Does Your “Selfie” Show Age Esteem?

The following excerpt from “What Selfie Sticks Really Tell Us About Ourselves” (NY Times, Aug. 8, 2015)
 came across my desk recently from Candice, one of my readers in Ireland. Her comment was, “Age Esteem needs to become more widely spread so we might be proud to show what we really look like and to be happy with the way we look, wrinkles and all.”

Here is the excerpt. “The American
 Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports a marked increase 
in demand for cosmetic surgery as people become disappointed comparing their
 selfies with the images they see in the mirror.”

It is true that raw close-up photos of any kind tend to emphasize details like wrinkles and age spots. It is also true that wrinkles and age spots are not yet embraced and celebrated by the society we live in.

So what can we do?

• Avoid posting selfies on the internet. People with age esteem know that they are in control and do not have to follow the herd.
• Post selfies that show your wrinkles and personal character and be proud of them. People with age esteem know that they each have a unique beauty. This is in part because of their wisdom and experience reflected on their faces.
• Encourage all the people who you know who have age esteem to post their untouched selfies on the internet with you to let people know that age is beautiful and that age can and should be celebrated.

Remember that you are beautiful with a unique beauty that is yours. Cherish it and celebrate it.

Bonnie Fatio

Age Esteem Lessons From A Newborn

Lessons From Lucy

We are delighted to have a new baby in our extended family. A dear friend who we consider part of our family recently gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Lucy.

Besides being overwhelmed with love as I held Lucy in my arms, fed her, changed her, and watched her wiggle, look at me, and then sleep, I realized that she had lessons to teach us. – Lessons for Age Esteem.

Let me share Lucy’s lessons for Age Esteem with you here.

• Unconditional acceptance. Accept people for who they are with both their flaws and finer qualities, knowing that they are doing what they believe is best. Accept the love of others.
• Let others know when you need something. Whereas Lucy must cry to let us know she is hungry or needs to be changed, we are able to express words and gestures. Although we have been brought up to believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive, remember that someone has to receive in order for others to give. Ask for what you want and need.
• Sleep when you are tired. It is okay to nap during the day.
• Drink a lot.
• Keep moving. Exercise your muscles. Wiggle and stretch.
• Take time to be quiet and tune into the world around you with its colors, odors and textures. Feel the breeze and the heat of the sun.
• Learn something new every day.

If you practice Lucy’s lessons, you will feel better mentally, spiritually and physically. You will age better and you will enhance your age esteem.

Bonnie Fatio

My 15 Age Esteem wishes for you during 2015 

1. Live each day fully.
2. Stretch your body, mind and spirit.
3. Inhale happiness and love; exhale pain and fear.
4. Embrace new experiences.
5. Build play into your day.
6. Share your talents with others of all ages.
7. Learn something new each day.
8. Laugh often.
9. Celebrate frequently.
10. Love yourself unconditionally.
11. Seek the positive in each person and experience.
12. Give thanks for the blessings of your life.
13. Meet new challenges with a sense of adventure.
14. Greet each new day with anticipation and zest.
15. Become a living model of Age Esteem for those who meet you!

Happy Age Esteem 2015!

Bonnie Lou Fatio

Gratitude Is My Attitude

When I was born,

In a Hotel Suite,

With Mother, Father, and brother Pete,

Our cast of four was thus complete,

An absolutely perfect feat!

All was perfect, or so it seemed,

And then we grew and grew much older

(We’d not yet heard of Age Esteem!)

each year braver, brighter, bolder.

Now I am in a Twilight zone,

My future’s not as long as yore,

The family’s gone, I’m left alone

But positive there’s much in store:

Depending on my attitude

And facing Life with Gratitude!

Written by Alexandra Taylor for AgeEsteem®

Dr. Jen Palmer, 44, Florida

I love the term Age Esteem because it has such a positive image. I have always hated the term “anti-aging”, because it implies the natural process of aging is a negative event that should be avoided and fought against. That creates an unreasonable pressure to try to look younger than we are, and to even pretend we are younger than we are.

