Age Proof Your Mindset

Your mindset can age you - accelerating the feeling of disconnection, irrelevance, and struggle to keep up.  It will also age your body and age perception.  Learn how to keep your mindset younger with simple tools to expand and use ever evolving society.

Transcript

Hi everyone. Today we're going to talk about stress, cortisol and aging, but not from the perspective of the physiological impact of cortisol and stress, but from the perspective of mindset. Because one thing that is often overlooked but is very important is that aging is a loss of adaptability and that adaptability shows itself up in how we manage and handle life, what's happening. And that shift happens quietly as we age. So I'm Julia. I am the founder of Jolie and what we do is we create incredible programs that integrate nutrition, lifestyle changes to heal you, to make you feel better today and for tomorrow and to help support your healthy lifestyle and disease reversal if that is where you are. One of the things that we are very committed to that I am super committed to is creating programs that not only change how you feel now, transform you now, but are going to give you dividends many, many years down the road.
(01:34)
And that's where longevity comes in. And longevity is our body as well as our mind. And it's not just in the body that the shift toward aging happens, but it happens in how we experience life. As we get older, we can become less receptive, we can become less adaptable and we can become less willing to metabolize or to move through digest stress. And this more than time itself is what accelerates aging because when we lose our adaptability to deal with life, we start the process of aging. We start the process of rigidity. We start the process of isolation and we start the process of losing relevance, losing connection. This is not what we want and this is what more than even the years passing, the days passing, the weeks passing will accelerate our aging. And so we're going to talk about today why that happens and how it drives cortisol and biological aging and how we can reverse it through mindset.
(02:56)
So the key thing that I really, really, really want to hone into is that aging is not just cellular. It's not just happening in your cells. It is perceptual. There is a very strong brain body connection as it relates to aging. And when you were younger, your body was younger, your mind was younger, you processed your experiences faster. And by processing, I don't just mean understanding what's happening, but I mean, let's say something happened that was uncomfortable or was scary or challenging, you moved through that experience through getting on the other side of that experience from a psychological point of view, much faster. You let things go more easily. You didn't mold them over, over, over, over. You didn't hold on to things as much and you are more open, more curious, more flexible. This is a younger person wanting to find things out to test the limits, to try on different hats.
(04:09)
This is youth. As we get older, unfortunately, we lose some of that if we're not intentional about keeping it. And so then we hold onto stress longer. We interpret more things as threatening. It might be our neighbor. It might be a changing technology. We interpret it as a threat. It might be shifting world. We interpret that as a threat and we resist more and adapt less. We start to dig in our heels and want things to be a certain way versus saying, "Hey, maybe there is another way of thinking about this. " And this digging in this resistance, it creates a chronic elevation of cortisol. It creates cortisol levels that are elevated. So elevated cortisol is not subtle and cortisol is very, very aggressive in the body. So we make cortisol, so I don't want you to walk away from this podcast thinking all cortisol is bad.
(05:25)
Cortisol is good. Cortisol is what gets us up in the morning and gets us going. Cortisol is protective. It is what gets us moving when there is true danger. So we're not to think of it as a bad thing. That's why I use the adjective chronic cortisol. It's cortisol that continues to be high because we are living life in a kind of a protected armor type of way. That is aging. And what does it do inside your body? It breaks down your muscles. So you lose tone. This is one of the reasons why metabolism can slow as we get older is due to elevated cortisol levels. This contributes to our muscle loss. Muscle loss naturally happens unless we're working against it as we get older. But if we have high cortisol levels, guess what? More is going to be broken down faster. High cortisol levels or chronic cortisol causes an increase in abdominal fat storage.
(06:31)
That's that inner tube around your waist. That is that fat that is really, really bad for your heart health and for your cardiovascular health. Cortisol adds to that. It degrades collagen, creating thinner skin, more sagginess, more wrinkles, but degraded collagen also affects our joints and affects our ligaments and affects pain because our fascia with the degradation of collagen can become quite rigid, which creates more knots and more pain and limited pain in movement, but also limited range of movement. Cortisol impairs sleep and because we sleep less, guess what? There's less brain repair. And what does less brain repair mean? It means our brains age more rapidly. And with less repair during our sleep, we have higher levels of inflammation. And we're also always operating under behind the eight ball if we're not sleeping and repairing ourselves. Cortisol is a hormone and when one hormone is out of whack, it causes all your hormones to go out of whack to a degree.
(07:47)
And so it is very disruptive to your hormones, especially to midlife women. So if you're a woman like I am and you are in midlife, cortisol is not your friend in terms of balancing your hormones. Cortisol also increases systemic inflammation and systemic inflammation is the root of aging within your body, but it's also the root of the visible signs of aging, the age spots, the saggy skin, the dull skin, the eyes that aren't as sparkly as they used to be.
(08:28)
So we don't want elevated cortisol and it is not just the stress that ages you because life will be stressful. It's when we get older, we sometimes choose to deal with it in a way that blocks our ability to adapt and to process stress efficiently. And the problem is less the stress, but how we're going at it. And so how do we restore coping capacity? How do we restore receptivity? These are two qualities that keep cortisol low and youthfulness intact, your youthful mindset. So we're going to dive into three ways to reverse stress aging, aging caused by stress. First step is to build receptivity. And here we're going from I need to control everything that sort of very tight fist to I can receive and respond. It's the difference from a scowl to a smile, honestly. As we age and that scout to smile is a good metaphor because as we age, we tighten.
(09:49)
