Aging is a blessing to be celebrated. It’s different for everyone, but we all are offered an opportunity to create the life of our dreams.
Let’s start with a visualization exercise. Close your eyes and picture your life at 90 years old. Take a moment to picture your day-to-day life. What does life look like? Are you physically and mentally strong? Are you active and enjoying time with friends and family? Or are you withdrawn from social and physical activity?
Visualization is imagining in great detail the feeling of successfully completing a task. It’s a shortcut to success because the brain is incapable of telling the difference between real success and vividly imagined success. It convinces us that not only are we capable of performing in the imagined way, but we’ve actually performed in that way many times already.
This can be an incredibly powerful tool for reprogramming your belief system when it comes to healthy and active aging. Visualize yourself growing stronger, not weaker, as you age; becoming more active, more social, more flexible, more resilient. If your mind believes it, so will your body. Visualize yourself saying “Yes!” to opportunity, taking calculated risks, making new friends, finding new love. Visualization is a proven shortcut to the life that you want.
If you struggle to look at aging through a prism of positivity and possibility, our friends at Growing Bolder are here to help with examples of real people who can show us all what is possible. They’ve interviewed hundreds of active nonagenarians and centenarians, those in their 90’s and 100’s, whose stories have inspired countless others. Growing Bolder refers to them as their “Rock Stars of Aging,” and the good news is we all can become one.
Here are a few examples:
Two decades after retiring from a career as an occupational therapist, Barbara Beskind, at age 90, emailed the CEO of a design firm saying she was interested in designing products for our aging population. She quickly became the oldest employee in youth-obsessed Silicon Valley specializing in product solutions for the elderly. She's now 100 and told Growing Bolder, "I finally achieved my childhood dream of becoming a designer, it just took 80 years."
Mae Laborde always wanted to become an actress but life interrupted – marriage, kids, careers. At the age of 93, she decided it was finally time. So, she got in her car, drove to Hollywood and got an agent. She was soon going on auditions and was hired for multiple roles on television shows and in commercials. Mae was a working actress in demand until shortly before her death at the age of 102.
Frieda Lefebre was in her 20s when she drew a simple portrait of her 5-year-old daughter. Seven decades later, a fellow resident in her senior living community saw the drawing and asked, "Who did that?" Frieda replied, "I did." To which her friend said, "That's pretty good." And that's all it took -- one sentence of encouragement. Frieda began art classes at age 76 and when she was 101, she had her first one-woman gallery show. Frieda painted up until her death at age 103.
So, how can you live more like these “Rock Stars of Aging?” Embrace a positive attitude. Find a purpose that keeps you going, each and every day. Keep moving, stay socially active, and stay curious – find new things to learn and new things to experience.
This mentality is especially key during life’s transitions. Whether you are just looking to downsize your home, relocate across the country, join an active adult community or even help a loved one in their journey to an assisted living facility, we can all embrace change like a “Rock Star of Aging.”
It can be extremely beneficial to lean on those who have helped thousands of others during these periods of change before, like our Caring Transitions senior relocation experts. They know how stressful relocating, downsizing and more can be, and they also know how important it is in order to create the future you want most. They’ll handle everything from creating a plan, facilitating an estate sale or online auction on CTBids, decluttering your home and doing all the physical labor of a move so that you can spend your time doing the things you love with the people you love.