140: Are You as Prepared Emotionally as You Are Financially While Aging?

Thoughts of the later years typically trend towards wondering if you'll have enough income to enjoy life in the so-called retirement years. I've used a phrase through the years to describe the desire for financial solvency: "I don't want to end up with too much month left at the end of my money." I'll adapt that to our theme here by stating: "I don't want to end up with too much life at the end of my money."

Heck, the good news is, we're living longer. Good health decisions, a more intentional focus on longevity that involves movement, relationships, and of course — though I'm biased — maintaining a steady diet of contrarian content about aging (wink, wink). And by contrarian, I think you catch my drift — none of that BS about being too old or too whatever to live a fulfilling life in the second half decades. Enough of that ageism nonsense. But I digress.

My intention with this issue is to stoke your thinking to the point that you'll shift your focus away from a potential obsession over dollar signs in your later years. But also alongside essential financial planning, and with equal intention, prepare yourself emotionally, as well as financially, for those years.

Your emotional reserves are a foundational aspect of successful aging and without a solid emotional bank account, no amount of money will be enough to sustain you.

So, the obvious question is: how full is your emotional bank account?

You might be tempted to think, "If I just had more financial security I'd be more emotionally healthy." If you're not intentional with your emotional health, what makes you think a bigger bank account will take up the slack.

Sure, I'll admit, money does buy some happiness. But it's a slippery slope to rely on your financial capacity to fulfill you in ways that a deeper emotional reservoir can and will.

Aging will take it's toll on your emotions. Grief, disappointment, health challenges, pain, you name it, the routine draw on your emotional bank account is real and every decade of your aging journey reduces your reserves.

Decide now to plan for your emotional reserves with the same intentionality you do with your financial reserves.

Plan for emotional maturity

I've met adults in their 20s and 30s with deep emotional maturity. And I've met adults in their 40s, 50s, and 60s with the emotional maturity of a 20 year old.

Emotional maturity isn't necessarily age related as much as it's experience and personal growth related.

You've probably matured emotionally due to the life you've experienced up to now. Whatever difficulty you've encountered and worked through adds depth to your emotions.

Your capacity to roll with the punches, so to speak, says a great deal about how mature you are emotionally.

Planning for increased emotional maturity involves:

• Welcoming rather than wincing when you face an emotional set-back. Your emotions mature when they're stretched beyond their current limits.
• Waiting rather than gratifying your immediate emotional desires. Unchecked desire, for whatever is attracting your attention, is a test of your emotional depth.

Plan for emotional strength

Life, especially on the aging journey, is like a fitness regimen for your emotions. Put in enough reps or log enough miles and you'll get stronger.

I choose to see emotional strength as the essence of being resilient. Every test of your emotions, if used to your advantage, makes a deposit in your emotional bank account from which you can make withdrawals when necessary.

Plan for emotional strength by doing the heavy-lifting that's required in life.

• Accept and process moments of grief, disappointment, and discouragement.
• Acknowledge the gift of your personal history. It's likely you've been in the challenging emotional season you're in before — use it to keep going.
• Appreciate the momentary pain or setbacks you experience emotionally and let them deepen your resilience.

Plan for emotional longevity

Like your mind, your emotions are not worth wasting. I fear that a generation of easy-way out, non-thinkers is on the horizon.

Second-halfers (those post-50s) and those a decade or so away on either side of their 50s at least have the advantage of having experienced their emotions without the influence of non-stop media access and influence. I'm somewhat convinced that emotional longevity will be more easily acquired by second-halfers as a result.

But we still live in a media-numbing and/or media-dumbing culture. Thus, it's all the more necessary to plan for emotional longevity.

Emotional longevity is your capacity to have the emotional reserves to draw on for years to come — not relying on something or someone else to put in the reps for you.

• Emotional longevity expands as does your wisdom when you learn from and use your life experiences to your advantage.
• Emotional longevity outlasts the sound-bite culture as you learn how and continue to think for yourself — not letting others do your thinking for you.
• Emotional longevity sustains you through the ups and downs of life as you age.

By all means, prepare financially for your later years of life, but do so on a foundation of emotional maturity, strength, and longevity.

And before I sign off on this issue, I'll be taking a break from our content next week and return the following week.

Press on...

Eddie