Keeping youthful depends on you
Many people are waiting for old age, like the time when, according to one of the writers, you have “the feeling that no one needs you, that those to whom you gave life and whom you raised left you long ago along the road along which you will not be able to follow them, and even the world's streams of thought rush forward so quickly that you have long fallen behind and remained lying in a quiet backwater, weakly, blindly trying to find the current that is constantly pushing you, helpless, back.
Of course, there is such old age, but not for those who look at life correctly. Such a pathetic, such tragic end is not for those who love and love, because their hearts are open to the joys and sorrows of life, they are constantly burning with a keen interest in humanity, in its progress and advancement, their abilities are only being honed, because they are always in demand, and their intelligence is improving.
We are jerked at the thought of giving up much of a life filled with potential opportunities for work, action, and happiness. Why wait for such an old age? It is precisely this kind of expectation, the fear of old age, that ages us.
The creative forces within us build our guidelines and mental models. If we all the time think about sad old age, decrepitude, weakness and powerlessness, about fading abilities, just such thoughts and images will be reproduced by our body.
Not so long ago, a young man died "of old age" in a New York hospital. After the autopsy, the doctors reported that, despite his actual age - 23 years old - internally he was 80!
Let's say it's a birthday. We celebrate birthdays, mark each anniversary in red, and put in mind the thought that we are one more year older. And throughout our mature life, we remember death, believing that we need to wait for it and prepare for it. And the truth is, thoughts of death have caused more chaos and ruined more lives than anything else in human history. They are precisely responsible for fear - the greatest curse of humanity.
One well-known doctor said that, starting from childhood, instead of talking about death, we need to accustom ourselves to the principles of longevity, and then we will preserve our youth much longer and prolong life for a very long time.
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There must come a time when birthday celebrations - highlighting the fact that we're a year older, getting closer to the end - will be canceled. Don't remind us so persistently once every 365 days that we have reached another milestone. It is necessary to understand that the years do not affect the soul. Deep down, we must realize that we have life principles within us that determine that old age is, by and large, a matter of mental attitude, and we will become what, in our opinion, we should become.
Once you reach the age at which you believe physical decline begins, your body will agree with your decision. Gait, facial expression, your whole appearance and even your actions will coincide with your mental position.
Not so long ago I talked about old age with a wonderful 60-year-old man. He was horrified by the thought of the inevitability of aging. It is not so important, he said, what efforts I will make to avoid or at least delay senile weakness, there will come a period when everything will decline, and even though I will try to fight against this, life is still coming to an end, irrevocably tending to the sunset, closer and closer to the time when I become useless. “The conviction that every moment, every hour, every day brings me closer to that hole in the earth, from which no power in Heaven or on earth can get rid, lives in my brain all the time,” he said. “This all the accelerating backward movement is monstrous. The inevitable feeble old age that awaits me takes away my happiness, paralyzing all efforts and dampening my aspirations."
- But why do you think about things that terrify you? - I asked a question. - Why are you carrying thoughts about old age? Why imagine weakness and mental impairment? If you are so afraid of decrepitude, loss of memory, loss of vision, unsteady gait, and everything else that you think accompanies old age, why don't you try to avoid frightening thoughts, throw them out of your head?
Don't you know that it is your focus on what you fear, the pictures that so terrify you, that create the conditions you so want to avoid? If you really want to stop the aging process, you need to fundamentally change your thoughts. Get everything out of your mind about age. Imagine being young. Tell yourself: “I will not grow old in spirit, and this is the only old age that is worth fearing. Until that time, while my spirit is young, as long as youth lives in me, I will not grow old."
The biggest problem for those approaching old age is that they give up everything that helps to maintain youth. Many people over 50 begin to avoid children and young people. It seems to them that "their age is not appropriate" to behave as in younger years, and day after day they acquire more and more old man's habits and habits.
We embed in our life those patterns that we imagine in our minds. This is a mental law. As a result, having reached the age at which most people begin to show signs of aging, we decide that we ourselves should behave this way. We begin to think that, perhaps, we have already completed the main work of our life, and our strength should decrease. We imagine that our abilities are weakening, that we are no longer so quick-witted and perceptive, that we are no longer able to withstand heavy loads, that it is time to calm down, reduce physical activity, work less, and it is time to relate to life easier.
