Have you been led to believe that you’re old or getting old, or you have to be old? It’s not your fault, except that you don’t have to buy into that line of thinking. The biggest danger is that one day you will have set yourself up for a great fall if you suddenly find yourself on the wrong side of young, and I’d like to prevent that. I’ve discovered the fountain of youth, and with each passing day, week, month, and year, I am feeling younger and stronger than I did a little over five years ago. Contained across the posts in my Metal Yoga blog, you will find details and secrets that were integral to waking me out of my aging life and into my youthful life. Before any details are discussed, this three-part series prepares you quickly and concisely for living the rest of your life young.

First of all, the fountain of youth is not exclusively in yoga, so don’t think I’m going to say that as long as you do your practice diligently every morning as the sun rises you will witness a miracle occur. But the concepts discussed here are encompassed in yoga, so some form of yoga practice is better than none, even if it is just to meditate on these perceptions. And if you’re familiar with yoga, staying young begins with attachment, or non-attachment to a notion of youth. Once you define too specifically what youth means to you and then hold on to it, you will be in a constant struggle in opposition to your notions instead of being young.

Perspective is what either drives things or brings them to a halt. Remember that if you live to be 100 years old, you will die young, not old. Keep that as a goal, to die young. If you smoke, don’t exercise, eat bad food, and have a hard time with your physical body, that is one way to die old. Another is to be in good physical condition but not know how to smile, be overly pessimistic, harbor anger and resentment toward others, and not to love yourself. Keep in mind that even our known universe is young, and thousands of generations of human lives later it will still be young. Life is short because we don’t have an opportunity to get old unless we impose it upon ourselves.

With the right perspective, you can spring into life with attitude. Examine your attitude. How do you consider yourself in this regard? Do you think of yourself as young? Do you think of yourself as getting more beautiful and vibrant with the passing of every day, taking in the accumulated experiences of love and beauty in this world?

If that is what you do, then you are on the right track. I don’t know about all of you, but the most common things I hear people actually say out loud is that they are getting old, that they aren’t young anymore, they aren’t getting any younger. They convince themselves that this is true, give up and don’t think and act for themselves in this regard, and then say it out loud to convince others to try to bring everyone down into their self-deprecating view of themselves so they aren’t alone in their sorrow. Some of them even make a conscious deal with themselves, sacrificing their youth for some task or tasks in life, thinking that youth is some kind of bargaining chip or currency to spend in the shopping spree of life.

Do you think of yourself as old? Do you feel disconnected from your youth and the joys you experienced in your youth? Are you uncomfortable around younger people? Do you feel that as time passes you are aging, losing something, losing a part of you that you once had, and don’t know why but are completely satisfied with the answer, “That’s just the way it is, that what happens”? How old is old? Anything over 29? Anything over 40? Does old start at 50? You see, my point is that there is no real answer, it is up to you, and that means it doesn’t matter unless you make it matter.

I can’t stress enough the importance of attitude because this is enough to bring the whole house down if you are of the second view of yourself in relation to the world. Once you start to think in terms of imaginary concepts that work against you without any possibility to overcome them, you are then the creator of a category of obstacles and difficult situations for yourself. It’s up to you then how large this category becomes and how powerless you are against it. Since it’s all up to you, how big will you allow it to get and for how long before you really can’t do a thing about it? Because this is quite easily the root of most inability to stay young and vibrant to contribute to the world and allow yourself to experience life without self-sabotage, I’ll stop here and next time we’ll talk about all of the ways to enact youth and physically make the body look and feel younger with the right attitude intact.