The Come Alive Project

Tag: longevity

  • Energy Bite 397 – What a Great Time to Be A Senior – Here’s Why

    Most men and women entering their Senior years just a few years ago, looked forward to a leisurely retirement: a life of security and ease, with few cares in the world.

    Not any more. Today, what they’re really after is a relief from boredom, a more active and healthy lifestyle, and relief from worry about things like long, lingering illness, falling, or being a burden on family or society. More and more, seniors are looking for something new, new experiences that keep them active. As Joseph Campbell said, “I think people are really looking for an experience of being alive.”

    So, imagine what it might feel like to wake up in the morning feeling really alive, looking forward to the day ahead, and having the energy and vitality to be able to spend your day active and productive — doing the things you want to do and not being dependent on having others tell you how to get through your day.

    Or how about this. Imagine being in total control of your body and mind, with the strength and agility to avoid falls, the ability to climb stairs with comfort and ease, the ability to bend and twist and move your body any way you want to — total mastery over the way you move and control your body — as well as total control over the way you think and use your mind as you go through life.

    Imagine how good it feels to be comfortable with the idea of being or doing anything you have ever wanted to do with your life and just haven’t done yet for one reason or another.

    This isn’t a pipe dream, and in fact Seniors everywhere are beginning to realize that getting older is no longer a true barrier to doing whatever they want to do with the rest of their lives. And Seniors from most of the world are living longer, feeling better, and living in the Flow of Life, than at any time in world history. The current generation of Seniors is on the leading edge of the new movement of Seniors who expect more from themselves than just the normal perks of retirement.

    Today’s Seniors who get physically fit and transform their mindset for living, energize themselves with a vitality that Seniors of previous generations might only dream of. Fortunately, Seniors today have a better knowledge of exercise, nutrition and the other attributes of living longer lives, and they are putting that knowledge to use to delay the onset of rusty hinges, brittle bones and the other accoutrements of aging that previous generations incurred much earlier.

    The late Eric Butterworth, a Unity minister and author of numerous books on active living in the flow of life, said this:

    “There are literally thousands of moping people who could renew their strength and youthfulness to say nothing of finding freedom from aches and pains, if they would simply stir themselves in mind and body, get into the flow of consciousness and ‘into the swim’ of activities. The wisdom of the world conditioned us to ‘act our age.’ Now we must begin to act our youth – to act our experience in the flow of life.” – Eric Butterworth, In the Flow of Life, p. 139

    When we adopt those principles of healthy aging, we can be a truly valuable part of society and not a burden on it. And that’s a blessing for our generation and for the generations behind us. What a great time to be a Senior!

    Thank you for reading

  • Energy Bite 388 – Resilience

    EB 388 – Resilience and Longevity

    One of the more fashionable buzzwords today as related to Longevity is the term: Resilience. You may have seen recent articles in newspapers and magazines about the importance of Resilience to Health and Longevity.

    What is Resilience? It’s the ability to bounce back from adversity and stress in a positive way. Stress has been know as a “silent killer” for many decades but only now does it seem to have been looked at beyond a strictly medical level. Academia and business are getting involved in “resilience” in a major way.

    According to a publication of the Harvard Medical School, Resilience is the ability to cope with stress in a positive way and is associated with longevity, lower rates of depression, and a greater satisfaction with life. A lack of resilience is the inability to handle stress and is associated with high blood pressure, a weakened immune system, and other health challenges.

    According to a publication by the World Health Organization, entitled, Strengthening Resilience: a priority shared by Health 2020 and, the Sustainable Development Goals, Resilience is a major priority, not only at an individual level but systemically through all levels of society.

    Let’s stay with Resilience at the individual level. Since we are all affected by stress in some ways, what is the best way to conquer the stress and develop resilience? The following is a bit technical but as I said, Academia is getting more and more involved in the subject . . .

    In his nearly 800 page book, The Future of the Body, Esalen Institute co-founder Michael Murphy recognized the problem and suggested that resilience can be developed through: “1. Reduction of habitual muscular tensions by somatic disciplines or biofeedback training. 2. Self-reflection that produces hopeful, though realistic, perspectives on life in general. 3. Relinquishment of chronically negative attitudes in psychotherapy or witness meditation. 4. Practiced contact with the self-existent delight revealed by witness meditation, contemplative prayer, and other religious exercises.” (Murphy, Michael, The Future of the Body, p 578).

    Hmm, got all that?

    The Harvard Medical School publication I mentioned above put it like this:

    How to build resilience:

    1. Meditation

    2. Reframe the situation

    3. Being involved in a “real” social network (real life)

    4. Positive thinking

    5. Laugh more

    6. Be optimistic.

    The only thing that the Harvard article left out was: Exercise. And I believe that exercise is one of the best tools to help cope with stress.

    Anyhow, the better our ability to handle the stresses of not only crisis situations, but those of everyday life, the better chances we have of living longer and better, and maintaining our mental and physical health.

    Thank you for reading.

  • Energy Bite 385 – Will “Expectations” of Aging, Actually Age You?

    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.