Personally, I believe we should embrace the gifts that come with getting older and consider life to be a great adventure. For me, every decade gets better and better! Age Esteem brings to mind confidence, wisdom and strength. The term is a great reminder as to how we should feel, at any age, especially as women.

My personal conerns? For the most part, I look forward to getting older because life gets better every year! I think as long as we have our mental and physical health, we can create a great quality of life for ourselves whether we are 30 or 80. So my biggest concerns would be losing my memory, or having difficulty walking, because those would present challenges (but not roadblocks) for living the kind of life that I imagine.

Jen's tips: My focus is on creating a lifestyle that promotes health for myself and my husband, while still enjoying some splurges here and there. We try to get a good dose of activity and exercise through the week, eat lots of veggies and whole foods, and take supplements. It’s all about balance and moderation. And have fun, because that keeps us youthful and positive about life.

We have plenty of inspiration because we live in an area of Florida that has a large senior population, and the majority of the people we meet are fit and happy. Every day, I see people in their 70s and 80s playing tennis, walking, and swimming- sometimes better and farther than I can! So my assumption is that I will be one of those happy, healthy seniors when the time comes, as long as I take care of myself.

Dr. Jen Palmer is a Naturopathic Doctor ProAgingLiving partnering with AgeEsteem. 

A RETURN TO LOVE by Marianne Williamson hangs framed on my wall to remind me of my own commitment to shine unabashedly at every age. You will recognize its influence within this Age Esteem Prayer of Thanksgiving. 

An Age Esteem Prayer Of Thanksgiving

Dear God, Spirit of Life,

We thank you for the blessings of the enlightened voices you have given us and the experience, talents and wisdom that have grown us into who we are today.

We know that we each have a unique power within us to manifest our light. – That we are powerful beyond measure.  We were indeed born to manifest the glory that is within us and to share our voices abundantly.

We are grateful for the freedom to let our lights shine unconsciously as a beacon to others so that they, too, might break through their own barriers of fear and self-consciousness.

Be with each person as she and he steps into her own power of voice and “being” her authentic self, filled with love, laughter, gratitude and commitment to test her voice in new ways as a gift to the world.

Guide us to wash away our fears and self-imposed limits in our thinking and actions.

Shower your blessings upon us as we ripen and mature knowing that the definition of aging and elders depends on how WE choose to live and the examples that we become for generations to follow.

And so it is. Amen.

Written for my interview on Using Your Authentic Voice to Transform the World.

Bonnie Fatio

More Dr. Shigeaki Honohara’s, 101 years, (See blogs Nov. 23 & 24)

Advice for a Long, Healthy Life = Tips for Age Esteem

* To stay healthy, always take the stairs and carry your own stuff. I take two stairs at a time, to get my muscles moving.

* My inspiration is Robert Browning’s poem “Abt Vogler.” My father used to read it to me. It encourages us to make big art, not small scribbles. It says to try to draw a circle so huge that there is no way we can finish it while we are alive. All we see is an arch; the rest is beyond our vision but it is there in the distance.

* Pain is mysterious, and having fun is the best way to forget it. If a child has a toothache, and you start playing a game together, he or she immediately forgets the pain. Hospitals must cater to the basic need of patients: We all want to have fun. At St. Luke’s we have music and animal therapies, and art classes.

* Don’t be crazy about amassing material things.Remember: You don’t know when your number is up, and you can’t take it with you to the next place.

* Hospitals must be designed and prepared for major disasters, and they must accept every patient who appears at their doors. We designed St. Luke’s so we can operate anywhere: in the basement, in the corridors, in the chapel. Most people thought I was crazy to prepare for a catastrophe, but on March 20, 1995, I was unfortunately proven right when members of the Aum Shinrikyu religious cult launched a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. We accepted 740 victims and in two hours figured out that it was sarin gas that had hit them. Sadly we lost one person, but we saved 739 lives.

* Science alone can’t cure or help people. Science lumps us all together, but illness is individual. Each person is unique, and diseases are connected to their hearts. To know the illness and help people, we need liberal and visual arts, not just medical ones.

