Please don’t tell me you are unaware of or don’t care how you are aging. The multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry for MEN and women tells a different story.
You should care about how you are aging, and the sooner you realize that the greater your success in establishing a satisfying life in your later years will be.
At retirement, you can choose the lifestyle you want for your future. You can choose the usual slow decline that follows the decision to live a typical retired lifestyle, or you can not allow outdated social norms to control how you live after you stop working. Retirement means the party is over, but it doesn’t have to be over.
Here are tips you’ve heard before and need to remember:
If you choose traditional leisure retirement at retirement age instead of a growth-oriented future, please understand that all of your psychological, physiological, mental, physical, emotional, perceptual, and hormonal processes will undergo a major downward shift to accommodate the slower pace of the lifestyle you plan to live. The result doesn’t show up until later in life and manifests as “old age decline.”
Your powerful subconscious mind listens to everything you say about yourself and will lead you to do what it perceives you want to happen.
Speak up for yourself. If people whose job it is to help you (especially nurses or doctors) speak to you in a sing-song voice as if you are an immature child, let them know clearly but kindly and with a smile that you are not senile and can process and understand everything they say in a normal voice..
Calling yourself an old fart, old bag, old broad, or other demeaning name is not cute. You are what you say you are, so go ahead and tell the truth — you are vibrant and healthy regardless of your chronological age. Don’t demean yourself by re-telling nasty “old people jokes.”
Your chronological age has no power to cause or prevent decline.
The more you talk about your age, the more power you give it to rule or even ruin your life. Do what you want to do and can do, age be damned! Chronological age is a measure of how long you have lived, not an indication of how competent you are. Chronological age is just an empty number that keeps track of dates and events in life. Unfortunately, our backward, stuck-in-the-past culture continues to give significance to chronological age.
Be picky about friends. We adopt attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of those we associate with most often, so choose as friends those who support your youthful mindset and lifestyle.
Try to avoid becoming a burden. Friends and family love you but don’t want to be your caretaker. Come hell or high water, exercise consistently to stay strong and look good. If you are having a love affair with x-rated food, learn to love a Mediterranean or other healthy diet instead. Don’t wait for the new food czar, Robert Kennedy, to remind you of all the junk you consume that’s tearing down your mind and body. (And then, you wonder why you come down with cancer or other illnesses. You are what you eat long term.)
Don’t toss a lifetime of experience and education into the “retirement dumpster.” Find ways to share the expertise stored in your brain. The more you give, the more you get. Sharing what you know keeps you youthful and helps others.
Don’t whine or expect special treatment because you have lived so long. Accept help when needed, but don’t expect others to do what you can do for yourself. Toughen up and help others who need help more than you do.
If you want to “fix” your face or other body parts, ignore women friends who insist you look fine just the way you are. Female friends who say you don’t need to improve your appearance don’t want you to look better than they do. If your guy discourages you, he is probably insecure and afraid of losing you. (Don’t ever change your appearance to please anyone but you.)
Don’t tell your age or dwell on it. Do not allow your age to determine what you should or should not do.
Around age 40, “age awareness” starts to set in and becomes more pronounced as time goes on. It sneaks up “under the radar,” so most people aren’t unaware it happens. Constant awareness of your age is a hovering haze that burrows into your consciousness. Without realizing it, everything you think about or want to do filters through it. The filter is composed of your own stereotypical beliefs about aging and your acceptance of outdated traditions and cultural norms. It shapes how you think about your competence and potential. It influences decisions you make about how you live your life.
Constant age awareness causes you to think or behave in “age-appropriate ways.” The more tradition-oriented you are, the more inclined you are to do what’s expected “at your age.”
Your constant awareness of your age causes you to talk negatively about yourself and your abilities. It’s socially acceptable to speak of yourself or your abilities in terms of “I’m not as young as I used to be.” No one is as young as he or she used to be, and focusing on that reality begs for decline.
Saying “I can’t” often enough because you think you are “too old” eventually becomes reality. You become what you say you are.
When exchanging social pleasantries, don’t recite your aches and pains in response to the question, “How are you?” Nobody really cares. Say you are fantastic, even if your knees creak or your back aches.
Constant awareness of your age plays a major role in personal and social decisions. Boastful telling your age attaches unhealthy significance to your age. Please don’t ask others to guess how old you are. It’s a sign that you are not only worried about how others perceive you but also fishing for a compliment to temporarily relieve your age-related stress.
Fixation on one’s age promotes acceptance of traditional social norms that apply to lifestyles, such as same-age living arrangements. Independent people don’t need to “cocoon” in communities with same-age people to be happy. Constant exclusive exposure to same-age peers intensifies one’s age awareness and contributes to decline.
Bottom line: Don’t allow awareness of your advanced chronological age to limit your potential and mess up your life. You are not your chronological age. You are your biological age. Live how you want to live, not how your age awareness tells you to live or allows you to live. If you don’t know your biological age, learn how to find out at www.TrueDiagnostic.com
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