If You're Still Doing These 4 Things In Your 70s, You're Aging With Remarkable Poise
Most people let these things go with time, but holding onto them meaning you're aging with true clarity.
Denisfilm | Canva In a world obsessed with reversing the visible effects of aging, most have forgotten that although aging is a part of life, how we age is completely up to us.
Growing old with grace, poise, and confidence has less to do with our looks and more to do with how we act. When you embrace aging with open arms, it might make it easier to notice which behaviors have been weighing you down and which ones allow you to move through life with a grace that's unmatched by your peers.
If you're still doing these four things in your 70s, you're aging with remarkable poise:
1. Pausing before reacting
Since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
This is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems, "Since feeling is first" by E. E. Cummings. The gist of this excerpt is that we observe the world firsthand through a lens clouded with emotions and feelings.
By this, Cummings wants to say that when a man sees a pretty girl, he feels emotion before anything else. After which, other voices in his head might talk him out of asking the girl out — voices of reason and logic that might say that getting into a relationship is not a priority at the time.
However, Cummings argues that a man should indeed ask the girl out because any amount of logic, reason, and maturity will feel pale in comparison to the raw joy of a first kiss.
It’s a beautiful poem indeed. You should check it out. However, what catches my attention here is that Cummings was spot on when he argues that we feel emotion before anything else.
And it is exactly why we should learn to reject our first thoughts. Our first thought in response to any situation is drenched with emotion, and in keeping with the biases we have in our lives.
- While thinking about a fight we recently had, we might think that we weren’t at fault — but that thought might be rooted in the bias "I can never be wrong," which is trying to protect our egos in the short term, but is disastrous in the long term.
- While thinking about a career switch, the first thought invariably has to be rooted in fear, which might delay or even prevent us from pulling the plug.
First thoughts rarely ever carry the credibility that might warrant decisions based on them. Yet, so many of us take it as the final word. We never question its credibility. It’s because we were never taught to foster a baseline skepticism towards our mind, which is often, quite notoriously, the biggest liar in our lives.
This is why you must learn to reject your first thought about situations. Question its credibility. Strip it of its power by asking yourself a million introspective questions.
Try to take out the emotion and neuter the biases with just as much skepticism. Always remember, your mind lies to you.
When you reject your first thought and force yourself to think without emotions driving the thought process, you’re more likely to find the truth about situations. And isn’t ‘Truth’ the essence of therapy?
2. Taking responsibility
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I believe most people misunderstand the word responsibility. For instance, are you responsible if you lose both your hands in a train accident? Certainly not, right? After all, you weren’t the driver of the train.
However, when we think about what responsibility truly means, a different perspective unfolds in front of us. The word is simply a sum of two words.
"Responsibility = Response + ability." Which means having the ability to respond.
Take the story of Ibrahim Hamadtou. He’s the one who lost both of his hands in a train accident when he was young. What do you think he did? Denied responsibility and blamed his luck for the misfortune he suffered? Nope. He took responsibility.
He grew up to be a professional table tennis player and represented his country in the Paralympics. Yes, he plays table tennis even though he has no hands. How? He holds the racket in his mouth.
Therapy is about healing yourself. It’s about being self-sufficient and finding your peace of mind. But that cannot happen if you avoid responsibility.
Even in situations when the people around you are clearly at fault, learn to take responsibility. By doing that, you convey to yourself that YOU retain the ability to respond. Yes, you cannot control people’s actions, and you cannot control every little thing that happens to you. But you always retain the ability to choose how you respond.
- When people around you are cynical, bitter, and negative, you can choose not to let their negativity affect you.
- When people around you wrong you, instead of anger and vengeance, you can choose to be empathetic by understanding that no happy person ever wrongs others. And perhaps if they’ve wronged you, it’s because they’re suffering themselves.
Understanding this does not mean turning a blind eye to people’s actions. No. It simply means that sooner or later, you have to realize that the only person you have total control over is you.
Taking responsibility, even when you don't think you're directly at fault, is crucial for personal growth, healthy relationships, and community well-being. It involves acknowledging your potential role in a situation and recognizing your ability to contribute to solutions. Research has shown that this proactive approach fosters self-awareness, strengthens relationships, and promotes positive change.
3. Getting to the root of your behavior
Here’s a blunt question for you — in what ways did your parents mess you up? Yes. I’m not asking whether or not they messed you up. I’m asking in what ways they did — banking on the certainty that they did mess you up.
As we grow up, we realize that our parents are not the perfect people we believed them to be. There comes a point where we take them off the pedestal we put them on in our childhood, when we realize that they’re just humans — capable of making mistakes — just like the rest of us.
You see, for the first (more or less) 18 years of our lives, we’re restrained to an institution we call home with overseers we call parents. In these formative years, it’s only natural that some gaps sneak into our path toward emotional maturity — as well as some scars.
And something particularly disturbing, sinister, or illegal doesn’t need to have happened to us in our childhood for those events to scar us. No. A seemingly normal or mundane event like a loud argument between our parents might be enough to micro-traumatize us in our childhood due to our vulnerable and fragile emotional selves.
Hence, it’s quite probable that our need for therapy in our adult lives might have its origin in our childhood. And hence, it’s a good idea to try to trace back our peculiar traits to their roots.
For instance, I’m an excessively independent individual. I don’t like to depend on people or expect a lot from them. That’s because as a child, I did expect a lot from people — and so I was disappointed a lot. That disappointment was partly because of my high expectations, and partly because of the failure of people to deliver on even my modest expectations.
Either way, I didn’t like being disappointed. So unknowingly — as defense mechanisms often emerge — I grew fiercely independent. This is great at times, but it also proves as an obstacle to the growth of my relationships because of my lack of courage to be vulnerable.
Now that I know why I am who I am, I can try to work on some of the traits that might become hindrances in my life. But it only happened because I bothered to trace back my traits to their roots.
This is why I try doing this exercise often —not just with myself, but with others as well. Because, A, it’s good practice. And B, it helps me understand why people are who they are by looking at the cores of their emotional assemblies, which helps me empathize with them, instead of judging them by simply looking at the surface.
Exploring the roots of characteristic traits is a meaningful journey of self-discovery, leading to a deeper understanding, improved well-being, enhanced relationships, and a clearer sense of purpose. While childhood experiences and genetic predispositions lay the foundation, research supports the ongoing nature of personality development and the capacity for growth and positive change throughout life.
4. Reexamining your beliefs
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The reason a therapist is able to help you is that they’re knowledgeable, and at the same time, they are able to look at your life from the outside. This means that their perspective about your life will be free from biases, emotional hindrances, and prejudices.
However, the disadvantage here is that while the therapist might be able to understand your major emotional structure, he’ll be perpetually ignorant of the minor subtleties of your emotional complex. That’s because no matter how knowledgeable, they’re not the ones living your life.
You, on the other hand, are privy to all of your emotional subtleties. You know your desires, insecurities, and fears better than anyone else.
However, the disadvantage in your case is that you’re plagued with biases, emotions, and prejudices. Which is what prevents you from helping yourself.
But think about it — if you’re able to look at your life from the outside — won’t you be able to help yourself better than a therapist, given the fact you know yourself like no therapist ever can? This, of course, is much easier said than done. Being able to objectively look at your own life means working on a lot of things:
- It means learning to be skeptical about what you believe so that you’re able to neuter the millions of biases you harbor.
- It means being able to move from prejudices to postjudices. Which essentially means forming opinions after examining the facts, not before.
- And it means trying to reject your emotion-drenched thoughts and instead relying on objective reasoning to find the truth and make decisions accordingly.
If you’re able to do this, you’ll get a bird's-eye view of your own life, and you’ll understand yourself better than ever. Of course, this won’t happen overnight. What I’m suggesting is you start working on this today — and eventually over the years, you will be able to get out of your own life whenever the need arises.
Research suggests that actively shifting one's perspective, engaging in new experiences, and developing a sense of broader meaning can have significant mental health benefits. Prosocial behaviors, like altruism and acts of kindness, are associated with a greater sense of meaning in life and can increase happiness and emotional well-being.
Akshad Singi, M.D., has been published in Better Humans, Mind Cafe, and more.
