Turbo Leadership Systems^™

Age is a state of mind

Our extended family gathered at the Country Meadows Retirement Village in Woodburn to celebrate my mother's 93rd birthday. She is an amazing woman.

We got there before she came down from her apartment to the community room gathering area. We met 85-year old Charles, a relatively new resident there. I had met Chuck a week or so earlier. He's energetic, outgoing, and eager to interact. He has a great voice, what I call a "radio voice". My brother Bruce asked him if he had ever been in radio. With a big smile, he immediately said, "No". We asked him what he did before he retired. He said, "Well, that's a long story" and launched into a fairly comprehensive overview of his bio, his life story. When he was 15 years old, he went off to join the Air Force and ultimately fly jets. We found out that he was a fighter pilot in World War II - jets.

Charles missed out on our family singing "Happy Birthday". When he came around later, he gave my mother a solo version of "Happy Birthday", followed by his own rendition of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". My brother queried him again a couple of times about his secret of a happy, successful life. He mentioned something about a card that had a message on it from his mother, Rosa, who lived to be 101½ years old.

Then he said, "I'll let you guys get back to

your party" and went on his way. A few minutes later, he came back with a beautiful calligraphy version of his mother's philosophy - what I call an affirmation.

This reminds me of what I referred to in How To Turbo Charge You as the "young old", a study that was done by Stanford University. These three attributes ~ optimism, forgiveness, and risk-taking, will help keep you young all of your life. They will help you be one of the "young olds."

How can you argue with success? Rosa lived to be 101½ years old. We all know intuitively the rightness of this philosophy, we know the importance of having something to live for, something to look forward to. We talk to people every day, it seems, who, when you inquire about what's going on, we hear "the same old thing," "just getting by," "I guess it'll have to do," and other neutral to negative comments about their life, work and state of their world. So if you'd like to live to be 101½, more importantly, live every day of your life, why not adopt Rosa Karl's affirmation; " Keep a small dream in the making". So what's your dream for the balance of '10? What do you want to do before 2011 rolls in? Why not write it down now? One more little stretch goal you can commit to. Write it down, read it every day, develop a plan to take a small step. You'd be amazed at what happens.