Unless we're very intentional about it, we start to want to control outcomes, to control timelines, to control people. And that's not wrong. You're not broken because you want to do that. That is part of becoming rigid, which is part of aging. But considering you're listening to this podcast, which means you're interested in longevity, we're going to work against that. So instead of being okay with control, which will equal tension and tension equals stress and stress equals cortisol, we're not going to be okay with that. We're going to shift that narrative and we're going to shift into receptivity that I can receive and respond. I don't need to control everything. And receptivity is anti-aging. It tells your nervous system that I am safe enough to experience life. And just think about that. Think I am safe enough to experience life. There is a joy. There is an openness that comes from that space and there's so much countless research on how much joy and openness and receptivity and lightness contributes to our ability to heal and it contributes our ability to be resilient.
(11:16)
So receptivity, it lowers perceived threat because we're not armored. It reduces cortisol output and it allows our parasympathetic state. In the parasympathetic state, the relaxed state is your healing state. So it allows for your body to heal and rebound after every day faster. So the more receptive you are, the more rebound you have, the more resilience you have. And so one of the things that I love is to take things, ideas, and I believe that change comes through doing. So you may not get the concept, but if you start doing the action, the concept will follow. And actually then the concept is kind of not even important. So how do we practice this receptivity? Here is a daily receptivity ritual for you. Sit still. You can stand still if you can't sit still. Open the palms of your hands. The upward facing palm is a receptive space.
(12:24)
Breathe in slowly and say to yourself, I allow life to support me today and then breathe out even more slowly. And you can literally do this anywhere. You can do it in the grocery store line. You can do it waiting on the phone. You can do it anywhere. Open your palms, breathe in. I allow life to support me today and breathe out. And you're going to see how your body changes and this will strengthen your ability to relax, your ability to receive. Okay. Number two, our coping capacity. As we get older, unfortunately we lose some of that coping capacity that we need. So we go into a state of feeling like more often than we used to that this is overwhelming. It's overwhelming. Trying to figure out my phone, it's overwhelming. Trying to figure out how to get from A to Z, it's overwhelming. We want to shift into, I can process and move through, that maybe something is hard, maybe something is a lot, that we can handle it, that we can proces.
(13:42)
It might take us longer. We might need to ask for help, but we can live through it. And this shift will help us to discharge stress more quickly. So instead of going into overwhelm, we kind of ground ourselves and say, "I can handle this. I can move through this. " And notice how that grounding I can is stabilizing and it brings us to greater youthfulness. So remember, our goal is not necessarily less stress, but it is to be able to process through stressful circumstances more easily. So we're not holding onto it. We're not drowning and overwhelmed. We're saying, "Okay, we can handle this. This might be hard. This might be challenging, but we can handle it. " And for this, I have a 90-second reset for you, which is how we can kind of reset our system when we feel overwhelmed and say, "Okay, we can do this.
(14:53)
" So here, when you feel overwhelmed, and I do this whenever I feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have too many things to do. " You pause, you name the emotion and this is powerful. Whatever the emotion is, you name it. You might say, "This is frustrating. This is anxiety causing, this is maddening, this is sad, this is ... " You name the emotion that you have. And interestingly, when you name an emotion, it kind of short circuits it from taking over your body and then breathe deeply and breathe out deeply for 90 seconds and you don't need to analyze the situation. You just feel your emotion and then you breathe it out, you release it out. This way we go from overwhelm to stopping, pausing, checking in with ourselves, breathing through it and going on. And this prevents stress from embedding itself into our body.
(15:55)
Our breath is extremely alchemical and our breath that release that exhale, it releases the stress. It releases whatever we're holding onto and you can just visualize it as leaving your body. And sometimes it helps to visualize it as sinking into the ground, sinking into the sand, the water, however works best for you. But the important thing is the release. And thirdly, we want to reintroduce adaptability. We want to be mentally flexible. We want to go from this shouldn't be happening, it shouldn't be this way, to this is happening. I can adapt and I can evolve. I can change. And this is the absent of rigidity. And I love to think of trees like trees in the wind, they can sway and they stay up. Once a tree becomes frigid, it falls down. So we want to keep going. We want to keep living. So we want to be flexible.
(17:07)
We don't want to resist reality. We don't want to resist what is. We want to adapt so that our cortisol lowers, our stress lowers and we live longer and happier. Resistance, it prolongs our stress response and it kind of embeds it into our system whereas adaptation saying, "Okay, I can think about this differently. I can do this differently. I'm open to something new." It allows your nervous system to recalibrate. And this is something that is important to train yourself daily to. So when something goes wrong, immediately ask yourself, what's the opportunity in this? If there's, say, a young person and they're spinning off some idea that you don't know or you don't agree with, say, "Wait a minute, let me just think about this in a different way." We used to do that when we were in debate teams and things like that. We'd look at an argument from different sides.
(18:10)
Somewhere along the line, we've lost that practice. Now it's time to bring it back because it will keep your brain flexible and honestly, it's another way to keep your brain sharp. So if that motivates you, let that be the motivation. So in closing, I want you just to realize and think about and really dive into the idea that our aging is not purely biological, but our brain and our perception of things, our mindset has so much to do with how our body handles stress, how our body is able to adapt, still is able to be at peace, is able to be relaxed. And when we are able to maintain openness to maintain lightness, guess what? We have greater health. We have greater ability to bounce back. We have greater ability to keep going and for longevity and for longevity to be vibrant, for it to be alive, that is what we need.
(19:22)
And so I encourage you to integrate some of these practices into your daily life, if not all of them, and look for even more ways of how can I be receptive? How can I be flexible? How can I move through things instead of getting stuck in them? And that's all for today. Please share this. Please follow us. Please visit us on our website. Any other questions I would love, love, love to hear from you. Bye. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Jolie Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast. I would love to hear your comments and you can contact me at julia@thejulielife.com. And please follow us on Instagram, the Jolie Life. Our website is thejolife.com and it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone.
(20:35)
Let the ripple effect happen. Let the Jolie life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving. By beauty, lots of love.