We All Age but We Don’t Have to Get Old

On January 8th I launched what I call my “90 Day Super Quest”. That quest is my ambitious goal to get myself into the best possible physical and mental shape of my entire life!  My birthday lands on the 90th day of this quest–and I turn the big 70 this year!

I am a week into my “super quest” and I’m right on schedule with my workouts which include tennis, weight lifting, sit-ups, push-ups and stretching.  As for the mental side of my quest, I’ve been doing pretty good keeping up with reading, writing, making new friends and spending lots of time with old friends as well as my family, of course.  But, I’ve noticed a problem.  It’s that old demon … that negative inner self-talk.  Since I’ve set the 90 day goal I’ve been way too focused on my age and the fact that I am getting older. That number 70 has dominated the chatterbox inside my head and not in a positive way.

However, today, I just happened to pick up a book that I’ve read and written about many times and it flopped open to page 55 where the word “aging” jumped out at me.  It’s the book that Susan Jeffers wrote entitled Feel the Fear and Beyond. This is the follow up book to Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Here’s what she says about aging and what your inner voice should NOT be saying about the subject:

“I am getting older now.  Aging is horrible. I wish my body were young again.  Look at those wrinkles.  Who could love a face that’s old? I hate it. Pretty soon no one will want to be around me.  When I was young, I could dance all night.  Now I don’t have the energy.  Why do people have to age?  I wish I could be young forever.”

And here is what she says we should be saying to ourselves:

“I love aging.  My children are grown and now I’m free to do the thing I put off doing.  I’m glad I joined the gym.  I don’t think I’ve ever been in such great shape.  I’m going to learn all I can about keeping myself in the best of health.  I have so much to look forward to.  I learn and grow every day of my life.  I wouldn’t want to go back one day.  Why would I want to go back?”

With all my focus on hitting 70, that number became set in my head, like a heavy, unmovable, concrete block.  I have now realized that I need to get rid of that and ask myself the question that I used to ask so often, something we all should probably ask ourselves whenever we think about aging: “How old would I say I am if I didn’t know?”.  When I ask myself this question I can honestly say I come up with the answer of 44.  So I guess on April 8th I will be in the best physical and mental shape of my life as a 45 year old. That sounds pretty good to me!

 

The Self-Forgiveness Experiement

 

OK let’s explore the “What the Hell” effect I mentioned last week and the research that was done about self-forgiveness as it affects your future behavior and success or failure. The “What the Hell” effect was first coined by dieting researchers Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman. Quoting from Kelly McGonigal’s book The Willpower Instinct, “These researchers noticed that many dieters would feel so bad about any lapse even if was just a piece of pizza or a bite of cake that they felt as if their whole diet was blown. Instead of minimizing the harm by not taking another bite, they would say, ‘What the hell, I already blew my diet. I might as well eat the whole thing.’”

Kelly goes on to recount the circumstances and outcome of an experiment on this behavior. “The two psychologists invited weight-watching women into the laboratory, then encouraged them to eat doughnuts and candy in the name of science. These researchers had an intriguing hypothesis about how to break the what-the-hell cycle. If guilt sabotages self-control, they thought, then maybe the opposite of guilt would support self-control. Their unlikely strategy: Make half these doughnut-eating dieters feel better about giving in.”

The women in the study were asked to finish off a doughnut then they had the women drink enough water to feel full. In the next step, the researchers divided the women into two groups giving the first group “a special message to relieve their guilt” while the second group were not told anything about going easy on themselves.

These same women were then served three large bowls of candy and asked to sample each candy and rate it. They could eat as much or as little as they liked. The idea was that if the women still felt guilty about eating the doughnut, they would likely say to themselves, ‘I already broke the diet, so what does it matter if I inhale these Skittles?’

After this taste test the candy bowls were all weighed to see what group ate the most. The results? “The women who received the special self-forgiving message ate only 28 grams of candy, compared with 70 grams by the women who were not encouraged to forgive themselves,” Kelly reports.

Wow, when you think about the overall implications of this experiment they are absolutely huge! Just forgiving yourself can be life changing. If you are paying attention and directing all or at least as most of that “self-talk” and “chatterbox” toward cutting yourself some slack, you would certainly be able to stay on track with your goals, even when you slip here and there. Just give yourself tons of forgiveness and watch your life get better and better by the day.

 

Live in the Now: Be Free of the Past and the Future

I hope you had a chance to read last week’s blog and have been practicing keeping aware of every moment and accepting it for what it is. Now here are a few hints that can help anyone to live in the moment or in the right now more readily and constantly. At least they have helped me and I hope they can do the same thing for you.

