How to stay youthful

Sunday fun - I bottle-fed Morris the abandoned lamb :)

We have been in our new home and new small-town country lifestyle for a month now.  It seems like much longer than that; indeed the big city seems a lifetime away.

There’s a great saying that says you create your environment, and then your environment creates you.  Two things that have changed for me lately, I don’t know if they would have happened anyway but I have a strong feeling they have changed because I am now in a completely different environment than I was before we moved.  Different house, different town, different lifestyle.

It doesn’t really matter what is true, because I am learning to be more open to change and following along with the flow of how I feel inside.  Learning to trust that what I am feeling is what is right for me to do.

I truly believe that being flexible in the mind is a key aspect of staying youthful.  I am cultivating this flexibility by saying ‘yes’ to new things and trying them out, rather than saying ‘no I don’t do that’.  It’s not going along with other people, it’s going along with myself.  I have this vision of myself becoming more rigid over time and turning into a person who has a very narrow range of movement which doesn’t feel good.  Perhaps it is something that can happen naturally as you get older unless you address it – getting ‘set in your ways.’

Of course it’s good to show a steady way of being and have people feel comfortable around you because you are reliable and un-flaky, however it doesn’t feel good to be to be predictable.

My first big change is that I joined a gym to lift weights and I love it.  I’ve been going almost three weeks now and it feels good.  I am getting fitter and stronger every day and can see myself in a year's time with a completely transformed physique.

An added bonus is that my achy right shoulder and arm from all the computer work and writing I do feels better already. My husband reckons that lifting weights is the fountain of youth and he may be right.  I don't do anything heavy, just enough to feel it, and I do three sessions each week. My goal is to combine strength and elegance.

My second big change is one that I honestly thought I would never see, not that I was dead against it, I just didn’t have the desire.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I stopped drinking alcohol after reading a library book – yes it was some book!  I have written about being a non-drinker here and here.  Well, about two weeks ago I woke up one morning and thought ‘I’d like to try wine again’.  So I did that night, and now I have a few drinks on the weekend.

It was a really strange feeling.  When I didn't drink, I didn't want to.  It would have been too weird to sip wine, I just couldn't do it.  Now that I have made the decision to do it, I feel calm and relaxed about it.

I realized later that part of my decision process was influenced by a book I'd just finished by Paul McKenna called Get Control of Sugar Now.  It's not that long and I ordered it on Kindle from Amazon.  There are many techniques in the book to help you go from a sugar-maniac (my words) to someone who can take or leave it.  I read it within a few days and did each exercise at the end of each chapter, not in a write it down and do it properly way, but in an in-my-head as I go way.  I have not done the 37 days of exercises (repeating them over and over again) but I may do if I need it.

The message of this book is that you go sugar-free then let a small amount into your life.  If it gets out of control again, repeat the above.  The mindset exercises help with this and I really like his message of moderation.

So with Paul McKenna's words in my mind, I felt more confident that I wouldn't be blowing the best thing that had happened to me, and I told my husband I wanted to have a glass of wine - that night!  I believe in striking while the iron is hot; when you get the idea to do something, do it right then because the energy is strongest at that time.

When I say ‘blowing the best thing that had happened to me’, I mean that I loved being a non-drinker.  I felt good all the time, but I also love honouring my feelings and trying out new things.  I am taking it easy, only having one or two small glasses of wine of an evening.

If anything, I think my five-plus years off alcohol has given me a new respect for it.  I don’t particularly like the drunk feeling so if I feel myself going too fast I naturally pull back.  Of course you can’t drink alcohol and not have a relaxed feeling, but it feels good to keep it in the mild range and then come back to normalness, instead of enjoying that feeling and wanting more.

These two changes in my life came about as thoughts and feelings from within, and I truly believe they were divinely guided.  Both have turned out well so far and I am very happy that I was open to letting them in.  It also gives me more confidence to trust my internal guidance system more and not be afraid to make big decisions that could potentially transform my life for the better.

When we are too scared to make changes for fear of consequences (I had to work through that before I tried wine again), it can leave us feeling stuck in a pen and like we cannot move freely.

I think there is a fine line between being so rigid that you feel you can never change anything; that how you are now and what you do now is going to remain the same until the day you die, and being so loose that you are not a cohesive person.  There is a third way to be and I’m loving trying it out!

A third and smaller change, I guess, is that I am going to be putting my weekly blog post out on a Tuesday (Monday for those of you in a different time-zone).  Now that we are more settled in our new home, I am creating myself a little work schedule to do all the things I want to in a week and remain stress-free.  Concentrating most things towards the start of the week feels better than leaving them towards the end of the week, and going into the weekend.  I want to do my blog work, make progress on my current writing projects, do house chores as well as have time for reading and crafting.

Of course, being me it is all on a spreadsheet; I thought it might be fun to print it out each Monday and tick things off as I do them. And I can update that sheet with changes from time to time.  I’ll share my schedule with you one day when I have it a bit more fine-tuned, but for now it’s an excellent and exciting work in progress.

What about you?  Do you accept change into your life easily or do you feel you are a bit more regimented?  Do you listen to your internal/gut feelings and take action on them?  I’m loving this new flexible me; long live staying youthful by being open to change!

Fiona

PS.  Thank you to everyone who has ever left reviews for my books.  I was thrilled to see that my latest book Thirty Slim Days: Create your slender and healthy life in a fun and enjoyable way has four- and five-star reviews on Amazon (so far anyway!)  This really means a lot to me because it shows you are enjoying the book and finding it really useful.

If you haven’t already read Thirty Slim Days, it's all about making being slim and healthy fun and easy by changing your mindset in lots of little enjoyable ways.  You can find it here, on Kindle for instant delivery or you can be sent a paperback too.