Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

As we baby boomers rocket through life, we stop somewhere near the end of it to look back on what we have achieved and we sometimes have the feeling we have ‘missed out’ somewhere on the important stuff!

Lives of baby boomers might be divided into sections: early life – where we learn to love our family and friends and where our values are set – where we gain an education and discover our skills and talents; the middle part of our lives where we find a partner, raise a family of our own and conduct a career throughout a series of job opportunities; followed by the final part where we sit back and either celebrate or regret what we did in the first two parts!

Psychological articles from the school of Positive Psychology have a take on this process of reviewing life. Baby boomers who suddenly take up hot air ballooning or drag racing or decide to climb Mont Blanc when they are pushing sixty sometimes draw comments such as: ‘He’s going through a mid life crisis’, or ‘There’s no fool like an old fool’ or ‘She’s trying to recapture her lost youth’, usually accompanied by a round of laughter.

These people are in fact merely ‘smelling the coffee’ – pursuing the activities they could not pay attention to when they were busy carving out a name in their chosen profession or spending hours doing the school run. Having an appreciation of life in later years is something that is actually quite common. Not only do people enjoy life when they have more time to appreciate it, they might also have the finances to sponsor the activities they want to indulge in; something that may have been lacking in early years.

As we get older, we begin to understand the value of living life to its fullest. We start to realize that as we develop the small aches and pains that come with age, there is not, as we thought, all the time in the World to travel, to see the places we always wanted to see and meet the people we always wanted to meet. Taking the time to savor the events we missed and appreciate the good things in life can be an attractive proposition as we enter middle and older age.

Psychological articles from Positive Psychologists describe the elderly attitude to life as introspective. Younger people cannot fully understand the limitations of age. Why would they? The analysis of time is something the young know very little about. Baby boomers, however, have the yardstick of their early years to know how much time is left to enjoy the good things in life: to spend time with the grandchildren; to sit in the sun instead of doing household chores; to make the best of things.

For some, smelling the coffee is merely the pleasure of spending time at home pruning the roses and learning new recipes; welcoming old friends for dinner and making new ones. The importance is to savor and appreciate, before it is too late.

The Psychological Article on Appreciation and Savoring: Remembering to Smell the Coffee is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!

Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

Love, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes. Love is something we all feel at some time in our lives and may be directed at a variety of people and things to whom and to which we feel drawn. Love for people tends to be either affectionate or sexual or a combination of the two. The love we feel for family is deep rooted and is also inexorably tied with other feelings of obligatory duty. Baby boomers might feel a certain responsibility to care for and love their family, whether they are lovable or not!

Psychological articles cover the subject of love and all its divisions in minuscule detail, exploring the reasons for love; the hidden agendas of love and the ability of certain people to love with greater freedom than others. Baby boomers are the infamous traders of free love in the sixties and seventies; a period many of our younger generation scandalize over as they ask awkward questions, mostly concerning unprotected sex!

Love is an emotion that can be felt for inanimate objects, perceived by the owner to be beautiful or desirable in some way. Love for a pet can certainly outweigh the love felt for another human being and this type of love is demonstrated later in life with more intensity than at any other time, possibly as a result of being disappointed in sexual or affectionate love. Baby boomers in their lifetime tend to have experienced every aspect of love and might even have discarded certain types of affection as unwanted or unnecessary.

Love is affected by other emotions such as selfishness or greed. People who have an over developed sense of worth might seek love from someone who is prepared to take a submissive role; an introvert might solicit love from someone who can be more demonstrative. Conversely, others reach out for people with all their interests in common.

Love of money is a dangerous affection that can take over and result in a person sacrificing other more meaningful relationships. The love that exists between a parent and a child is usually a strong and loyal alliance, yet can sometimes be completely overshadowed by the affection a grandparent might feel for a grandchild.

The human ability to make sensible choices when they concern sexual love is sometimes sadly undermined by hormones. The saying ‘love is blind’ is certainly accurate and might describe any number of unhappy relationships where men and women have blundered – madly in love – into situations wherein they were unable to find happiness. Baby boomers have a huge capacity for affection yet have managed to push the divorce rate through the ceiling, possibly due to their major talent for picking unsuitable partners.

Psychological articles on the benefits of finding a loving relationship clearly outline the positive aspects of long term love, including better health and a longer life. A good relationship with close family members can also promote a happier existence. The ability to love affects an ability to laugh and enjoy life; the recognized purveyors of strength and health.

The Psychological Article on Love and Its Positive Effect is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!

Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

Baby boomers who are outgoing, with a talent for making new friends, have a wide circle of acquaintance. Some of these people will be part of a social set, some will be work colleagues past and present and others will be family members; old school friends; closer associations. While many people have a positive and enthusiastic approach to good news and share it with everyone they know within the hour, others hold a positive piece of news within; savoring the knowledge and enjoying their own exclusive access to information that would delight everyone else if they knew about it.