1. Be free of unease. Make a conscious effort to monitor your thoughts and feelings by constantly asking “What is going on in my mind right now?” Halt any worrying questions about the past or the future.

2. See if in those monitored moments you can catch yourself complaining in speech or thought. If so, you are probably “playing the victim”. Calmly silence that kind of chatter.

3. Always remember that to complain is not accepting of “what is” and it’s usually something that is in the past or something you anticipate that will happen in the future. Either do something about your complaint or accept it.

4. As you move, as you play or as you work, do it totally in the great “right now” as if this one moment is all there is and all you want.

It’s interesting to note that many times, even when a person is engaged in an activity that is meant to be fun and enjoyable, it can be ruined or at least diminished by what the brain is doing or not doing. I’ve noticed for example, that many times when I am playing a tennis match–especially in a tournament–that the more I think about a bad shot that I just made or wonder if I might be able to win this particular game or set I find myself not enjoying this game that I play in order to have fun. Plus I notice that when I am having thoughts about the recent past (the bad shot) or the future (if I can win this game, set, or match) I usually don’t play near as well as I know that I can. So I am losing in two ways—first, I am no longer having fun and second, I end up losing the match. That’s pretty dumb, don’t you agree? And it doesn’t have to be that way, not if I just work on training my brain to live “in the now” and I mean that “right this moment now”!

It’s certainly ok and even fun to recall and reminisce over good and fun times of the past and it’s quite necessary to do some planning and goal setting for the future but the key is, don’t spend the majority of your time in those two places. For maximum peace of mind, pleasure, and feeling of fulfillment, spends most of your life in the great “right now”. Make “the now” the primary focus of your life.

 

Life Lessons for People Young and Old

A few nights ago I presented 2 Cottonwood High School Senior scholarships. 27 years ago I set up the Kristin Haroldsen scholarship fund in honor and in memory of my daughter Kristin, who died suddenly at age 16 from an eating disorder.  I told the 400 or so high school seniors and parents how shocking and painful it was to lose a child and sadly a few families already knew from experience the deep sorrow parents, families and friends suffer.

But then I tried to explain the huge “life lesson” I learned from that tragedy. And yes, it took years for me to learn this big life lesson.  I tried to convey to the audience and especially these wonderful young, senior high school students what I consider the great secret of a happy, fulfilling and productive life. Here are those 2 messages:

LIFE’S BIG LESSON:  It’s not what happens to you during your life but how you react or respond to what happens to you. You have to remember that whatever happens, you have choices and you determine the quality of your life by the choices you make.

LIFE’S BIG SECRET:  To have a happy, fulfilling and productive life, you must monitor, control and program your self-talk and constantly make positive affirmations to yourself, inside your head. Talk  to yourself by saying simple things like,

“I can handle any situation.”

“I am happy and healthy.”

“I am positive and upbeat.”

“My life is working out beautifully.”

“I love people and I listen to them.”

Based on the many comments I received later that night from these wonderful teenagers I think they got the message, The real key, however, is how long they will remember it and live by it. That goes for their parents too. And for you and me!

Making Friends with Your Inner Voice

Someone once said if you want to change your life, you need to change your thinking. Yes, most people have heard that and agree but changing your thinking is not an easy task. There are, however, some subtle but very powerful forces inside your brain that can work for you or against you. Sadly too many people don’t recognize it or at least if they do they don’t know how to direct those forces for their own huge benefit. This powerful force has various names and it can be the best thing in your life but it also can be very sneaky in sabotaging you.

This force is often called your “inner voice”. It also has been called self-talk or even your inner chatterbox. Some would say it’s just your sub-conscious. Others would say it’s God talking to you. The good news–or should I say even great news–is that regardless of the source, many super successful people have learned how to use and direct that inner voice and it has enhanced their life almost beyond words. Using and directing your inner voice to improve your life doesn’t happen overnight and even after you become very good at self-talk directing, you need to stay ever aware of that chatterbox inside your head and continue to step in and keep the self-talk positive so you continue to move toward your life goals.

We talked about this a bit last year but I thought this was about the time of year we could all use a reminder of this. We set goals at the beginning of the year. We’ve taken the first steps, perhaps made some progress but it is about now that the hard parts are coming up or we’ve hit a few snags and are starting to get discouraged. Remember, that negative talk is just your inner voice trying to talk you down because it’s getting difficult. But hey, the most fulfilling accomplishments are those you come to after overcoming the hard stuff, right?

