Everybody's doing it.

EVERYBODY’S DOING IT

Everybody’s doing it these days! Getting older. Yesterday a friend sat on my sofa complaining about how he’s getting old. (He’s TWENTY years younger than me) And how he’s shaved off his, already tiny, beard because a few white hairs had shown up.

Okay  so I dye my hair..an  avoidance tactic too no doubt. But what’s with all the negativity?

Admittedly getting older is very difficult for some people. There’s the loss of faculties like hearing, sight and mobility. And HAIR.  Yes it falls out, turns grey or relocates to places that you really don’t want to have it. And there’s the loneliness. All your friends and relatives of the same age start shuffling off the mortal coil.

But hey, we get wiser don’t we? At least I definitely have. And I no longer feel obliged to get out and party on a Saturday night.

We have an influence on how we age! I‘m not spouting some new age nonsense about how you can think yourself rich(thin)..substitute the adjective of your liking. Nor am I talking about recommendations from the food police to have a yearly detox involving weeks of drinking cabbage juice and eating 6 almonds a day.

I am referring to how we think and feel about getting older. 

That we can reverse some of the effects of ageing has been proven. Harvard researcher Ellen Langer did an experiment in which 70 and 80 year olds lived for some time in an environment where everything referred to a time when they were much younger. In addition, they weren’t cosseted. They had to carry their own cases (in more ways than one). Extensive tests carried out before and after the experiment showed that many of the effects of ageing, which are bandied about as just par for the course, can actually be reversed.

 "My own view of ageing is that one can, not the rare person but the average person, live a very full life, without infirmity, without loss of memory that is debilitating, without many of the things we fear." Ellen Langer

CAN THE POWER OF THOUGHT STOP YOU AGEING?

I just don’t want to be carried along in an attitude epidemic. It’s like flu. Or colds. Another friend keeps saying how everyone around him is sneezing and coughing and how he’s bound to get a cold too. Get thee hence.

On a recent Horizon ( BBC science programme ) about obesity, researchers discussed their discovery that in identical twins one can develop the 'fat gene' and therefore the propensity to put on weight while the other remains slim and has no trouble with weight gain. Why?Because stressful events and how they deal with them influence the triggering of this gene.

Being surrounded by people telling you that getting creaky and cranky is an inevitable consequence of getting older is STRESSFUL!

‘Like second hand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else’s toxic state’ Daniel Goleman

So please, no needless moaning.This woman has the right idea.

Paragliding Utah Grandma,101, breaks world record