Level Up: Shifting Our Perspective About Aging and Defying Stereotypes

Why do we think that we have to look or behave a certain way when we get older? And how can we change that?

Well, thankfully not everyone thinks this way, but if you still do find yourself getting hung up on a particular number, you are not alone and it is not your fault. It's mainly because of outdated narratives telling us that once you've passed a certain age, it's time to throw in the towel, which couldn't be further from the truth.  In this episode, we're proving those stereotypes wrong.

Here are some of the inspirational influencers mentioned in this episode:

• Joan MacDonald
• Ernestine Shepherd
• Irvin Randle
• Angie Schmitt 
• Chalene Johnson 

If you want to shift your perspective about aging, I suggest following these accounts and any other accounts that defy the outdated stereotypes of what aging should look like. Surround yourself with more people like this and you will no longer look at aging as something to be feared, but as something to celebrate.

Perspective is everything. This is how we level up.

Transcript

Let's talk aging, particularly why aging is scary to a lot of people and why we feel like we have to look or behave a certain way as we reach certain numbers in our age. And how can we change that? Today we're going to ditch these outdated notions and level up. Let's dive in. Hey there. Welcome to the Friend in Your Ear podcast.

I'm your host, Luna Smith, and I will be that friend inside your ear. Well, we explore all things self-improvement. I'll share tips, motivation and positivity to help you live your best life, from health and wellness to career and relationships. I've got you covered because that's what friends are for, right? So tune in every week for a friendly chat to brighten your day.

And let's make every day a little better together, shall we, friend? And now on with the show. Okay, This episode is actually a listener request. The idea of why is it that some people are so afraid of reaching certain numbers in their age, particularly those different like decade thresholds? Like what is it that makes them scary? And how can we not be affected by those numbers?

It's actually my birthday week this week, which is why I thought this would be a good topic to discuss. So thank you for that listener suggestion. All right. Why do we think that we have to look or behave a certain way when we get older? You know what I'm talking about? Like, there's a lot of stereotypes that seem to come with aging.

I mean, thankfully, not everyone thinks this way. But if you find you still are getting hung up on a particular number, you are not alone and it's not your fault. It's mainly because of outdated narratives from society telling us that once you've passed a certain age, you are no longer useful. And that couldn't be further from the truth.

And I think it's important to talk about, I think. I think generally there's a lot of change happening in this arena. I see so many more people who are embracing age and proving or disproving, I should say, stereotypes about aging. And that's what I want to highlight today, because I think this needs to come out even more like more people need to stop listening to this outdated narrative about what we should be looking like and acting like as we get older.

Because let me let you in on a little secret. Age is just a number. What matters more is your mindset. That's what ages you. It's not the number that you see. It's how you feel about that number. If you have a negative attitude about your age, you can actually influence your body like how you feel in your body.

Like the things we've discussed in past episodes, how you know, the things you tell yourself matter. And the same is true for how you feel about yourself and your age. Yes, there's some things that we cannot change. We're more likely to be prone to certain things as we get older. But you can also change a lot of those feelings and things just by making the right choices for yourself.

So if you have a negative attitude about your age, you're going to feel that because you may be subconsciously throwing in the towel and influencing your physicality and mental sharpness by making subconscious choices that support that narrative, you're telling yourself about how you should be feeling as you age. But on the flip side, if you think about aging in a positive way than the number of years that you've been alive is just that there are no attachments to it.

It's just a number. And the beautiful thing is you can make this shift in your perspective at any time. So even if you're in your fifties or six or seven years or eighties, it doesn't matter how old you are, You can still shift your perspective and live your best life. And that's what we're talking about. I want to talk about a handful of people who've become influencers in the aging space, proving that stereotypes are false, essentially about teaching.

They're disproving the stereotypes and societal biases of of aging. And I'm going to start with two extremely inspiring women. If you haven't heard about them, I highly suggest you look them up, follow them on social media because they are very inspirational. We're talking about Joan McDonald and Ernestine Shepherd. If you haven't heard of either of these ladies, I'm going to give you a quick little rundown.

Joan MacDonald, who's known on social media as @TrainwithJoan, has 1.7 million followers on Instagram, recently released a book called Flex Your Age, which is about defying stereotypes and is 76 years young. She didn't start working out until she was 70 years old. She started because she was having a lot of health conditions. She was overweight and was told if she didn't make changes, then things were going to get worse.

