FOUR WAYS TO EMBRACE THE AGING PROCESS
By Fonya Lord Helm, PhD, ABPP
One. Get Interested in the Process of Aging.
Instead of secretly hoping aging will never happen to us, we need to get interested in the whole topic. In fact, we start dying as soon as we are born, and we are genetically programmed for cell death. We need to get used to the idea and embrace the process. It is a normal process and everybody goes through it. However, partly because of our growth in the early years, we have the illusion that growth is what happens and growth should continue. Happily, in some ways, it does, but there is also an ever-present process of winding down. When we are very young children, we see dead animals and we begin to puzzle about and worry about old age and death. As we learn more, we discover ways that work for us to enjoy life while we cope with challenges and learn how to value the process of getting older.
Two. Taking Good Care of the Body
When we are children, we need healthy outdoor activities—something not so easy to get now, since schools don’t have much of a recess and most children don’t walk to school anymore. Physical activities have to come either very early in the morning or later in the day and on weekends. As a grownup, when we take the time to take good care of our bodies, we do not have as much time to get work done, if we have a sedentary job, but we work more efficiently when we get enough exercise. It’s a balance. If we have a physically demanding job, we have the problem of figuring out how to avoid overuse of certain muscles and injuries when you can, and how to take care of them when we can’t. Either way, our bodies need attention and at every age, our bodies need enough rest and good food.
Three. Stimulate the Mind. Our minds need activity, too, so learning and growth can be stimulated. These activities need to be fun. Anything that causes us to think about something more deeply is good, and we can test our ideas in conversation and fine-tune them. The activities need to be interesting and demand our full attention, even challenge us. Examples are a really good book, or a TV show, that makes us think. Jokes and stories that we can share in our relationships with our friends are good, too. What we take into our minds is what we think about and what we become. When what we take in is of high quality, we grow and understand other people and life’s challenges more deeply.
Fourth. Develop the Spiritual and Creative Part. Here is where we can appreciate the beauty of the natural world, great works of art, great books, mystical experiences and spiritual ideas. Our deep friendships with others help this part of us gain greater understanding of the needs of others. We are reaching for something outside ourselves. We can access and feed our true selves with spiritual experiences and practices. Our creativity feeds our true selves, too–that special part of us that is hidden away and can’t be described in words. It is in our deep unconscious and has a relationship with universal forces, forces that are sometimes expressed in terms of religious experiences and even in paranormal experiences. These kinds of experiences are very powerful and can be life-changing.
