Challenge, flexibility, resilience

You know how we have to exercise our muscles to maintain strength and health? And you know how we have to exercise our brains to enhance and maintain cognitive wellness?

How about this idea: We also have to exercise certain character traits. We have to nourish, invigorate and fortify those aspects of our personality that are (I believe) essential to happy and successful aging. We have to give these traits a real work-out. Sweat a little. And keep at it.

The traits I’m thinking about are flexibility and resilience. Think of flexibility as openness to change, the ability to adapt, a supple, springy attitude toward daily life. When I am my most negative about aging, when I feel myself (temporarily) submerged in the worst stereotypes of getting old, what I imagine is a stodgy, unimaginative, codger-like self. Timid and overly cautious. Resistant to change. Scared of change. What I fear most is that my world will get smaller because my ability (or desire) to seek challenges or make changes will diminish.

Resilience is that bounce-back quality, the ability to cope creatively and positively with changes and challenges, to recover and move on. Resilience implies a kind of buoyancy, a liveliness, an irrepressibility of spirit.

The multi-billion dollar “anti-aging” industry would have us all obsess about physical appearance. Those of us who know better (that means you and me) are – let’s admit it — often obsessed with exercise and nutrition. Which is better, far better. But perhaps we can turn a bit of our attention to the attitudes and traits that make for a lifetime of engaged, active, youthful living. Like flexibility and resilience.

And let’s consider going out of our way to cultivate and strengthen these traits, just as we go out of our way to find an exercise routine that strengthens our core or create a diet that strengthens our immune system.

How do we do this? For me, the key is keeping a hot fire lit, the fire of curiosity and creativity. For me it is about taking on new challenges that propel me out of my comfort zone. The key is, with some regularity (not to mention trepidation), placing myself back at the beginning of a learning curve, that awkward, unnerving, potentially embarrassing place of know-nothingness where anything is possible. The flexibility comes in seeking the challenge. The resilience comes in dealing with the ups and downs of it. It’s this practice that protects me from future residence in Codgerville.

And along the way, I have myself some fun. As I did when I embarked on my year-long quest to dance The Nutcracker ballet with a professional company (after not being in a ballet studio since I was 12). The quest became a book (of course), just released: Raising the Barre. It’s what we need to do for ourselves – raise our personal bars – to live a counterclockwise life.