Our Wisdom Years

We live longer than ever before. Let this life-changing book show you how to make the most of your ‘wisdom years’. We are now experiencing one of the most significant — but not yet fully understood — revolutions in human life: the dramatic rise in life expectancy. This revolution does not imply, as most people usually think, that we’ve simply got more years of old age. Rather, it implies the formation of a new period in human life: the Age of Wisdom. This age is qualitatively different from the adulthood that precedes it and the old age that follows. People who are able to prepare themselves for this new age will be able to enjoy an active, wise and satisfying stage of life, which will enable them to delay their ‘old age’ to the very end of their life. The Wisdom Years provides a practical, thought-provoking and life-changing read for both people embarking on retirement as well as younger people who would like to mindfully prepare themselves in advance. Derived from Dr Lanir’s lifetime of work experience in identifying mindsets that are no longer helpful or relevant to current reality, it reveals how we can reframe our thought processes and mind set so that we can live life based on our ‘functional age’ rather than our ‘chronological age’. The result is a book that carries a unique and inspiring message: life after retirement is to be enjoyed as a new, exciting and uplifting journey of personal evolution.

"In Our Wisdom Years, Dr. Charles Garfield skillfully and practically guides readers through nine tasks that can transform the struggles of aging, bringing fulfillment, joy, and serenity"--

Psychologist and best-selling author Charles Garfield shares an uplifting vision as he takes us on a journey of a lifetime. Some of the most profound growth of our lives can happen in the home stretch, the years after age sixty or so. It’s a time when we can finally crystallize the meaning of what we’ve been and done and fully expand into the self we’ve always intended to be. But, says psychologist Charles Garfield, that can only happen if we first loosen the grip of the life we’ve led so far, the one that’s been focused outwardly—on activity, achievement, and the idea of success—and let our souls lead the way. In Our Wisdom Years, Dr. Garfield skillfully and practically guides readers through nine tasks that can transform the struggles of aging, bringing fulfillment, joy, and serenity. Drawing on the understandings that come from both his work as acclaimed “success guru” in the 1980s and the truths distilled from volunteering with those at the end of life, Garfield offers a fresh, uplifting vision of the wholeness that awaits us. Dr. Garfield shares how we can gracefully let go of the younger selves we’ve been and walk through the opening that keeps beckoning toward this soul-driven version of later life. He encourages us to take the risk of being fully alive as our years pass. This is no small task—aging is not for the faint of heart! The beautiful paradox of growing older is that none of the gifts of age are available without the kind of loss that forces us to confront mortality in a way we can’t deny. In the face of loss, we’re changed and expanded by truths that come from the heart, not the mind. We learn that we’re more than our bodies, part of something much larger than we are, and that love and kindness matter most of all.

An extraordinary literary journey, 100 Years celebrates every age from birth to 100 with quotations from the world’s greatest writers. This literary tapestry of the human experience will delight readers of all backgrounds. Moving year by year through the words of our most beloved authors, the great sequence of life reveals itself—the wonders and confinements of childhood, the emancipations and frustrations of adolescence, the empowerments and millstones of adulthood, the recognitions and resignations of old age. This trove of wisdom—featuring immortal passages from Arthur Rimbaud, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Jane Austen, and Maya Angelou, among many others—reminds us that the patterns of life transcend continents, cultures, and generations. As Thomas Mann wrote of our most shared human experience: "It will happen to me as to them." Designed by the legendary Milton Glaser, who created the I ♥ NY logo, 100 Years brings together color, type, and text to illuminate the ebb and flow of an entire life.

Looks at the many dimensions of aging and considers the joys of this special stage of life as well as the rewards of being open to new experiences and new relationships.

Calling on seventy-five years of memories and lessons learned, Emilie Griffin reflects on the beauty and struggle of aging. Hers is a deceptively simple spiritual path--motivated only by a desire to be close to the Lord. Ideal for both individuals and discussion groups.

“The voices gathered here display incredible wit, sincerity, and generosity; we are lucky to be able to listen to them.” —Artforum If you had the opportunity to meet your eighty-year-old self, what do you think she/he would tell you? That is the question artist Susan O’Malley, who was herself to die far too young, asked more than a hundred ordinary people of every age, from every walk of life. She then transformed their responses into vibrant text-based images. From a prompt to do things that matter to your heart, to a reminder that it’s okay to have sugar in your tea, these are calls to action and words to live by—heartfelt, sometimes humorous, and always fiercely compassionate. This stirring celebration of our collective humanity unveils the wisdom we hold inside ourselves right now. “Everyone, regardless of age, can take something away from this uplifting work.” —Real Simple

The One Year Book of Encouragement is a collection of insights from assorted Christian authors, past and present—from Oswald Chambers and Philip Yancey to John Calvin and John Wesley. Draw encouragement every day from the wisdom of the ages with this One Year book—it’s bound to be a classic!