What is holding you back in retirement?
One of the things you notice as you get older is everything that you accumulate. Certainly you accumulate relationships. You also accumulate assets. You want those accumulations because this is the wealth to sustain you as you finish life. Without the assetts and relationships, old age is empty. You also accumulate attitudes and a body of beliefs that form the foundation of who you are. You have learned over the years what you can and can’t do and you accept that you exist only within those limited boundaries. In other words, you stop growing or changing and live out your life within the cage you created never venturing outside those limits. [continue reading…]
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You can’t stop the aging process for your body. You can control the age of your mind.
It is natural to notice the aging process, particularly when you get to my age. Joints aren’t dependable and in addition they creak and ache. You don’t have the balance you remember and some of the muscle strength is just gone and catches you by surprise at awkward moments. Whatever you do to stop aging, your best efforts only slow the process, My plan is to resist the inevitable with downright pigheaded refusal to accept my desline. When I succumb – and succumb I must to the relentless forces of nature – it will be because it is all over. So I plan and attempt a 12 mile hike at 7,000 feet. People tell me that I am crazy to believe I can do this but in my mind I believed. Even managing only half the hike, I still believe I can do it next time. Just a bit more conditioning and an earlier start and I can go all the way. There will be a next time.
So what makes me so crazy? What compels me to fight the aging process? I can hear some of the answers questioning my sanity, intelligence and judgment. Go ahead. Tear me down. I am not buying any of it. My secret is that I know that my body and my mind are distinctly separate. My body may age but my mind will be whatever age I want it to be. I can completely control my thinking, my attitude and my actions. My mind is better than it ever was. I have a better understanding of myself and what I want than I did at twenty. And I fully understand the power of my mind to make the world that I want and to make my body perform beyond its limits.
I am not buying into old thinking. I am not accepting limits – even the ones my body tries to impose because I know the secret that society tries to hide from us about aging. We accept the lie that aging is physical; that people get old because their bodies get old and that when you get chronologically old you will then think old as well. You don’t have to age mentally. It is a decision. Just look around and observe how many people act old that aren’t old. They have no physical reason to think old and yet they are closed and negative about life and their future. You aren’t catching me in that mode. People may look at me and see an aging physical wreck, but this aging physical wreck will be living life full out, foolish as I may appear. Go on. Tell me I’m crazy. I dare you.
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