Tuesday, August 28, 2018

A Sense of Mastery

 What exactly is personal mastery?
It is self-reliance.

What exactly does it take to become more self-reliant and shift your life into a higher state of confidence and healthy, active living?
Three important factors come into play( interplay):

1. An opportunity to undertake a specific action that challenges one's sense of self-sufficiency without overwhelming it.

2. The presence of supporting and reassuring others.

3. The experience of succeeding at something with confirming feedback from others.

A sense of confidence works on the same dynamics at any age. We imagine ourselves doing something. We muster the courage and abandon our inhibitions to try it. We look for feedback for our efforts from the people around us. A historical pitfall of aging is the narrowed radius of the comfort zones that can control a person at age 65.
"I have never done that," 'I do not know anything about computers," and "I am too old to start that now" are examples of verbal indicators that the fossilizing process is already under way. The fact that you often hear 50-year-old people making such statements is proof that "old" can start at any age.

The MacArthur Foundation  study concluded that the three indicators of successful aging are:

1. Avoiding disease and disability.

2. Maintaining mental and physical function.

3. Continuing engagement with life.

More than 10 years later, the findings of this landmark study still apply. many factors come into play in order to age successfully. The physical intellectual, social, and spiritual aspects of our being must be attended to equally if we hope to hold back the hands of time. We can readily observe the effect of not attending to one or more of these areas in the lives of people we know who practiced such negligence. It does not take long for the aging process to kick into high gear if we let down our guards of discipline and purposefulness.

The first key to aging successfully is to take an interest in yourself. It does not take long in the company of elderly people to figure out which ones are feeling sorry for themselves and which ones are extracting every ounce of life's possibilities. Those who succeed are self-respecting enough to keep their bodies fit, their minds challenged n and their hearts engaged.

Figure out how old you truly are in mind and body, and introduce yourself to people who are defying the so=called limitations of age. These individuals have not bought into the idea that they need to move aside for the next generation -- or anyone else for that matter. They will leave the race when they are good and ready.

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