 Aloha! Welcome to ThinkDecowise program on aging. Don't just age, engage. I'm your host Larry Grimm, and for this half hour we'll explore the benefits of life coaching. Now, I assume the majority of elders I approach with this offer of mind coaching expertise will first respond, I don't need no damn life coach. Well, especially those who like myself are baby boomers. I mean, after all, we've been accustomed to all kinds of power, social position that dominates the settings where we are in. And so if that's your response today, let me attempt to persuade you with reason and with some emotional appeal for you to consider coaching and its multiple, multiple benefits. Well, first of all, just a few quick little stats. Nearly a quarter of the population of Hawaii is over 65 years old. And that makes, of course, for a great market for health care, the majority of health care funds in our nation are spent during this stage of life. And I look at this stage of life as a stage because it's part of our growth pattern. We grow through our childhood, we grow through our adolescence, and we grow through our adult adulthood. And then we grow through our elder hood, which is, I think, another stage. And just like these other stages have certain spiritual tasks to help us transition into that adults, that elder hood stage, and to make it really one of the most creative and wonderful experiences of our life. Some 90% of people in our stage of life say they want to die in their homes. Wonderful. I think that's a wonderful choice in my book. But do you know what that choice may entail? And are you preparing the way to be clear so that you can do so with your family, with your health care needs, with anything else that may arise? It's hard to predict, but it's possible to make that way as clear as possible and prepare it in such a way that when the time comes and you are ready to lie down and to let go, you can do so with a clear conscience. Also data from COVID-19 is, of course, particularly of interest to us, showed that there's a dramatic difference in the rates of age associated to deaths. There's a case fatality rate of 4.5% for patients aged 60 and older. And that's in contrast to only 1.4% for those under the 60 years of age. And with those under 30 years of age ranging from 0 to 1.9%, to 0.19%. So some studies are reporting that this age group, the stage group that we are in, is more likely to die from COVID-19 than those under 60 years old. The issue is weakening immune system. As we age, our immune systems weaken. And if you add to that possible comorbidities that have come up throughout our life, then that population is even more susceptible, even though vaccinated, to even break through vaccinations and break through infections. So in addition to these physical characteristics to aging, the over 65 population is susceptible to ageism. We had a program two weeks ago with Dr. Counselor who does counseling work with this stage of life population. And Dr. Morgan said that ageism appears in so many different ways and so many different contexts, one of which is the medical system. But also it appears in economics. It can also appear in our social systems. People can assume in our families that we are so aged we can't participate in our decision-making as to our life experience. Families sometimes marginalize those elders who need support in making the decisions rather than to have the decision made for them. So yes, aging may challenge our sense of strength, may challenge our capabilities, and then taking on a coach may seem to be at least likely to help. I want to make a few points with you if I may about coaching itself. I submit to you that throughout your life, when you have taken on something new, you have had a coach either formally or informally acknowledged. Now let's take a look at that. What was your sport? Did you have a sport in high school or college? Or in your early adulthood years, did you have a sport that you pursued? Well you probably had some kind of a coach. I had a football coach from ninth grade on into college, two years of college, and that coach was able to say position your feet this way, hold your body this way, move out this way on the snap of the ball, and I was much more successful of course because I had a coach. There are career coaches as well, and my career was a pastor. I was a Presbyterian minister in my adulthood, and I had a coach certainly at the beginning, other pastors who would make comments about my role that I was pursuing and how I was filling it. Those folks really helped me orient towards expectations and how to shape some of the gifts that I had to offer. I became a chaplain in long-term care and in hospice care, and at Bristol Hospice here on the island of Oahu, I served three years as a coach in hospice, I mean as a chaplain in hospice care, providing spiritual care, and of course right at first, I was shadowing another chaplain. That was how I learned the system, that was how I also, that also enabled me to see how how families interacted with the expectancies that, with the expectations that they had of chaplains and spiritual care provision through the hospice system. I at one point in my life attempted to play golf, now I paid for a coach, and my coach said to me one time said, there are 52 picks in a golf swing, and if we get 32 of them right, we do really well. And so he was able to watch me in my swing of course, and if it was my left foot too high or my right foot pulled up, he corrected it. It was my glove, my hands, the position of my hands, the position of my head, all of those went into a golf swing. You know, if you've ever played golf, it's one of the most complex movements of the body, totally counterintuitive, and it really was helpful to have a coach who could stand there across from me and make corrections in my swing. So the benefit was that it was so much more enjoyable to connect in that sweet spot in a drive or in a long putt across the green and make that hole. That made it worth coming back again. So having a coach was really important to me to enjoy golf. Otherwise it was, as Mark Twain said, the disruption of a really nice walk. Also, since I've been on the island here, I have taken on voiceless. I've sung all my life, and I love love music, and I love to sing. But I haven't done anything formally until I came to the island four years ago, and then about two and a half years ago, I hired a voice teacher. He's a voice