* Life is filled with incidents. On March 31, 1970, when I was 59 years old, I boarded the Yodogo, a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka . It was a beautiful sunny morning, and as Mount Fuji came into sight, the plane was hijacked by the Japanese Communist League-Red Army Faction. I spent the next four days handcuffed to my seat in 40-degree heat. As a doctor, I looked at it all as an experiment and was amazed at how the body slowed down in a crisis.

* Find a role model and aim to achieve even more than they could ever do. My father went to the United States in 1900 to study at Duke University in North Carolina . He was a pioneer and one of my heroes. Later I found a few more life guides, and when I am stuck, I ask myself how they would deal with the problem.

* It’s wonderful to live long. Until one is 60 years old, it is easy to work for one’s family and to achieve one’s goals. But in our later years, we should strive to contribute to society. Since the age of 65, I have worked as a volunteer. I still put in 18 hours seven days a week and love every minute of it.

These tips were sent to me in an e-mail concerning Dr. Hinohara. His advice also offers excellent tips for enhancing your age esteem.

Bonnie Fatio

Dr. Shigeaki Hinora’s (See blog Nov. 23, 2013)

Advice for a Long, Healthy Life = Tips for Age Esteem.

Each of the following bits of advice for living a long and healthy life are tips and techniques for promoting your age esteem.

* Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It’s best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

* All people who live long regardless of nationality, race or gender share one thing in common: None are overweight. For breakfast I drink coffee, a glass of milk and some orange juice with a tablespoon of olive oil in it. Olive oil is great for the arteries and keeps my skin healthy. Lunch is milk and a few cookies, or nothing when I am too busy to eat. I never get hungry because I focus on my work. Dinner is veggies, a bit of fish and rice, and, twice a week, 100 grams of lean meat.

* Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I’ll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

* There is no need to ever retire, but if one must, it should be a lot later than 65. The current retirement age was set at 65 half a century ago, when the average life-expectancy in Japan was 68 years and only 125 Japanese were over 100 years old. Today, Japanese women live to be around 86 and men 80, and we have 36,000 centenarians in our country. In 20 years we will have about 50,000 people over the age of 100…

* Share what you know. I give 150 lectures a year, some for 100 elementary-school children, others for 4,500 business people. I usually speak for 60 to 90 minutes, standing, to stay strong.

* When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can’t cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.

These were sent to me in an e-mail and are on numerous sites on the internet. There will be the second, and last, installment of his advice tomorrow.

Bonnie Fatio

Age Esteem is “Being”

Are you present in the moment, or are you ruled by To Do Lists and self-imposed obligations?

I came across an e-zine that I had written three years ago.  “This is really good stuff”, I thought.  I pulled out another and another.

Did I really write these?  I know that I did, but they seemed to convey an authenticity that has been missing recently.

What has happened?  What am I doing differently today to make them less than they were?  Is it because of my health issues?  I have had several during the past three years.  Have I turned my passion into work?  I still love what I do.  Many questions bombarded me.

The answer came to me a couple days later as I was writing my To Do List. – I have become caught up in “doing” rather than “being”!

This revelation shook me up.  I had always prided myself in being drawn toward my vision rather than building it.  But here I was, several business mentors later, realizing that I was no longer being my genuine self and living the vision.  Instead, I was caught up in doing what must be done to build the vision.

You may say, “Of course you were.  That is how empires are made.”  But it is evident to me that I do not want to build an empire.  My vision is of a world where people of all ages are respected as valued members of society.

It is not an empire.  It is an attitude, a way of life that enhances lives around the globe.

I want to be a catalyst for this vision to positively transform the way we look at age.  It is a vision of dignity, respect and appreciation for the contribution and potential of each age, which is inclusive of all people.  This vision wants to be so strong that people begin to think, act and live the vision.

Yes!  For this I need to go back to “being” the vision.  Being means breathing, thinking, dreaming, feeling and vibrating the vision now.  It means being present in each moment.

I AM and I choose to BE.

Time will tell the difference this will make.  Oh, yes.  I will continue to “do” as well, but only as it relates to “being”.

How about you?

Bonnie Fatio