Psychological articles from the school of Positive Psychology point out that a desire to share good news is healthy. It is a positive emotion that triggers other positives such as love; hope; optimism etc. Baby boomers might benefit immensely from recognizing how sharing good news promotes a cordial atmosphere. Finding good news amongst a menu of doom and gloom is a talent some people just never develop. Baby boomers who perpetually look as though they have ‘lost a dime but found only a nickel’ are a good example of people who prefer to look at the negative aspect of most things.

Positive people generate positive emotions in others and taking a healthy and optimistic view can lead others to develop their ability to enjoy and savor life’s opportunities. Good news; sharing; positive thinking and spreading happiness around are all part of building the steps to positive emotion. And positive emotion promotes longer and healthier life.

Baby boomers, due to advancing age, begin to lose old friends to divorce, separation, illness, and death. Keeping positive emotions helps to dispel heartbreak and gloom, even if the positive attitude covers only small, seemingly insignificant things such as continuing to walk the dog and feed the birds, despite feeling low. The process of doing small, positive things will eventually chip away at despondency.

Being gloomy about bad news is never productive and usually destructive. For some who are in the position of having to nurse a partner through terminal illness, the process of optimistic nurturing can have a strengthening effect. Finding positive things to do with a patient near death can enrich the dying experience and be the difference between a contented passing and a miserable process where both parties wallow in torment and grief.

Psychological articles from Positive Psychology inform us that negatives can make illness and bereavement harder to cope with: waiting for the worst to happen does not make the worst thing that could happen easier through expectation. The period of time leading to the event could have been spent positively yet can be wasted by people determined to expect the worst.

Sharing each snippet of positive news, even in bad situations, has a calming effect on everyone involved and can take the sting out of bad news by providing a happy balance. Good news can be perceived as information of only passing interest by people with a poor concept of what constitutes good news, of course.

The Psychological Article on Spreading the Word and Sharing Positive News is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!

Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

For baby boomers in late middle age and entering older age, an ability to laugh keeps things on an even footing and helps to ‘ground’ emotions that might otherwise topple confidence and self esteem. Psychology articles from the school of Positive Psychology recommend laughter as a antidote against an early grave and evidence bears out that the ability to apply humor to even the most tragic of circumstances can lighten the spirit and help get life back on track again.

In the early part of the last Century, death and serious illness was treated with a degree of pomposity. It has been found in recent years that when a lighter attitude is taken, patients with terminal illness have a better end of life experience and grieving is best addressed through laughter as well as tears. Baby boomers tend to have a share of both illness and bereavement, due to age. Keeping a sense of humor can be helpful when dealing with emotional extremes and can diffuse tension.

A positive outlook brings problems into perspective. Taking a gloomy view of every small thing that goes wrong is not only unhelpful, it can actually make things worse. People with a toxic and pessimistic viewpoint invariably attach themselves in friendship to people with the opposite attitude.

An optimist will soak up negativity and ‘turn it around’, cheering up the pessimist and making things look ‘brighter’ by association. Eventually, however, the sponge becomes over loaded and optimistic people turn their friendship away. Pessimistic people are therefore by definition lonely and isolated. Baby boomers are great listeners but there is a limit to everyone’s patience with gloom and doom!

Making the best of a situation need not apply only to bad situations. There is a certain negativity applied to the hum-drum of normality; the routine of life; the sameness of performing tasks on a daily basis. In retirement, routines necessarily change at first but as habits set in, boredom can also raise its ugly head. Psychological articles confirm that keeping things in perspective and applying a sense of humor to drudgery can lighten the task and raise the spirits.

Baby boomers are talented at rolling with punches and it is true that life is what you make it. Adopting a cheerful disposition can certainly keep you young, help to ward off minor ailments and strengthen the emotions to help deal with loss. For people who lead an active life and who still perform daily activities such as driving a car; shopping; working either full time or part time; baby sitting younger family members and pursuing leisure activities such as golf; bowling; swimming and going to the gym, life can seem to freeze in time.

Once these activities are given up, it is tempting to sink into a depressing and self serving attitude that is nothing less than self pity. Taking the optimistic route is sometimes harder but it pays off when life brightens considerably. Learning to laugh at the blows life throws can make a big difference to how one enjoys the ride.

The Psychological Article on Making the Best of Things: Keeping a Sense of Humor is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!

Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

Nobody likes a grouch. Yet some of the nicest people are actually professional grouches. Their best friends are usually ultra positive characters with a talent for seeing beneath the surface of things; finding the redeeming qualities of even the most determinedly miserable specimens. The sad thing is that positive people can only stand the company of moody friends in small doses. So the loser is always the grouch. Baby boomers are social experts and tend to include even the most moody and negative thinkers in their social circles. However, grouches tend to be deservedly sidelined and included under sufferance.

