Age is just a number or label society places on us (and prints on your driving licence), and yet, so many of us allow it to limit our heroic nature and instinct for greatness.
And positive psychologists confirm (through good research) the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy: think you’re old and you’ll become old. [Because if you think you’re old, you’ll move less, create less, work less, dream less–which will make you old!]. Yikes! 🙂
It’s common to hear, “I’m getting older so I need to workout less” or “I’m not 21 anymore so I need to become less of a dreamer and more practical.”
The vast masterpieces of art, business, science and humanity were not constructed by practical people. And many of them were far older than 21 🙂
How To Never Grow Old
Never let an “old person” move into your body and mindset. Age is just a label society puts on you. I’ve seen so many people saying “I’m 50 years old, I should think about retiring.”; or as some say: “I’m 60, I guess I should stop running or climbing mountains or skiing.”
It’s so easy to buy into the mental viruses of aging, and yet I’ve seen people who are supposedly older than their years, but they’re so incredibly young. They look, feel, talk, think and love like young people. Age is a real trap, and you really don’t want to allow yourself to get old. I’ve got some powerful tactics that hopefully you’re going to find them super valuable to help you never get old:
1 – Novelty
Science confirms that the human brain craves novelty. The old idea that the brain you have is the brain you’re stuck with for the rest of your life is just nonsense, a myth. Neuroplasticity confirms the brain is like a muscle. As you get older, if you expose your brain to novelty, it may be in the form crosswords, puzzles, new languages, new skills, new conversations or new travels, you actually start to grow your brain and your brain stays very agile.
That could mean reading every day or start having more great conversations. It could also mean taking a trip every quarter and injecting adventure into your life. It could be trying Vietnamese food if you usually eat Italian food. If you usually hang out with entrepreneurs try hanging out with yoga teachers. Inject novelty into your life as much as possible. It will keep you young, it will keep you energetic, and it will keep you on the top of your game.
2 – Social Orbit
You become your conversations. If you hang with people who always complaint: “I’m in my middle-age, put me out to the pasture.” or “ I guess I shouldn’t be exercising anymore” or even “I used to have a fire in my belly to do great work when I was younger but now I’m going coast.” You’ll want to avoid those conversations, because your social orbit affects your mindset and consequently your mindset affects your behaviour. Ultimately our daily behaviour is a reflection of our deepest beliefs. If you believe you’re old because of some label on your driver’s license, then your behaviour will be that of an old person.
3 – Life-long Learning
Learning is a game-changer when it comes to being ageless. You can get tired and old and feeble if you stop learning, but if every day you’re listening to audio books or new podcasts, or you’re having those new conversations and injecting new information within your mindset. You’re really on the path to agelessness.
4 – Be of Service
You will never grow old if you have a dominant purpose to get up every morning to. The German Socio-Economic Panel deconstructed the largest database on what makes people happy. They discovered that the happiest people on the planet, those with the most zest for life were people who had one thing in common; they all had a purpose for their life. It wasn’t that they had a lot of money, in fact there’s a lot of research that says people with more money actually have more problems. I think the latest I heard was, I believe it was Sonja Lyubomirsky who said “People who have a net worth of $6 million are only incrementally happier than blue collar workers.” Basically, you get to a certain level of money where more money doesn’t bring more happiness or more longevity.
What this database revealed was, the happiest people all had some meaning and some reason and some purpose in their days. If you want to stay young, and if you want to stay nimble and vibrant and fully alive, find some meaning to devote yourself to. Find what I call a compelling cause that’s larger than yourself to donate the rest of your years to. That could be, you know what, you’re a teacher, so it’s being the finest teacher in your field so you raise or influence the young generation to be leaders versus victims, or you could be a taxi driver, but your meaning is every day, every single person who gets into your cab you leave them better than you found them. You could be someone who sells something in a store but literally it’s all about serving them by delivering great value through the products that you’re selling so that you enrich your life.
Please remember: Age is just a number and don’t let it infect your mindset and pollute your performance, you deserve so much better than that.
