1. Essential Conversations in Mid-Life and Beyond
Amy D’Aprix, MSW, PhD, CPCA
October 11, 2017

2. Goals for Mid-Life and Beyond
Maintain choice, control, and freedom for your entire life
Stay healthy – mentally and physically
Sustain meaning in your life
Maximize Quality of life
Have enough resources

3. To Reach Goals There are things you need to: Think about
Plan for (explore)
Talk about with people you love

4. Essential Conversations
Start with contemplation
Defined: Talking to the most important people about the most important things in our lives

5. Top 5 Essential Conversations
Vision for the future: how to spend your time and with whom
Health or mobility changes and how they could impact:
Driving
Where you live
If you ever need care, what is important to you and what constitutes quality of life for you
Who you want as your “thought partners” as you age
Estate planning conversations – beyond the money

6. Contemplation
“If there were a shift in my health or mobility or the health or mobility of someone I love, what might I do differently?”

7. Essential Conversations
Whom do you need to talk with?
Thought Partners
Spouse
Kids
Siblings
Friends
Professionals
Those who will be impacted
People who will be involved in helping or care
Those who will be disrupters

8. Process for Essential Conversations
Clearly identify the topic of the conversation
Start with processing, not problem-solving
Then generate solutions (or share information)
Make decisions
Take action if needed and plan follow-up discussion
NB: Start with PROCESSING rather than PROBLEM-SOLVING.
What are everyone’s perspectives about the situation?
What are everyone’s feelings about the situation?
What are everyone’s ideas about how to resolve the situation?

9. Where Do You Go From Here?
To maintain choice, control, and freedom….
Think about what you want
Explore and plan
Have essential conversations with the people you love and who love you
Talk about Elder care Mediators, Geriatric Care Managers, coaches, social workers….many, many people can help with these…

10. Thank you!
And the third thought is a quote from Margaret Meade that I believe sums up the work that we do: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Meade

11. Why Hard to Really Listen?
We think we are right
We may be in a hurry
We have lots of other issues going on
The decision has serious consequences- and we may be scared
We are angry about past
We need to slow down the pace and breathe
Discuss each of these reasons- ….talk about pitching a baseball and slowing it down…how much easier would it be to catch? Dad and driving issue

12. LISTEN EMPATHIZE REFRAME ACT LERA
. Go through each of the 4 steps emphasizing that “reframe” is often “normalize”
Part of the “magic” of this process is in the order that you do it.
Listen - When you listen you are listening for “interests”. One of the greatest human needs is to feel heard and understood- not agreed with, but understood.
Empathize - then empathizing helps the person feel that you truly get it.
Reframing or normalizing can help them feel less alone or “weird” or like no one else has ever dealt with this.
Plan - Once you have dealt with those emotional issues, you can move to discussing a plan (act). If you go to the plan without the emotional issues being dealt with, the plan has much less likelihood of working. People sabotage plans – either consciously or unconsciously- when they don’t feel that their concerns have been heard and acknowledged.
ACT

13. Interest vs Position Creativity happens at the interest level!
Our position is the thing we want
Our interest is the reason or reasons we want this
Creativity happens at the interest level!

14. Story
We hear
We need to listen for
Positions
Interests

15. The Key to Success
Remembering that the greatest human need is to feel heard and understood…not agreed with, but understood.
Often hardest to do with the people we love…
This is what gets families into trouble!