I’ve always liked Werner Erhard. Many of you reading this will remember Werner Erhard as the creator of e.s.t. (Erhard Training Seminars), one of the earliest and most successful of the Personal Development Programs that thrived in the 1970s. Over 750,000 people took the e.s.t. training. As with most people who have been massively successful, Werner Erhard took a lot of criticism for his program, and was pilloried by the press and harassed by the IRS. He was subsequently vindicated on all counts, both in the press and by the IRS. His thoughts rang true back then and still ring true today. Erhard is still around, consulting and speaking mostly.
There are two quotes by Werner Erhard that particularly stand out in my thinking and I will make them the basis of this blog post. Both are about Transformation. The first is:
“You and I possess, at every moment of our lives, under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.”
Most of us over sixty have been brought up to think that once we hit around sixty years old, chronologically, we are too old to start something new and become a new person. And as we let ourselves deteriorate, a not so natural result of the aging process, this only becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We do get “old”. Our bodies start to lose the ability to do what we once could do and our minds lose some of the elasticity and resiliency of our youth. This happens mostly because we let it happen. We believe that it will happen so it does. The quality of our lives starts to deteriorate with our bodies, and our minds begin to deteriorate shortly thereafter. In most cases we surrender to the ravages of aging.
We also recognize that we can defer and in some cases reverse the process. We know how to do it but most of us don’t. Oh, we pay lip service to change and vow to do something about our aging, but most of us don’t even get started with what it takes, let alone keep it up. People don’t like to make the effort so they don’t; their reasons “why not to” are stronger than their “reasons why”. That’s a fact of life. Change is inevitable but we often look at getting old as a gradual and natural happening rather than preventable change. And that’s not true.
Werner Erhard’s second quote is: “Transformation isn’t change — doesn’t add to or subtract from —it creates a new concept — where possibilities that didn’t exist for oneself now all of a sudden come into being. The future consists of possibilities.” —from Transformation: the Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard (DVD).
Think about that for a minute. Transformation doesn’t mean change at all. It simply means a new way of creating possibilities that, in your mind, didn’t exist before. That’s why the tag line for The Come Alive Project is “Transforming the way men and women over sixty think and act about health, fitness and personal energy for living.”
The point is that you are never too old to transform yourself. You’re never too old to start something new and exciting that you have never done before. You’re never too old to start thinking about halting or reversing the aging process, and then doing something about it. You can transform your physical body, your energy, your vitality, your resistance to disease and long term illness . . . at any age. You can start right now!
You can rejuvenate your body over time if you really want to. You can look and feel younger with more personal energy if you want to and if you take action. But you have to accept your current physical condition as it really exists, without allowing the effects of denial that all too often manifests itself and keeps you from taking remedial action. And after accepting your reality, you must be willing to take action and actually do something to improve your physical condition and recapture your personal energy.
Over the next several months, this blog will cover some of the actions that will lead to the transformation and rejuvenation of your body and spirit. Put them into action and you will recapture the energy and vitality your mind and body once had. You will transform, not just change, the way you think and act about your own health, fitness and personal energy for life, and discover new possibilities for yourself that didn’t exist for you before. Don’t think “old”, think “possibilities”!