Mindset: Forever Young? Gas Up the DeLorean!
Posted on December 30, 2019 by Logan Williams, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
As we age it is important to keep an open mind and challenge ourselves, providing new opportunity, continued growth, and endless possibilities.
On Sept. 25, 1965, Satchel Paige became the oldest player to pitch in the major leagues. The 59-year-old Paige allowed only one hit in the three scoreless innings he pitched for the Kansas City Athletics against the Boston Red Sox. “Age is a question of mind over matter,” Paige said. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Time travel and the fountain of youth are stories that intrigues us. The top grossing film of 1985 was Back to the Future, staring Michael J. Fox who plays a teenager from California named Marty McFly. In the film, Marty accidentally initiates the DeLorean time machine, sending him back to 1955 where he meets his parents. His adventuresome encounters with various hurdles eventually leads him back to his own future.
In another example, Ellen Langer, created her own time machine in 1979 at a New Hampshire monastery. The now Harvard professor invited a group of elderly men to visit the monastery. The men were divided into two groups, and one group figuratively gassed up the DeLorean to travel back in time. Everything about their week-long stay reflected 1959. The second group had no outside stimulation from a time-period and they were only told to reminisce.
Langer wanted to understand the physiological consequences of a group of men if they returned to a time when they were younger and healthier. Langer held discussions on “current events” that covered the Baltimore Colts winning the Super Bowl and Fidel Castro marching across Cuba. Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny, and Jack Gleason appeared on the television, while the velvety rasp of Nat King Cole dominated the radio.
When Langer studied the time travel group she found that their memory, vision, hearing, and even physical strength had improved. They also seemed to appear younger in pictures that were taken before and after the week-long study. The essential question behind the study: If your mind travels back to when you were younger, does your body start to believe it? Ellen Langer writes about her study in the book: Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.
As we age it is important to keep an open mind and challenge ourselves, providing new opportunity, continued growth, and endless possibilities. Which leads us to ask ourselves paramount questions such as: what mountain, hobby, or marathon will you conquer in your later years?
Here are just a few highly qualified seniors:
Julia Child became at TV phenomenon at age 51.
Oscar Swahn earned an Olympic medal at age 72.
Gladys Burrill ran a marathon at age 92.
Teiichi Igarashi climbed Mt. Fuji at age 100.
Peter Roget invented the thesaurus at age 73.
Grandma Moses started painting at age 76.
John Glenn when to space at age 77.
Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida at age 64.
Dorothy Davenhill Hirsch went to the North Pole at age 89.
Ben Franklin signed The Declaration of Independence at age 70.
Theodor Mommsen received the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature at age 85.
Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa at age 75.
