Here I am at the end of my Birthday Month. I turned 65 and feel like I’m just getting started! It has been a great time of celebration, appreciation, expression, family, friends, new connections and personal and professional accomplishments.
As I prepared for my recent talk at the Phenomenal Women’s Conference, the topic I chose months ago “You are Here: Make the Rest of Your Life the BEST of Your Life. 4 Top Strategies to Ageless Vitality” took on a special meaning for me personally.
What is vitality? Here are some of the most common definitions:
- Exuberant physical strength or mental vigor
- Capacity for survival
- Physical or intellectual vigor; energy
- A lively or energetic quality
- Full of life
- Vigorous and energetic
- The state of being in great health
- The continuation of a meaningful or purposeful existence
- The capacity to endure
To me Vitality is maximizing the activity and actualization levels of all our years by making a healthy lifestyle our lifelong commitment. While longevity is about achieving a higher age, putting the emphasis on our future, vitality fixes our focus on the here and now.
What would it mean to experience vitality today? Ask yourself what you’re willing to commit to today. Vitality will be nothing but a pipe dream if you don’t invest yourself in it – invest your time, your energy and (yes, to some degree) invest your money. Ask yourself what you want out of this investment. What do you want to see happen? How do you ultimately want to live? The answer is likely different for everyone.
Decide what vitality means for you (and be willing to continually upgrade that definition).
People tend to look at Health as a term that describes the absence of disease.
Vitality, on the other hand, ups the ante considerably. It suggests living from a different, more energetic, more fulfilling place. To achieve it requires a bigger, deeper commitment than achieving a lukewarm sense of health.
It’s making a healthy lifestyle our lifelong commitment. To accept genuine change into our lives, we have to be willing to deserve it. Appreciate that you have a right to celebrate your path and the accomplishments along the way.
Going on a diet is a strategy for a particular end. Choosing vitality and a healthy, vibrant life is a personal value. Compromising our health means compromising who we are and what we hold dear.
You get to choose your life and values. You don’t owe anyone an explanation.
Personally, I don’t think much about my age, but I consciously make it public because I know it can speak to some people. I feel great, and I’m going to share that. If I listened to the conventional wisdom in this country that told me what I should “expect” at my age, I’d be living a much, much smaller life. I reject that.
· Do you just accept that it’s ‘normal’ to feel like crap and tired all the time?
· Are you are settling for less than you deserve?
· Do you feel guilt and shame for letting you health and body decline?
· Do you procrastinate and have excuses?
· Do you want to unshackle yourself from the idea that your best years are behind you?
You don’t have to do this alone. Don’t lose sight of the chance to craft your own life.
FREE Vitality Acceleration Session