STOP Believing In What Is Aging You

Who or what do you believe is doing the dirty deed of aging you? Family? Life? Circumstances? Politics? All of the above?

It happens.

Somewhere around the middle of life, things start happening that make us feel older than we want to believe we are. You know the things I mean. We all know the things I mean.

Little things.

Big things.

Things we keep to ourselves, but wonder who else notices.

Aches and pains that have no business annoying our once pristine bodies.

Those same once pristine bodies . . no longer quite so pristine as we once imagined. A little less elastic. A little more lined. Different look. Different feel. Still ours.

Losses. Illness. The death of a parent. Reminders of our own frailty, our own mortality.

A mailed invitation to join AARP. The gall of those people!

You get the drift.

Without so much as a smirk in our direction, they happen. And pretty soon, if we aren’t careful, we start believing them, don’t we?

And if we’re too busy looking the other way to pay attention, we start to feel like something is aging us – without our permission – before our very own eyes!

It seems like the lines of a bad movie, but there we are . . not old, but not nearly so sure of ourselves as we were in youth.

Control. Aren’t we supposed to be the ones in control of things?

What’s happening here? What’s going on!

Oh come on now. You’re smarter than that.

Beliefs Are In A Conspiracy With Time

What’s going on is that, at some point, more years lie behind you than ahead. You aren’t so young as you once were. Neither am I.

But that’s just time, right? Why do we give so much power to time? Why do we let time age us? We’re more than time would have us think, aren’t we?

Then again, is time really what you think is aging you? Or is it the lack of time . . the lessening of time . . the lessening of the time you believe you have left?

And so what if it is? What might that mean to you? And what effect might your response to the lessening of your time have on how others respond to you – how others age you?

Think back a little, if you would. Think back to your youth, and remember how those in their middle years looked at us. What do you remember seeing in their eyes as they compared our youth to their middle years . . as they blamed us for aging them?

In some ways, very little has changed.

Young people see it even if you refuse to. They not only see it, they know how to use it . . just as we used to.

It’s in the disregard they show you. Not ignoring. Just not paying attention.

It’s in the way they raise their voices when they talk to you – even though you can hear them perfectly well at their normal volume. Or can you? Are you somehow less if you can’t?

You compensate well, but perhaps not that well.

It’s in what you believe about them . . the world . . and your relationship to them and the world . . and how you treat them and the world.

It’s in what you believe about yourself, now . . the judgments . . the attitudes . . the beliefs that no longer hold up to the light of day as well as they once did. Then again, maybe you just see them differently now. Maybe you’re starting to realize that they never really held up to the light of day at all.

It’s in all the things you were once so sure of, that no longer seem so certain. Other things have taken their place, haven’t they? A worry. A fear of what may lie ahead.

When did you become so insecure about . . everything? When did those insecurities begin to age you?

When did your own beliefs begin to age you?

You know what I’m talking about:

All those beliefs you’re carrying around about how much you resemble your mother and her father in not the best ways . .

And how that can never change . . just as . .

Looking back . . you can remember thinking that certain relationships, jobs, financial involvements were doomed to failure for whatever reasons you cooked up – and so they did fail, just like you believed they would . .

And that crap about how you just weren’t meant to be happy . . so why bother.

Sure. Right.

When did you stop trusting yourself to know what was best for you? When did you start believing others knew better – about you – than you?

When did you give up control? And why are you now complaining because someone else has more of it than you . . unless, of course, you like things the way they are?

Midlife is a crazy time.

Everything’s shifting positions on you. Beliefs you once felt so comfortable holding, now seem to back you into corners you didn’t even realize were there. I know. It’s happening to me as well.

So what do you do?

Take Back Control of Your Beliefs

Well, let me just suggest something for you to consider:

If a belief isn’t serving you, STOP believing it.

It really IS that simple.

We believe things about ourselves and others and the rest of the world for very good reason . . mostly to protect us in one way or other.

There comes a time, though, when we no longer need the protection. There comes a time when the protection does us more harm than good.

There comes a time when it’s time to STOP believing in everybody else’s stuff, and remember that your beliefs are your own. You get to choose what and who to believe . . as well as what and who to believe in.

So far as I’m concerned, any belief you hold that gives someone else or something else the power to make you feel less in control of your life than you know you are – that gives them the power to “age you” – is long past due for being dropped like the sad potato it is.

If a belief isn’t serving you, STOP believing it.

It really IS that simple.

Of course, you’re welcome to take it or leave it . . whatever you believe is best for you.

.   .   .   .   .

What beliefs are tripping up your midlife? Who, or what, are you blaming for the havoc they’re wreaking? What are you going to do about that? I’d love to hear from you.

Keep growing my friend,
Gail

Tagged as: Aging, attitudes, beliefs, control, judgments, Midlife, time