If we could live forever, would we really want to? Imagine being old and sick, feeble and infirm, not to mention lonely and grumpy. Throw in a healthy bit of dreams unrealized, potential untapped, depression settles in and staying alive forever would have to come with some options.
I believe it was Art Linkletter who said growing old was not for sissies and he would be absolutely correct since anyone who has ever witnessed parents or close relatives age can attest to. We don’t have o worry about living forever at this time in our being but what about growing older with a younger outlook and healthy body, this we can achieve now.
Whenever you read about the latest “oldest person on earth”, it is generally an obituary unfortunately and they always ask what they attribute their long life to? The answers are pretty much the same, but what stands out to me the most is the claim that they had a positive outlook to life. They remained optimistic and happy with their lot in life and if there were any regrets, they were not dwelled upon.
There are some things we can do to remain young even as we grow frail and physically challenged.
Be More Open To Our Feelings
Some believe that suppressing our feelings contributes to physical aging. When we are in our youth, we were much more likely to express ourselves, less likely to hide how we felt and as we grew older, we learned it was prudent to control the urge to express how we felt all the time. Anything we can do to get back in touch with our feelings we should apply as we age now. We should be open to expressing how we feel with the hope that we will reestablish health and the vitality of youth when we do.
Live More Intuitively
Vital and vibrant people follow the instincts and live more intuitively. They believe in their gut feelings and will “follow their gut” when challenged. To these people their intuition is everything and when following their instincts they feel alive. The key to using intuition as a means of staying young is to challenge ourselves in those areas where we still must reach our full potential. Listen to our instincts or our gut feelings in order to fulfill that potential.
When prompted to follow our intuition we will generally turn the thought aside, quite likely from fear. We begin to think logically and logic over rules our instinctual reactions. What fun is that! It helps to understand what our intuition is as opposed to our conscious talking to us. Learn more about following your intuition and carry this forward into old age, sagely.
Manage Your Thoughts
I am sure we’ve all heard stories of people who do extraordinary things with their lives. These people talk about actually envisioning the end result in a positive way affirming their will to win or overcome the challenge they face. Successful athletes, business professionals, they all practice this regularly and have the results to back up their decisions. People have been creating their own reality from their thoughts for a long time, it’s hardly novel.
How does it affect our psyche to walk around all of our lives knowing that someday we are going to die?
For starters, the closer we get to the end of our life span the more depressed we are probably going to become. Trusting that we are going to get old and die is like preconditioning ourselves for the inevitable to happen. It would be mentally impossible for us not to have some fears overtake us if only subconsciously and what happens to this fear? Perhaps we internalize it and we put up barriers to others as we age, separating ourselves from our hearts in order to escape or maybe prepare for the inevitable.
We should try and set aside an hour or so each day when we tell ourselves we are NOT going to die, that we will live forever so we must begin to change our attitude to cope with our new emotional immortality. It is time to begin to condition ourselves now for the concept of living forever and see how this works out for us over time. It certainly is more pleasant than the alternative we all face now.
Fri, Oct 30, 2009
Immortality, Longevity