Kenneth D. Barringer PhD - Making Healthy Choices for Senior Living: A Guide for an Enriched Retirement

MAKING
HEALTHY CHOICES
FOR SENIOR LIVING

Welcome to an Exciting Reading Experience!

MAKING
HEALTHY CHOICES
FOR SENIOR LIVING

A Guide for an Enriched Retirement

revised edition

KENNETH D. BARRINGER

Copyright 2014 by Kenneth D. Barringer.

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Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) - Jason Wohlford (wohlford)

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Scripture taken from the Life Application Study Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 07/28/2021

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AND GRATITUDE

This book is the product of much time and attention by many people. I am the sole writer, but I have been supported by many people. Their names are listed below with my appreciation.

My wife, Joan, has been my constant and dependable support over the one-and-a-half years I have taken to write and publish this book. Thank you Joan, for your assistance and valuable advice.

My Son and Grandson Dale and Nicholas Rausch for taking the time for the final revisions and setting up a reprint with our publisher.

My book editor, Liz Bleau, has been invaluable for her excellent ideas for organization of the content.

My publisher has been very helpful in giving me guidance about how the book can be put together in an attractive format and how it can be marketed so that I can reach seniors.

Seniors I have counseled, taught, and worked with during my own retirement have taught me much and helped me understand the behavior and mentality of their world.

My good friend, Dr. Robert H. Trivus, has been so kind in writing the foreword and in giving me suggestions for improving the book content.

I am happy for the support and encouragement from the members of my small study group at our local church in pursuing the writing and publication of this book.

Special notes to the reader:

There is repetition of the content in the book. This was done intentionally for the purpose of clarifying and emphasizing my message have learned that making just one statement about an idea is sometimes insufficient. Hopefully, the repetition in the content will be helpful.

MAKING HEALTHY CHOICES
FOR SENIOR LIVING

By Robert H. Trivus, MD, PhD

Clinical Psychiatrist

Note: Dr. Trivus has been a distinguished faculty member of three major medical schools, including Harvard. He has also been a director for two locations of inpatient services, among other prominent responsibilities. He was a medical director for the South Shore Coalition for Mental Health and Aging. He saw seniors in crisis who needed help and hope for recovery. It is his wise perspective and good clinical judgment that form the basis of the following comments on this book.

I am more than honored to have been asked to do the foreword on Dr. Barringers new book on senior living. He is a remarkable and accomplished man, having personally achieved the goals he so eloquently desires to share with us in his book. He has successfully spanned many years in the ministry, as a college professor and also serving years as a clinical psychologist. Now in his retirement period, he continues volunteering and giving of himself to others even to this day.

In retirement, Dr. Barringer established a coalition of volunteers and professionals, the South Shore Coalition on Mental Health and Aging. Its aim is to serve people from Tampa to Sarasota. While working with the coalition, he also helped establish treatment plans and lead a group of women who needed support in the prison system.

Dr. Barringer is a tireless servant of God who still works with the Coalition of Mental Health and Aging in an advisory role and now with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He has won many accolades, including the Butterfly Award offered by the Coalition on Mental Health and Aging for outstanding service to seniors. The award committee used the symbol of the butterfly arising out of a cocoon for new life as a free spirit expressing his/her new life fully. The hope of the author is that his new book wiII help in the process of building a healthy, fulfilling long retirement lifestyle.

We honor and salute Dr. Barringer for his challenge to all of us to discover a more fulfilling and satisfying retirement. Readers everywhere will appreciate the ideas in this book by a very competent writer. Readers will appreciate the good illustrations and supplements that will challenge everyone to review their lifestyles and to make a new determination to make retirement the best years of their lives.

We honor and salute you, Dr. Kenneth Barringer, for the gift of choosing to make healthy choices in retirement.

DEVELOPING A PURPOSE AND
PLAN FOR THIS BOOK

Writing this book was difficult because we seniors confront the challenges of many changes and losses in our lives today. It would feel more comfortable if things would just stay the way they were before we retired. Of course, we adopt some of the new changes into our world, like computers, cell phones, expanded HD television, and high-tech automobiles. But many of the newer realities of our world regarding health care, family relationships, financial pressures, and the losses of loved ones threaten us to the core.

We see our adult children move frequently and faraway in search of new and better jobs. We witness our grandchildren living with partners without the benefit of marriage. People that we love and care about are getting sick and many are dying before our eyes. The world news seems constantly threatening and changing. Even the political instability in our own country bothers us as we read the newspapers or watch the news on television. Then we hear about the threat of global warming, and we become even more anxious about our lives and future generations.

It has always appeared to me that when we live in a world where uncertainty and instability are a norm, we need to develop stability in our own personal affairs. Many seniors (ages 55 and over) I know have found a healthy lifestyle through setting realistic goals and by learning to live with the changes and losses they experience in their retirement. They have found also, through their struggles with life, how to avoid becoming unglued. Most of them have faced the same issues we all deal with daily, but these successful seniors have discovered coping skills and the resilience they need to survive. There are keys to how to live a healthy senior life style, and these ideas are the core of this book. We can all benefit from understanding more about the values and the behavior of the healthiest among us. We can be happier by following the living examples of those who have succeeded best in managing their lives in todays world.