Systems That Age You vs Lifestyles That Make You Radically Alive

Episode Length: 15 minutes

The Dimness in Their Eyes

Hey y'all, hey friends, it's me Kristin back with a chilly winter day message for you. I'm so excited to tell you about today, because it's a topic that's really near and dear to my heart: radically alive systems.

For many of us, especially those of us like me approaching 70, sometimes I meet other women in their late 60s or early 70s, and I see this kind of dimness in their eyes. And I know that they're not having this experience of Radical Aliveness that I am having. So today, I'm here to talk about it.

Your Life Reflects the Systems You're Running

Your life reflects the systems that you're running. So if there is a dimness in your eyes or a sagging or a heaviness or a gravity around you, it's because the systems that you're running are not working well for you. And you may not even realize that you're running systems, and you may not even realize that it's the systems that aren't working well.

See, a lot of times we start running systems when we're really small children. I know that I did. I grew up in a household where there was some dysfunction, and because of that dysfunction, the parenting wasn't optimal, to say the least. And so it began to program me with systems about how to do well in my family environment that weren't really very healthy.

The Glass on the Counter: Focus on What You Don't Want

These systems were not only unconscious, but very conscious. Like, for example, my dad used to tell me, "An accident is something you mean not to happen." So if I put a glass on the counter close to the edge, my dad would come and shake his finger at me and say, "When this glass gets knocked off the counter, it will not be an accident, because you did not make sure that you put the glass somewhere where it couldn't be knocked off."

This kind of system sets you up so that you're constantly looking into the future, identifying what you don't want to happen, and then living in a way that won't allow the thing you don't want to happen to happen. You're constantly focused on what you don't want.

Well, if you know how life actually works, what you focus on gets bigger and expands. So if you focus on what you don't want, what do you have a lot of in your life? A lot of what you don't want. And this is why so many people are depressed and anxious—because their focus is on what they don't want, and that is expanding and getting bigger every day.

And so the light goes out of their eyes, and their face gets heavy, and the gravity around them is weighing them down, and sometimes you get this kind of stooped posture. Well, those are all symptoms of bad systems. But you can change your systems at any time. It's a matter of getting conscious about them and deciding what you want to do about it.

The Aging Default

One thing I realize is that despite the fact that trips around the sun have a biological impact—and I'm certainly not trying to say they don't—how much you age in those trips around the sun isn't so much about the trips as it is about these systems that I'm talking about. And one of the systems, for sure, without any doubt at all, is what I call the aging default.

The aging default is a system that is going to run unless you do something about it. It's this whole "hell to get old" belief. It's this "you're used up, washed up, burned out, burned up, exhausted, fatigued, old people are irrelevant" programming. All the things that when you were 20 years old made you think, "Oh gosh, I don't want to be an old person." My dad used to say getting old is hell.

Well, I'm here to disagree with that, and I say getting old is heaven. We all know people that are not going to get old because they're already gone. In my high school graduating class, it is scary how many people are not going to get old. And I feel the privilege of having more trips around the sun ahead of me.

If you're not thinking of it that way, I invite you to reconsider, because if you adopt my dad's vision of getting old as hell, and you focus on the hell, guess what's going to expand in your experience? The hell. Nobody wants that. You want your life as long as you're here to live it to be a joyous adventure, and it can be with the right systems.

Children Are Naturally Radically Alive

If you don't really understand what I mean by Radical Aliveness, you need to get around a little kid. Little kids are naturally radically alive. Unless they have a health challenge or something like that, a healthy young child is radically alive. Their life is focused on wonder and curiosity and joy and discovery and this feeling of vibrancy.

Every day is an adventure to a little kid. My grandson, when he was a little boy, oh my gosh. Every time he came and stayed with me, he was just such the guru on how to be a joyful human being. And trying to keep up with him, which by the time he was two and three years old was already not getting easy—keeping up with him was a joyful experience. He taught me so much about Radical Aliveness.

And you were a two and three year old kid too. You know inside, from inside, what it means to be radically alive. But why are you having trouble living that way? It's because of these systems and how they crept up on you, unconsciously. And the more life experiences you had, and the more failures and disappointments and rejections and betrayals and all the stuff that life brings your way—those things accumulated.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze: When Old Systems Trip You Up

The brain is all set up to be a protective device to identify danger and guide the system away from it. Right? The fight or the flee or the freeze. Those are three systems that are meant to protect you from danger. But unfortunately, we are not attacked by too many saber-toothed tigers anymore.

And that very same system that works great when there's a saber-toothed tiger in the mix isn't quite so good at identifying the dangers of modern life. So constantly, these old systems of safety are tripping us up into reacting in ways where fight, flight, or freeze comes out. And instead of meeting challenges with the kind of youthful enthusiasm that you had when you were learning to walk—that's different.

