A challenging question?

On some of our courses, we used to introduce our Design Your Future exercise.

It was a way of creating a practical action plan to create your ideal future over the next few years.

When introducing the exercise I ask people to consider “where do you want to be with your life in 5 or 10 years’ time?”

Usually about half the group will silently wince or grimace when I then ask them to actually calculate what age they’ll be in 5 or 10 years” time.

So, we discuss this reaction.

Ageing = Decrepitude…

And it emerges that they’ve bought into the widely held belief that ageing = decrepitude!

For many people, especially those from about 40-50 onwards, thinking beyond the next year or two can scary. They have a belief that they will be less healthy or fit or attractive than they are today. 

And this is not surprising when you consider how the media treats this topic. It’s quite understandable, in fact – unless we are careful.

Unless we are careful to filter out the negative ideas that we are exposed to – in advertising, through media coverage, through the wall-to-wall well-intentioned health advice, through the scarcity of inspiring role-models of healthy healthy and happy.

Yet the Ageing=Decrepitude it is not a given. And there are lots of inspiring and positive role-models for becoming healthier as we age.  Short of a degenerative condition, everyone can be healthier in 5 years’ time than they are today.

(We have another article on ‘The Ageing Attitude’ here)