Aging Doesn't Make Us Old

Description

What if instead of believing that age makes us old, we believed that things like a junk-food diet, sitting in chairs, inactivity, and mindless entertainment made us old? Might we then live more engaged lifestyles that weren't as susceptible to the usual effects of the passing years?

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Video Transcription

all right I'm only 44 years old and only have a little bit of gray hair so I'm not sure I actually have the right to talk about this subject today but I've experienced some things in my own life and I've been able to work in some of my past jobs with people who are dealing with aging and it has some thoughts to share today that your regular watcher of this channel you know it's going to be a little bit counter to what we're usually told so I should say up front that I've also been reading Ellen Langer and she's a Harvard psychologist professor that has done some fascinating Studies on Aging now our mindset has a profound effect on our physicality in our health so I'm going to be including some of her thoughts and ideas in this today aging you know if if we're getting on in life a little bit it's something that starts to really affect us and you know I see people that get older sometimes even taking pride in the failings of their body and mind because we've developed a mythos in our culture that as you get older it's inevitable that our body fails us our memory goes we basically just start falling apart if you're in your teens and you're watching this aging may seem a million miles or way to you and why do I even think about this but I would bet that deep inside your mind you too are thinking about it because none of us is completely sheltered from seeing people that are aging and when we see that and we see people walking hunched over and using walkers and in really difficult places it can be really frightening like wow that's what's waiting for me again that's a message that we'll get from a lot of our elder generation that this is inevitable you might think it's great you're never going to you know if you're 18 you're never going to be 60 or 70 or 80 years old but it's going to happen and you're going to be in the same boat now there's people like Ellen who are saying that this inevitability that we become decrepit with age is not as it's true as we've been led to believe and she did a fascinating study it's called the counterclockwise study you can look it up online basically she took some elderly gentleman and she transported them back in time in other words she brought them to a location where I believe for a week they they got to live surrounded by artifacts from 20 years earlier and they almost role played and pretended that they were 20 years younger they only talked about things that were happening at that time they listened to radio broadcast music from that time and the world became that world of twenty years ago and what happened you know they did they did measurements and what happened is they notice that arthritis was was better in these people after the after their time in the counterclockwise study that their memory had improved that their hearing had improved even their vision improved here we had this example that in a short period of time these people had a mindset change that had a profound effect on many of the markers that we look at when we think of aging arthritis getting weaker using our vision losing a memory for myself I have always taken pretty good care of myself but last year I noticed that when my joints were kind of feeling achy and my body wasn't feeling as strong I didn't feel like I was healing as quickly I didn't feel like I was recovering from soreness as quickly and and so what I did is I started taking gymnastics lessons and now I can do a standing backflip and front handsprings and working on my roundoff two back handspring to be able to do these things to have my body do this is remarkable in itself because it's it's getting stronger and more agile than it's ever been but I've also noticed that I feel incredible by my recovery time is is faster I feel like I heal more quickly and my joints all feel awesome loose and fluid

I mentioned that I also been able to work with people in the past of different age groups including people that are getting older in life and and I've noticed over and over again that there seems to be an attitudinal difference of course this is all anecdotal in my part but but when people have a positive mindset when people have a caring attitude about their body their health they tend to just do a lot better and then we hear these stories about people that are 95 and running marathons but but we often think oh that's just good genes it's luck of the draw but Ellen's work suggests that it may actually also have something to do with our mindset for myself there's been something that I've used all along and this is what's really kept me young essentially and you know when I was 20 I was in really good shape and people were saying whoa you know when you're 30 you're going to be packing on the pounds and and when I turned 30 then people were saying well when you turn 40 you know you're going to be you're going to be feeling that age and packing on the pounds and as I said I feel younger than ever

