Soooo, I found what works for me is to take a minute, and in that minute, just pause and shift my negative thoughts and attitude towards picturing someone who is dear to me. I fill myself with love and hope for them and I find myself able to relax and smile. Those feelings of love and gratitude make my face look less tense, less worried, and, hooray, even less old.
When I’m uptight, worried, bitter or angry, I’ve found those feelings can easily become a habit for me for more than just that moment, and it shows. It shows in my voice, in my posture, in my digestion, aches and pains and on my face. Everybody has troubles in their lives… relationship issues, financial and health issues and tragedies. I don’t want to look like I spent the last 60 + years in fantasyland but I definitely don’t want to wear every downturn in my life on my face!
I want my children and grandchildren to know me as someone who still has enough energy and spirit to be interesting and fun to be with. I want them to learn what I know to be true. Just like me, as they grow and age, their thoughts will be reflective on their faces as well as on the way they feel, emotionally and physically. I want to be a reminder for them that they can look and feel better when they banish negative thoughts with thoughts of love and gratitude.
It takes conscious effort to not get trapped in our heads with worry... hashing and re-hashing what happened and what might happen in the future. It takes conscious effort to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. You can’t just make negative thoughts go away and leave a blank space. To remove negative thoughts, you have to consciously replace them with positive images and positive thoughts.
That takes effort, and doing something that takes effort requires an answer to the question, “why should I?” The answer to “why should I?” is called motivation.
My primary motivation to expend the effort required to continually monitor and banish negative thoughts from my head, is so I may be a positive example of aging to the kids and grandkids. That’s mine.
What’s yours?