BlogPositive

He's just a boy

Today I was chatting with a colleague who had left a job because he was too young.  He'd been told that he could not be promoted into a particular role as he was too young and hadn't been there long enough.  So he gauged that the level of confidence in his obvious abilites was too low for him ever to make progress and left. Big mistake for the firm as they lost his expertise and drive.

However as we grow older we need to take care that as well as not falling prey to the stereotypes surrounding age (as in older) we also do not typecast the young. Its so easy to say "Oh well when I was 28 I wouldn't have had a chance at a job like that so I doubt that this person can do it".  The world is changing so fast that what was undoubtedly true then (whenever "then" was) probably does not apply now.

I believe that whatever someone's age or experience they can only conclusively be shown to be able to or to be unable to do a thing by being given a chance. As long as we continue to make arbitrary rules surrounding age and experience we can hardly be surprised when we don't get offered something because we are older. I say give youth a chance!  Then ask for our own chance.

When I grow up..

What do you want to be when you grow up?  I bet you were asked that a lot when you were younger.  But at a certain point in your life people stopped asking. Obviously you had reached a point at which you were considered to be "grown up".

So I propose that you actually start asking yourself the question again. I don't feel as if I have ever really grown up. I still feel as if I am sort of trying life on for size and maybe at some indeterminate timein the future I'll reach a state called "grown up". I'm still avoiding getting there as it seems like it might be a sort of boring and staid palce to be. Somewhere with not enough room for fun, somewhere that everything is settled and no changes can be made, no room for changing your mind or trying something different. I'm also fearful of the fact that it might be a place with too much resposnsibility and not enough time to play.

So if, like me, you don't really want to grow up then push it back further into the future and ask yourself again what you'll do when you get there.  What do you want to do when you grow up?

Keep smiling

In Japan they have a problem with an aging population that is even more acute than ours.  It has more than four times as many centenarians.  One women who was 100 in April was interviewed for a report in yesterday's Independent.  She puts her longevity down to having a happy-go-lucky nature.  She is cheerful most of the time and even if she is worried about something she gets a good night's sleep.  That, coupled with the healthy Japanese diet that is antioxidant rich, contains little animal fat and lots of soya, vegetables and seafood has resulted in her outliving her son, who died of cancer 6 years ago.

So the message from Asia is clear - be happy, eat healthy, live longer and fitter.

So what are you going to do today to bring a smile to your face? What are you doing to make your diet healthier to support you as you get older?  What are you planning for your 80th, 90th, 100th birthdays?

MOT and Service

Here in the UK we have to have our cars tested for road-worthiness every year and because I do lots of miles I also get mine regularly serviced.  However we often fail to treat our bodies in the same way.  My body is the machine that is going to get me through life so I feel that I'd better look after it.  That means that it needs regular servicing and MOT and an occasional polish, just like my car.  And as my car is getting older I am finding that I am having to do more at each service.  More parts require attention. And my body is just the same. As I am getting older I am putting more effort into looking after it.  I was chatting with a friend the other day who observed that I needed to keep working as long as I could just to pay for all the specialists working on my body - the osteopath, chiropractor, physio etc etc

As we get older lots of things that we used to take for granted with our bodies do start to change, metabolism slows down, muscles start to decay, joints become stiffer and everything then becomes much more effort.  However it does not have to be that way.  You can make a decision today to look after your sole life machine even better than you do your car.  You can make a decision to service it every day with exercise, to keep it operating smoothly with regular stretching, to give it the best fuels to run with by eating and drinking well and to pep up that metabolic rate through regular aerobic workouts.  You sole life machine will reward you for this by giving you better performance every day and you can then give it a polish with a treat like a day out, new experience or just some relaxation time.

So when did you last go for your well woman or well man MOT?  Ring your GP today and get it booked then draw up your body servicing and maintenance plan to follow.  And if you need more motivation just keep reading this blog and of course BlogPositive.

Resisting progress

Resistance is futile, progress will overtake all of us eventually and we will be dragged kicking and screaming into the present.  As we get older though we frequently retreat under that warm comfort blanket of the things we know and trust.  This can be because in our great experience of the world we have found that embracing new stuff sometimes gets our fingers burnt.  You remember that you tried that new supermarket and they didn't have your favourite tea or any natural yoghurt.  You buy a new phone as I did, only to find it doesn't do half the stuff that my old one did and the software is painfully slow (Nokia 5500 versus 5140i).

However we tend to dwell on these bad experiences which then causes reluctance to try other new things.  And its only by dipping into that great cornucopia of new opportunites, new experiences, new relationships and new things out there that we continue to grow and enrich our lives.  The brain makes new connections when it encounters something new and an adapting brain is an active brain so by doing new things you will improve your mental fitness.

I have had new software on my desk for months and have been putting off loading it cos I knew I'd have to learn new ways to drive it and it might not work the same way as the old version.  I finally did it about two weeks ago and it has changed my life (sorry does that sounds really sad!).  Now working in Outlook 2003 it sweeps the 100 or so daily spam email messages away into a separate folder so I never even see them.  its saved me loads of time and effort.

So where are you resisting progress?  What are the areas in your life where you think you are too old to move on?  What new things are you going to do this coming week to change that?  Where in your life is it time to upgrade to a new version?

The shifting horizon

Today I was chatting to my neighbours as we were packing up their house.  In their search for somewhere new they had been shown some "old folks" houses, as they put it.  They are both drawing a pension although I don't know how old they are.  What we then began to talk about was how we neither of us had got to a position of considering ourselves to be old.  It was like a continually shifting horizon.  When you are a young child you consider your parents to be old but then when you reach their age you certainly don't feel old and then in your twenties you might consider those over 50 or 60 to be old.  But when you get there yourself again it doesn't feel like that.

You are the age you are and only you can decide if you should feel old.  Its interesting how what we feel, how we think and our behaviours and activities are all linked.  So if you decide that you will think and act like a "youngster" then you will certainly feel like that as well.  And remember that no-one can make you feel old.  You control your feelings so if you have decided to feel old today then thats just fine cos tomorrow you can decide to feel young or intelligent or confident or excited or any one of a host of positive feelings that you know of as you have experienced them in the past.  And if you have already experienced it you can do it again.

So go on, decide to feel any age you want today and see how the people around you react.