If you are getting old before your time, it could be all in your mind…

I had a rather astonishing experience today that proves it! I was at a relative’s home and was introduced to a couple. They were also related to them and had stopped by for a visit as they were traveling through town.

Very nice people

By their appearance and demeanor I thought they were close to the same age as my relative’s who is in his seventies. I didn’t think much about it until some time after we left and my wife Gwen dropped a bombshell on me…

“She was younger than me…”

What?…

“And he is younger than you”

I was totally blown away. It couldn’t possibly be true.

That couple had to be in their late sixties or early seventies. What Gwen was saying is that they looked twenty to thirty years older than they actually were!

Did they suffer from some immense personal hardships or stress or disease?

None she could think of. So what could possibly account for what I had seen and experienced? Obviously Gwen and I continued our conversation. This was not the kind of thing you experience everyday… or is it? How many people do you run into on a daily basis who look and act 20 or more years older than they really are? …and you have no way of knowing!

For many years, I have professed a belief that people will adapt to the mental image they have of themselves. Their bodies will age prematurely because their thinking process and belief system buys into a series of compromises (over time) that literally drains the vitality out of their lives.

They become old because they believe they are old.

What going on here?

If there is a predisposition within a family culture that reaching a certain age means you are going to look and act a certain way, those unaware of the long-term conditioning to their expectations will simply become what they’ve been programmed to be.

One of the next big breakthroughs in “our understanding” of the aging process is going to be that our expectation and apprehension about aging may be the single greatest cause of the physical manifestation of age on our appearance.

In other words our attitude can slow time down or speed it up. You always become what you believe.

Just look in the mirror.

-Bob Baran