Understanding The Rate at Which we Age

Ageing is, of course, inevitable. Life goes through a natural cycle of birth, growth, ageing, and death, over which we have little influence. However, the RATE at which we age is entirely down to us: whether rapid or slow. And one of the biggest determinants of rapid ageing is FEAR, caused by three major factors.

First, is the brainwashing people get from society and the media around the ageing process. There is nothing positive associated with ageing, so everyone is directly, and indirectly, taught to fear it, mainly because of its connection with ill health, physical degeneration, compulsory retirement, and exclusion from the wider society. As soon as we are born, especially in European societies, we soon learn about the negative things we can expect from being older, because of society's fear around ageing. Everything is supposed to get worse, fall off, droop south, or just stay droopy! Yet, we are all individuals, and no two people age the same way! Not surprisingly, people come to dread the ageing process and precipitate its negative effects through their own attitude. Yet if we are told we would live forever when we are born, we would have an entirely different mindset about ageing!

Second, we age through our thoughts first, and our bodies follow. We cannot get a positive life from negative thinking, especially through negative labels. We need to get rid of that 'old' label and think in youthful terms. Most of the illnesses we have are induced by the mind. A long time back we probably started fearing getting older, fearing certain illnesses, and began telling ourselves that by a certain age some painful things are going to start happening. We focus on them constantly, dreading them daily, instead of on the positive effects that are possible, and the good health we are enjoying. A few years later, all the negative fears fall into place exactly as expected. Sadly, by that time, we would have forgotten that we brought them into being by our continuous focus upon them. 

The powerful mind is what dictates the quality of our life, and when we use it to think negatively, negative events are all we are likely to get.

For example, a guy I spent some time talking to kept saying "You can't teach an old dog like me new tricks". Not only did he look older than his age, but he acted it too. Whatever he kept saying was slowly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he clearly had a closed mind that had obviously stopped growing. If you see yourself as 'old' and 'useless', your body will happily oblige. That is why some older people are extremely youthful and agile, because they refuse to conform to age boxes or stereotypes.

Third, we age through not sufficiently using our brain and other faculties. Many people, especially when they retire, stop using their brains, memories and problem-solving faculties. They stop dreaming and aspiring, and often live a completely sedentary, fearful life. Of course, the quality of their life deteriorates much quicker. If we don't use it, we lose it, and that is the biggest cause of both mental and physical ageing, the way we CHOOSE to live as we get older. That choice then decides how positive or negative we are; how active or inactive; in effect, how much we are actually living, instead of merely existing.

Thus we might age physically, according to our natural years, but it is our thoughts, expectations, and activities that determine how much we really age in every other aspect.

Are you 40 years old, or 40 years young?

Your choice of words could be currently deciding the quality of your present, your future, and how you actually age.

Elaine Sihera: The Essential Guide to Confidence (ebook and print)

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