How Do You Stay Hip Over 60?
Spunky funky and just plain cool. “How do you do it, Elise?” I get this question all the time. How do I stay young at heart or listen to hip hop or know how to use Snapchat?
Maybe it’s because I have a 19-year-old son. Or that my dad never aged in his mind, and I take after him that way? Or that my heritage is Eastern European/Slavic, and Slavs retain that rugged yet healthy look? I’ll have to consult with Borat on that one. 🙂
I know that when I look in the mirror and notice a few wrinkles around my mouth (my son calls them whiskers, LOL), I’m kind of amused and curious. Almost like an out of body experience. Do those new topographical lines belong to me, I wonder? Because in my mind, I am 39 or 15 or 26 or whatever age I remember feeling inspired, adventurous, daring, and bold. So my real age is not a number, it’s a memory I tap into to relive of powerful feelings that encourage me to look to each day wide-eyed and with a sense of rebelliousness. I’m sure another critical element in keeping a youthful spirit is humor. It’s the key to longevity. I think some ancient Chinese wise one said that too. If you don’t take yourself so seriously, you’ll be able to jump hoops.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think.
I like to tell my young friends that I was born at the tail end of the baby boomers, and I have a millennial mindset. When I see how positively they respond to that, I add a dash of Elise-ism. Don’t believe everything you think; I often hear myself repeating.
If you’re entrenched in a thought pattern, it will be hard to adapt to the curveballs life inevitably throws at you. You can learn to dance with fluidity as a structure. The steps are like a water pattern. If we keep going in the direction of the stream, we are not fighting the current. Another analogy is driving. If you follow the signs and signals, you will eventually reach your destination.
I look around me, and many of the women in both my professional and personal circles look terrific and act young. Perhaps it’s because we live in a very youthful city: Austin, Texas, where over 40% of the population is under the age of 40? If you feel haggard and as old as my grandmother did at 65 in the 1970s, then perhaps it’s time for a reboot. And by the way, you can look and feel “old” at any age. I’ve known 40 and 50-year-olds who stress out about their lives, or politics, jobs, society, relationships, which appear to be on the verge of collapse, mental, physical, or emotional.
How You Look is Based on What You Feel Inside
I’m convinced that the way we look is but a reflection of what we feel inside. When you carry around extra kilos or pounds it is because that weight is what you are emotionally hiding behind. The same is true for those of you who are obsessed with thinness almost to an extreme measure resulting in anorexia or other deadly diseases. Because I feel young, I haven’t grayed. Most if not all of my friends and colleagues my age, even some younger, have gray hairs. I dye my brown hair purple. Wrinkles. I hardly have any. Of course, there are some lines around my eyes and mouth, and perhaps it’s hereditary. Yet by and large, there’s very few.
Let’s talk about illness. Whatever happens to us physically, if it is detrimental in any sort of way, big or small, is but a reflection of how we are feeling emotionally. Given this premise, I can trace the exact moment when I bounced back to my youthful spritely self. It took me some years to feel emotionally healthy after a few major life-changing events happened all within four years:
- moving from Europe to America after twenty years
- the separation from my partner of eleven years
- my son almost dying in a car crash
- taking care of my terminally ill mother
- a nasty divorce
- a move with my son across the country
- my mother passing away
The exact moment when I regained my emotional clarity, freedom, and awareness was when I stopped blaming anyone else for my past. At that point, I realized that I was the cause of everything that transpired in my life. I wrote the script that unfolded scene by scene and chose the actors who fit perfectly into my play. Each one performed brilliantly and beyond my expectations, which shook me to my core. What it showed me was how powerful I indeed was. Think about it. If I created the playbook, chose the actors, directed the scenes, and outcome, then I could change my life in whatever direction I wanted.
By taking real responsibility for my life, I began by reprogramming my mind to change the neurological connections in my brain. That led to entirely different feelings, which triggered mixed reactions. I want to be crystal clear about something here. Reprogramming DOES NOT mean thinking positive or using techniques like NLP, using the tapping technique or Imago counseling, Abraham Hicks, or hundreds of other “cures” out there in the woo woo new Age market. Put merely, reprogramming can only happen when you are emotionally courageous enough to face that which you’ve hidden inside of you that you “forgot about” and blamed others for your entire life!
Once you see the patterns of your brain, causation, and reactions, only then can you address the underlying issues you’ve replayed over and over again. Being free of blaming others means you are conscious of your input at all times. That includes all reactions — positive or negative, thought patterns, what you put into your mouth as fuel, what you think and say, what you project onto others, what your expectations are, and so much more.
As a result of my reprogramming, I lost twenty pounds over one year, and my whiskers dramatically disappeared. I can dance longer than I’ve been able to in years and have a tremendous amount of stamina for work and play. I am not afraid of my future nor death.
