I’ve been reviewing your comments about your biggest frustration about growing older and believe I may have found a common thread.
As a Life Coach, I know the importance of “having an environment that pulls you forward.”
When one of my clients wants to become something he or she has never been, I’ll often ask, “What new structures and systems would help pull you forward into the new reality you want to be living?”
Obviously, I’m usually part of that environment. But for one person, creating an environment that pulls him forward might also involve joining a community of like-minded people. Or another might decide to read a passage from an inspiring book every morning.
For many, creating an environment that pulls them forward also means giving up pieces of an old environment that pulls them backwards.
Once you hear the concept, you’ll notice how easy it is to apply.
Its intuitive, really.
You can instinctively tell what and who is pulling you forward into a new reality you want to be living and who and what is pulling you out of it.
So when I hear what frustrates you about growing older, what I notice, underneath all the specifics, is that virtually nothing about your current external environment pulls you forward into a new reality of Youthening.
Worse, everything you see, feel, hear and experience seems to pull you out of it.
I’d love to know if this rings true for you.
Is one of your biggest frustrations about growing older the fact that nothing in your environment pulls you forward into Youthening, but instead pulls you away from it?
Because if that’s the problem – or part of it – that gives us an easy starting place.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with your observation that nothing much pulls us forward, I also argee with it is our responsibility for this. For me I will take anything and everything into my tool box and use all at will. Never stop Wendy you are loved.
The media is just doing what the media does. It is not the media’s job to decide what we will think, focus on and accept as our reality. I am the one in charge of my reality and I am Self-Centered enough to create it the way I want it. The rest of the world can think what it likes. Time to decide what we want and decide that nothing will deter us from it. It can only be reflected back to us if that is the story we are telling. As we change from within, so will what is reflected back to us. Faith of a mustard seed…
I’d have to agree with Pat, the media and others seem to expect certain behaviors that “correspond” with the age number. Even with paying no mind to media, I still pick up things second-hand, and of course there are influences from before I got smart enough to cease purchasing fashion magazines, etc. Because I have no children, I don’t have the “I’m a mother of a #-year-old” thing to deal with, but I imagine that would be a challenge as well.
Linda D.
Hi, Wendy.
I think you’ve summarized this point of frustration nicely. We are constantly being pulled away from youthening and into aging….by media, family and friends. It’s what everyone expects and what everyone predicts and suggests. It’s pretty darn hard to resist.
Pat
Well, not “nothing,” but it surely is an exercise in focus of attention
) which I have found useful. I have had to make it up the way I needed/wanted it to be to get what I wanted. We must first cultivate it “in here” so we will see evidence of it reflected back to us from “out there.” My sense is that this is where we must focus our attention, within, so we don’t go without. It truly is an inside job ☺
Excellent observation as to what people are experiencing. Perhaps we need to have noticing buddies! I noticed I improved in an area of fitness when I received compliments in that area – in short, someone else loving what was there expanded it! So, I have had something in my environment that did pull me the way I wanted to go – it’s been a very good model for me.