I don't think I'm packing on the pounds you

that feeling of young miss for me comes from two main things the first is I've talked about you know what kind of it's a river that runs through all of my videos and that's what there's a playfulness to life and when we can start to take life less seriously and be more playful about it we not only create a sense of well-being throughout our entire life but paradoxically we actually become more able to put our energies towards the serious things of our lives essentially because we're not using up a bunch of energy in being serious being serious creates a lot of worry a lot of stress which takes a lot of energy out of us but here's the other little trick I use and this inspires me to keep moving and eating healthy and fostering good relationships if you look at the Blue Zone studies another thing to check out you'll start to see that there's some of these elements it's not just movement or exercise it's not just diet but it's it's having really good close relationships having a tribe it's having a sense of meaning or spirituality or purpose there's a lot of factors that play into this but for me I think ok I'll just accept is the truth whether it's true or not that every year past 30 I'm going to lose a certain amount of muscle mass what are some of the other things that we are supposed to lose as we get older lose some my testosterone I'm going to lose some of my brain cells and and I'm going to suffer these losses and I think ok grant it let's say I'm going to lose 1% of what I've got every year that can sound scary and that's going to add up a lot in ten years was going to be a 10% drop on a lot of these things and I'm not going to be able to do those back flips by the time I'm sixty right here though even if I'm losing one percent a year I have to ask myself am i a my fullest potential

right now if I am a ultra genius top level Olympiad athlete then if I'm at my total top perhaps then if I lose 1% it's inevitable I'm at 100% I'm going to lose 1% I'm going to be at 99 but I think of myself and I think oh yeah I'm in good shape I take care of my mind I eat really well but I'm probably realistically that maybe 20% of my fullest physical potential and probably 20% of my mental potential and I eat really well but probably at 2030 percent of of how well I could actually be eating same with movement and exercise so let's say my baseline is 20% that's how good I am right now if I'm going to lose 1% next year that will bring me to 19 but what happens if this year I also start engaging my mind more doing more meditation again learning a new language start doing some things differently because that novelty creates new openings new engagement in our mind what if I start some new movement paradigms like the gymnastics I started next year what if I do a little bit more research and tweak my diet make it a little bit better so that I bring myself from 20 percent up to 23 percent of my fullest potential and then if I lose 1% next year I'm at 22 instead of 19 okay and of course I've made this into a little limited scale of a hundred but if you make that organic you realize that if I lose a little bit every year but I increase my my training my mind exploration my diet every year then if I continue that growth and evolution as a person next year I can be stronger or agile more intelligent more quick thinking have a better memory then I did last year in fact when I start thinking like that it gives me excited because I think 44 now what happens when I'm 50 wow that could be incredible when I'm 50 I mean I've got six years here to really like make incredible improvements in myself and 60 wow I can't even imagine where I'll be and I convinced myself that I'm going to be more physically for instance fit 60 then I am now maybe I'll make a video when I'm 60 and say this was all a bunch of BS and the truth is that 60 is really really old but all that that when I'm 60 I can actually be better physical fitness than I am right now and this goes for all of us if we don't settle for comfort if we question entertainment and just sitting and watching if we get excited about self evolution about strengthening our body our minds our emotional resilience if we make that our goal in our adventure and our playfulness then next year is going to be amazing in the year after that and the year after that and it does not matter if you are 95 and you're watching this and every system is failing in your body that doesn't mean that when you're 96 you couldn't be at a little bit better place than you are this year and I've had the experience of being able to work with some people as a personal trainer who are really up there in age and to see that a lot of people wrote them off because they're in their 80s and they're just you know they're where they are and they're going to keep going downhill every year not true we can keep moving uphill at some point we don't live forever right at some point we're going to have a crash and if you look at the pull of the blue zone people they tend to have a nice curve like this and then at the end of their lives they go quickly we've created a different paradigm where we go along and then we have downs little ups and downs and little ups and goes like this as we slowly degrade over the years both of those are realities and we can choose which one we want yes genes will play a part but don't underestimate the power of our mindset if you're in your teens and you're watching this you're in the perfect place to start if you're 15 16 17 18 and you start now with this attitude well where will you be when you're 20 when you're 30 when you're 40 watch out world thank you for watching this I would love to hear your comments your thoughts if you have struggled with aging what has what has worked for you what hasn't worked for you what's your right what's your opinion is this is it true that we just degrade over time or do you think there might be some truth to this thought we have more control over this than we've been told check out Ellen langurs counter-clockwise study and any of her other work it's really fascinating what she is beginning to teach us she's been teaching us for a long time but it's paradigm busting so that stuff doesn't get the big headlines that bit more fitting in the paradigm type of studies do hers is it's it's interesting stuff take a look and you may be convinced that this really affect this talk with you soon