Author: Bob McMillan

How do you approach Aging?  What is your attitude?  Do you look forward to aging, or do you dread it?  How you answer that question has everything to do with what your aging experience will be like.

A positive attitude toward life and a fit body, will be a major step toward a long, healthy and happy life.  Here are just a few of the benefits:

Less Stress.  Some studies tell us that people with a positive attitude toward life are more likely to have reduced personal stress.  Exercise contributes to less stress, as do good nutritional habits.  And many activities once thought of as weird and off the wall, are now considered mainstream, including:  Meditation, Awareness, Mindfulness, and Not projecting ahead (worry).  Newer studies are showing that body and mind really ARE part of a whole, and work together to either make us happy, or put up obstacles and limits.

Lower Medical Needs.  This is simple.  If you take care of yourself and take full responsibility for your own health, you will reap the benefits.  How so?  Exercise, good nutrition, and a positive attitude foster a positive self image.  Studies suggest that people with a good self image and a positive attitude don’t have room for illness.  Less illness means lower medical needs and costs.

Live Longer and Better.  Happy people who take care of themselves live longer in general.  In his book, The Blue Zones, Author Dan Buettner writes about the benefits of a series of specific factors that allow people living in certain parts of the world to live longer and happier lives than their counterparts throughout the rest of the world.  Beyond exercise and a healthful diet, other factors include:

•  A Purpose in Life. Having a purpose is critical to aging happily.  Boredom is a cause of a depressed physiology and can evolve into real depression according to many psychologists.  When you have something to look forward to every day, a reason for getting up in the morning, you have purpose built in.   The Okinawans have a word for this, Ikegai. It means “reason for getting up in the morning.”  Other cultures have similar language built into their cultural vocabulary.

• A Close Circle of Good Friends. Buettner found that one of the attributes of people in certain areas with well above average longevity, was their relationships with close knit groups of like-minded people.  Why is this true in only certain areas?  Buettner listed this as one of the attributes, and only suggested that it might be cause and effect.

A Better Overall Senior Experience.  All of the above seem to result in an overall happier, healthier, stress reduced Senior Experience.  The result is a positive experience of being alive, rather than the sad, bored, depressed state that far too many Seniors encounter. 

Will we be all be happy all the time?  Of course not. Events come into our lives that cause unhappiness, grief, turmoil, and real stress.  It’s how we react to those things that affect our overall life experience.  Grief passes — too slowly for most of us — but it passes nevertheless.  Emotional upheaval comes to all of us in one form or another as we age.  A seventy year old losing a ninety five year old parent is emotionally difficult.  An eighty year old losing a fifty-five year old child is also emotionally draining.  But it happens and life goes on.

Will we be healthier all the time?  Of course not.  Illness and disease come to all of us.  But the healthier our immune systems are to begin with, the easier it is for us to fend off illness and disease.  Our bodies are built to be well, not ill.  If we take care of ourselves, our chances of illness are less.  Long term chronic illness happens.  Infections happen.  It is in our own best interest to ensure that our systems are strong and capable of fending off disease at the start.  But sometimes we have heart problems, get cancer, or find ourselves with the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s or Dementia.  These are part of living, not necessarily aging.  The more we take personal responsibility for our own wellness, the less chance these diseases have of finding their way in.

So, let us remember that we are living in an age of miracles.  There is more opportunity for longer, healthier, and happier lives than ever.  But it is our own personal responsibility to go there.  A positive attitude toward life goes far in fulfilling our hopes for a long, fit, healthy and happy Senior experience. And, of course, exercise and good eating habits add to it.

Thank you for reading.

It’ been just a few short weeks since I turned 81. For some people, that’s old. For me, it’s just getting started.  

I have a purpose! That purpose is to create a movement to encourage men and women over sixty that you can come alive and live your life with health, energy, and purpose. Do you have a purpose in life? If you don’t, you might just want to create or find one. If you do, you’ll probably live a longer, healthier and more fulfilling life than most older adults. Read on and find out why.

