ADJUSTING YOUR THINKING

Given that healthy aging is a function of your framing (#17), by positively framing your understanding of aging as a process and experience, you adjust your thinking and believing so it fits with healthy aging. How do you do that?

Let’s begin by peeking into the theater of your mind to see how you are currently picturing aging. Think about aging. Think about someone you know who is aging. What do you see? How do you picture the aging process? The cultural pictures that we are constantly fed on TV, in the movies, on social media, in books, in jokes, etc. typically create some very unpleasant and undesirable pictures. Here are some old jokes: I don’t trip over things, I do random gravity checks. Old age is coming at a really bad time. When I was a child, nap time was a punishment, not it feels like a small vacation. My people skills are just fine, it’s my tolerance of idiots that needs work. At my age, ‘getting lucky’ means walking into a room and remembering why.

I remembering watching the New York Marathon some years ago and toward the end of it, there were three or four centurions finishing it in 5 to 6 hours. Talk about an image! Here were three 100-year old men finishing a 26.2 mile run. I immediately grabbed that image and put it into the theater of my mind as an image of aging with graceful energy. Later I put some images of 90- year old weight lifters still going at it.

What’s in your mental theater? Representing is the first level of thinking and when you have images of vitality and youthfulness there—you are sending those kinds of messages to your body. For many people, this is the first place to make some changes—alter the representational code that you currently have in your head. Create a picture of aging that you find attractive and compelling.

Now while you age, as a number, represents a mechanical process, simply counting the years, aging itself is a fluid process. In addition to your mental pictures, it involves your beliefs, values, understandings, etc. Therefore in service of teaching your body how to age well, you need to incorporate empowering beliefs, values, and understandings. One way to do that is to engage a friend in a conversation about aging. Simply start with, “What do you think about aging?” and then, just listen to what you automatically say. Listen without censoring or judging. Doing this is a way to flush out limiting beliefs and understandings. Now you are in a position to upgrade your beliefs and understandings.

Years ago, as a good friend of mine was speaking, a piece of information slipped his mind. Though he was only 55 at the time, he immediately commented, “Michael I’m having a senior

moment.” I asked him, “Do you hear what you are saying to yourself?” He had not. I called attention to the implication by asking, “Do you believe that as you get older, your memory will get worse and you’ll forget more and more?” “Sure do!” he immediately said without a moment’s hesitation. At that point I decided to install a belief in myself, “As I get older, my memory will get better and better.”

Now I don’t know if that statement is true in any absolute sense. But I also know two things—first, a belief does not have to be true to be believed, and second, a belief well installed is a “command to the nervous system.” A third thing I also know, there is a phenomenon in our minds, the placebo effect, and it can activate processes in our mind-body system apart from something being factual (see Neurons #10, 2023).

The bottom line: Take good care of your brain. The following comes from Brain #101 training manual about how to take good care of your brain.

1) Breathe! Your brain needs lots of oxygen; 20% of oxygen goes to the brain. Do what you can to get blood delivered to very cell in your brain.

2) Exercise: aim for “healthy mind in a healthy body.”

3) Sleep: your brain transfers short-term memory to long-term memory during sleep as it engages in working through problems. Aim for 7 to 9 hours.

4) Detox: eliminate toxins inside and outside which can damage the brain.

5) Think/ Learn: engage brain in stimulating activities. Read, reflect, debate, solve puzzles. “Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go higher than you think.” Benjamin Disraeli.

6) Play: children are ferocious learners because they play; play with ideas.

7) Reflect: use solitude to reflect, read, write, etc Reading makes you full, speaking articulate, and writing precise.

8) Reduce stress: stress reduces brain functioning; can’t think well under stress, stress hormones has toxic effect, leads to death of neurons. Control your blood pressure.

9) Love: be compassionate, caring, engage in collaborative communications. Love your work.

10) Eat well: avoid junk food, sugar, flour, etc.