Why Some of Us Age Much Faster than Others (part 2)

In part 1 of Why Some of Us Age Much Faster..., we discussed how having strong beliefs and desires in opposition to each other produces the long-standing stresses that speed up aging. In order to better align our beliefs and aspirations, reducing the stress/tension/resistance that is aging us, we need to understand how our beliefs were created in the first place. Then, using this knowledge, we can construct new, more empowering ones.

Since in part 1 we used the conflict between wanting to experience more of the energy that we had decades ago and not believing we can have it because of our age, let's continue with that example. You may be thinking, but IT'S TRUE! We become less energetic and have less stamina as we age. To which this author answers, "BOLOGNA!" THE PROOF: Here are three examples of individuals who have more energy than probably 99% of young adults and substantially more stamina and vitality than they themselves had decades earlier:

•Just this past Fall, Montana's Bob Hayes ran the LeGrizz 50 Miler in 10 hours 47 minutes -- at age 83! How many 20-year-olds do you know who could RUN 50 MILES?

•California's Helen Klein ran a complete 26.2-mile marathon a day for three consecutive days just shy of her 82nd birthday. Yet at age 55, when she first started running, she couldn't summon the energy to jog half a mile in her backyard and thought she was "going to die" when she tried.

•Lifelong elite bodybuilder, Dr. Bob Delmonteque, says he got in the best shape of his life at age 78 (and this included more muscle and his annual marathon race) and bench pressed 300 pounds at age 82.

There are hundreds of others who could prove the point that we can actually improve our stamina as we age, but these three should suffice. Unless you were a champion athlete in your youth, you really can enjoy more energy and vitality than you did years or decades ago, as the three Age Blasters above prove.

That brings us to the question: Just what are these beliefs that are tearing us down? A belief is merely a habit of thought, a pattern of thinking, on a particular subject. When we think the same thought or similar thoughts over and over again through the years, they become our beliefs. They could be based on solid scientific evidence, faulty original thinking or a highly emotional event in our past. Whatever their origin, we then, by the Law of Attraction, find more and more evidence to back up our belief, ignoring and explaining/rationalizing away anything that contradicts our belief.

Now some beliefs serve us well, but believing that we have to have increasingly and substantially less energy and stamina as we age(or some other self-destructive belief about what it means to age) is not one of them. We can do better!

When we think, "I don't have the energy I used to have" or "at my age I can't expect to have the stamina I had at 20" ... we reinforce that particular neural pathway in our brain. A pathway in the brain that is used a lot gets myelinated; that is, a fatty sheath is created around that pathway similar to the plastic insulation coating on electrical wires that helps prevent the problems that occur when two bare wires touch. Just as the coating on the electrical wire keeps the electricity flowing through the wire, the myelination of a neural pathway in the brain strengthens the pathway making it the path of least resistance and keeping these and similar thoughts flowing. It becomes a "super highway" for your thoughts on losing energy as you age, for example.

To see how we can replace these destructive beliefs that are in opposition to your desires -- that are aging you -- imagine a path in the woods. You and your friends use this path regularly; it is well trodden. Let's say for some reason, a rock slide ..., folks stop using this path completely and create an alternative path. After a few months or years, what happens to the old path? It becomes overgrown with vegetation and disappears. What happens to the new path? The more it is used the clearer and more well-defined it gets. It becomes wider and easier to follow or stay on. It becomes the path of least resistance through the forest -- so to speak.

The same thing happens in your brain. When you stop thinking thoughts that oppose your desire for more energy and vitality, that neural pathway will start to disappear and become less attractive! The neural pathway of the new thoughts of being more energetic and vibrant become dominant -- become the path of least resistance in your brain concerning this topic. The more you think the new, more empowering thoughts, to the exclusion of the former habits of thought, the more strongly myelinated that new pathway becomes. It becomes like a super highway with massive thought traffic, that's easy to stay on and takes a conscious decision to get off of because there are few exits.

In conclusion, a belief is merely a highly myelinated neural pathway in your brain created by repeated thoughts on a subject. Your pattern of thinking on a topic could be based on a faulty original assumption adopted in your youth, before your reasoning ability was fully developed, or on solid scientific evidence/theory; either way, in the end it just comes down to your habitual thoughts on the topic. It's true because you think it's true, not necessarily because it's a universal truth. No matter our age, we can allow old myelinated pathways that don't support our goals and aspirations to disintegrate and replace them with a newly mylenated neural pathway that better align with our desire for a biologically younger and more energetic us.

Remember, the bigger the "gap" between our major wants and our beliefs about whether we can achieve them, the faster we age. Change your thinking in those areas of opposition and over time you'll age slower. Just because "everyone else" experiences certain unwanted conditions as they age, doesn't mean you have to, too. You CAN think your way to a better future. In part 3 we'll look at the biology of exactly why long-standing stress so greatly ages us.