Anti-ageing expert, celebrity therapist and best-selling author Marisa Peer has the secret to looking, feeling, and staying young. The secret isn’t a round of injections or a series of nips and tucks, or any of the other common ageing remedies of the day. The secret to staying young starts in your mind.
Who among us doesn’t want to stay young and to live longer? We all want to feel energetic, alive, with the vitality and ability to try new things. The problem is, the anti-ageing industry has long focused on looking young when the most profound solution to remaining young is programming your mind to feel young. Once you do this, your body will undoubtedly follow. The body will always act in a way that matches your thinking, so when you think young thoughts and act in a young way, you send messages to the body that actually slow down ageing.
In my 25 years as a therapist, I’ve learned a great deal about how much of a role the mind plays in everything our body does, most notably in how it ages. Have you ever noticed how people who exercise, embrace new technology, hang out with their grandchildren, and socialise are also the people who tend to look young, vibrant and happy? That’s not a coincidence; they are doing the same kinds of things they used to do when they were young. Instead of giving up the things that make life fun, they continue to embrace them, refusing to feel old.
When I was researching my new book You Can Be Younger, I found it was nearly impossible to find existing anti-ageing books that weren’t focused on cosmetic products and special diets or a younger wardrobe that make you look younger.
We all have three ages: our chronological age, the age our birth certificate says we are; our biological age, which is the age of our organs; and our psychological age, which is the age we feel. When we do young things like laughing, dancing or having sex, we send a message to our bodies that says, “I feel young”, and this, in turn, can slow down how we age. Our bodies age on their own timetable, so if you were 40 and a runner you could have the heart and lungs of a 25 year old, but if you run in the sun you may have the skin of a 55 year old. The least important age is your birth certificate age, so ignore that and decide how old you would feel if you didn’t have a birth certificate.
Our mind does not age unless we stop using it. Professors in their 90s have brain neurons equal to those of someone in their 30s. If you introduce your mind to new things, it keeps your memory and thinking sharp, so read your paper and do your crossword on your tablet. Anything new will boost your brainpower and slow down ageing. The things that can slow down ageing range from the daily and mundane, such as the way you sleep or how many electronic devices you have by your bed, to the more profound, such as how you talk to yourself and others about ageing. It’s puzzling that so many of us don’t consider the fact that hanging out with the same people in the same age group does little to keep us younger. The same goes for going to the same places, reading the same authors and publications, or never shaking up our routines. The body will do what the mind tells it to, so making a conscious effort to switch up your normal routines will change your thought processes – something you used to do all the time when you were young.
We live in an age of rapid technological progress. The amount of information that is available at our fingertips would have been unimaginable just 20 years ago. These amazing advancements can all be embraced as a part of staying, feeling, and ultimately looking younger. Learning new things, like how to use a new gadget, and doing the kind of mental exercises like Sudoku or crosswords, keeps your brain elastic, sharp and finely tuned.
Nuerobics are the latest way to slow down ageing. If you are right handed, hold your toothbrush with your left hand, go up the stairs leading with your left leg, pick up your phone remote with your left hand. The newness will make new and strong neurons that keep you mentally sharp. Life is such a beautiful thing,and there’s no sense in feeling it’s over when, in reality, a new and exciting stage can be just beginning. We don’t dread getting old – we dread losing our youth and vitality. Using my programme will show you how to grow older without growing old and can add between sixteen to thirty years to your lifespan
