Aging is inevitable, but getting older doesn’t have to be.
Discerning Seniors’ central mission is to inject joy and agency into our clients’ lives. Rather than restrict, we seek to enable lives through supportive means, assessing the liveability of a home through the integration of external supports, offering alternatives where none appeared available before. It’s a can-do attitude. Change is difficult, uncomfortable, and getting set in familiar patterns keeps us stuck. So why do we do it? Well, there’s a kind of safety in that immobility, that avoids risk, that avoids failure at all costs. It also avoids the kind of joy we’ve seen in our clients when we connect them with the right support networks, a joyful freedom which before hadn’t even been imagined.
From what if, to what then…
Instead of “what if….”, DSI prefers a “What then….” approach. Asking a different question allows a different outcome. It puts agency into your decisions, finding solutions, and encourages action over paralyzed fear. The Great Pause of this last year has caused many of us to reassess our lives and how we wish to live them. Where before we may have just mindlessly gone about our days, now conscious decision-making offers a far more deliberate way to live our lives. The question it begs is: How do you WANT to live your life? Rather than saying “No, I can’t….”, replace it with “Yes, I can…”; you’ll find a way. Rather than close doors, Discerning Seniors finds ways to open them, to offer an opportunity to connect, to create courageous space to find adventure.
What’s important now? or W.I.N
In this spirit of adventure, there’s an inherent looking forward to the day. Decide what you can afford (and we can help make those comfortable conversations too), and then plan accordingly. That plan of action, rather than one of inaction, is energizing and contagious- something we’d all like to catch! Being in a community of active, positively charged communities, allows us to see in each other what’s possible. Sure we’re older and maybe we have more time behind us than we do in front of us, that’s a positive too. It sharpens the focus, centres our attention on what’s important now. Just like Parkinson’s Law, less time means you actually get more done, as there’s no time to waste. In a world where hyper-digitalization means we’re driven to distraction, maybe this focus is a blessing. Maybe the focus on a daily practice of deliberate choice, a discerning life, would be good for us all, young and old. Now more than ever, seize the moment, create what you want, live as joyfully as you can and create a present worthy of imitation. Why not now, why not you?
