What does it mean to you to “grow old”? Does your chronological age match the age you feel you are? Can a positive attitude make you ageless – feeling years younger than your actual age?
How old do you feel inside?
A survey found nearly three-quarters (72%) of people over the age of 65 feel younger than they are, with half saying they feel younger than 50 years old.
(Me? Sometimes I feel about 40…sometimes I feel 12, and sometimes, oh, around 29. So if that’s what it means to “feel my age” at 60 – bring it on!)
Age is nothing but a number for most older Americans, as 84% said they have embraced aging.
Cultivating an ageless mindset – that is, feeling strong, healthy and happy regardless of your actual age – is the real goal.
We don’t need to BE any younger.
We just want to feel good about where we are now.
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The Power of a Positive Attitude About Aging
Of course, we don’t mean that positive thinking can literally make you ageless. It’s a mindset, not a time machine!
Positive thinking can help you live your best life – keeping it fresh, creative, energetic, happy.
One of the biggest complaints amongst those over the age of 50 is the feeling of deterioration and decline. The feeling of being unwanted, or not useful, or even invisible, often comes along with aging.
Your mindset plays a major role in how you cope with these feelings and, also, how you can work to combat them.
If you focus your mind on the positive things your age has brought you (like wisdom, understanding, and the ability to better help others), you are more likely to feel proud and satisfied with your life achievements. You won’t feel that your age is holding you back.
A positive mindset will greatly improve your overall outlook on life, leading to a greater quality of life.
Ignore the Youth Culture – You are Always in Your Prime
We live in a world obsessed with youth.
Every day, older people feel pushed to the side in favor of the younger generations.
People – especially women – are seen as being in their prime when they’re in their late ‘teens and early twenties. Some people who are older than 30 will even lie about their age, trying to make it seem like they’re part of the favored, younger group.
But this is just society’s bias. IT’S NOT TRUE!
In order to get past this awful bias and actually start living with an ageless mindset, you have to learn to tune it out.
Stop denying your age, and instead, embrace it for all its worth. You have experience, wisdom, and a depth of living that can only come with growing older.
It’s time to celebrate the brilliance of our older years.
That’s what will truly make you ageless.
Learn to Love Your Body as it is Right Now
An important part of keeping yourself in the ageless mindset is loving and appreciating your body for what it does for you and how far it has gotten you.
Of course, your body is going to reflect the life it has seen. Stretchmarks from babies. Scars from injuries. Arthritis from years of playing sports. Laugh lines from all the times you laughed until you cried with your best friends. And so much more.
Every day that you’re alive, you learn something new and adapt to changes around you.
Would you really trade in the memories written in your body for a societal view of perfection? And erase all those wonderful reminders of your past and what makes you, uniquely you?
I’m not going to pretend that I never have body anxiety issues, but overall, I can say that I love the life this body has seen me through. I appreciate how well it functions to this day.
The first step in keeping an ageless mindset is loving your body for all its many years and experiences, and that means making peace with its perfectly perfect “imperfections”.
Realize You Should Never say “Never”
The number one thing that will knock you off your track toward an ageless mindset is negativity.
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we’re too old to do something, too set in our ways to learn something, and even that we’re simply too old to be of value.
These thoughts are toxic and highly dangerous to the positive outlook you’re trying to maintain.
You are capable of doing anything you put your mind to!
It may take you a little extra effort to get there (as compared to your younger self), but if you make the effort, you can accomplish pretty much anything you really want.
When that negative voice inside your head tells you anything negative about your abilities, your worth, or your age – shut it up and prove it wrong!
Consider these success stories:
- Julia Child wrote her first cookbook when she was 50.
- Author Toni Morrison won her Pulitzer Prize when she was 56, and her Nobel Prize in Literature at 62.
- Anna Mary Robertson Moses, better known as Grandma Moses, began her prolific painting career at 78.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder published the first “Little House” book – a children’s literary classic and the basis for the TV show “Little House on the Prairie” – at age 65.
- Entrepreneur Jack Weil remained the CEO of the brand he founded, Rockmount Ranch Wear, until he died at the age of 107.
- Harland Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders, was 62 when he franchised Kentucky Fried Chicken.
These individuals, and so many more, didn’t consider age to be a hindrance.
They went ahead and lived their lives and achieved their dreams using a positive, ageless mindset.
Get books about aging well here
Read More:
- Positive Mindset: Change the Way You Look at Life
- Essential Lessons to Learn for a Meaningful Life
- 75 Quotes on the Power of Positive Thinking
- How to Be Happy: 10 Secrets to Living Life on the Sunny Side
Final Thoughts on Can a Positive Attitude Make You Ageless?
Aging is a part of life. You can’t change that.
How you deal with aging is entirely up to you.
Would you prefer to:
- be in denial about the fact that you’re getting older,
- treat yourself as if you are past your prime, too old and set in your ways to try anything new, and too irrelevant to enjoy a full life,
- OR
- embrace your age for all the wonderful things it has brought you and move forward with a positive mindset that will have you feeling ageless.
I feel pretty positive I know your answer!
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