Act Your Age

Photos Courtesy of Pixabay

How many times in your life have you heard this?  Add that to the prevailing attitude of retaining your youth and it is no wonder we don’t know how to act.

There are aspects to both of these that have truth.  To live your best life, you should adopt an attitude of joyful exuberance in whatever stage of life you are in.  Joyful exuberance is happiness and acceptance of self no matter your age.

Trouble comes when we get stuck on a particular number or phase in our life.  Have you ever noticed people, maybe you are one of them, who constantly talk about your teenage or college years as though that is all there is or will ever be?  I’m not a psychotherapist nor profess to be one.  These are things I have learned in my own healing journey or observed in others.  I believe that when we get stuck in a particular time frame of our life is the point where we have experienced some level of trauma or loss of self.

I once worked with a woman close in age to me, who constantly talked about her teenage years and her ex-husband/boyfriend-at-that-time.  Even her appearance reflected that of a teenager.  I especially noticed her liberal use of super-shiny, super-sticky lip gloss.  I use lip gloss, but her use was similar to that of young teens.  She rarely ever spoke of her present life, except to complain about her three children and all the troubles they were in.  She had her oldest child at nineteen and now that child was repeating the pattern.  She also went to school with her youngest child just to make sure the kid would go!  What trauma and life-changing event occurred in her teenage years that put a hold on her life growth?

Where do you find yourself stuck?  What time in your life seems all-encompassing and your last best years?  There is so much in your life that you are missing out on by keeping yourself stuck in the past.  Your present life is what is important as it is where you create your best future.  Stop being stuck.  Heal your past, make friends with it and put it behind you.  Find the self within you that you stopped being.  Reinvent who you are.  Adopt the attitude of joyful exuberance.

And act your age.  Whatever that is.

Noteworthy news: Older women being featured on style magazine covers is rapidly growing.  Check out some of these beauties: Maye Musk (Elon’s mommy); street style babes Lyn Slater and Sarah Jane Adams; former Playboy Bunny Dorrie Jacobsen; and the grande dame of all, Iris Apfel.  There are countless others being added to the influx of fabulous older women.  The fashion industry is finally taking note that beauty has no limits.  Rock on!