The Seniors Festival, Flexible Time, Goals and Renewing One's Self

Feeling respect and honour is important and coming up in October we may be prompted to feel gratitude, respect and honour for the seniors in our community because of The Seniors Festival, officially in Victoria the 4^th to 11^th October. In the Knox district there will be activities throughout the whole month of October. It culminates in a closing ceremony on 31st by the Royal Australian Air Force Big Band. Also it can serve as a timely reminder about our local laughter club which has been laughing away for 10 years. I invite you to experience what we do at the Ferntree Gully Club, which meets on the 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th Sunday at 10.30am. You will enjoy yourself, whilst probably enjoying a new experience. Laughter Clubs gather together in great community spirit and practice laughter yoga. This is a form of physical exercise which is loads of fun and is fun, energising and uplifting. More information is here.

Seniors Festival I am looking forward to the Seniors Festival this year, which has an enormous variety of community activities throughout Victoria, many free ones, like our Laughter Club. We would like to acknowledge our gratitude to the Knox Council for featuring us in the Knox Council Seniors Festival Information Booklet again this year. We are featured on page 19 and if you do not have the booklet, you may pick it up at the Council or contact me. I have several and am happy to post it, hand deliver or email to you or else here is the downloadable PDF (21 page) link.

Use It Or Lose It There is an important and from my experience to be true, a well-known saying to ‘use it or lose it’ and surely this can apply to many things in our lives. It could be true too that when we become more aware of decreasing something in our life, such as flexibility or fitness, it is also true that when we apply ourselves, we are able to regain it or significantly improve over a period of time. This may take considerable effort and application and mean that we do need to rise up out of our comfy chair to exercise or whatever it is that we know is in our best interests and might have been putting it off. Effort applies to so many things that are worthwhile and another well-known saying is ‘practice makes perfect’.

Time Can Be An Issue For You  Another issue may be time. If you are like me, you will agree that we can fill our lives and become busy with a variety of interests which may take up a lot of our time and energy. Even everyday things such as looking after ourselves can take up a lot of our time. A different and more inviting way of looking at how much time we have can be to feel and know that we have enough time. Time can be experienced as stretchy, even standing still and even become quite flexible. For this to happen we may need to change our mindset, particularly when our self-talk is about there not being enough time. We could be more positive and each day say to ourselves, ‘I have enough time to do what I need to do’. There are counselling exercises which help evaluate where we place our time and one is a fun one, having a dozen cardboard cut-out egg shapes and distributing them into various baskets. It helps one to see where there is an imbalance whereby what we are doing will clearly not enable us to reach our goals.

Goals  Of course as a foundation, you want to know what your goals are in your life. This includes personal, professional, spiritual and community goals. Does this bring up for you a need to revisit your goals and figure out how you are in reality spending the hours in your day? I know I tend to go with the flow a lot and can certainly improve in this area and have been working on achieving a greater balance in what I do from day to day and improving putting more time into my spiritual, or self-mastery wishes.

Look At Your Life In A New Way And Take Action  The simple thing of changing the way we view our life can be energising in many ways and of great benefit on every level, whether to ourselves, our family, friends and members with whom we work, or groups to which we belong. When we apply ourselves to regaining or keeping ourselves as fit, healthy and involved as we would like to, we will be rewarded. (Not that we do things seeking rewards.) This may require a far greater amount of effort and attention if we have let things go too far. It is never too late to turn over a new leaf and life can be very forgiving as we adapt to what our current motivating force is. All is not lost and we will find more pleasure and meaning in our lives when we follow our heart. When we are surrounded by happy people we feel happy and in the same way, when we are in tune with our bodies and our life, including our hobbies, we frequently mysteriously connect with and are drawn to likeminded people.

Summing Up  Seniors Week is coming up Victoria wide 4-11 October and in Knox, right throughout the month, with many wonderful activities to participate in all over Victoria, many of them being free, including your local Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, which you are warmly welcomed to attend. We need to keep active in order to maintain our fitness and flexibility. Let your self-talk be that there is enough time. Revisit your goals and evaluate where you are investing your time. Review your life and view it through new eyes in order to feel more energised and involved and lastly – do things that bring you joy.

Lynette Mitchell runs the free community Ferntree Gully Laughter Club, phone her on 0425 799 258. Besides this she sees clients who need counselling, life coaching or laughter yoga sessions.

Contact details: Lynette Mitchell

Phone: 9763 5475

Mobile: 0425 799 258

Email: lynette@laughterforliving.com.au

Website: www.laughterforliving.com.au

Disclaimer: Information shared here is from my personal understanding and experience. Advice given is general and as I am not a medical doctor, take no responsibility for how it is received, my intention is that articles will be supportive and assist in living a fuller, holistic living life.