Despite evidence to the contrary, psychological articles on Positive Psychology assure us that actually nobody likes being miserable. The assumption that people are miserable because they want to be that way is quite false. Everyone wants to have a sunny personality; yet many people just cannot achieve the happiness levels to make them nice to be around. Some miserable and moody people have no idea they are being negative and affecting everyone with their poisonous attitude: they quite often have a warped impression of their own persona and believe themselves to be ‘serious’ or ‘reserved’ or ‘conservative’ – all ‘positive’ descriptions of someone who in fact is seen by everyone else to be toxic.

Extreme negativity displayed by moody people sometimes spills over into the lives of the friends and family around them. We have all seen the scenario where the rest of the family will laugh spontaneously at a situation, only to have the laughter cut short by a parent or friend who glares ferociously, causing a repressed aura of gloom to descend on a previously cordial and happy gathering. This is the result of the person seeing the laughter as critical, usually quite wrongly. The laughter is derisive, they believe, so they put a stop to it promptly.

Baby boomers are getting on in age and many tend to take the attitude that you should not try to teach an old dog new tricks. However, in the case of mood management it is never too late to learn and the benefits of adopting a new attitude are immediate. Baby boomers who have struggled through ten or twenty years of gloomy moodiness are usually aware, at least subconsciously, that they are not widely accepted as good company. Their attitude might be ‘your loss, not mine’, but deep down their need to be accepted is as great as anyone else’s.

The triggers of moodiness exist within everyone. For people with a marked darkness of mood, the triggers are multiple and sometimes difficult to recognize but they must be identified if any progress is to be made. Psychological articles teach us how to identify those triggers and how to overcome the effects that they have on our personality.

From identifying the triggers that cause dark moods and changes in temper, it is necessary for baby boomers to make a concentrated effort to progress to, if not avoiding the triggers, at least to control their reaction to other people’s comments and behavior.

The Psychological Article on Mood Management and Knowing Where the Triggers Are is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!

Psychological Articles by Boomeryearbook.com

We all suffer with demons now and again and the ability we all have to wallow in negativity can sometimes interfere with our capacity to enjoy life. Taking those demons to task and vanquishing them can sometimes take a little effort. As we get older (and all we baby boomers are definitely doing that!) the strength to ‘pull ourselves together’ and get on with the good things in life can escape us, leaving us vulnerable to dark and sometimes angry mood swings.

Psychological articles from the school of Positive Psychology that study the triggers of negativity promote the use of positive thinking to offset the darker side of our emotions. Our positive view on a set of negative circumstances might reverse the effect they have on us completely. Simply put, it is a case of ‘looking on the bright side’ yet might apply to quite serious problems in life. Baby boomers are frequently the victims of a sudden change in circumstances, through loss: loss of job; loss of home through financial problems; loss of partner or spouse through death. Although it is impossible to take a positive view of some of these events immediately, a certain lightening of spirit should take place at some stage afterward, even after the worst moments in our lives.

An inability to conquer negativity usually begins with a number of negative events crowding into a short period of time. As we try to cope with the first blow, a second hits before we have time to recover from the first. Resentment at having to deal with two losses at once overcome our positive thinking resources; we become moody and sulky and unable to smile; morose and critical of those we see as responsible. Should a third setback strike, we are doomed to gloom! Baby boomers with a positive personality and who have to cope with multiple negative events are lucky to have the tools to deal with the fallout from tragedy and misfortune: others tend to struggle.

Coping with negative emotions requires a revision of attitude; seeing the fun and humor in a situation; being grateful for small mercies in the face of larger tragedy; learning to appreciate the joyous side of life and retaining a social circle of supportive and affectionate friends. Psychological articles tell us that keeping a smile on one’s face can lengthen life.

Dispelling negativity for baby boomers with a leaning toward gloom and despondency can take a little effort but it can be done with a little application and a lot of dedication to seeing the good side of situations. It is important to retain an attitude of positive thinking combined with a resolve to stay active, see plenty of friends in plenty of socially positive situations. Learning to cheer other people up is a great way to practice your own positive outlook. Finding small pleasures and taking an interest in helping to entertain others can have a great effect on your own ability to stay focused on the joy of life rather than the darker side of daily events.

The Psychological Article on Generating Positive Emotions and Learning to Dispel Negativity is part of Boomer Yearbook’s continuing series of baby boomers psychological coaching tips and how to alleviate elderly problems. We believe knowledge is power. We’d love to hear what you think.

Boomer Yearbook is a Social Network and Psychological Articles for Baby Boomers. Connect with old and new friends, or expand your mind and ward off senior moments and elderly problems with dream analysis and online optical illusions and brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join other Baby Boomers to stay informed, receive weekly Newsfeeds, and let your opinions be heard. Baby boomers changed the world. We’re not done yet!