At the time when you allow yourself to think that your strength is fading, they will begin to fade, and your appearance and physical form will follow. If you decide that your ambition has diminished, that your abilities are fading, you will come to the conclusion that the younger ones have an advantage over you, and now - at first voluntarily - you will begin to recede into the background, figuratively speaking, to hide behind the backs of the young. As soon as you do this at least once, and you are doomed to be pushed further and further away. Your assessment of yourself will be accepted. As soon as you confess in thoughts, actions and work, that you have grown old and your productivity has fallen, that you are no longer equal to the young, it is natural that others will be preferred to you.
If people who prematurely aged, analyzed what exactly influenced them and deprived them of their birthright to youth, they would realize that in most cases, premature aging occurred due to their false belief that they should age precisely for this. age. It is the thought of aging and the corresponding mood that turns middle-aged men and women into old men and women.
The laws of renewal and rejuvenation always operate in us and will be effective if we do not neutralize them with wrong thoughts. The cause of chemical changes in the blood and the rest of the body is anxiety, fears, incontinence, any depressing mental disturbances; it is they that trigger the aging mechanisms.
Humanity is sure that 60-70 years is the limit of a person's life. This thought has crystallized, turned into a belief, and we begin to prepare for the end long before the onset of the period we have established. Until that time, while we adhere to this point of view, we suggest to ourselves that after the threshold of 50 years our strength begins to fade. The very thought that we have reached the limit of development, that we should discard any hope for further progress, cuts deeper and deeper into our consciousness the picture of aging, and, of course, creative processes can only reproduce the model he proposed.
Many people have what they call a foreboding - the belief that they can only live to a certain age, and this becomes the focus of their whole life. They're getting ready for the end. It is their belief that they will die at a certain age that, by and large, determines the limit of their life.
Once at a banquet I met a very intelligent, well-read man who told me: he is absolutely sure that he will not live to old age. He drew an analogy with all of nature, arguing that plants, animals, and other forms of life mature early and die early; because he became practically an adult at the age of 15, he argued, this convinces him that he must die at a relatively young age. He said that he felt like a poplar next to an oak: one ripens early and dies early, the second ripens late and lives a long time.
This man so obeyed his confidence that he did not even try to fight for a long life. He simply did not show concern for his health and did not take any precautions at the moment of danger. “What is the point,” he said, “to resist Nature? I will simply live while I live and enjoy everything I can and try to prepare for an early death."
A large number of people from early adolescence are likewise crippled by the belief that they have some kind of hereditary defects, a predisposition to some kind of disease, which is likely to shorten their lives. They walk through life bound by this restrictive thought, and do not even try to develop their higher abilities in themselves.
Just think about the destructive influence on the child's mind of the constant suggestion that he may die young, because this happened to his parents or other relative; that even if he is lucky and he can survive this illness, as well as the tragic accidents of youth and early maturity, he still will not be able to push the limits of life and survive a certain age moment! And we drive this and other similar suggestions into the heads of our own children until they become a part of their lives.
Our achievements depend to a large extent on plans of expectation, on a life pattern that we create for ourselves. If a person plans to live only half or a third of the time allotted to him, it is natural that he will have to do only part of what he is really capable of. I have a friend who, from childhood, was convinced that he would not be able to live long, it would be good, at least until he was 40, because his parents died before they even reached that age. Naturally, he is going to die by the age of forty.
It is much better to believe that we will live as long as possible. We should not give up precious years, setting ourselves a certain date of death simply because one of our parents died by tragic accident at this age, or because we are afraid that we have inherited some kind of disease, say, cancer, and he will certainly it will be fatal for us to develop at this very age.
In reality, life expectancy is increasing all the time. In the old days people grew old much earlier than now, and died at a younger age. Our Puritan ancestors considered the most important thing in their lives to prepare for the afterlife. They were not interested in this world and did not enjoy life. They only talked, sang and prayed for "life there," making earthly life dark and full of inhibitions. They forgot that Christian teaching tells us to rejoice.
