When you do young things like laughing, dancing or making love, you send a message to your body that you are young and this slows down how you age. The younger you feel and act, the more you lower your biological age. In 2010, Harvard psychologist Dr Ellen Langer took a group of celebrities to a retreat for a BBC programme. The retreat was furnished from 1980, all the magazines, radio shows and TV programmes were from the 80s and each person wore a badge of themselves from 1980. Before leaving, the group underwent tests to determine their age including grip, vision, hearing, balance, hormones and muscle strength. The group then spent a week living as if it was 30 years earlier. Everything going on around them was engineered to enable them to act as they had 30 years ago, subconsciously tricking themselves to believe they were younger. After seven days, they took the same tests again… and all had reversed their age by a minimum of seven to ten years and had a new lease of life. When asked to describe what had happened they reported forgetting they were older and as a result they physically grew younger!
These experiments show how your beliefs determine how you age. If you think and act old, you grow old prematurely, whereas when you think and act younger, you remain younger, physically and mentally. Every thought you think has a physical effect on your body – think of eating and you create digestive enzymes. Thinking about and seeing yourself as younger sends a message to your body that is replicated in every cell, conditioning (tricking) your mind to delay ageing. As your mind believes everything you tell it, and acts on those words, don’t use ageing language such as: ‘I’m too old to wear that’, or ‘I can’t do that at my age’. If you want to be part of the ‘new old age’ use words like youthful, vibrant, full of life and vitality. Instead of ‘I look old’ which is seen by the mind as permanent, say ‘I look tired’ which your mind accepts as temporary and overcome by sleeping.
You can also trick your mind into staying young by continuing to learn new things throughout life. Doing new things and different things keeps your brain elastic, sharp and finely-tuned. You only age when you stop doing new things so embrace newness and change and you will stay mentally younger, this in turn keeps you physically younger. Keep your memory and thinking sharp by reading your paper and doing crosswords on your iPad, use Skype, Instagram and Twitter as this will keep your mind in peak condition because anything new boosts your brainpower and slows down ageing.
Taking control of how you age is easy, simple and painless. Change negative patterns, and habits that accelerate ageing by making small adjustments that give you lasting results and can add many active years to your life. If you want to look and feel younger you don’t have to spend a fortune to hold onto your looks just change your mind and this time next year you can be physically younger than you are today.
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