Science is recognizing the interconnections of mind and body more than ever. There is now strong evidence that what you THINK about yourself can affect your genes, and the way you think about life can affect the way it actually turns out. While the actual science is relatively recent, that sort of thinking goes back a long time.
Right now, whether because of the COVID Pandemic or because of other events going on in the world, depression and feelings of unworthiness have become a near epidemic among Seniors.
This is nothing new. These feelings have been going on with Seniors since the first person started aging and younger people started observing.
The words, the thoughts, and particularly the expectations that we express to ourselves and one another about aging, can actually affect the way we age.
“The expectations of aging will age you” said Maxwell Maltz author of the famous self-help book from the 1960s, Psycho-Cybernetics. He asks the question: “Do we sometimes THINK ourselves into Old Age?”
The traditional thinking was that a person becomes pretty much useless as he or she passes through their 60s and into their 70s and 80s. The retirement age for many companies has traditionally been 65 or 70 years old. My Father was a “young” 70 when he was forced to retire from being a well respected University Law Professor. Seniors of that age used to be considered well past their functional prime and pretty much useless to business and society. No wonder so many Seniors experience those feelings of depression and unworthiness as they get older. NOTE that I don’t call this practice “AGISM”. It simply represented traditional thinking in the 1960s and earlier.
Maltz went on to say:
“In expecting ‘old age’ and fearing its onset, we may unwittingly do those very things necessary to bring it about. We begin to taper off on both physical and mental activity. Cutting out practically all vigorous physical activity, we tend to lose some of the flexibility of our joints. Lack of exercise causes our capillaries to constrict and virtually disappear, and the supply of life-giving blood through our tissues is drastically curtailed. Vigorous exercise is necessary to dilate the capillaries which feed all body tissues and remove waste products.” — Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics
Beliefs are a powerful motivator both positive and negative. If our beliefs tell us that we are getting old and there is nothing we can do about it then we will fulfill our expectations and get old and decrepit. If, on the other hand, we believe that we can take positive action in both mind and body to slow the aging process, and EXECUTE on those beliefs, then we will fulfill those expectations and keep our youthful vigor.
What are those positive actions? Physical exercise, eating well, breathing deeply, getting plenty of rest and sleep, and equally important, to think and believe that we can agelessly move though our 60s, 70, 80s and beyond with vigor and Flow.
We can choose who we are as we age. As I wrote last week, we can CHOOSE whether to be AGELESS or we can CHOOSE to be OLD. It’s up to us which one we CHOOSE.
Thank you for reading.