By Barbara Morris, R. Ph.
The new year is almost here and you may be making a
few anti aging resolutions to improve your health or appearance. Perhaps Santa will be
giving you a treadmill -- if you are lucky or if you've been very
good.
Not too excited about that?
Let me get right to it. If you
don't have a treadmill, you should. It's one of the best Christmas gifts you can
buy for yourself and your family. A treadmill is your speedway to a healthier
cardio-vascular system and weight control. It's my favorite tool to maintain a
youthful, energetic stride. If walking is difficult, try a Gazelle. Thirty
minutes every day will give you a waistline in no time at all like you haven't
had since you were eighteen. When you have your own treadmill or Gazelle you
don't need an expensive membership at a fitness club. (I recall telling a doctor
I had a Gazelle. She looked at me strangely. She wondered if I might be
harboring some kind of illegal animal. Obviously, she doesn't watch TV shopping
shows very much.)
Okay, let's say you have a treadmill or will buy one.
Your New Year's resolution is to use it every day for 30 minutes. Yaaay!
But here's the reality. Your resolution lasts about 30 days, if that,
because life has a way of interrupting. You have something more important to do
with your time. You forget. Whatever the reason, your good intention goes in the
tank.
I'm not qualified to get into the psychology of why people do or
don't do what they know they should do. I don't even care about the psychology
because I know this as a certainty: We all have the ability to make choices. And
somehow, and you know this is true, we usually, if not always, find a way to do
what we really believe is important.
In my new book, "No More Little Old
Ladies!" I talk about the necessity of recognizing that within each of us there
are two entities that function to influence our lives. You are well aware of one
of them -- your survival instinct. I have chosen to call it your inner pit bull
because, like a trainable dog, your survival instinct is trainable to a greater
extent that you might think.
My inner pit bull is named Rocky. I've
mentioned him before. He's the meanest slobbering beast you hope you would never
meet in a dark alley. He's tough, and I've trained him to be tough.
I
have trained Rocky so well that when I'm tempted to sit and watch TV after
dinner, he snarls and tells me to get off my butt unless I want to balloon from
a size 10 to a size 20 in short order. Rocky also shows me pictures of what I
will look like if I don't walk every day. You may laugh at this, but it works
for me. Visualization is very powerful.
The other entity is your
existence manager whose purpose is to get you to the end of your life. I'm not
sure you can control the number of years you will live, but I do know that from
personal experience you can influence how your existence manager affects the
quality of your life. Here's a perfect example of an existence manager at
work:
A mattress ad currently running on TV shows a young woman in bed
and the alarm goes off for an early workout at the gym. An older woman appears
beside her, telling her that she should enjoy the great mattress and that the
gym will be there tomorrow. This is a perfect example of how your existence
manager tries to sabotage your good intentions to stay in
shape.
Recognize that you have an existence manager. Know what it looks
like and give it a name. My existence manager is Jezebel, a refined, genteel,
conniving Southern lady right out of Gone with the Wind, and she and Rocky
constantly jockey for control of my mind and body.
When I'm debating
about "should I or should I not walk " Jezebel, mint julep sipping temptress
that she is, coos into my consciousness, "Barbara sweetie, you've worked hard
today. You deserve to sit." Guess what. Rocky is the victor in just about every
tug or war with Jezebel.
You could say I walk out of habit. Yes, that's
part of it. But habits that require expenditure of energy are easy to break. You
have to be tough and determined to win the war against decline that can come
with aging. You need an ally, and your best friend can be your inner pit bull
that you can train to do your bidding.
I understand that we are all
different. Not everyone is as tough as I am, but my toughness is not something I
was born with. I worked at creating it. You can do it too.
The bottom
line is this: You have the capacity to make choices. If you do nothing else for
yourself in the New Year, get a treadmill or use the one you have every day. At
the end of the year you will have added years of youthful, ageless zip to your
life. You will have more energy and vitality. You may even find that some health
issues may disappear. The icing on the cake is that you will loook better than
you have in years. All it takes is 30 minutes a day, every day, while you walk
through your favorite TV program.
Girlfriend, are you up to it? Sure you
are. Get to know your inner pit bull. Get on a first name basis with it. Train
it to do what you want it to do. Identify your existence manager and figure out
how to deal with it. You will be rewarded beyond anything you can
imagine.
Grrrrrr. :-)
