When you first look in a mirror and see an old  person staring back at you,  your breathe catches. Challenges your Emotional Intelligence. What to do? Read on.

As of 2013, the living members are all in their mid-sixties or older. Like the Energizer Bunny, they keep going. Staying active keeps you feeling young, if not actually younger.

Emotional Fitness TRAINING Thoughts

On getting ready to turn 80, Oliver Sachs noted: 

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”)

The years pile up no matter what we do to stay young.  Staying emotionally strong, however, puts you more in Oliver’s camp.

Emotional Training Training Tips Related to Aging

Tip one: Accept reality.  The harder you fight to deny your age, the harder you eventually fall.  Trying to be twenty when you are forty not only doesn’t work, but all too often makes you the subject of jokes.

Tip two: While accepting reality, make the best of your current age.  Life is full of stage:  Infancy, Child, Adolescent, Young Adult, Adult, Middle Age,  Elderly, Frail Elderly, End of Life.

Each stage holds  good and bad.  Knowing what patterns are most common for what age and stage reduces stress.  Lots of articles about Age and Stage can be obtained through your  search engine.

Tip three: Set and work toward realistic goals.

Tip four: Have a mission that focuses on making the world better, particularly your part of the world better.

Tip five: Stay active, physically and mentally.  Practicing EFTI’s Twelve Easy Exercises helps here.  You can try three now.

Remember now is all we have which is why it is called The Present. Make sure each day include some presents just for you.  Each day needs to find you indulge in a healthy pleasure, laughing, playing, and being with beauty.

Thank you for all you do.

Katherine

Image by The Week.

P.S. This post was inspired by the Daily Prompt which suggested:  Tell us about a time when everything seemed to be going wrong — and then, suddenly, you knew it would be alright.  I didn’t quite stick to the subject, but almost.

Related Articles and Links

• The Art of Aging Gracefully  (WebMD.com)
• The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.) – NYTimes.com
  
• 7 Signs Your Parents Are Acting Too Young – humor -(Sparknotes.com)
• Erickson’s Eight Stages of Life  (Examiner.com)