Chapter 1
Choices Matter
CHOICES
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
~ Nelson Mandela
Poucette: Attitude of Incline
On a cold yet sunny winter day in 1952, a three-year-old little girl set out along a snowy path to explore her new neighborhood. She pushed her favorite doll in her gray buggy, and she had a few crackers tucked into her snowsuit pocket that her mother had given her in case she got hungry. Poucette, nicknamed by her French grandmother for Thumbelina, was wide-eyed and excited about her new adventure. She had just moved with her family to Terrace in northern British Columbia. But unlike her parents and younger brother, who were unpacking and settling into their new home, her curiosity had led her to choose adventure and a desire to explore outdoors.
Sixty-seven years later, that little girl still chooses to look at life with wide-eyed wonder and an attitude of adventure. That is a choice that has never changed for her, regardless of age. Her core essence remains intact. She chooses to live a life of Incline and to continue to climb metaphorical hills. And, yes, that little girl is me. I recently became a septuagenarian, and I’m proud of it.
Whether your inner child is a Tom Thumb or a Thumbelina, or any other adventurous fairy tale character, it’s your choice how you live your life. And wouldn’t you want it to be as adventurous, relevant, and fun in your sixtieth, seventieth, eightieth, and ninetieth decades as it was in your first? It’s possible, as you’ll find out when you meet the Incliners and learn how they are meeting the challenges of aging and living life with an attitude of Incline.
I’m sure you’ve heard countless times, “Just change your attitude.” But if it was that easy, we’d already have done it, right? What I’m offering is new and different. I will show you how to examine your current attitude, determine just how much of an Incliner you are, and embrace a series of practical strategies to make that positive shift. For all that and more—read on!
Raymond: Tuning It Out
Clint Eastwood is a cultural icon. He began his acting career in the TV Western seriesRawhide in 1959, and over the decades he has won acclaim as an actor, producer, director, musician, and political figure, even serving as mayor of Carmel, California, in the 1980s. At the age of eighty-eight, with no sign of retirement in sight, Clint continues to be actively engaged in the work he loves. When asked how he maintains his energy and zest for life at eighty-eight and how others could as well, he responded, “Don’t let the old man in.”
Which is just another way of declaring that he’s living a life of Incline.
Like Clint, my brother Raymond, at sixty-eight, decided not to “let the old man in” and made a choice to live a life of Incline. When asked if there is anything about the external pressures of society’s negative mindset that gets him down, he said, “That doesn’t affect me at all. If I see some people that are declining, that’s their choice. If I don’t like what I hear, I tune it out.” An avid outdoorsman, he further added, “While I don’t climb mountains anymore, I can still enjoy hiking around them. It’s simply a matter of modification that I’ve applied to many life activities.”
So, what are some of the different choices and approaches that others have made and how can they help you, too, support a life of continuous Incline? Let’s look at the stories of some more of the Incliners.
Galen: Aging as Decline—Reality or Illusion?
Galen recently retired from his position as a technology executive for a healthcare organization and is the author of the bookUnlock the Secrets of Retirement: How to Plan and Achieve a Fulfilling Life in Retirement. He’d always had a fascination with magic and was curious to see how he might pursue that interest. At seventy, Galen has become quite an adept magician. Performing magic
