Mindset

Recently I discovered Angie and Kevin Brown at Real Life Runners so of course I signed up for their email promos. Stay with me here, please — this post is not about running.

Today’s email starts with Angie’s story about waking up on her wedding day with a sore throat and deciding not to let it ruin her day. And it didn’t. She enjoyed a beautiful ceremony and danced all night at the reception because she told herself, “This is what I want to do. I have to make this work.”

Angie says that she tells this story because “it illustrates the power of our thoughts and our mind.” She developed walking pneumonia on her honeymoon, when she could deal with it. For her wedding day, she chose not to let her sore throat rule the day. “I made up my mind and my body followed,” she says.

“Our mind controls our body because our thoughts literally control how we feel. … When you start to take on the mindset of a runner, see running as a journey rather than a destination, and find joy in your running, everything changes. How you think about your running completely changes your entire running experience.”

Now read that last paragraph again and change every “running” to “aging.”

People of all ages are prone to negative self-talk, and we develop all sorts of excuses for why we can’t or shouldn’t do what we want to do, but I’ve noticed that those of us in our sixties and up add aging to the list. The obvious negative thought is, “I’m too old to … [run, dance, hike, go to college … etc.]”

But I think a more common, and more insidious, thought goes more like this:

“My problem with my … [knee, back, heart, memory, depression … etc.'] is permanent and I just have to live with it, or maybe have surgery or take meds for the rest of my life.”

I’m tempted to that form of negative self-talk as much as anyone. Recently I injured my left knee slightly; I have no idea how. Probably I tweaked it wrong in a class at my Pure Barre studio (I’ll explain about Pure Barre next week). Whatever started it, I went through a couple of days when, occasionally, some tiny part of the joint would give and I felt a quick, sharp pain. It lasted only for that moment, but every time this happened the knee would swell a bit more. When, thankfully, the give-and-hurt phase ended, I then had to deal with the swelling for the next ten days, more or less. I gave it the usual R.I.C.E. treatment (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), but throughout those days of no noticeable improvement the thought constantly with me was, “Is this forever?”

After about ten days my knee was feeling a little better. I brought my ibuprofen consumption down to twice a day, from every four hours. Then one day, around two weeks after the injury, all was well again. My knee was still sensitive — as it always is (there’s that “forever” thinking) — but the swelling was down and I could bend it normally.

No matter what age we are, life continues to cycle through seasons. Injuries happen, and they heal — maybe the healing takes longer than it used to, but healing still happens. At times our energy is low, maybe for weeks or months. But if we resist falling into negative, “forever” thinking and instead practice reasonable self-care, take charge of thoughts (“This, too, shall pass”), and simply wait, the season changes and energy returns.