The Third Age is Here – Can You Control How You Age?

Eventually we all reach that point. When you’re a child, you can’t wait for a birthday to arrive. You’ll even add half a year on to your age when people ask how old you are, all in your rush to grow up. As the years progress, the time arrives when you finally realize enough is enough.

You don’t want anymore. No more birthdays, thank you very much.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to do just that? To turn back the clock, or perhaps just slow it down?

The solution may be not be in the form of a wonder drug or some scientific breakthrough, but instead in simply a matter of perspective. A way of looking at things that can actually change your life.

It wasn’t that long ago that “age roles” were as set in stone as gender roles. Your teens were for school. The twenties were for college and establishing a career and marriage. By your thirties, you should be raising a family.

We followed these guidelines because that was how it was done. By the time we hit our sixties, it was time for us to start thinking about retirement.

That may have worked for our grandparents, maybe even our parents if they were lucky, but with the economics of today, many of us simply can’t afford to retire in our sixties.

There’s good news.

Thanks to advances in science and better health and nutrition, many people in their sixties, seventies, and even eighties aren’t ready to give up the life they’ve always known and quietly live out their days.

It’s not simply a matter of their bodies being in better physical condition. In their minds, they don’t feel like the feeble geriatrics society often expects them to be.

Scientists discovered a distinct connection between aging and mental health. Understanding the balance between the two can help you control your age and keep you young at heart, if not in body, for the rest of your life.

It’s surprisingly simple.

We all will grow old and have to deal with what that does to our bodies. However, how we prepare for aging and mental health has a great deal on what its affects will be.

Regular exercise, good nutrition, and healthy meals all keep your body fit and toned. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder, but a normal exercise routine, enough to keep you in shape, is enough.

Think of your body as a car. If you want it to be a classic, looking shiny decades from now, you need to do regular maintenance.

The rest is state of mind, of understanding that age truly is just a number.

There are people in their early twenties who drag themselves to work and through their daily lives every day, unable to see past the pure drudgery they surround themselves with. Their generation often feels “ill” and takes more medication for random problems than our grandparents took in their old age.

Yet there are other people in their seventies or eighties – perhaps dealing with chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart problems – who still go about every day with a spring in their step. They are happy with life and the world around them.

They are living every moment to the fullest and making a choice to enjoy it.

You know how old you are. Many people have lists of things they would like to do but might think it is too late. That the time to experience new things or places is for the young and their chance has passed them by. Why should age matter?

Imagine yourself at eighty. Are you smiling, laughing, and ready to meet each new day with anticipation? Do you have friends and hobbies? Are you keeping your mind sharp?

If that is not how you picture yourself in your elderly years – this is your chance to make a change. Choose the road to a youthful future. Embracing each new day as part of a grand adventure affects your mental health and it directly impacts your physical well-being as well.

Thinking about aging may seem daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to. Life isn’t less simply because we age. It is what we make it. Imagine laughing at a joke your great-grandchild tells you. It sounds better already, doesn’t it?