You get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say, "What happened? Wasn't I just 30"? We wonder where all the years have gone, and now we approach retirement age, or we have already retired, and we are beset with a new set of questions and challenges. Some of us may think that life has passed us by. The image of seniors and retirees is that of someone hunched over and generally sedentary.
Depression is a condition that afflicts many retirees. They look back at their life and perhaps regret missed opportunities. Then they look ahead and wonder how many years they have left. If you are 65 or 70, you don't know how much time you have. Is it five, 10 or 20 more years?
If you are in your 40s or 50s, you tend to think only a little bit ahead. After all, life is good, or you're so busy dealing with work and family, what your future looks like in the next 20 or 30 years is in the back part of your mind. The problem is that when you hit the "retirement" age, things are suddenly upon you, and you realize that life is not how you thought it would be or you are financially strapped.
In Australia, according to Statistics Australia, 62% of retirees are on a pension. A couple's full pension is $41,704 ($28358) annually. Now, if you are a reasonably fit 70-year-old and can do many things, there are financial limitations to what you can do if you're on a pension. You won't do an overseas trip yearly unless you have some backup savings. However, if you have too much savings, the pension starts to be reduced. The fact is the majority of elderly Australians don't have the passive income from their investments that will cover the lifestyle that they wish to have. So what happens is that their lifestyle shrinks.
So, people have specific belief systems that prevent them from living the life they would love to live. My wife and I see this in our own lives where our children think that we shouldn't do things, that we're too old. They keep reminding us to "be careful". Somehow, they see us as semi-invalid. We keep bursting their bubble when we go overseas on adventures like climbing in the mountains or chasing severe storms. This leads me to the first belief system.
Belief #1. "I'm too old."
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