Healthy Aging 2 – Exploring Positive Approach To Aging
To promote healthy aging, it is essential to view aging as a manageable experience and reject society’s negative perception of it. Adhering to dysfunctional and toxic beliefs about aging can lead to a highly debilitating experience. Therefore, it is crucial to distinguish between age and aging. Age refers to a mere number, while aging is a dynamic process influenced by our actions and their quality.
Instead, let’s focus on what you are doing.
Are you growing? Growth is a fundamental aspect of healthy aging that extends beyond specific ages. Mentally, you continue to expand your knowledge through reading and studying. Emotionally, you develop emotional intelligence, becoming more aware of your emotions, regulating them, and maintaining important qualities like joy, curiosity, playfulness, compassion, and passion. Relationally, you engage with others, offering support, mentorship, and care. Physically, you keep your body active through cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and stretching, experiencing the endorphins associated with maintaining fitness.
Aging is an active process, and its quality depends on cultivating healthy habits that nourish all dimensions of your being. This entails taking personal responsibility, relinquishing excuses, and utilizing creativity to remain engaged in the game of life.
Influencing Aging
If you have been influenced by the toxic idea that aging is something that happens to you and you have no control over it due to genetics or other factors, it’s important to unlearn those beliefs. Take charge of your own perception of aging and reframe it positively. By doing so, you transform the aging experience into something manageable. If you encounter any challenges related to aging, examine the assumptions and frames that shape your thinking and feelings. Remember, you are not the problem; the problem lies in the frame you adopt. Addressing and reshaping this frame is vital for your well-being.
