on our health of the increased stress, pressure and rapid changes in our daily life and work.
We are likely to live much longer than previous generations. 60 years of age is now middle-aged and public are continuing to live highly productive lives well into their 80’s and beyond. The two main issues of people preparation for retirement are:
(1). having sufficient money to enjoy a long life, and
(2). the ability to stay sufficiently healthy in mind, body and spirit to be able to maximize their lifestyle, right to the end.
Nobody admits to being old these days. Society might be ageing but people want to stay young and healthy. Older people over and over again exhibit greater health than many younger people. Maturity brings with it a deeper appreciation of the true joys of life enrichment. This outlook provides a strong foundation for even good health.
The healing power of laughter and enjoyment has become well known through the film “Patch Adams” based on the work of Dr Patch Adams in set up the Gesundheit Institute in the USA. His work – and the film – has done much to make stronger the link between enjoyment and good health. But also the film tinted the require to overcome the approach shown by the training hospital board, who so strongly resisted the work of Dr Adams because, in their eyes, health care was a matter of life and death in which fun and enjoyment had no place.
Health has become a enormous factor in the crash that the ageing society is having on workforce management, particularly to do with:
(1). The ease of use of skilled people in the workforce
(2). pull towards you and keeping good staff
(3). re-thinking the benefits of employing and retaining mature staff – and the previous preference to employ younger workers.
We call for to remain older people healthy in every sense of the word if we want to have them stay in the workforce for as long as possible. People today are less inclined to retire and more inclined to retain some form of involvement in work. The difference is they would like to work on their own terms. Their major bills during life are largely paid. at this time their financial needs are mainly to support daily living, travel and the pursuit of enjoyable interests. Working helps pay those bills but all it keeps the mind, body and spirit healthy.
The issue of work life balance – I prefer to talk of work life harmony – is also of great importance here. This issue goes beyond the exposed issues of childcare and eldercare, significant though they are. The broader, gender-neutral, issue is the mental physical condition of workers’ increasing exposure to excessive prolonged stress, tension and imposed change. Such health issues are insidious and often go undetected awaiting ‘the lifestyle cracks appear’. Present is much in common between the concepts of workaholics and alcoholism.
People want to take the ‘tired’ out of retired. Retirement is no longer a matter of ’stop work and start dying’. It’s now more like, as one client put it to me, “what’s for dessert? I’ve finished the main course and I’m still starving!” Such people want to carry on having an active involvement in society – preferably paid – but on their own terms rather than on an employer’s terms. Total health is a critical factor in this issue.
A growing health matter here is what’s called the Retired Husband Syndrome – the man (usually) who has left work and finds himself with no interests to pursue. He develops a “me too” attitude, seeking to become occupied in the interests of his wife or partner. Sometimes he assumes the role of an efficiency expert, advising his partner how to better run the home. If unresolved rapidly, strong emotional issues can arise, leading to possible divorce or even death.
The Retired Husband syndrome highlights the fact that preparations for a healthy retirement need to be in place long before the incident. This opens up another wider perspective on the value of enjoyable interests as a means of promoting, developing and maintaining good health.
The future belongs to the young. Much of this conversation has dealt with mature people. However the answers for a fit long term health policies and practices lie in the teaching of the young. Think about the staged increase of the typical youngster in their first five years of life – from birth to starting school at age 5, with most of the basic vital life skills. Yet in those little continuation they did little more than eat, sleep and enjoy life from end to end play. Kids live for the instant, they want to try everything, no matter whether or else not they are high-quality at it.
Posted on April 18th, 2008 by catlin
Filed under: Health & Fitness
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