My Top 10 Tips for How I am Enjoying My Young Old Middle-Aged Life

Pretty much any age between 30 and 80 is one person’s young and another person’s old.  I recently heard my 24 year old son assert a policy of scorning the opinion of anyone over thirty-seven.  The other day a longtime friend from college pronounced us to be in “late middle age” causing another of our cohort to express strong dismay.  Having celebrated my 58th birthday yesterday, I thought I’d share my top 10 strategies that are working for me as I age.  God, help me to resist the temptation to write a small novel about each point:

1.  Treat every ache or pain as temporary.   I put this first because it’s so crucial.  I read a survey of physicians who say that the biggest difference between their active patients in late life and their inactive ones is the attitude towards their own bodies.  My 85 year old father-in-law discovered he had pneumonia when he fell while playing tennis.  His main concern on recuperation was when he could get back to tennis (he is back to it, yay!).  Meanwhile, I know people my age who go around affirming the lists of things they can’t do any more because of “their knee” or “their back.”  I understand this because I went through over a year of not being able to walk more than a block with pain from a knee problem.  And yet I backpacked last year.  I shattered my wrist 2 years ago and had long surgery.  I can do everything with it again.  The capacity of the human body to heal from absolutely every injury is well-established but the mythology in the culture surrounding permanent injury is pervasive.  
2.  Change the channel in my thoughts on aging.  Deepak Chopra tells of a study done of several communities around the world where there are exceptionally long-lived and healthy individuals.  There was only one common element; not their diet, not their water, not their soil, but their attitude toward aging.  Each of those cultures truly believed, reaffirmed and KNEW that as we age we get stronger and healthier not weaker and more infirm.  In one South American indigenous culture that depending on runners to communicate with other villages, it was well-established that the fastest and best enduring runners are in their 70s and 80s and then they coast until well after 100.  The runners in their 30s and 40s are considered pretty much a joke.  
3.  Cultivate curiosity–what else is possible?  A mentor of mine from the Access Consciousness community taught me to say aloud “what else is possible?” and “how does it get even better than this?” These are genuine questions of the universe.  I say them every time I feel stuck or in a rut and it helps me REALLY get curious about the answers.  It’s not up to me to think up the answers.  It’s up to me to be curious and look for evidence of them.
4.  Exercise should be enjoyable.  Just that.  I know there’s a lot out there about just do it and it doesn’t matter if you like it and to a certain extent that’s true but does it have to be?  It took me years to establish an exercise routine that I actually enjoy.  And now I love it and look forward to my program of Bikram Yoga one day, swimming another, walking on another, core workout on another.  My husband, like his father, loves his tennis. What’s your enjoyable exercise?  I’d like to do more dancing this year. 
5.  Eating what serves me.  Let’s face it, by now in your life you know what serves you and what doesn’t serve you.  Some of us thrive on animal protein.  Some of us don’t.  Some of us can eat carbohydrates.  Some of us can’t.  There’s SO much information out there about what you SHOULD eat.  I try to pay attention to what serves me, not what the advice says.  In my case, that’s no dairy, no wheat, no sugar, no red meat, low poultry, low carbohydrate.  What serves you?
6.  Gratitude.  I write twenty specific things I’m grateful for out of every single day. It shifts my focus from what is not working to what is working.  Whatever is the worst thing that happened that day, I find at least 5 things to be grateful for about that.
7. Do the things that bring me joy.  I love to exercise, to sing,  to dance and to write.  So when faced with a choice between something else and those, that’s what I do.
8. Wait to be asked.  I’ve spent so much of my life trying to anticipate other people’s needs.  Much of the time they don’t appreciate it. Now I wait to be asked.
9. Dress my truth.  Most of the time I dress in such a way that it reflects my personality rather than someone else’s.  That’s pretty new for me in the past 7 years.  If you’re a woman, particularly on the paler end of the skin color spectrum, you might check out Dress Your Truth on which you can take a personality test and see specific suggestions on how to reflect your truth in your clothing, hair and accessories. 
10. Be there for myself.  I recently made a firm decision to stop abandoning myself.  No one is going to be there for me but me.  As a woman I was acculturated to abandon my own druthers and priorities every time someone else needed me, or even if I thought they needed me (see #8 above).  Well, someone does need me: me.  I am now there for myself and I intend to continue to be through the end of my life.  

As I look back at this list, it sounds selfish.  Where is the service freely given?  Where are the donations?  Well, I do those too.  This is MY list.  I don’t have to remember to be giving, that’s hard-wired in me.  I always give.  Above are the ways that I can continue to be healthy and strong and happy throughout my long life of service.