Is the difference semantics or something vastly more important?
Let me make myself very clear on this point: I don’t like the term anti-aging. I will use it from time to time because it’s in the vernacular. I will use it because, as anyone who knows how search engines work, a website gets more hits if it uses highly searched words – and ‘anti-aging’ is a highly searched word. But I don’t like it.
Anti-aging is hot button issue. Along with hundreds of thousands of internet searches a month, people are putting their money where their mouse is. Anti-aging products is currently a $170 billion industry and all projections point to stratospheric sales in the years to come.
So, what's my beef with the anti-aging? The term works against the very thing it wants to accomplish. Anti turns aging into an enemy. It assumes and applies characteristics and limitations not only to aging but to what you can do about it. Someone else – not you – is defining what aging is for you and how you are going to age. And then it makes you fight against it. When you perceive the enemy, you tense up and fight – and you’re fighting on someone else’s terms. It’s exhausting. Now add the rule: what you resist persists. What you create is a never-ending spiral where the only alternative given is age or die.
I’ve worked in the field of anti-aging for years. It always surprises me that the same people who had massive plans, goals, and objectives for their business, their careers, creating wealth, getting married, planning a family, even setting up schedules for buying and selling houses to keep moving forward, have little or no plans or concepts of their own when it comes to aging. Aging becomes this abyss that exerts a gravitational force that pulls us into it. And we’re going into that abyss like lemmings.
Even if you don’t feel that way, tell the truth: how much control do you believe you have? Do you believe you can change the total foundation and direction of aging? If you believe you can look better, do you believe there is a limit? Do you really want those limits?
Hear this: there is an alternative. It’s aging on your terms or what I call Ageless Living. It’s about you. It’s about what you want now in your life. And it’s about shattering those limitations and getting it. It’s about shedding and freeing yourself of those hackneyed images and perceptions about what aging is. And when you stop accepting those limitations, you stop creating that reality.
So, whether you’re 20, 40, 60, or 90 years old, it’s time to stop aging and start living. And start living on your terms.
Hi, Dr. K. I helped a friend get a book started on the topic of "anti-aging." But we called it "youthing." The term seemed to work. I like to think in terms of my own father, who set himself some really high goals AFTER he discovered he had stage IV lung cancer. He wanted to run a marathon. He wanted to publish his memoirs. He wanted to put our family property under a conservation easement so it would stay pristine in perpetuity. And he wanted to fall in love again, after my mother died.
He ran two marathons, published "My Life as a Child," marshalled our large cattle ranch into one of the first large conservation easements in Colorado, and … he fell in love again! Any of those would have been a massive achievement for a healthy person, much less a 78 year-old man with lung cancer. So I always advocate that people should strive for optimum health, set goals that are too large to fathom, and then just continue to grow. Biological age is just a number. We are all part of eternity, so no need to let a number get in the way of a goal. I now see myself as the caretaker of goals such as the evolution of the awareness of the unity of all living beings. I don't have to worry that it will never be accomplished, because I know it is already true, and I just have to encourage others in that direction!
To "youthing."
Great article Dr. Fern K. … hey Don !!! .. You certainly 'Walk your Talk' you never seem to stop… you put people half your age to shame… me to shame… I would be enjoying life more if I followed in your footsteps… My new inspiration… My Mother's partner is heading for his 75th Birthday… just became a great grandfather… Did the China bike tour.. the Danube ride( my Mum went on that too ).. does 90 to 200 kilometer bike rides just for fun with his mountain bike group called the Warby Ghost Riders… LOL… and I complain about a 10 Kilometer round trip to our local lakeside park !!! I've got to change !!!
No use looking youngish if you live old !!!
Dr. K,
I agree with you. People today are so against againg, so they came up with "anti-aging," as if aging is a bad thing. However, everyone knows that it is inevitable. I just saw the trailer for the new film, How to Live Forever, and it talks all about the aging process and how people deal with it. It seems to be very enlightening and entertaining I'm looking forward to seeing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZGDUFHhyko