"A group of the forgotten really", 55-60+ year olds

Well, the title of  this post is inspired by an interesting document I was today. It was a report about healthy and active ageing in Europe. The main idea was that the persons of this age group are "older people" but nobody among researchers, governments etc thinks and dedicate time to improve the life of this group even if they need more attention since they are in the period when more health cure can move back time.

This report was interesting for me because I take part of this group and would like to remain young as long as possible. I do not feel that I'm "older person". Maybe it's because I have many friends who are older than me. In any case, time passes for me, too, and I wanted not to stop it but to live my age independently.

Here are some quotes from this report

Employment at transition into retirement
Participation/social inclusion, including engagement in voluntary work and mental health
Life-long learning and e-inclusion
Physical activity and nutrition
Utilisation of health services and intake of medication
Carers of children and older person

So, as you can see, we are very busy persons. And this information will maybe be interesting if you did not know it (I didn't)


SEVEN is a European network of 29 organisations promoting lifelong
learning and volunteering for senior citizens. The member organisations
are local governments, NGOs, research centres and universities. The
main aim is to generate international exchange, and allow for voluntary
work and lifelong learning to benefit from a “European Wide Space”.
More information is available at:
http://www.seven-network.eu/site/


ENOVO was created in 2005 as a new working group as part of
Volunteurope to promote older volunteering across Europe. ENOVO
works to develop new opportunities for older volunteers, exchange
good practice and open new funding opportunities and combat
ageism in volunteer agencies. It measures the impact of older
volunteering efforts


The Lifelong Learning Programme (2007-2013) aims to make lifelong
learning and mobility a reality; improve the quality and efficiency of education
and training; promote equity, social cohesion and active citizenship; and
enhance creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels
of education and training. Within the broad programme, several of the
funding streams are relevant to active ageing issues, including providing
support for teaching computer skills to older people, learning through
networks and intergenerational exchange. In particular, the Grundtvig programme aims to develop the
adult-education sector to meet the changing needs of learners taking adult education and non-mainstream
education courses.
More information about the Life Long Learning Programme is available here:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/doc78_en.htm
For the grundtvig programme
http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/llp/structure/grundtvig_en.html


EUNAAPA is a network that aims to improve the health, wellbeing and
independence of older people throughout Europe by the promotion of
evidence based physical activity

More information is available at:
http://www.eunaapa.org/Home/

Here is the report if you are interested and want to read it

Defend Against Complainers

Complainers are very popular. Many of us practice it from time to time. Others do not understand that they complain all their life unceasingly. I do not blame this behavior because it's difficult to avoid it when one feels bad. Even if little by little complaining becomes the way to live.


This is and was the theme of different researches. Complainers not only damage their own brain with continuous complains, they damage all those who lives and happens near them even if for a short time. Everybody knows the bad feeling we have near such persons. We can't help often. And they don't want to receive help. Their brain is just in that terrible state.


Once I wanted to help one girl who complained the betrayal of her husband. I felt sorry and thought, I had to listen to her. A kind of psychoanalyst gratis. Imagine, I listened to her for different months hours and hours every day from the morning - every time she could find me by phone. After it I could not continue this way and told her she had not to phone me more. Well, some days after it, one friend told me, that girl speaks everywhere bad about me...


So, I turn back to the researches. They proved that the negative thinking of other persons and continuous complaints create negative thinking and behavior in our own brains. And this is the reason why we have to avoid complainers as much as possible. 


As I wrote in my previous posts about the stress remedies, we have to avoid negativities as much as possible, first. 
Then, we have to control our reactions when something happens in our lives.
Finally, we have to create positive exposure for our brains as frequently as possible.




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How to Reduce Sterss 2

Reducing stress is not the easiest task in our lives. We use different remedies most of them are not healthy. The most popular are drinking, smocking and eating. And, since we are stressed practically every day, this behaviour becomes habit, a kind of addiction, and we have to use bigger and bigger quantities of our "medicine".

1 - I used to avoid everything that provoked states of anxiety: I did not watch TV notices and films that were full of bad notices, crys and yells, killings and horrors (and I don't do it till today before I have to go sleep).

In Italy, TV became a kind of a tool of "natural selection": there are too many persons with not stable mind -they repeat  desperate gestures they see on the screen. We had epidemic of mothers that killed their children, for example. 


2 - Very often is enough to avoid a person or an environment where you feel bad, nervous. If it's possible. And... this analysis of your life, when you are able to detect the "bad" person, will do so that other similar persons will not be attracted by you more. Because if you attract ONE of such persons, you probably attract other similar persons, too. So, it's something inside you that attracts this kind of persons.


3 - Other reason of stress are too many tasks. It's enough sometimes to make a list and to cancel some of them. Or to find your personal way to solve the problem. What do you do when you have too many plates to wash? Or too many things to iron? What is your personal way to manage this situation?