There is no more fearsome enemy to the aging process than joy, hope, good humor and fun. They are the personification of the spirit of youth. If you want to preserve youth, you should develop this spirit, think about youth, communicate more with the young, participate in their life, in sports, in their games and aspirations. Play the role of youth, not formally, but with the greatest possible enthusiasm and ardor.
You will not be able to use your abilities until you are convinced that this is impossible. Until your belief in yourself calls you to action, your body's reserve forces will remain in the background. If you want to stay young, behave like young people.
If you want to stay old, stop thinking and acting like an aging person. Do not slouch your shoulders, do not shuffle your legs - straighten up, throw your head up and step resiliently. Do not walk like old men and women, whose strength has faded, and the fire of youth has extinguished. Walk with a springy young gait, like a young man full of life, spirit and enthusiasm. The body will not grow old until consciousness allows it. Stop thinking of yourself as an old man or an old woman. Stop showing signs of decrepitude and old age. Remember - the impression you make on others reflects on you. If other people think that you physically and mentally have started going downhill, you will have to put all your energy into overcoming this kind of opinion.
We must resist the habit of aging, as we resist any vicious habit. Do not give in to the belief that old age is inevitable, do not be afraid of it, resolutely deny it and assert the opposite. If it occurs to you that your strength is running out, that you can no longer do what you did earlier, prove to yourself the falsehood of such thoughts, exercise the abilities and skills that, as it seemed to you, began to weaken. To give up means only one thing - you surrender to old age.
We find in this world what we are looking for. This means that if with age we begin to look for signs of aging and decrepitude in ourselves, we will definitely find them. If you are constantly on the lookout for signs of declining abilities and skills, you will find many of these signs. For example, sometimes you cannot think with the usual clarity of thought, or you cannot concentrate on something, remember something. This happens - just do not immediately draw conclusions that a person of your age should fade, that you cannot expect from yourself the same skills that you possessed in your youth. This is a fatal mistake.
In other words, if we strive to receive something, and our hearts are aflame with this desire, we fight for it, we create a mental contact with the desired and with the help of thoughts create a connection with this object. We do everything in our power to achieve what we want, and mental effort is a real force that helps us to realize our dreams.
But instead of fighting old age, sticking to thoughts of eternal youth, energetic thoughts, many people think about weakness and extinction. If they forget something, they immediately declare that their memory refuses them, and soon their vision will fail. They anticipate signs of weakness and decrepitude, and finally the idea of old age takes root in their bodies and materializes there.
You don't have to get used to looking for signs of old age in yourself, create the habit of looking for youth in yourself. Think that your body is still strong and supple, that your mind is strong and active. Do not allow yourself to think that you are fading, that your abilities are fading away, that they are no longer as reliable as they used to be, that you have forgotten how to think because your brain cells have aged and hardened.
The one who thinks about old age grows old. The one who believes in his youth remains young. Many people are still unaware of the biological fact that Nature herself has endowed us with the power of constant renewal. There are no cells in our bodies that can age because they are frequently renewed. Physiologists say that some muscle cells are renewed every few months. Some authorities say that 80 to 90% of all cells in the body are completely renewed within two years.
This means that the most basic thing is our mental position. There is no way to stay young if you are convinced that you absolutely must see the signs of aging. Thoughts about old age are imprinted on the renewed cells of the body, and very soon a person begins to look 40, 50, 60 or 70 years old … most of them - every few months.
Old age is not so much a matter of past years as of the transparency and elasticity of the protoplasm of the cells of the body, and nothing ages the protoplasm so much as anxiety, excitement, fear, anger, hatred, thirst for revenge and any other inharmonious feelings.
Some people try to heal the physical devastation caused by wrong lifestyles and wrong ways of thinking by patching up bodies from the outside. The "beauty salons" in our cities are being besieged by people who are desperately trying to maintain a youthful appearance, not realizing that the elixir of youth is in their own minds.
Orison Souet Marden