“Life is beautiful, and longer every day. Part one”. was originally pubished on Sep 6 2019, but now has a video version. You can watch the available videos in the Vlog section, or directly in my Youtube Channel https://youtu.be/kRofwzmkuXM
The 2019 special edition of Time Magazine’s “The Science of Living Longer” was sent to me by a close friend. He knows alternative ways of living and as thus ageing interest me. I think back to when I turned 40 and the mother of a friend, who was overweight and struggling to walk, told me that I was now entering the best decade of my life because it had been her best decade. I know the intention was good and little did she know that she startled me! Were they here already? The best years of my life!
Now that I have become a Neuro-linguistic programmer, I know how to reprogram myself when things like that are put into my brain and so it doesn’t matter too much. The declarations I hear don´t necessarily have to become my belief. I’m programming myself to be the oldest woman alive the day I die. This way I don’t limit myself with a number. And I will enjoy life as much as I can until this day. With all that it sends my way, with grief, pain and disappointments but also love, laughter and happiness and hopeful with more wisdom after each decade. As Jane Fonda says “ageing is not a downwards sloping hill, it is an upward ascending spiral to wisdom”. I also much adhere to the statement by the British/American anthropologist Ashley Montagu “the goal is to die young but as late as possible.” He became 94 and for a man born in 1905 that in itself is extraordinary.
As we can read in Time magazine “In less than a century, more years were added to life expectancy than in all the years added across all previous millennia of evolution combined”. Just pause for a moment and think about that statement! That is incredible and wonderful news. We do have to prepare for it, we have to reprogram our entire society to take advantage of this and it begins with reprogramming our children and ourselves. Just think about how this will change the way we plan for life. Our education and relationships there is no rush. The only thing we have to think about is our capability of reproduction if we want to have children. Because as we can learn in the Time Magazine 2019 issue on this subject “Although we were and remain little different genetically from our ancestors 10,000 years ago, the working capacity of our vital organs has improved greatly. Average body size has increased. We have grown taller, and our brains have come to process information faster”.
I myself am telling my daughter there is no rush that there is time. Just imagine the life expectancy our children will have. So not only do I have to be a model for her as a free woman, I also have to show her the way to a healthy life, habits, diet, physical and mental health and a different economy because she will have to last so much longer. So we don’t only have to think about taking care of our planet we also have to think about taking care of ourselves and prepare for a longer life. As Time Magazine puts it “Long-lived societies appeared so suddenly that culture—the crucible that holds science and technology along with wide-scale behavioural practices and social norms—has not caught up.” And “The challenge we face today is converting a world built quite literally by and for the young into a world that supports and engages populations that live to 100 years and beyond. This is no small feat”.
So the longevity is not just for 50+, (I don’t know any longer what is middle age, so I can’t write that) our future generations will have to engage as their future becomes longer. And as we can learn in Time magazine our society is getting older, for the first time in US history in 2012 there were more people who were 65 and above than there were new births.
There is so much more for me to write about from the Time Magazine on ageing and I will, it is a 100 pages long and you can read it yourself.
However, I want to stay within the format of my blog that has given me my many faithful readers all over the world a format one of my readers calls “small pills easy to apply” So my plan is to present to you a few blogs on this issue.
I hope you are as happy as you would like to be and remember it is for free to be kind.
Best wishes,
Ivalo Okking
Oh, just in case you want to keep in touch… Coaching vital is also in facebook, twitter and instagram!
Amazon link to the magazine, if you want to read the complete text.