Age is just a number. What do we say about our age? What do we think about our age? What do we tell ourselves about our age? Is it all true? Or can there be a better outcome?

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Transcript

I was at a conference a couple of weeks back, and I met a lady named Sherry. She was 80 years old, but you wouldn’t have known it. She certainly had more energy than I did. Even though I’m 15 years younger. She had driven from Austin to San Antonio for the conference. I had driven all of 14 miles to her 70 to 80 miles.

It was towards the end of the second day and my energy was fading, but not Sherry’s. I was impressed with her energy and told her that I aspire to be like her at 80. I plan to interview her soon, so perhaps you’ll get to hear more from her personally.

It got me to thinking about age and some of the things that we just tend to accept. Do you know what I mean?

What We Say About Our Age

We hear these things all the time, somewhat in jest, but also as our excuses. We tend to talk about our age like this, it might start with “When you get to my age” or “Once you reach a certain age.”

And then it ends with something like this:

“Everything hurts.”
“What doesn’t hurt. doesn’t work.”
“You’ll be on 10 to 12 prescription medications.”
“You gain weight. Can’t be helped. It’s a fact of life.”
“You forget everything.”

And I could go on and on and I know you’ve heard them all.

Most of us tend to laugh at these sayings. But I want to cringe on so many levels. Seriously age is just a number. It’s up to you to decide what it means. We don’t need to be talking about it all the time. I get reminders regularly when I drive on Texas highways and see those silver alerts. They remind me that if my best friend and I decided to take a road trip, a la Thelma and Louise, there wouldn’t be a movie about our adventures. Only a Silver Alert.

Energetically speaking, we are attracting the attitude we accept about our age. It makes sense this way: If you accept that you will have more pain or need medications or gain weight as you get older, it’s a defeatist attitude. Once you accept it, you’re not going to go look at what you might be able to do to change it. Why would you? You’ve already decided it’s a fact of life. You might even look at your family, your siblings, your parents, your grandparents, and assume that you’ll be the same way they are and have the same problems they’ve had. Which by the way, totally ignores the role of epigenetics in our health. But that’s a topic for another day.

You know, if those sayings were true, wouldn’t everyone of a certain age have these issues? Wouldn’t they all eventually hurt and take meds and wind up obese? But they don’t. You know, I’m in a Toastmasters group and our club has quite a few longtime members, quite a few in the over 65 range. Most of them you wouldn’t guess their age by looking at them. They may not be in perfect health, but they’re not feeble or frail or sick.

Attitude Matters

Which makes me want to know why? What is their secret? Attitude plays a huge role. I talked recently with a lady who suffered for 15 years with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Her first approach was with her medical doctors, they treated her symptoms but could not help get to the root of her problem. Eventually, her doctor told her there was nothing else he could do. There was no other help for her condition. Eventually, he said she would develop an autoimmune disease. So she just may as well go on disability now.

Can you imagine how soul-crushing and devastating that kind of diagnosis was? But that’s story does have a happy ending and I’ll have her on soon to tell you all about it. I bring it up here because it was attitude that made the difference. She was not willing to accept that she would just have to live with her condition.

I also talked recently with someone who healed in record time following a work related accident. His name is Mark and I interviewed him about his accident recovery. He’ll be on an upcoming episode but I want to talk a bit about him here.

Mark sustained first and second degree burns to his eyes face, chest and arms from a sulfuric acid spill. At first, the doctors told him that his healing would take six months and they weren’t positive about the status of his eyesight. Well, I saw him three and a half weeks later, his eyesight was better than before the accident, and there were no visible burn marks on his face. He still had a few issues but his doctors were totally baffled by his recovery. In the interview, Mark tells his thoughts and how he healed so quickly but one thing stood out. He’s always been athletic and competitive. At age 57, he plays tennis with people half his age. This is what he told me:

“I knew I wanted to be just as athletic as I was before this happened. I wanted to be able to fully play tennis compete with people a third my age. I wanted all that back. I wanted the strength back, I wanted the full motion. I wanted to be able to do my yoga and not even miss a beat.

I refuse to be my age. That’s what it comes down to.”

So you see, attitude really is important, but it will only get you so far. I mentioned earlier that I told Sherry that I aspire to be like her. That’s true. But can attitude alone get me there? That could depend on who you ask. But here’s what I know about known for a long time:

It Also Takes Work

First, most people that seem to heal miraculously did a lot of work themselves. For myself, I know there’s a lot of internal inflammation in my body. It shows up in many ways with weight issues, chronic pain, increased allergies, blood sugar, irregularities, etc. Perhaps you’re thinking, well, there are drugs for most of those conditions. Well, yes. But all those drugs, those are treatments for symptoms, they don’t ever address the root problem. They’re only chasing down those symptoms. And too often, they also come with their own side effects, which can take you down a rabbit hole, you do not want to go down.

Yes, there are drugs that can treat some of the symptoms of internal inflammation, but they don’t really stop its progress. So rather than treating those symptoms, why not work on healing the inflammation, which is exactly what I have decided to do.

In the coming weeks I’ll be talking about inflammation: What it is. Why it happens. And what we can do about it. But I’ll also be taking you along on my journey to heal my inflammation.

I hope you’ll join me.

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Barbara

Creator In Chief at BarbaraMcNeely.com

I love to cook. I’m also a health coach, a path I chose after going through a health crisis which taught me the importance of eating healthy meals. Now, I want to combine the two — health coaching and cooking — to help people learn to cook healthy meals. To plan healthy meals. And to eat healthy meals.