Lifestyle

Healthy Aging doesn’t come easy when you have built a lifetime of habits, from Grandma’s apple pie recipes full of sugar to believing that retirement means to stop being busy and become stationary at home.

Do you know that it takes quite a lot to create a new habit? Or to dull the old one so that you don’t automatically go to what your brain feels is easy and comfortable? We have so many pathways in our brains leading us to the experiences we have recreated over and over to perfect an action or thought. Such as driving or sitting in our favorite chair and reaching for the remote. Brushing our teeth with the same motion and yes, our negative or positive thought patterns. These are all pathways that we can call “habits”. A connection of brain neurons and synapses that continually fire to get us to the end result. When you played a sport, you were strengthening these pathways. When you stopped, the pathways weakened.

It takes considerable effort to change these pathways once they have been solid for years. That is why, as we age, it seems a bit harder to change a habit. But the difference in the superager is that there is motivation and determination to learn a better way. By this time in our lives, we are learning that we may have neglected our own care and it is time to take care of ourselves. That means learning about a new healthy habit and then applying the practice it to make it solid.

This can take up to 12 weeks to develop strong synapses in the brain. But every single day it will be necessary to practice to keep it up. You are working against forces that were created way back when you were a child. Imagine how strong those pathways are to the smell of grandma’s apple pie baking in the comforts of her home or even to feeling that first drag of a cigarette that you started smoking when you were under-age…

The first step is learning about other options out there and the benefits that they will have for your mind, body and spirit. This helps us connect the awareness to the next step to practice it so over time it will be easier.

For this month we will visit with different healthy habit makers to get to know what they have been doing. They may provide different types of services from therapy to relaxation. But we will take the opportunity to give ourselves new options of how to take care of ourselves as we age and think about what works best for us.

Then, take the next step… and apply it.

Small Steps Create Big Shifts

Lifestyle is not easy to change. So let’s start with one small step. Not big ones. Find one thing that you know you want to work on and break it down into even smaller steps. Set up a visual to remind you every day.

Do not try to change everything all at once! If you are really determined to make a change, I recommend you do two things.

One: Tell a trusted friend who will help hold you accountable. Check in with them regularly.

Two: Track your progress. I know, I know. So many people hate to keep a journal, or document things in one way or another, myself included.

If you are really determined, you have to find a way to allow yourself to process that step that you are taking and find successes. Even the tiny ones. This helps you see the progress that you are making.

Again a reminder, doing too many things at once (I’m preaching to myself here too) can cause you to fail on several things at once. So find that baby step. Take it. Offer yourself praise and not punishment. If you have to start all over again, that is okay. Who cares? We are now able to see that starting over is not the end of the world. We are Superagers. We have experience in this world now that we didn’t have before. We don’t get wrapped up in what others think about us and our personal failures, because we know things pass and move on. So, take that experience and apply it to building your new healthy habit with a calm knowing you can do it, whatever it may be, you can do this.