So with the help of her daughter, she turned her life around through mindset, diet and weight lifting and has been an inspiration. And to many, you should go follow her account and see like her transformation. And it just shows you like how you can it doesn't matter how old you start, you can still transform like, seriously, go look at her pictures and her videos.

And I love that because it's such an inspiration and possibility because of this, you know, part of the stereotypes is that for especially for women, but for men, too, is that your metabolism slows down as you age. And a lot of people just start to accept their you know, like increase in weight. They just are like, oh, well, this is aging, I guess.

And they just kind of like, you know, give up and throw in the towel and think that there's no other choice, that this is just life, this is what happens. But these two women have proven that it doesn't matter how old you are when you start, you can still look good.

Now I want to talk about Ernestine Shepherd, who is on social media on Instagram, as @ShepherdErnestine. She has over 90,000 followers and she is 86 years young and is actually the world's oldest living female competitive bodybuilder. But get this, she didn't enter her first bodybuilding competition until she was 71 years old, and she didn't start working out until she was 56 years old. And then at the age of 71, entered her first competition and won first place and she looks amazing, like she looks really good.

She's super in shape and has a very positive attitude and has said that age is absolutely nothing but a number. And her advice to anyone who wants to start making changes is to just get out and start walking because anyone can do it. You just get out the door and walk. It's free and that's a great start. I love her story about how she did not enter her first competition until she was 71 years old.

It's insane and she still works out daily and looks amazing. So go follow her to for inspiration. But both of these women, if you you know, like you think of what society has said, women in their seventies and eighties should be looking like they are defying that and they're showing the possible added that what we've been told this idea that you basically once you pass a certain age, you recede into the shadows and you you let go, you throw in the towel, you're just in the act of dying like, you know, none of that is real.

None of that is true. There is no well, I guess that's like you can always make a change. And I think these women are setting such an incredible example and proving that it doesn't matter what number it says, what year you were born, what matters is your mindset and your motivation. And you do not have to give up.

You do not have to think to yourself like, Well, it's too late for me. I guess this is my life. Like you can always make changes. You can always be better. And I love that they've shown that it's never too late to start working on herself. And that mindset is so much more important than age.

I know we're talking about a few more influencers in, you know, different spaces that are showing that age is just a number like Irvin Randle, who is on Instagram as @IrvinRandle. I'll link all of these in the show notes. He can follow them. He has over 700,000 followers on Instagram and he's known as #MrStealYourGrandma. He is 61 years old and is a teacher turned fashion model who became famous for his stylish outfit posts on Instagram and has been featured on magazines and on runways since his post took off.

So, again, this is just like I mean, he's he is someone who already had a career working as a teacher and just happens to be a very fashionable guy who just shared some of his pictures and it blew up. And all of a sudden now he's, you know, a fashion model and age that previously might be considered like a senior age or too old to be getting in the fashion industry.

Like, you know, the industry itself tends to favor younger men and women. And he is like became famous in an older age and you should go check out his post. He does have an amazing fashion sense and again, is showing that it doesn't matter how old you are, there's always potential for you that basically, you know, it's never too late to start. You can always change careers. You're not stuck. I guess that's the gist of what I'm saying is you're not stuck where you are.

Another influencer that I wanted to highlight is Angie Schmitt, who in her sixties has over 1 million subscribers on her "Hot and Flashy" YouTube channel, which is about beauty, health and fashion aimed at women in their fifties and sixties to help them look and feel their best again, disproving this idea that that once you reach a certain age, you should be lighter on your makeup or just, you know, get rid of makeup completely.

I mean, if you don't, like, wear makeup, that's fine. That's you. But there's a lot of people who wear makeup daily and when they start to age, sometimes are ashamed about trying to continue to look and feel their best. But continuing to wear makeup or continuing to dress in fashionable clothes, you can still very much care about your looks and your appearance and put effort into your self so that you can feel your best, even in your sixties and beyond.

And another person I want to highlight is younger than the rest that I've talked about today. But she's been one of my personal I guess, like mentors from afar for years now. Her name is Charlene Johnson. She has over 768,000 followers on Instagram. She's a serial entrepreneur and podcaster who people mainly know or with a lot of people seem to know, I guess from her days as a fitness instructor and a lot of Beachbody workouts.