teacher, he says, and he certainly does give me lessons in voice that I cherish and really have learned a lot. But he also coaches me in how to sing opera. I have never in my life, up until this time, sung opera. So in my late 60s, I started singing opera, and so he coaches me on how to place my voice, how to breathe and where to breathe in the line and phasing of the language. He coaches me on how to speak Italian and to sing Italian, how to sing German in the leader songs, and it's just opened up a whole new realm of my voice that I've never experienced before. And it's his coaching that enables me to do that. So there are various ways that we have had coaches, and I submit to you again that whenever you have started anything new in your life, you have had a coach of some sort, someone who is another party who can watch you, who can offer suggestions, and who can offer some actions for you to follow. Now, coaching is different from counseling, and it's precisely in this way that I've been speaking to you about coaching, that it is its highlights, and it is its strength. Because when we go into counseling, and that can be a very important part of personal development, I don't care what age we are, counseling can offer a tremendous insight into yourself and to the history of your life, the psychological dynamics of family life, and how you have developed as a human being. So, but a coach is not necessarily a counselor. And they differ because the coach focuses on clarifying your goals, your wants, and your desires in your elderhood, as I call it, and then creating action plans that help you move towards those goals. And they can be in four different areas, I'd say. They can be in the area of personal spiritual development, or the area of physical development, or in the area of your relationships and culture in which you live, or in the area of the society of which you are a part and how to shape it, and how to make your impact in it as an elder. So that's the focus of a coach, a life coach. Counselors explore the history of your behavior and enable some psychological transformations, beautiful work that counselors do. And certainly a coach can make recommendations or referrals to counseling when it seems appropriate. But the coach holds you to account to that agreed upon action plan, and then celebrates the accomplishments that you make. I also think of coaching as time limited. First coaching session I suggest is always three months, because there are some significant decisions that can be made within that three month period that can have an impact on the total life experience. The coaching may come in one-on-one, weekly, online. This is what I offer. Weekly, online, small group, online, weekly, and education in the Elderhood Academy. So there are three opportunities. There are three opportunities. There's one-on-one coaching online, community, experience, what I call elder guilds, because we're working on being elders, and education, insights from books, from excellent authors, from articles, from research that's been done on aging population. In our society, we do not value Elderhood that much. We are basically, I think, afraid of dying, and we are basically, I think, in our culture, unhappy with aging. Look at how we treat older people, how we describe them in comics, how comedians treat aging, even how we ourselves treat aging, because we get to this age and we make all kinds of well excuses that are funny and try to minimize the importance of the aging process, and think of it as something that we're sort of dragged into by virtue of our physical demise. I don't think I don't want it to be that way for you. I want it to be that empowered experience where you are truly in the position of making your own choices come true. I have one client who has been very active in his extended family life. His son became a leader in Boulder, Colorado in the criminal justice area of Boulder, Colorado. And so my client has been very active in his life all along and very active in his grandchildren's lives. And at one point he says he felt them trying to marginalize him, sort of push him off to the side. Because he felt that, he decided that he was going to tell them not to do that. He was not going to be pushed off to the side. Now he was very much aware, very much aware of himself, his own feelings, how he was being treated, and he was empowered to make the decision and to declare the decision that he was going to be involved right up to the last moment. So a coach enables a client to pursue your goals. It's all about you. A coach also draws upon a wide variety of suggested activities to make an action plan to pursue. There are within a coach's pool chest, so to speak, a wide variety of what he or she has experienced in their lives or in their training. And those all can be helpful, helpful in the process of moving towards the goals that you have chosen to pursue. With a coach, you clarify those goals. With a coach, you make out an action plan. With a coach, you are held accountable to the daily, sometimes daily decisions of following up, following into that action plan. There also can be obstacles that can be dealt with in a coaching manner. Let me give you a, for instance, one of my clients was helping her mother. Her mother was living with her because in their culture, she was the oldest daughter and it fell to her to have her mother in her home. So they were doing that. She and her husband made space for her mother. They made a possibility for her to be home all during the day. But of course, this daughter had her life to live, had her children to care for, had her own business to pursue. And so she wasn't home all day. In fact, mom was at home alone. And when the daughter came home one day, she found her on the floor and she'd been on the floor for most of the afternoon. Well, this was horrible for the daughter. So the daughter, and along with the mom made arrangements for her to go into a facility where she would have care. Well, in the facility, she had assisted living for all of her daily needs to help her dress, to help her move about the facility, to help her have her medication, make sure she got fed, social events with other people to experience community. Well, every time the daughter would go visit, the mother would berate her for not taking her home. Why don't you take me home? You were said you would always take care of me. You're supposed to do that. And the daughter told me