Ageless Life Style

The traditional aging process relegates the middle age people to early decline.

Here are five "power tools" for smart people to help control the aging process:

1. Take control.

Aging is inevitable but getting old is strictly an option. Smart people constantly grow and improve. If you don't take charge of your life, and you just let life happen -- life will just happen, and the result will be typical, fossilized old age we accept as normal.

2. Inventory and monitor youthful characteristics.

Observe old people. What is it about their "oldness" you would like to avoid? How strong and flexible are you, mentally and physically? Can you bend and touch your toes? Can you walk up stairs without becoming out of breath? Keep and improve what you can, while you can!

3. Plan your future.

By age 50, smart people have a plan for a healthy, productive second life at retirement age because they know they will probably live to 100 or more. In 1950, there were a mere 2,300 centenarians. Today, there are over 40,000. By 2050 close to a million people will be 100 or more.

Bottom line: Smart people maximize their future by protecting and building their health, and visualizing their future.

4. Avoid the social disease.

No, it's not sexually transmitted, it's worse than that -- it's self-inflicted, and it's called retirement. Once you internalize that you are no longer productive, that you no longer have goals, decline sets in rapidly. Everything slows -- movement, reaction time, thinking, walking, talking. The mind and body go into a shutdown mode in preparation for the final event -- death.

Bottom line: Smart people rewire instead of retire.

5. Manage and fix correctable symptoms of aging.

For example, a slow shuffling gait, poor posture, unattractive teeth, and uncorrected hearing loss. Invest time, effort, and money where it matters: Buy a treadmill and use it daily to maintain a youthful gait, cardiovascular fitness and weight control. Get on an anti-aging diet, and do weight-bearing exercise daily to stay strong and upright.

Bottom line: Smart people manage how they change with age.

May sound easy, and there is a lot you can do to help yourself and everyone is entitled to live the way they choose to live, just think a healthier alternative at the moment to plan into have a productive second life after traditional retirement age and love and value yourself.

Not in a narcissistic sense, but in recognition that your body is the only one you will ever have! You can't trade it in, you can't move to something better, you have to deal with what you have.

If you are good to your body, it will serve you well. Valuing yourself means not abusing your mind and body with drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food and lifestyle choices that are not ennobling.