But I love her because she's super authentic. And for me she's about 20 years older than I am, so it's kind of like a flash forward of what can I still be doing 20 years from now instead of feeling like in my thirties that I'm like, oh, halfway through my life and, you know, everything's downhill from here.

She's showing me basically like a glimpse into what's possible for me 20 years from now, which I really appreciate, by sharing about how she feels better in her body in her fifties than she did in her twenties and thirties. After shifting her focus to weight lifting and nourishing foods and higher protein. Instead of doing hours of cardio a day and diet foods.

So basically it's again that like that hope that like things aren't downhill after you like reach 50 things aren't downhill after you reach 30. Things can always get better. And there's so many women who I have who I follow who are in their fifties and above, who basically give me hope about that age. We need to share more of this kind of inspiration because the more we normalize this, the more we can dissolve that negative and extremely outdated stereotype of aging.

So I highly suggest following some accounts like these that inspire you about getting older, that prove that aging doesn't mean throwing in the towel and giving up on yourself, but instead that you can love yourself even more the older you get. After all, with age comes experience and wisdom. Of course, not everyone gets wiser as they get older, but typically the more experience you have, the more things you've had in your life, the more you have to look back on and learn from.

And we become better people. The more that we learn and grow from those trials and errors of our youth. And that in itself is beautiful. That's the thing I love most about aging, is how much better I feel as a person today. When I look back on how I was in my twenties, you know, like I think I've had so much growth just from life experience and every year is another opportunity to collect even more experiences.

And the older you get, the fuller that collection, which is such a gift. I love to think back about like all of the things that I've accomplished, which kind of goes back to that episode I did on celebrating not deprecating like that idea of if we write down the things that we've accomplished in the last year, you can also just do that with like just writing down your life experiences, like looking at photos.

I mean, it was I just love to scroll past photos and think like, Holy moly, like I've done a lot of stuff in my life. It's a really cool to look back on that and just think about like how rich those experiences are. And if you haven't collected a lot of those experiences yet, there's still time. It doesn't matter how old you are, there's still time, and you should live life to the fullest because every day you have is a gift and you should use it.

You should live it to your fullest. Because with aging, we have a choice. We can either be dying or we can be growing and blooming. And which would you rather be? Personally, I want to keep blooming and I love that. It doesn't matter what age you are now, you still can live your best life. If we follow people and look up to people who are inspiring to us, who are representing what we want to be when we get older and reach a certain age, then I think that we can really change our perspective of getting older.

I personally am not afraid of certain numbers, but I know a lot of people are. I think because I follow so many inspirational women who don't care about the number of the age they are and are just out there kicking butt and being amazing, inspirational women, I think that that has made me have a positive outlook on aging.

So I wanted to share this because if aging is scary to you, I want you to know that you can shift that perspective. It's not too late. It's never too late. Just follow people who inspire you. Just look at the people that I have shared, look them up, see what they're doing, and hopefully you'll find someone who inspires you too, and makes you have that positive outlook and makes you feel excited about the future because it's never too late because you can still live your best life.

You're just getting started. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you found this useful and if you did, it would really mean a lot to me if you shared this with someone because sharing is caring and it helps to support the show. Another way to support the show, while also possibly giving yourself an extra boost and changing your perspective to a more positive one might be to check out manager band.

If you go to MantraBand.com/ThatBlissfulBalance and use code: thatblissfulbalance, you can get 10% off your entire order. And they have some really great mantras. I think a good one for today with this idea of aging and collecting experiences and wisdom and looking at it as an opportunity to grow and collect those experiences would be the mantra, "Enjoy the journey."

But there are, of course, so many to choose from. I just think that that idea of instead of getting hung up on the number that we happened to be, how many years we've happened to be alive, we should be focusing instead on enjoying doing this journey because it is such a gift. So check them out. MantraBand.com/ThatBlissfulBalance.

I'll have all this linked down in the show notes to make things easier. Thank you again so much for listening. You are amazing and it doesn't matter how old you are. What matters is how you feel about it, how you feel about yourself. And I hope this episode helped you to feel better. Thanks for letting me be the friend inside your ear and I'll see you next time.

Have a great week.