Get started adding life to years

In my opinion, we are not much better today than our forefathers 30.000 years ago when they used stories and ritual dancing to transmit information to the following generations.

In fact, in today’s communications, we are lacking most of the times the main issue: emotions. 

We try to fix it with emoticons, but the richness and nuances a human can transmit are still muted.

If we look at the big picture, there is a bigger revolution it happened since the 19th century:

The life expectation.

Back in the 19th century, the expectative of life was 30-40 years.

Since the first homo sapiens appeared, (some say from 100.000 to 200.000 years ago) we have jumped just 200 years ago from 30-40 years of life expectation to 80-90 to date. Until then, the life chain was to be born, to grow, to reproduce and to die. Children used to know their parents some 10 to 15 years before they passed away, then becoming adults, having children themselves, and die at the peak of maturity.

This is today a thing of the past, and after the point of reproducing and being at the peak of maturity, around 30-40 years old, we still live almost the double of years.

We have learned to add years to our life in a great manner.

We are used to seeing young people walking life like if they would be already dead, without expectative, like zombies.

People from all ages embittered, wishing that weekend arrives, only to spend it all day on the couch, with a blank mind in front of the television.

The bad news is that we are not genetically prepared to live for so many years, to witness our physical and mental decline, to lose our loved ones after many years of living with them, or to meet our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

To experience these things, which until now were unknown to us human beings, leads us to a feeling of progressive and uncountable sadness, which, in most cases, leads to the most common evil of our times:

Depression.

Our next challenge is to add life to these years. Here are some hints to make it happen.

• Maintaining our body

Along 200.000 years, we did not need to take care of our body the way we need now. We died without reaching a declining status of it. The first thing we need to do is to accept the fact that no matter how our body status on our fourties is, tomorrow it will be worse.

Nobody will love you more than you love yourself. Daily exercising is then a must. No exceptions. No excuses. Your body will be grateful to you, and will allow you keep going.

• Watch what you eat.

Until now, we did not need to take care too much about it. But when the body declines, we do not process the food same way, so we might need some complementary vitamins, antioxidants and in the other hand, some kind of food start to act like poison to us.

• Keep feeding your brain.

Bad news, brain is not ready yet to last hundred years. After 12 years of age, the brain development has almost finished, and 12.000 brain cells die daily. The learning capability, the memory, start to decline thereafter, being this declining more pronounced the older we get.

The levels of acetylcholine, the substance that allows our brain cells to communicate, start to decline too. Alzheimer is a neural-degenerative illness caused by that.

Learning and reading promote and strengthen these interconnections.

The later you start to “exercise” your brain, the more probabilities you have to get this illness at a young age.

The Brain is one of the few things in life that gets enhanced if you use it, and gets deteriorated if you don’t.

So read, read, read and keep on learning. If you lose your capability to learn new things, you might not recover it again. Nobody is ready to live with an idiot 50 years. Not even yourself.

• Keep feeding your soul

We live in a world on which we receive literally a storm of bad news daily, and this can make us forget the good things we do have. If you feel you have no reason to live, just sit down and make a list of 20 things on your life it worth the trouble to fight for, to feel grateful for.

Yes, just 20.

It can seem it is a large number when you start, but you will see that you have much more than that.

Our lack of happiness due to the things we don’t have, has its inception in the lack of gratitude for the things we do have

Everything that makes us happy, laughing, dancing, jumping, making love, will mess your hair, so, keep messy.

Keep smiling, loving, embracing, and giving. Only do the things you feel passion by doing them.

Life is too short. Don’t sell it cheap.

Sometimes is not a matter of changing your whole life. Just the way you walk on it.

Picture credits (and a lesson within):

http://www.boredpanda.com/perfect-kingfisher-dive-photo-wildlife-photography-alan-mcfadyen/

Alan McFadyen, just captured a photo that he has spent 6 years trying to get. By his count, it took him 4,200 hours and 720,000 photos to get a perfect shot of a kingfisher diving straight into the water without a single splash.

To put life into years can be tricky, and needs the same level of constancy and patience Alen McFayden showed to get the perfect shot.

Above all, remember: We are born to be happy, not to be perfect.

Make sure to always remember what you want, and what you don’t.

And if you fail, start again.

The secret resides on not being afraid to be wrong, and to know that it is a must to be humble to learn.

Be patient to wait for the exact moment, and congratulate for your achievements.

And if this was not enough, analize the causes, and try again with even more strength.

The world is the hand of those who are brave enough to dream and take the risk to live their own dreams.

Bibliography:

Emilio Duró. “Optimismo e Ilusión” Conference in YouTube in Spanish

Dr. John Bargh, Yale’s University Psicologist, http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/

Eduard Punset “Viaje al Optimismo” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Punset

G.H.Eggetsberger Gerhard_H._Eggetsberger on Wikipedia

Paul MacLean https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_D._MacLean

John Grinder https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grinder

Richard Bandler https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bandler

Chris Hadfield An Astronaut Guide to Optimism