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How Well Do you Understand your Everyday Communication?

Do you Understand your Everyday Communication?

The older I get the more aware I am of the peculiarities in my everyday communication. After all these years I think I understand everything and do not need to explain too much.

For most of the time that is true. But on some occasions, my ears are tuned to what I want to hear and my partner asks where I am with my head.

These are the moments that I become aware that nothing is more complicated as good communication. In this article, I will try to explain what makes good communication so difficult.

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Unexpected Secrets for a Happy Marriage

Unexpected Secrets for a Happy Marriage

Tom and I celebrated our 45th anniversary in 2021. For a long time, we hardly celebrated our anniversaries, which isn’t very smart. Because if we don’t celebrate our successes and acknowledge them, we diminish them. That’s one of the secrets for a happy marriage: celebrate!

Being together for such a long time and still being curious about each other and loving and respecting each other can be marked as quite an accomplishment.

This year was special because we had to deal with a Fase 1 Flexibilizada lockdown and its restrictions. We used to eat out on our wedding anniversary day, but during the lockdown, the restaurants were partly closed. They were only allowed to open the terrace, not the inside, and we don’t want to be on the terrace with smokers all around us.

We did go out though – we went to the bakery for bread and en passant we took tea with cake in a corner.

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Avoid Loneliness. How to Make Friends When you are Older?

Avoid Loneliness. How to Make Friends When you are Older?

Years ago, when all my friends were either occupied by working very hard or by doting on grandchildren and babysitting them, I was convinced I needed new friends. I was equally convinced it’s impossible to make friends when you are older!

Negative or limiting beliefs serve nobody. And being convinced it is not possible to do something is a sure guarantee I won’t be able to do it. Duh.

I am so glad I was wrong, but I only realized this when I read some posts in one of the Facebook groups I am in.

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The Importance of Life Expectancy for your Unique Personal Situation

The Importance of Life Expectancy for your Unique Personal Situation

The most interesting question I ever got was “How old are you going to be?”. There had been a vague notion in the back of my head, but until then I had never put an actual number on it.

The importance of life expectancy is huge. Not just for life insurers but especially for your personal situation.

Why? Well, let’s say you will live to be 100. And that you retire at age 67. That means 33 years of not having a job and maybe more costs because of declining health. Which in turn means that you’d better have made preparations while you were still working.

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Healthy Lifestyle: 25 Tips on How to Spend Leisure Time

Healthy Lifestyle: 25 Tips on How to Spend Leisure Time

Maybe Tom and I are crazy, I don’t know. We are pensioners nowadays, we should be sitting in a chair looking outside what the neighbors are up to, right? Instead of what we are doing now: working on our websites, I am designing a couple of things, Tom is finishing his thesis.

My guess is, as long as we are both having fun, we’re OK. The only thing we really need to be aware of is to not work for too long. Leisure time is important.

All the more now we are in lockdown on an almost regular basis and restricted in our movements, it’s important to consciously spend leisure time together.

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What to Do during Retirement? Be a Lifelong Student!

What to Do during Retirement? Be a Lifelong Student!

If what to do during retirement is an unanswered question for you, why not pick up a study? Studying late in life comes with an enormous amount of advantages. See it as a kind of exercise. It keeps your brain fit. And don’t worry about your brain: it’s stronger than you might think.

Both Hannie and I never stopped educating ourselves. We probably will be studying as long as we can read and listen. Lately I have been picking up my old love for literature again, more specifically for poetry. This gives me much pleasure. 

However, the question is why you should study late in life. Of course, because to study gives pleasure. Yet there is more to this question that meets the eye.

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Why Giving is our most Fundamental Human Motive

Why Giving is our most Fundamental Human Motive

For years on end classic economists have spread the gospel that selfishness is the human motive that overpowers all other motives. Nonsense. A big lie. 

Giving is far more important. This is because our social life is far more important. Our everyday life together with others. At home. In the neighborhood. In our communities. 

Our relationships give meaning to our lives. 

Yet, good relationships don’t fall from the sky. We have to invest in them.

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What is the Importance of Personal Development?

What is the Importance of Personal Development?

What is the importance of personal development? Why would we quit bettering ourselves once we are retired? I never understood this reluctance to “be bothered” by some of my fellow retirees. In my view, we all have a responsibility to leave this world a better place than it was before.

Sustainability, zero-waste, caring for the earth are good ways to improve the world on the one hand. On the other hand, improving ourselves is just as important.

We can do this by reading books, watching YouTube videos, or attending seminars. When Tom and I still lived in the Netherlands, I did the latter a lot.

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About Us

Hannie Mommers

Hello! We are Hannie and Tom, and we are so glad to meet you here.

Some people have a bias against ageing people that we deeply resent. “Old and worn-out”. Well, we are far from that and I am sure you feel the same way.

When they describe this worn-out situation in the Netherlands, where we come from, the saying is: Oh, that one is only sitting behind the geraniums.

Well, no geraniums for us. At least not to sit next to, because the flowers are beautiful of course. 🙂

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