Failure Is Built Into Success

Now, if you want to talk about a dangerous system, learning to walk when you don't know how to walk is dangerous. You are going to fall down a lot. But you know what little kids never do? They don't make it mean anything, even when they fall down and have a little owie. As soon as they're over it, they're back up, holding onto the coffee table, going around one step at a time, taking up their courage and letting go of the coffee table and taking off into the middle of the room.

Well, they fall down sooner or later. But you know what? It doesn't mean anything to them. So they don't have this massive system that says, "Don't try something new, you'll fail. Failure is not an option." Where in the world did that saying come from?

I heard it a lot in my family. If I brought home a failing grade—which I never did, I'm telling you right now, I never did that because it was cause for serious punishment, and I did not want punishment—so I made sure that I did not bring home any failing grades. But what it taught me is, if you don't think you can succeed, don't even try.

And so I don't know how many opportunities I've turned away from in my life because I didn't know if I could be successful. I know about a few big ones though. And you know, it's sad now when I look back and I think, wow, if I had understood that not only is failure an option, it's actually built into the success process.

Yes, go back to the baby learning to walk example. They fall down because there are skills that they don't have yet. And every time they fail, fall down, their brain learns something about the skill that they're trying to establish, which is being able to balance on two legs. It's not considered a big issue when a baby falls down and they're learning to walk. We all understand that's just part of it. Riding a bicycle is the same thing. You take a couple of spills probably. It's not the end of the world. You just learn something and try again.

Lifestyles, Not Goals

This loss of Radical Aliveness that leads to the dimming and the eyes that don't sparkle, and the face that's long, and the heavy gravity that's pulling you down—those are all expressions of systems that are not working for you.

Now, there's another thing. Being as how it's January, it's all fresh on our minds. A lot of us have set New Year's resolutions, and a lot of us have already, quote unquote, failed at those and put them to the side and gone on down the road with the same old habits.

Goals, in many, many ways—I mean, some people have a real system, good system for working with goals. And to you all, I say more power to you, and I'm not talking about you. I'm talking to those of us who set these goals, try and fail and give up. That system is not working very well. And that's why this dimming thing just gets worse and worse the more trips you make around the sun. All these failures and disappointments and betrayals, they add up into something that is not good.

So what we really need to do, instead of setting goals, is create lifestyles for ourselves. Lifestyles are about what you want. So instead of being focused on what you don't want, you're focused on what you want.

My Lifestyle Goal: Feel Good

And for me, this year, my lifestyle goal is to feel good. And it's working really well. I've made some pretty impressive changes in my life in just the past few weeks. Because now when the cravings for eating foods—that's one of the big changes I've made, is some changes to my diet—when cravings for certain foods hit me, instead of responding the old way, which was to try to willpower my way through, and the craving would come back and come back and come back until finally I would give up and go eat the thing—forget it, it's not worth it. That's not happening too much anymore.

I'm not saying I don't have a bad day or don't slip up, but I am saying that even that is built into my lifestyle. I have a forgiving lifestyle. If I step back into an old habit, that's part of it. It's like when the baby falls down. It's part of learning to walk.

I'm creating a new lifestyle. And so in order to live in that lifestyle, I know that once or twice or here or there, there's going to be a step back, and that's just part of it, and that's okay with me. I'm fine with it. But in the meantime, every day that I'm managing to live mostly into my new lifestyle now, I'm creating new neural pathways in my brain that like this feeling good.

This feeling good, it's very motivational, because I feel good. I feel much better than the old ways. Those old habits were pulling me down. It didn't work, and I didn't realize it. Because, you know what? I had a really big prime directive from my beloved mother: "Eat something, you'll feel better."

Guess what? I found out recently, eating some things makes you feel bad, really bad. Things that I thought were making me feel better were actually making me feel bad. And now that I don't eat them much, if at all, I feel better. So the whole thing is just better for me.

The Three Minute Practice

So you might want to consider a focus on having a lifestyle that you want, and then create a few anchor points for yourself. I have something that I call the three minute practice that helps anchor into different habits, different patterns, into the lifestyle that will make you feel good.

So if you want to know more about that, put it in the comments below, and I'll be in touch, because I'd love to share it with you. And I guess I've talked your ear off enough for today. So I'm going to say goodbye and I'll be back soon. And I hope you stay warm and big hugs and love and bye for now.

Key Takeaways

1. Your life reflects the systems you're running—conscious and unconscious
2. The "aging default" runs automatically unless you choose differently
3. Focusing on what you don't want makes it expand
4. Children naturally embody Radical Aliveness through wonder and curiosity
5. Failure is built into the success process—like learning to walk
6. Create lifestyles (what you want) instead of goals (what you should do)
7. A forgiving lifestyle includes room for setbacks as part of growth
8. New neural pathways form when you consistently choose what feels good

Connect With Kristin

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3. Learn more about Radical Aliveness and the three minute practice