Being Young At 90 or Old At 18

Harriette Thompson at 92 years old, last year was the oldest woman to finish a marathon. She finished the Rock’n Roll Marathon in San Diego in just over seven hours and twenty minutes. Harriet is the perfect example of how to be and feel young despite age, the passage of time and the wrinkles life leaves on the face and the soul.

Old age is often associated with death, physical problems, memory loss, loneliness and the decay of the body in general. But to age well, it is important to get rid of negative thoughts and enjoy all stages of life. Fortunately, life expectancy in recent centuries has increased by more than twenty years. In the early nineteenth century, life expectancy was around 45-50 years old.

In 2013 the magazine Cell published a study by Spanish experts who analyzed the keys of aging. One of the main results of this study was to understand and combat aging and also fight cancer. Aging causes accumulated damage to DNA throughout life and that process can cause cancer, diabetes, heart problems, and diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Feeling young is an attitude

Youth is a matter of attitude towards life. Growing old is something we cannot avoid. All we can do is mitigate some of the effects it has on our body. Exercise, healthy eating, favorable environmental conditions, avoiding drugs, tobacco and excess alcohol are some factors that will help delay aging.

But also, if we maintain an attitude of a young person we can enjoy the learning process that is also involved in aging. To feel young, we propose some strategies:

Keep making your dreams come true

When we get older, we see that there are dreams that we haven’t fulfilled because of a lack of time or because we thought they were impossible. However, having aged doesn’t mean you should pay attention to the expression “you’re too old to…”

It doesn’t mean we should behave like teenagers, but rather we should not give up those things we want to do because we are older: studying, traveling, sports, meeting new people, etc. Our abilities, in most cases, are much broader than we think.

Update yourself

Fashion, technology, society in general, are constantly changing, so it is very good to adapt to changes and learn new things in order to stay young with an active mind that is constantly moving.

Protect your time and space

As we get older, we tend to focus more on others than on ourselves. It is very important to find a space to do what we like, to take care of ourselves and respect the time that we devote to these activities. It is important to find a balance between time devoted to others and to our own time.

Smile and laugh whenever you can

Laughter is something that will make you feel much younger. Laughing at yourself, at the fun things that happen every day, looking at daily events with a sense of humor. You can even attend a course of laughter therapy where you will have fun and meet new people also.

Being old at 18

There are people who have had lives with very difficult circumstances or simply feel old while they are still very young. People who do not adapt to changes in life, who stay locked at home, who don’t socialize with anybody, people who are old without being old. But what causes this kind of circumstance?

People who feel old have usually abandoned their dreams. Whether it is because of life’s circumstances or by choice, they do not realize that they still have a long way to go. When you stop having dreams and stop trying to achieve them this causes aging. You have to enjoy the present.

In addition, these people tend to have low self-esteem, do not love themselves, do not value themselves and this makes them shut themselves inside their thoughts and not come out because of fear. Reinforcing that self-esteem  gradually promotes opening up and the person begins to interact with their environment and with others. It’s not about having wrinkles or not, but about smiling at life.