about the feeling of guilt that went along with that. And the guilt, I said, how is that guilt? What does it feel like? And she says, well, it's like a big cloud. And I said, how big is that cloud? She said, and she looks really big, this big. And I said, what color is it? And she said black. I said, so I coached her with that. And by the time we got through with the coaching, she was relieved of the feeling of guilt and convinced that she was really doing the best thing she possibly could do for her mother's care in her elderhood. So you see, coaching is not only for an elder, but it's also for the family and those who are responsible for caregiving in the process of the aging that we do. There are just all kinds of resources available to us, spiritual, physical, relational, and economical resources available to us as caregivers, as well as elders as we move through our lives and the stage of our lives. There are, we'll be happy, by the way, to have any questions come that you might offer. All you have to do is send an email to questions at thinktecawaii.com. And I'll address those with what I have to offer you in response. So I think there's, again, one of the important things for you to recognize that as a client in the coaching relationship, you decide what is helpful and what is not helpful. And it has to be based on certainly a relationship of trust and confidence that you can have in the coach that you choose. I would like to show you on my own website several benefits that I have noted. Personal coaching for life and faith is my website. And on the benefits page, I have listed several, which I think are very important benefits. There's pastoral care. Some people love pastoral care. You have a constant pastor in me. I am a Presbyterian minister and I've served in pastoral roles all through my life and respond to all kinds of situations and personal, spiritual, life-giving ways. You can negotiate and negotiate the transitions with ease and confidence. You see, we go through from stage to stage in our life. And here we go from adulthood to elderhood. And that's a major transition, which we often don't acknowledge, but it has several spiritual, what I call spiritual tasks that have to be accomplished. Let's go back to that benefit page again. There's some benefits that have to be accomplished. You can let go of guilt. You can lower your anxiety in a coaching relationship. You can connect with like-minded elders in small group, which I call elder guilds, because we're working at being an elder. You can imagine a new purpose for yourself at this stage of life, but it is so often considered to be difficult. It's a lack of purpose. Suddenly, we're people without a purpose. You can cleanse your conscience. You can integrate your past. You can head relationships. I mean, you can heal relationships as you are able. You can deal with the stranglehold of trauma deep in your experience of the divine and discover a new lighthearted joy. Thank you, Eric. So these are benefits of a coaching relationship. You may still be saying, I don't need no damn coach for aging, but I submit to you that you are finding a coach somewhere, and it is making a difference in your life already. And I would like to say that you have this opportunity, certainly in my work and ministry with you online. Now, the emotional dimensions I think are really so, so important, of course. I've shared with you some of the rational aspects of being a coach and being in a coaching relationship. But it's the emotional dimensions, I think, that are most important. You're not alone. And you have a trusted spiritual friend who listens non-judgmentally to you, a companion in aging, along with others in the elder guilds. For me, I have been a pastor in Presbyterian churches, congregations for many years, a chaplain serving in long-term care and hospice care here in Denver and here on this island. And I'm not afraid to talk about dying. Sometimes dying becomes a common view for us and we don't have anybody to talk about dying with. We often lack people who are able to just listen to us, think about dying. What is dying about? And how does it affect my spirituality as I approach dying? I'm not afraid to talk about it. I'm very comfortable with it and very committed to enabling people to have very beautiful death experience and to enable families to participate in this aging process in very meaningful ways. And in addition to that, there are things that we don't think about necessarily that that I that coaching can bring to mind to as and recognize as a concern to pursue. For instance, advanced health care directives, having an advanced health care directive in place, very important these days, not only for elders, but for all ages, I believe, because we live in a society that's high-risk society and everything we do. What about adult daycare centers, case management agencies, developmental disabilities support? What about home care and hospice care, housing? These are things that we can think about ahead of time and have in place the resources that will be needed, should they be needed later on in our adult or our elderhood years. Have you thought about meal services? If you are going to stay at home in your elderhood years, who's going to make the meals and how do you want that to be provided for you? Palliative care, senior centers, support groups, if you're a veteran, do you know what kind of resources are available to you? Medicare and Medicaid, and what about supplemental income? All of this can be pursued with the help of a coach. And I offer that kind of orientation to all of my clients. This is what we're about, getting you to fulfill the goals that you find so important in this elderhood time of your life. Well, I thank you very much for participating in this discussion, and if you still say, I don't need a damn life coach, you may be absolutely right. But if you have found some crack in your denial and want to engage further, log into my website, contact me for a free half-hour coaching online, and then you can determine first hand if it's a need or desire for you. Thank you again for being a part of this discussion. Don't just age, engage, and it airs every two weeks on Tuesday at 2 p.m. from Honolulu, Hawaii via Think Tech Hawaii. Visit our website as you have in order to log on to this event, and click on the donate button and make a generous donation in order to keep grassroots dialogue alive. See you in two weeks. Aloha.