Do you hear other people who continually have a “woe is me” attitude? Do they feel old? My 8-year-old granddaughter and I had a discussion of what it means to be old, and I realized we were two worlds apart. To her, it meant someone who looks worn out. I told her two things. First, some people are old at 20. Second, oldness happens when a person loses sight of dreams, regardless of the number of years they have lived. April is an ideal time to reevaluate our lives. What happens in Mother Earth is a perfect example for what can happen in our bodies. Bulbs and plants are beginning to wake up after their winter’s nap. It’s exciting to see spring come to our land, and it is time for us, too, to wake up our earth bodies with renewed optimistic nourishment. Just as we feed our body when we are hungry, we need to also feed our soul. More people today have a hunger to bring more meaning into their lives. To do this, we need to realize that every day, we have the choice to change our outlook. Good health really depends on finding new ways of addressing problems that have become a block to health and, to a large extent, to how we approach life. In one of his books, Deepak Chopra teaches that the only reason we are not perfectly healthy is because we are always taking new bricks and putting them into old slots. Why do we do that? He says if you look closely at your own life, you realize that you are sending signals to your body that repeat the same old beliefs, the same old fears and wishes, the same old habits of yesterday. That is why we are stuck in the same old body. But we can change that! Some time ago, I heard Elie Wiesel speak. He is a Nobel peace prize laureate and survivor of the Holocaust. He has a prescription for bringing about positive change. He said that we need to bring back the poetry in life, the poetry in human relations, the poetry in music, the poetry in art. C. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, and Caroline Myss wrote a book called The Creation of Health. At the end of the book, Myss uses a wonderful phrase: the elegant spirit. I fully believe that if we can have a balance among the mind, body, and spirit, the result will be a unity of health and a beautiful appreciation for life. Think of the wonderful opportunities we have to bring excitement and joy to life for ourselves and others. Please pick a bouquet of beautiful thoughts as you go to sleep each night. Dream about all your new ways of reaching out. Go to sleep with a smile, and you’ll always be young in heart. More from Prevention: How Energy Medicine Can Heal Your Grief