Here’s what I often hear from older adults. “I’m too old to start anything new” or, “I just want to kick off my shoes, put up my feet, and relax forever” or, “I just want to go on cruises and eat a lot and drink myself into oblivion with all the rest of the people my age” or, “I’ve had a good life. Now it’s time to settle down and take it easy” or, “I don’t have the energy to do anything new. “Ah, the life of the “default senior”.

But those same people tell me later that “retired life is boring. I have no purpose. My life is meaningless. I’m ready to just give up.”

Living your life with purpose is the common denominator of nearly every self-help book, New Thought philosophy, human potential seminar, or even biographies you read.  It’s the main theme for a long, healthy, successful and fulfilling life. Napoleon Hill talked about it in his classic, Think and Grow Rich.Rick Warren wrote a best seller about it called A Purpose Driven Life. The late Dr. Wayne Dyer referred to living with purpose or intention in just about all his books and seminars.  Read what Bruce Lee, the Martial Artist, Actor, and Philosopher said about Purpose:

 ”The function and duty of a human being, a “quality” human being that is, is the sincere and honest development of potential and self-actualization.  One additional comment: the energy from within and the physical strength from your body can guide you toward accomplishing your purpose in life – and to actually act on actualizing your duty to yourself.”

-Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts,Tuttle and Co., 2000.

Your Purpose is your “why”. It’s your reason for getting up in the morning. Dan Buettner, the award winning National Geographic writer and author of the book The Blue Zones,wrote about the longevity principles lived by the people located in certain areas in the world where there is a high concentration of people living past one hundred years old. He found Purpose to be a major longevity factor in keeping people not only alive, but energetic and active past their one hundredth birthday. He wrote that in Okinawa, there is a term, Ikigai, which means “reason for getting up in the morning”.  In Nicoya, Costa Rica, another Blue Zone, the term is Plan de vida(plan for the day). Yes, there are other longevity factors in all these Blue Zones, but a sense of Purpose seems to be the universal common denominator for an active life, filled with both physical and mental longevity.

That’s all well and good, but what do I mean by purpose? A Purpose can be a cause, a quest, an intention or desire. But that’s just playing with the language; it’s really a state of mind. Do you have a project you always wanted to do, but never did? You could be out to change the world, or you could just have a “bucket list” of things you dream of doing before you die? A purpose could be as simple as a quest for health and fitness, or perhaps starting a new business, or writing the next great novel, or becoming the next Picasso or Grandma Moses. Having a Purpose keeps people alive, as well as giving a person a reason to stay alive.

What is it about Purpose that adds to the Energy and Vitality of Life? Motivation? Momentum? A sense of accomplishment? An attitude of self-actualization, the top rung of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? While I’ll talk about self-actualization as a Vitality Principle in its own right in a couple of weeks, it’s important to understand that to be a self-actualizing person, there must be a Purpose to move towards.

Here’s a fact. Older men and women who have a purpose in life are happier, healthier, live longer and feel better about themselves than those who don’t. That’s backed up by medical studies from some of the most well known medical institutions in the world. Psychologists have been studying this phenomenon for years and have found that if you live your life with an intention and a purpose, your body and attitude are better off than those who just exist in their old age: “Lives of quiet desperation” someone once called it.

You’ll feel better, sleep better, eat better and live better. Which is the cause and which is the effect? That doesn’t seem to have been sorted out yet, but does it matter? The Come Alive Project is all about working on both sides of the formula. Have a Purpose to look and feel better. Look and feel better and you’re more likely to search for and find a fulfilling Purpose in your life.

Let’s face it, health, fitness, and a Purpose to live are all parts of the reality of being older today. Years ago, old age was fifty and life ended at sixty-five. Today, life can begin again at age sixty-five if you have a Purpose to aim for.

So create a “bucket list” of things you want to do before you die. Create a cause and change the world. Make it your Purpose to be physically independent, healthy and fit as you move through your senior years. Make it your Purpose to do that one thing that you wanted so badly to do, but you just never took a chance to do. Take action now! Self-Actualize! You’ll live a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life if you do.

Thank you for reading.