Maybe you’re up for a “reset.” What does that mean? It means that one or more (usually more) things in your life need to be adjusted, changed, eliminated, or replaced. There are times in everyone’s life when it is time for a reset. Finding a reasonable, comfortable, and equitable time for a reset is often necessary to continue to enjoy life, which means facing life’s changes and making appropriate adjustments.

We recently published a newsletter and accompanying blog, regarding “accommodation and adaptation,” in which we suggested that we need both of these operations in our lives. In review accommodation is a necessary, but also temporary, solution to something difficult in your life, whereas adaptation is a long-term solution to a major uncontrollable shift in life. While accommodation and adaptation are tools for more serious shifts, a “reset” is for a time in life where one or more routine things need to change, advance or simply cease thus giving a clean start in day-to-day living.

Personal reflections on resetting

Ron and I have found it necessary to reset our life in several areas. Some of these things that need a reset have to do with our approaching 82 and 72, while others have to do with changes in our orientation to things, being involved in a culture that is changing, letting go of things that used to be very good, even necessary, for us, and generally structuring our life together so that we are more effective in the various elements of life that we have. This means resetting the effective use of our bodies, our work, our property, our engagement with other people and organizations, and our engagement with each other. For instance:

• We have a good deal of property that has been acquired during our collective 153 years of life, some of which we no longer need or want.
• We have always worked a lot and certainly well beyond most people’s age of retirement. We enjoy our work and continue to be very productive in our work.
• We have a number of people in our lives currently and many more that we have known over the years and view with nostalgia as having been good for us, and perhaps we good for them.
• We are both “players” and value fun in our lives. Some things are fun for me, others might be fun for Ron, while we have a good bit of fun collectively.
• Service has been the central ingredient of our work and our lives. Is there a better, more equitable, more efficient way to serve the world than what we have done?

As we look at resetting, we can see the value of reducing and eliminating as well as adding to what has been our customarily style of life. Our current work in resetting is a work in progress. These are some of the things we have done, are doing, and might do in the future:

• We have found Facebook Marketplace, admittedly for better or for worse, that has been a source of reducing our property, this in addition to our regular deposit at thrift stores, putting usable things “on the street,” and simply disposing of other things. It yet is to be determined how many dishes, books, and games for which we can find new homes.

• Several years ago, Ron had a reset with three good friends, all good guys, but people who had a different trajectory in their lives. More recently Ron had one friend with whom he established a hiatus, possibly returning to a regular relationship, possibly not. On the other hand, Ron has enhanced his life with several newer friendships. Even in relationships we sometimes need to re-set to enjoy someone long distance, just in memory, or to re-establish how a given relationship will continue as well as simply say it has been a “good run.”
• In our play time, we are noticing that some things that we imagined we would never be done with are beginning to shift.  For me, gardening has always been play time as well as spiritual rejuvenation. While my spirit still needs and savors my gardening, my body is asking for a reset in how much time and energy I put forth. I truly can’t image not gardening but I can now envision less gardening space to maintain. This is an important reset for me.  Ron, for example, needed to end his administration of a local weekly pick-up game of basketball due to the fact that it was taking too much of his time and energy to organize and maintain. While this was a community service he rendered for over twenty years, it was also a primary outlet of play for him. Retiring from that particular role now gives him the reset of simply joining in local pick-up games at his leisure.
• We both have come to realize that there are physical things that need to be done, things that we have always done and would like to do, but our physical energy is no longer as  available as it has been.  Resetting is not necessarily stopping but shifting how the activity is engaged.
• We enjoy travel, and before Covid, we traveled to Europe annually, always on a low budget by traveling off season, “sitting in the back of the bus” and making the first stop of every day at a local bakery or grocery store for our “packed lunches”. Now, as we consider international travel or even local excursions, we are considering what might be good for us and enjoyable now, compared to how we have always traveled.
• Our professional resets are primarily in the realm of reduction. We have reduced our hours of work to about 2/3 of what we used to do, and we may reduce more yet. Furthermore, we now have the privilege of being more selective of the people we see.. For instance, just today, I had to refer out a new client once I learned how complex her distress is. While such intensive work has been the hallmark of my clinical work for many years, it is no longer best for me to engage in such intense work with people. 
• Resetting for us simply means evaluating the amount of time we should work to maintain both the enjoyment and productivity of our work. We have to consider how, why, and if we should be working, as well as how we work within our abilities.