So turn any negative talk into positive, supportive self-talk. Think of that inner voice as your cheerleader, the voice that will keep you going, remind you of why you are doing what you are doing and will help you get through the more challenging tasks. It’s always easier to move forward when you have good, positive friends along. Why not make your inner voice one of those friends?

 

Willpower Awareness

So, as I was mentioning last week, I have this goal to be in the best shape of my life. There is no reason that I can’t achieve my goals. But it will take a lot of work and dedication. That is the issue—not whether I can achieve this but keeping with the program.

I was just 10 days into my new program when I found myself breaking some of my work out and eating goals. Ouch! That pissed me off at myself. Not sticking with my goals was the bad news but there was good news and its news that can help anybody who is serious about setting and sticking with their goals.

What I did was to go back to that great book by Kelly McGonigal PhD, “The Willpower Instinct: How Self Control Works, Why it Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It”. I have this habit of skipping around in books to quickly find the real gems and in doing that I often miss key points. This was one such book. To my great delight, this time around I discovered a few critical secrets that I totally missed before.

I am going to give you just a couple of her gems starting this week and then adding to them in the next week or two. Kelly’s advises readers to try only one new strategy per week so here are a couple options.

1. Get To Know Yourself: Know when and where and why you are likely to give up on your goal. You must be able to see how and why you stop short. So this week I am going to work on becoming more aware of when I am making choices related to my will power. I think it is quite reassuring to know that everyone struggles in some way with temptation, addiction, distraction and procrastination. These are not weaknesses but simply part of the human condition and something we can work on.

2. Pay Attention to How You Talk to Yourself About Your Willpower: What do you say to yourself when you procrastinate and how do you judge your willpower shortcomings and successes?

Put just one of these ideas into practice. Once you become more aware of where the temptation is coming from and what you tell yourself that gives you permission to give up, you will be better able to halt that behavior and stick to your goals.

Check back next week for another couple great ideas.

Tiny Moments for Powerful Affirmation

Lately I’ve been blogging a bit about the life changing power of directing and controlling the chatterbox inside your head. So now I thought it would be helpful to give some specifics of how I have been practicing this inner-self talk.

For years I’ve had a morning hot tub time routine. I stretch and let the water jets work the kinks out of my lower back and neck, silently counting the number of seconds I hold each position. So a few weeks ago, there I was in my hot tub counting away and suddenly I thought “Hey wait a minute. Why not use this hot tub time to practice my positive affirmations?” (Or my “PA’s” as I like to call them.) So now I repeat “I’m strong and worthy” 50 or 100 times instead of counting seconds. Then I change positions and silently repeat in my head multiple times “I am healthy and happy”.

It’s amazing what this little exercise can do to help you in your daily life and it can be done in odd spare moments. It’s something you can do while waiting in line at the store, on your drive to work, as you shower, etc. Even in the middle of a busy, stressful day you can steal a moment at your desk to do some deep breathing and PAs (and on such days, this will really help!) I do PAs specific to my task all the time now. For instance, when I am playing a tennis match, I run through my physical and tennis PA’s as I play and between points.

Next week, I’ll share even more specific PAs and help you keep a focus on them until they become a habit. If you missed the articles about PAs, see the list at the end of this blog and start practicing this simple but powerful little exercise and see for yourself how it can really improve your life and how you see it!

Take Control of Your Internal Chatter

In my singles match against a strong player at the Huntsman World Senior Games this last week, I found my internal dialogue turning very negative and as it did, so did my game. I was playing terribly–double faults, mis-hits, into to the net, etc. I just stunk.

In the first tie breaker, I found myself down 4-2. It was then that I said to myself, “You’ve got to get positive here or you’re going to lose.” So I pushed the negative thoughts aside and, sure enough, I won the next 5 points and the first set. During the second set I consciously kept my internal chatter much more positive and as a result my game was also consistently better.

The way we talk to ourselves is so very important in everything we do in life. If you say to yourself just before going in front of a microphone, “I am not going to do well today”, your subconscious hears you and, yep, you’ll probably blow the presentation.

And it’s not just the negativity. It’s also the language we use. Studies have been done that show when, for instance, a tennis player says to themselves “I just can’t double fault”, a huge percentage of people will go ahead and double fault. This is because the mind sees the most descriptive part of that thought, the act of double faulting, and ends up subconsciously focusing on that potential, just as it does when you think negatively.

So be careful and pay attention to all that chatter inside your brain. When you’re in the moment, push the negative out and imagine only the positive.

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