It Takes BALLS To Face The Issues Of Midlife & Beyond!
I'm Dr. Adam Sheck, and I'd like to welcome you to the "Men After Fifty" Community! Living for more than half a century on this planet is a rite of passage and I wanted to create a place where we can share our wisdom and experience to help each other and to help those who matter in our lives. As true for many "men after fifty", I've had a number of careers over my … [Read More...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCPAQrDTf_M[/youtube]
I was the featured guest at a Google Hangout sponsored by the Good Men Project recently, the topic being, “Are Men Falling Behind In Mental Health?”
We opened up the discussion beyond mental health to the larger issue of men seeking help and what is in the way. As a Clinical Psychologist and Couples Counselor, my practice is filled mainly with men who actually do want to improve their lives. The panel consisted of five other men, including my colleague, Jed Diamond, PhD, who has been engaged in men’s work for decades and is becoming more involved in the pioneering work of Male Gender Medicine.
Watch the video, it’s thirty minutes that will definitely give you much to contemplate.
Please share it with friends, family and colleagues that will benefit and post your comments below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwdj4keraHQ[/youtube]
The five man video chat covered topics ranging from men and relationships, to mission and life purpose, to the differences between the first and second half of a man’s life. Please watch/listen to the Good Men Project Hangout and share your thoughts with me about it. I guarantee it will be stimulating!
Don’t Wait For The New Year, Start Now!Most of us wait until the “New Year” to reassess our lives and state new plans, intentions and “resolutions” for our lives. Yes, it’s a time when there is general consensus that this is a good thing to do, yet why wait?
If you want to create change in your life, why wait? NOW is the only time that you can make change, whether that NOW happens to occur today, tomorrow or on the first of January. The only thing that creates change is creating change: in the mind, the heart, the body. It starts with intention and completes with follow through. And it begins NOW!
The purpose of this post [Read more…]
Is The “New Macho” A Good Model For Healthy Masculinity?As I’ve said in previous posts (Mankind Project, Men’s Work), I’m a big fan of the Mankind Project (MKP). MKP has shared a great piece offering a great working definition of the “New Macho” as a model for the “New Masculinity”.
It is a wonderful launching point for discussions about what makes for healthy masculinity and what qualities we want to embody and express. I’m presenting it to you below and hope that it will inspire you and that you will share it with your friends, family and tribe.
He cleans up after himself.
He cleans up the planet.
He is a role model for young men.
He is rigorously honest and fiercely optimistic.
He holds himself accountable.
He knows what he feels.
He knows how to cry and he lets it go.
He knows how to [Read more…]
What Makes A Man Sexy?There was a recent survey that announced the 21 “Sexiest Men Over 50“. To be honest, I’m appreciative that anyone is even taking of survey of MY demographic.
And the top three were hardly surprising: George Clooney, Antonio Banderas and Denzel Washington. I find it way cool that this is a multiethnic list.
What WAS surprising in a good way was that a NON-movie star, not conventionally sexy man, 56 year old musical prodigy, Yo-Yo Ma was number six on the list!
This gives me a tiny bit of renewed faith in the human race an perhaps a little more hope to the “average” man after fifty. When Yo-Yo Ma was asked what made a man sexy, he replied, [Read more…]
When You Break Up, Who Gets To Keep The Naked Pictures?In this world of Facebook, Twitter, texting and especially SEXTING, it seems like there are quite a few unspoken protocols to master.
While I have had the exciting opportunity to have been gifted with a few incredibly sexy photos of some incredible women in my past, I have always been a gentleman about keeping them secure and private and would never even consider exploiting any of them or misusing them. That consciousness might be part of why I received these pics in the first place.
However, having recently returned to the dating scene, I find that the unspoken rules have perhaps changed or are at least being verbalized differently. The blonde goddess who wouldn’t share food, DID share a few anatomically correct pics with me (for more about this, see my article, Do YOU Have Control Issues, I KNOW I Do!).
In fact, [Read more…]
What Do You See?
I read a beautiful poem on aging recently, posted on the Internet as coming from an old man in Australia who died in a nursing home with nothing to his name but this poem in his pocket.
It’s a beautiful poem and VERY appropriate to the Men After Fifty blogsite. HOWEVER, it has also been attributed to a “crabby old man” in Florida as well as a “crabby woman” and a host of others. It is yet another urban legend.
Since I’d like to give credit where credit is due, I did a little Internet research and discovered that it was written quite some time ago by a disabled veteran named Dave Griffith who writes a LOT of poetry and titled, “Too Old Soon”. You can enjoy his work at his website.
Let me know what feelings and thoughts are inspired by the poem below:
What do you see my friends, what do you see? [Read more…]
I LOVE Women Over 40!I’ve got to confess: I LOVE women over forty! I know you’ll think I’m a freak for defying my evolutionary instincts and not joining the rest of the boring crowd in going for the hot, anorexic, airbrushed, implanted girls in vogue these days. Feel free to mock me if you’d like.
Pretty much, I have always loved them. I love ALL women, it’s just how I roll, but over forty – the BEST! I’ve had sex with them, I’ve married them, I’ve had children with them – NOT necessarily in that order!
As a psychologist, analytically I can trace it back to my mother issues. Like Freud might have said, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your MOTHER!”
Mine was strong, independent, and had a crazy sex life [Read more…]
Midlife Crisis: Marry Your Yoga Teacher?The idea of the midlife crisis is certainly something that we men face at some point in our lives, usually in our forties or fifties, making it a very important subject for the Men After Fifty blogsite.
As we enter and begin to face the second half of our lives, we men have the opportunity to face our mortality and this brings up existential issues. What have I accomplished in my life? What do I have YET to accomplish? What might I NEVER accomplish? What will I leave behind? What kind of person have I been and what kind of person do I WANT to be? Does my life have meaning?
Some men “act out” on the way to facing these questions and we have the stereotypes of men buying the red convertible, having affairs, getting involved with younger women, perhaps all of the above. And you can also marry your yoga teacher!
Now I’ve never met Alec Baldwin nor his lovely yoga teacher bride and [Read more…]
Can We Balance Warrior and Lover in Relationship?While assisting a recent Tantra workshop, I experienced the strong difference in my body between when I embody the Warrior and when I embody the Lover archetypes. It was SO pronounced and uncomfortable a difference, I felt the need to write more about it and how it might impact us all in our relationships and in our lives. If you are unfamiliar with these terms, I give a very basic explanation of the four masculine archetypes in my post, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Four Mature Masculine Archetypes.
Of course, during a Tantra workshop I expected to open up my heart, be fully in my body and to activate the Lover archetype. Not exactly an earth shattering epiphany, now is it? I felt open, loving, spiritual, connected, soft, vulnerable and available.
However, as an assistant of the workshop, I also had responsibilities to see that a safe environment was set for the participants. Unfortunately there were a few snafus with logistics at the ocean view hotel we stayed at. To take care of these issues, I had to put on my Warrior armor. “This is DOCTOR Sheck, I’d like to speak to the hotel manager, …”
Immediately I could feel a different energy move through me. [Read more…]