Other Examples of people who need to reset

• Jack and Lilly are in their 70’s, and recently retired. They’ve had a good life and a good marriage of 40-some years, however, without children. Importantly, both of them traveled quite a bit for their respective jobs, which meant that they were in separate places most of the time. Now that they are 100% together, they are discussing joint travel as a way to reset and rediscover their enjoyment of each other.
• John has attended the same church for multiple years. Recently he has found that the direction the new pastor is taking the congregation isn’t in line with his personal sense of world missions. For John to reset means he probably needs to take some time to examine his perspective on the mission of this congregation and determined if he can shift or if he might need to go elsewhere.
• George is nearly 70, single, and has been involved with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for 30 years of his sobriety. Much of his social life has been via AA groups, which he has attended, served, and led for many years. Recently, two of his familiar groups have had people who, in George’s mind, have not abided by the accepted procedures of AA, which among other things, means no “cross-talk,” or challenging other people. George is already working to discover how he can reset so that AA continues to be one of his most important places while recognizing he can’t abide the crosstalk custom being violated. Since AA is one of the most important things in his life, he will most likely have to reset by finding a new chapter.

All of these resets will require purposeful examination of what life can be now, and then make the shifts to do what needs to be done. This means accepting the value and success of their previous lives together with a forthright discovery how their lives can thrive in a different way.

Considerations and suggestions:

• Consider the elements in your life: people, places, ideas, and property in your life. Take an assessment of these elements.
• Look with nostalgia on these elements in the past. Nostalgia is a combination of appreciation/gratitude, on the one hand, and a certain sadness that something familiar and/or pleasurable no longer serves you the way it once did. A proper use of nostalgia can go a long way in savoring the good of what you have had or done while you reset to new activities and attitudes.
• Examine possible resets in your life. Look at where you were, how certain people or activities served you. Appreciate them and begin to look towards new ways of engaging. As you examine these elements, notice that with nostalgia, there comes an ease in recognizing that some things have just “run its course.”
• You might discover that some things simply need to be enhanced. John doesn’t need to give up his passion for world missions.  He needs to find a place, a congregation through which he can enhance this passion.
• Some important resets do include saying farewell to the familiar and discovering new people for familiar actives, like George and his AA groups. 
• Perhaps, the best reset is increasing something rather than letting it go. Jack and Lilly have discovered that they need to continue to travel, but together for pleasure rather than separately for work. You might discover that you need to travel more, not less, nap more not work more, spend less or spend more or simply need to meet more people and spend less time with others.
• Reset is, most of the time, about paying attention to yourself and focusing on what is good for you on a day-to-day basis. Trusting that observation and going about shifting with an anticipation that the reset is “a better way” to do what you have always enjoyed doing.
• Economists call this procedure “cost analysis” or “marginal utility,” but this kind of reset takes into consideration the elements of emotions, particularly, joy and sorrow, the effect on other people in your life, the time you have and want to have to these elements, and money spent where that is necessary.
• Advise the intimate people in your life about your resetting intentions. If possible, get them on board with you. This doesn’t mean they necessarily need to do the same reset, just that they might need to know the purpose of your changes.
• After a few days, weeks, or months, assess your life with your having reset some things. Note the joys and sorrows you have experienced remembering that joy and sorrow have to do with things loved. You will see that either the reset is not as necessary as you thought or, that you have adapted well to a reset in your life. You will note that you are more effective, efficient, and productive albeit with a somewhat different perspective of effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity.