Forever young, it's not all about what you eat...

I am always fascinated when I see interviews with 100 year olds and they are asked that infamous question, "What do you think is the secret to a long life?" Their answers are so full of range and often lacking is the expected response, "Well, I eat a balanced diet and exercise everyday."

In search of the Fountain of Youth...
Even those of us who find it a constant struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle secretly hope that eating right and exercise are the keys to staying young,  Why is that? Well maybe because it's the one approach that appears to give us control. It's relatively straightforward, well researched, and measurable.  Surprisingly however, these centenarians often tell us outlandish tales of their two-pack-a-day habits and reckless sky-diving-type behavior that in our minds should have done them in decades ago. It goes against all logic that they have reached that 100 mark and are still of sound enough mind to get in front of a camera to share their secrets with us. 

While their responses to the "What is the fountain of youth?" question swing from being very general to very specific, I am struck most by what is often an underlying common thread in their statements. You must listen carefully to catch it because the true message lies in the spaces between their actual words. That common thread is this.. the secret to a long life is the ability to live each day as if it is your first...not your last. These eternally youthful souls seem to have an innate capacity to recognize that all of life is a series of re-births, each day giving us another opportunity to hit the reset button and experience life anew. So how can we take this wisdom and break it down so that we too can experience this daily renewal?

That Darwin fella was on to something...
Now, I don't wish to sound too "it's a dog-eat-dog world" here, but I think that Darwin was onto something much more relatable with his whole "survival of the fittest" business. A crucial piece of his teachings gets lost on us amongst all of the "genetic mutation theory and the propagation of species" rhetoric and that is that the key to remaining alive and forever youthful is adaption. Let's, for a moment, set aside all of the complexities we learned about adaption theories in high school and think of adaption in a much more practical way. What if we all became more consciously adaptable in our daily lives? What would that look like?

Conscious adaption means that when we are faced with choices that require us to either hold on to our old ways of being or adopt new ways of being, we pick the choice that encourages life above all else. With conscious adaption we recognize that life is not a line from start to finish but a circle (a "life cycle") within which contains many smaller cycles of beginnings and endings. When we acknowledge these mini-deaths and re-births as a way of life it becomes easier for us to decide what needs to be shed (death), what needs to persist (labor), and what needs to be created (birth) in order to keep our life force strong. 

Live to tell your story...
Conscious adaption asks that we be like the willow tree, strong but flexible, always willing to bend with the forces of nature so that we don't break. It tells us not to resist change when change is what's called for. It encourages us to remain as curious as a child, delighting in learning new things. It requires us to be forever open-minded to new possibilities and observant to solutions that naturally arise out of every problem.  As we adapt we are constantly re-birthing and aligning to the vibration and frequency that our modern world is operating from. When we fail to adapt, be it from stubbornness or ignorance, we naturally fall behind. Aging too soon being the unwanted result. 

So yes, of course, eat your salads, move your body, and get your 8 hours of sleep but don't forget to keep a mindset of renewal everyday. Don't cling to what no longer serves you in this forever-changing world we live in. Be around 100 years from now to share your unique story!​

​Visit me at tracicrampton.com.

---