As a senior you have the opportunity to see the world with new eyes. Look at the great themes of life and you can have them or renew them. Love, creativity, immersion in nature, deep friendships, spirituality, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with others, continuing to offer your children and grandchildren guidance and understanding.

What are the ways to achieve what you seek? Even if an idea resonates with you, take it, absorb it, and use it. Change is fragile but if you believe it can be lasting and bring you a renewal of life itself.

There are many things you can do. Education, self-direction, exploring newcomers, and joining groups that will help you find what you’re looking for. If you have to choose a way to approach the change in your life, use positive affirmations, a very simple but powerful method to improve your ability to make your retirement vital and fulfilling. It is simply a way to change negative thoughts into positive ones, experience a different life and give yourself new beliefs.

Affirmations have been used for hundreds of years as a valuable form of positive thinking to encourage optimism, a constructive life, and a more creative lifestyle. Norman Vincent Peale is perhaps the best known advocate of using affirmations as part of his daily life. More recently, Deepak Chopra has spoken and written about his value in gaining wellness.

Believing in your ability to succeed and eliminating negative thoughts and feelings is vital in your ongoing journey to successful aging. The ability to repeat multiple affirmations daily whenever the thought occurs to you helps keep your frame positive. Many authors have left very meaningful sayings to inspire and encourage people to lead a positive life. We are usually stimulated by these thoughts, whether they be from Shakespeare, Einstein, Yogi Berra, Warren Buffet, or many others. Reading such affirmations can be fruitful and meaningful. There are many books with thousands of popular and famous sayings. The Oxford Book of Quotations, The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Distilled Wisdom, and many others. And Google can be a mine of information for claims.

However, creating your own affirmations is not only fun, but mentally stimulating, and because they are your own creations, they will have special meaning and a greater impact on your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t use others, but yours will be especially rewarding and useful.

The themes are legion. Health, wellness, romance, sex, peace, love, creativity, overcoming illness, self-esteem, diet, bonding, not judging, giving up envy and jealousy, trust, wisdom, understanding. etc.

And there are many ways to express an affirmation. A simple illustration is all that is needed to get started.

Let’s take the subject of health. Health can mean many things. It means freedom from disease, the ability to run a marathon, lose weight, eat healthily, and exercise faithfully.

An assertion can be one or more of the following:

• I will always do my best to stay healthy.
• I will not overeat or eat unhealthy foods. I will stop eating junk food.
• I will always eat breakfast.
• I will walk for 30 minutes to 1 hour five times a week.

As you can see, these statements simply point out in a nutshell the things you want to do to stay healthy. Repeating them daily strengthens your determination to stay healthy. Believing in your ability to change, repeating the affirmation frequently throughout the day, and implementing the expected changes will lead to a more positive, healthy, and happy life.