[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #16 HEALTHY AGING --- IS IT POSSIBLE?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #16

April 3, 2023

Healthy Aging #1

        HEALTHY AGING-

IS IT POSSIBLE?

 

Here's the thing about aging, while it sounds like something only older
people do, it is actually something that every single one of us do.  You do
it!  I do it.  Every single day of our lives, we are aging.  In this, aging
is inevitable, it is inescapable, and it is the best thing given the
alternative.  All of my life I have been aging and so have you!  It is built
into our genetic make-up.  So the question is not whether you and I will
age, the question is the quality of our aging.  Are you aging well?
Healthily?  With energy and vitality?  Would you like to?

 

For me, I want to access and experience healthy aging as much as possible.
How about you?  I want to age with grace and dignity rather than become an
old grouchy person.  I want to age with energy and vitality-alive mentally,
emotionally, and physically.  That's what I mean by healthy aging.  Healthy
aging means getting older in terms of years, but not getting old in terms of
attitude, thinking, or acting.

 

Of course, it is not your chronological age alone that determines this.  We
all know young people who think, talk, and act as if they were old people.
I have many younger friends and associates who are so much "older" than I am
when it comes to their attitude about learning, staying active, taking
risks, and so on.  I tease them whenever I can that while they get older in
years, they could become younger in spirit.  Some smile when I say that;
others ask, "How?"  That brings up the quip about age and aging, "If you
didn't know how old you are (your chronological age), how old would you be?"
"How old do you feel?"

 

Age and aging are not the same.  While the speed of your chronological age
increases at a steady rate.  Chronologically, you inevitably add one year to
your age for each revolution around the sun that we make here on this
planet.  By way of contrast, the speed of your aging is actually highly
variable.  That's because it is, to a large extent, under your control.
Aging depends on your attitude, your life-style (active, inactive, passive),
your commitment to your mental and emotional growth, the quality and nature
of your intentionality, your health habits (eating, exercising, sleeping,
etc.), etc.  The good news regarding what this means is that you can take
control and manage your aging to a great extent.

 

Now if aging is something that you do rather than something imposed upon you
(like the number of years you have roamed around on this planet), then there
are all sorts of resources in Neuro-Semantics for healthy aging.  To that
end, I will write about those resources in this series of articles.  That's
because, as NLP says, there is a structure to every subjective experience,
and aging is simply that-a subjective experience.  That means we can
interview and model those who effectively and healthily age and then
replicate the successful variables. 

 

Another distinction.   Healthy aging is not merely about longevity.  The
length of your life in terms of years is important, but only if the extended
years (which we call longevity) are good years.  Some people live a long
time, but in pain, distress, and misery.  Some have no quality of life to
speak of, they are merely existing ... waiting to die.  That's not the kind
of longevity I would think that anyone would want.  I certainly do not.
Instead we want to experience what Spock says as his greeting- "Live long
and prosper."  We want to live long with energy, vitality, meaningfully
involved in our daily activities, and joyfully mindful about how we are
contributing to the significance of life.

 

Back to the opening question in the title, "Is healthy aging possible?"  I
believe it is.  As long as you are alive and have your faculties and can
exercise your power of will, I believe that you can make choices about how
to engage yourself in the things that will make for healthy aging.  Of
course, the sooner you do this-the better.  If you wait until your years are
about to run out, you will have far less time to set things up for healthy
aging.  The best time to begin to take charge of this is mid-life.  For most
people, that is in the 40s and 50s.  That's when they begin to get over "the
immortality of the teenage years and of the 20s."  Suddenly we become aware
that we are actually mortal creatures and that there's an end point.

 

Now whether anyone else wants to make this part of their journey, I
certainly do.  I have set it as my aim to engage in healthy aging.  And to
actualize that, I have been studying this from the perspective of what we
can learn and model from those who have lead the way in aging with grace and
vigor, energy and persistence, and end with a legacy of "a life well lived."

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net  



 

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