We make a mistake if we don’t tell people that it is just as important to invest kindness in people we meet, and invest our interest in them. There are other kinds of investment accounts besides those that are held by banks. A big bank account won’t make up for loneliness in your old age.

I decided that if I wanted to have as many friends as Doris did, I would have to keep making friends and keep maintaining friendships my whole life. I would have to make friends with people of all ages, including those much younger and much older than me.

Older people confront unique challenges in trying to maintain a satisfying social life. Many people find it difficult to make new friends as they get older.

As people age they often face social, health and monetary challenges. Older people may become less physically mobile. They often have less money to spend on recreation and entertainment.

Older people are also more likely to suffer from depression. They may be physically frail and afraid to go out at night. Even if they remain healthy themselves, aging people experience deaths of long time friends and spouses, resulting in a shrinking circle of social and emotional support.

In modern western world, older people are often treated as if their usefulness is finished, and as if what they have to say is not really relevant to young.

A lot of older people are shocked to discover when they retire at age of sixty or sixty-five, that friendships they thought had developed at work do not survive retirement party.

In many modern societies, older people are socially marginalized, and left to socialize solely with each other. People in North America are much more segregated along age lines than people in some other parts of world. In North America, teenagers tend to socialize with other teenagers, and older people are expected to make friends with other older people.

No matter where you live, or what your age, you do not need to follow your local society’s dictates about what age your friends should be. You do not need to restrict yourself to making friends only with your own age group.

If you are concerned that you may be lonely in your later years, time to start doing something about it is now, no matter what your current age might be.

As you grow older, make sure you stay living in present, not in past. In your conversations with others, don’t be fixated on who you used to be, or on your current ailments.

Be willing to make many social approaches to others, no matter what outcome. Stay interested in current world, stay optimistic, and keep a youthful, open mind.

One of things that self-judgment accomplishes is to keep you in a very old internal relationship. Because basis of most of these judgments is in childhood- when we were told how to behave, when a look made us feel there was something wrong with us and we better adjust ourselves quickly, when we learned standards that were expected of us, when we felt awkward and incapable – when these arise again we are energetically back in that situation and robbed of our power. So thrust of work with self-judgment is to finally cut that relationship – to bring support for yourself back home to you and not resident in a list of rules and regulations spoken or unspoken that told you who you were supposed to be.

In working with clients I have come up with an acronym that covers 5 of basic strategies of dis-engagement. The acronym is SPACE because that is what occurs when you are successful at stopping self-judgment – you have SPACE just to be who you are, SPACE to develop yourself, your real talents and what it is you want to do in world.

STRENGTH: Access your natural indignation when you recognize how damaging self-judgment is and toll it takes on your life and your aliveness. Use this STRENGTH to literally tell judgment to stop.

PLAY: When a self-judgment arises you can use humor to disarm it i.e. you can say to judgment “Yeah right I am stupidest person in whole area.” or “I only let bullies say that to me. Be absurd about it so there is nowhere for judgment to stick. Be like teflon not fly-paper.

AWARENESS: Use a sensing exercise to keep you present as self-judgment always accesses past or future. The more you are in present less a judgment can arise. Notice many ways in which self-judgment comes up and notice immense toll it takes on your aliveness, your creativity, and your joy. When you are feeling particularly tried, deflated, fearful, or anxious – look around and notice if there has been a self-judgment and find away to desist from it.

COMPASSION: Let yourself really be aware of pain that self-judgment creates in you and how it sets up situations that support belief of self-judgment. Notice it in others and how it damages them. Allow this recognition to bring up your natural compassion for anyone in pain and use it to support your determination to stop engaging in internal attacks.

ENVISION: Allow yourself to imagine what your life and you would be like if judgment were never around. Feel deep safety and support of that, feel aliveness that is present. Nourish yourself with this feeling and know that this is what you are creating in your life.

When you have successfully dis-engaged you can feel an energetic shift. You feel strong, intact, in moment and accepting of yourself- you feel freer. I believe this are of work is one of most important in developing satisfaction in your business and in your personal life. I have only skimmed surface in this short article. I invite you to attend a workshop or teleclass that will develop your skill in working with this issue.

If you live in Miami area. The workshop will be Saturday, February 26th , 10am-2pm. Click here for details. http://www.enflyer.com/app/file_root/1828/EnFlyers/72058.html For those not in area I will be offering it as a teleclass. A teleclass is a class conducted over phone. I reserve a bridge line which allows many people to call into same number. On this group call, I guide students through material and exercises. Our teleclass will be limited to three 60-minute calls. The dates are: Wednesday, February 23rd at 8pm EST Wednesday, March 2nd at 8pm EST Wednesday March 9th at 8pm EST Click here for more details http://www.enflyer.com/app/file_root/1828/EnFlyers/72058.html

“Feel truth of what you are and at same moment act. Risk yourself for what you know is right and true.”

Fredrick Douglas, escaped slave from an Independence Day speech