CHOICES FOR SENIORS

If you are a senior, like everyone else you want life to be both stimulating and pleasant. If you work with seniors you want their lives to be both stimulating and pleasant. That puts you on the same wave length.

Being a senior can be exciting for the person who can travel and engage in activities that a work schedule may not previously have permitted. On the other hand, being a senior can feel like a burden if matters of health and the loss of valued friends make it difficult or impossible to do what the individual would like to do with the people he or she would wish. Some seniors seem to be very fortunate; others create their own good fortune in the face of difficulties. As the saying goes, if life hands them a lemon they make lemonade.

How do more creative people handle matters in ways that are different from those who let the difficulties of life let them down? A careful look suggests that the majority of things they say and do in interactions with others tend toward the positive end of the scale. To say it another way: Seniors who thrive make effective choices -- most of the time. At key points they STOP, THINK, and CHOOSE in effective ways.

BUT, even seniors who are inclined to make the best of the hand they are dealt may improve their moment-to-moment communications and polish up their choice-making skills. The fact of the matter is that all of us have developed our communication and choice-making skills rather like Topsy: They just grew, after many trials and many errors, and as a result of reinforcement and rejection along the way.

ON THE CREST: Growing through effective choices is designed to help people look at the kinds of choices they make and consider how they might improve their choice-making skills. This light-hearted paperback based on the Choice Awareness system is an easy read that is loaded with concepts and ideas designed to help people explore the ways in which they make their choices, and expand the range of choices available to them -- both within the workplace and beyond.

People can read ON THE CREST on their own, or it can be explored in a seniors group. Detailed guidelines for ON-THE-CREST Groups are presented in the book, and 12 of the 31 chapters can be read on this web page.

The List of Publications offers links to 8 other books that could be of relevance for seniors, including two for elementary- and two for middle-school-aged kids or grandkids. Grandparents whose kids or grandkids are "driving them crazy" because of the choices they make should look first at their own choices, but another line of action would be to explore together with them the kinds of choices both are making, using ON THE CREST as a vehicle.

To get a deeper sense of what STOP-THINK-CHOOSE is all about, please review the List of Publications, peruse the Choice Awareness concepts, and explore the five CREST Choices.  Then click on Ordering Information to obtain copies of ON THE CREST: Growing through effective choices and other sources -- so you can make the most of the choices that are available in all the avenues of life.

SEMINARS: Dick Nelson is available to conduct seminars for seniors or professionals who work with seniors on STOP-THINK-CHOOSE and the fundamentals of Choice Awareness. He can be reached through e-mail via LET'S TALK, or through STOP-THINK-CHOOSE, P. O. Box 2272, West Lafayette, IN 47806.

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This page maintained by Dick Nelson. Last updated: September 8, 2010