So, we discover that it's often our perception and not external conditions that provoke stress in our life. And analysis is often just enough to show to our brain the way to turn calm and happy.

Reduce Stress Analyzing Your Life

"Reduce Stress" are the keywords of different newsletters I received this week. It was a surprise for me since I thought that this theme is more appropriate for "cold" seasons. Now, when all the persons go on the beach and pass all the free time swimming and spoiling themselves with sunbathes, stress is really the last thing to think about. These were the arguments I had. But those who send me all those newsletters think differently, as it's possible to deduce.

Well, I decided to try benefits from this stream of "stress-reducing" information and write a kind of summary to have these remedies always available in my blog.

First of all, we have to find real sources that provoke stress and it means that we have to analyze our behaviour when we feel we are stressed.

Example.
I began to cry when my ... did something wrong.
Was it the real source of my anger? No, I was just nervous.
Why was I so nervous? Because I was offended.
Why was I offended? Because the neighbour said I look terribly this morning.
Why said she so to me? Because she is always happy to make me suffer.
Why so? Because she has terrible husband who treats her very bad. She suffers and wants to make suffer others to balance the energies.

It's very sad that we can't stand these persons and continue the chain of malice shifting the negative energies we received from others to those who is weaker than we are. In this case making suffer our children, husbands, friends.

What is interesting in this situation: we do not understand often that we continue the behaviour of those persons that try to offence us.

And, believe me, I've just used this method with food allergies and stress, such analyze can solve the problem.

:-))) My husband learned it immediately and does not worry if he knows that the source of my stressed behaviour is not he. In case I am not tolerable, he says me something like this: Do you think still about that person? My mind turns back from the abyss of the resentment and I can have normal reactions.

As Buddhism teaches, it's important to become aware about our state. It's the first step on the way to convalescence.


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What Actually Works if We Want to Reduce Stress?

Do you have your favorite remedy to reduce stress? I'll try to guess... Ice-cream or a bag of potato chips? And, since we feel or are stressed every day, we abuse them so that it's possible to define this excessive use sugar and fat addiction and put them in the same row with drug and alcohol addictions (I wrote about it in my previous post sugar addiction).

 

Unfortunately, it's not the best way to treat the stress.

Here is the approximate list of the more healthy solutions:

It's difficult to sleep when we are stressed but if you sleep 7-8 hours per night you become more happy person. At place of the classic sheeps, create a mala for you and count your breath or mantras concentrating your attention on the beads of your mala. This behaviour can become "addiction" but it really works perfectly to calm your mind and to have more calm sleep.



Next is clearly a healthy diet. It's not so bad to eat only salads every day in summer, you know...

 

And, finally, cultivate your favorite active hobbies. Something you do with great pleasure.

 

Negative Energies in Your Life -Clean Them!

Do you believe in evil eye and other ways to hurt you with negative energies? As a modern person, I do not believe in all this things. But... Sometimes the events of the life are so that you begin to think something is really true in all it. And... maybe go to the "specialists" who are simple charlatans. Often. Very often. In Italy, there were different great scandals in the last period when false magicians were discovered. Unfortunately, they had enough time to damage persons who looked for help. They asked always bigger and bigger sums to continue their "treatments" and threatened their clients when they wanted to close with that "help".

But the negative energies are real and they can damage us.

Once I had a very hard period in my life. It seemed, all the forces of the world are against me. I had an impression that I FEEL the air of negativity around me...


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I asked my grandy what can I do to cleanse all this negativity? She answered: wash all your flatware in salted water.

I remembered this story when I read an article about negative energies cleansing that I received in a mail today. There was an advice to clean them with salt, too. The method, described there, is to wash yourself in a bath with sea salt dissolved in the water and think all the negativities go away with the water when you open the plug.

An other advice is to use medical herbs basil, lavender, peppermint, rosemary, sage and/or cinnamon in anny way you like: infusion, incense or bath.

Burn juniper, sage, lavender or thyme.

But the most simple way is, maybe, always the way of salt. Put it in a cup or in a plate and leave it in the room you want to purify at least one our before you have to stay in it.

Sugar Addiction

There is something wrong in our lifestyle if most persons in our culture are obese. Italy was still normal till some years ago but suffers obesity now, too. It's terrible to see entire classes of buys and girls who at the age of 13 years are 100 kg heavy. Suffers... Maybe, suffer is not the right word. In any case, the problem is known to everybody and I've just wrote about it many times in this blog.

What is relatively new in the notice I read this morning is the classification of the problem "I love sweeties and can't renounce on them" as sugar addiction and it's positioning in the same row with drug addiction and alcohol addiction. With -as conseguence- necessity of psychical therapies. These therapies are so effective (they say) that can cure you in only one working day.

I do not understand: why is this problem still so important???? We are only some milliards.

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