Courageous Aging Personal Journal: Reimagining Your Best Possible Future

This companion journal to the book, Courageous Aging: Your Best Years Ever Reimagined, transforms reading into an experiential workshop. Guided by the author, Dr. Ken Druck, this personal journal allows readers to address the self-empowering, life-enhancing questions and exercises from Dr. Druck’s Courageous Aging workshops, coaching sessions, and family council meetings in the privacy of their own homes. The journal will become a record of where you are at this time in your life, what you imagine could make the coming years gloriously wonderful, and it will help you summon newfound strength, courage, and awareness to take action.
The Journal also reminds you to support the kinder, braver, more loving and confident version of yourself, daring you to venture forward and do whatever is necessary to become the better version of yourself.
Completing the Courageous Aging Personal Journal allows you to derive maximum benefit from reading the Courageous Aging book. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 will help you take inventory of where you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go. You’ll be invited to complete a Courageous Aging Self-Audit, identify roadblocks, and craft a vision for your path forward.
Chapters 4 through 7 will help you clear away roadblocks—whether they’re regrets, emotional wounds, losses or denial—and contain the joy-inhibiting fears and myths that too often go along with getting older. You’ll be given the tools to purge yourself of the youth-worshiping and age-devaluing biases so pervasive in our culture and replace them with a model of peaceful acceptance. Loving and caring for yourself just as you are sets the stage for part three: moving forward.
Chapters 8 through 11 are all about putting your house in order as you enter a new and different phase of life. That means uncluttering your life of “stuff,” taking care of your medical, legal, and financial future; navigating the challenges and opportunities of your relationships with adult children, aging parents, and partners.
And finally, in Chapters 12 through 15, you will shift gears and put the psycho-spiritual parts of your house in order. This may involve expressing the full measure of your gratitude for the blessings in your life, forgiving those who wronged and mistreated you (including yourself), apologizing to those you’ve hurt, coming to terms with the ways your life is changing and bravely facing the reality of your impermanence. Making peace with what is, as well as life’s mysteries, you’re more inclined to pay the good in your life forward to your children, grandchildren, and future generations.
Take your time completing this Personal Journal. Finish a chapter a week or a chapter a month, or move through the material over a weekend. What’s most important is to show yourself that you’re committed and willing to explore uncharted territory. This journal will help you do that and meet whatever shows up with courage, curiosity, awareness, and self-compassion.