5 Healthy Habits to Cultivate with Aging like Wine

Would you like you if you age like wine? Would you like you if you met you?

Sometimes asking yourself with powerful questions and a deeper empowering conversation with yourself will take you to another level of your true self and with better understanding in how you are self-prioritizing your self-care.

Here’s a collage picture of me below. Some are over 10 years ago and other pictures were only 8 years ago.

Speaking of coloring/dyeing hair, I haven’t dyed my hair since 5 years ago due to some health reaction to the chemicals in the hair dye. So, since then I have learnt to cultivate a new approach of perspective on embracing aging… while the majority of us are somewhat still insecure of facing the truth about ‘growing old’, and yet it is just part of life.

Five years ago I went on a journey of going natural without trying or tempting to dye my hair ritually. So I made a decision of working from the inside out. Meaning, I work on my intrinsic frame of thoughts and belief system with the insecurities and the inherent belief of where I got this idea of influence from i.e. whatever the society would always tell us how women/men should look like or who they should be. The expectation of this world has gotten into our system that we kept believing that we should keep up with the appearance of the “Jone’s”. But deep inside my heart, I knew, this wasn’t the way to live the life I truly desire. I was tired of changing hair color and the feeling of not enough.

So I decided to ask myself questions like, “Why am I keep dying my hair and for who am I doing this for and why?” and “How long should I keep up with this system of trying to look young while ignoring the true meaning of growing old?”

Long story short, I began the journey of growing my hair “dye-free” and go for platinum naturally. I mean free from chemicals. At first, it felt uneasy and strange. But eventually, time does gives a time and space to learn how to let and let be.

Let’s talk briefly about men here too: We know for a fact that most men do not have a problem growing gray hair and it is actually attractive too as it shows more self-confidence in them. It is more appealing when your self-confidence can be felt by how you prioritize self-care and self-love by living and leading as an example, and not only by how you look on the outside. And you know what’s worse is when an old person is trying to look so young and do everything in their might to fight aging outwardly without working on their inner peace and their insecurities from deep within. Deep inside there’s a feeling that you and I would like to free us from lies of what the society is bombarding you and I; Or others will put pressure with their high expectations of how you should look like or smell like so you can feel that you just fit in right. But how far will you let the pressure of fitting in would go in your own life? Would you let it go as far as you starting to notice your physical health is in trouble? Or your emotional journey is feeling depressed? Once you give power of control to others what you should be like for the rest of your life, you give your freedom away. It doesn’t matter how old you are or your status is in life. When you learn how to work on your insecurities first about your “unrealistic expectations” versus *purposeful desires with missions*, then you have found yourself- that you, my dear, is Enough.

There’s two different kind of seeds that grows in each one of us and these will depend in the intention on how you nurture it (the seed of Unrealistic Expectations are learned belief system by what the society or the inherently behavior from your peers or parents who’d thought of how you should be like; and second, the seed of Purposeful Desires with Mission is when you acknowledge, live, and lead your life with compelling future that you yourself know it from the art of knowingness, and declaring the #IAm in you). Work from the inside out to begin the story of your Endurance with Purposeful Life thru UNLEARNING first the unrealistic expectations that you have allowed in your life for years. Unlearning is the very first step to Self-acceptance cultivation that plays a big role in Aging like Wine. Once that is cultivated with daily practice, it will also show or reflect on your physicality healthiness and emotional fitness. Self confidence is built in from deep within and it reflects thru the Essence of Clarity of how you handle the meaning you attached to your identity.

I remember asking myself another question of, “Why can’t we just be naturally accept aging like it is a beautiful thing? and what’s so bad about it?” From there on I stopped dying my hair, I saw results with my health improve too. Just doing the process of asking powerful questions that can lead your thoughts and emotions and actions to start making conscious decision of what’s healthy for your self-wellness. I have learnt as well how to embrace aging like wine and my self- confidence developed over time. It took days and nights, one step closer to another, and one day at a time to renew my mindset to experience the shift of beliefs system of what I truly want to accomplish with my self-care when it comes to the beauty of self-wellness.

I still get compliments like, “You still look like a teenager”, or “You look like your kids older sister!” LOL!!! Except at home, my teenagers would tease me about my gray hair as it shows more than before, “Mom, you are getting old!”. I just smile and accept comments as compliments. After all, they remind me to be grateful for all those years nurturing them to be the person they are today. It’s also about your attitude in how you choose to be on a receiving end by how you choose to handle the energy of the meaning of the words it carries to link with your perspective. Also what choice of meaning would you rather attach to a comment or compliment, negativity or positivity? A shift of Concerns or a shift of Influence?

Below is a recent picture of me at 39 years old.

So here’s me. To dear me- going into 5 years of hair-dye free. So, to answer the question above if I’ve met me, would I like me? The answer would be, “Oh yeah”. And would I like me if I age like wine? The answer is Holy doodle!!! YES please!!! Especially after all those years of reevaluating and reflecting on myself about my life’s purpose with my personal development. It is a daily habit to practice indeed.

When I started practicing to walk the talk of hair-dye free, I started to feel the weight of society’s expectations fading away, one puzzle at a time. Until it doesn’t affect me any longer. My self-confidence of learning to love myself thru self-care, I started loving myself by looking at myself in the mirror of my eyes that I needed this change of perspective in how I look at life from deep within me. From the intrinsic frame of thoughts (what I think of myself) and the extrinsic frame of thoughts (what the world thinks of me), I learned to filter with what I truly want and how I can demonstrate the purposeful lifestyle I truly want. From then on I took one step on front of the other to give myself permission and a gift to forgive me for not trusting the beauty that’s already within me (Authentic Intrinsic Frame of Thoughts). And that beauty can be cultivated with love and trust as self-care to self- love to self-whole= Sacred Responsibility.

So, here I am, to dear me. Loving myself has brought self trust, self worth, self confidence, and self-love to my self-image. And by that, I can also show others to give themselves the permission to shine their own definition of self-love to health care wholeheartedly.

Here are some simple healthy habits to adapt on how I applied in my life on cultivating the healthy habits in aging like wine. We dont’ have to wait to get old to adapt a healthy habit. We can start as young as we are right now, or wherever you are at in life right now, in order to create a healthy habit and make it a consistent daily practice to honour our own selves.

5 Healthy Habits to Cultivate with Aging like Wine:

1. Self Awareness: Pay Attention: EYES, MOUTH and EARS. Be self aware of what you read to feed your mind. Be aware of what you eat and how much you eat, and what you speak of in your life and others- Speak Life. Be more self-aware about what you hear- Words are powerful especially when you give strong meaning attached to it. What you hear repeatedly, lies or truth, may become your new norm of belief system. It is also thru hearing is how you also feed your mind, heart, body and soul. Above all, learn how to listen from different perspectives or point of view without being bias, but by using your filter system in you (based on understanding with wisdom) before making a final decision. Be also self- aware and be responsible of your own energy that you bring into any space you go into. For in life, everything has a cause and effect into any choices each one makes. With every single choice of cause and effect comes with a natural consequences that no one escapes it.
2. Meditate: Meditation is a very vital health habit to adapt into your very busy lifestyle. Without it, life is just a meaningless roller coaster of words without meaning. Meditation helps your mind to be still and know. In a place of knowingness within the stillness, the answers thru meditation calms the storm within us. The greatest challenge in life is learning how to be calm in the midst of the storm. This is when the practice of meditation teaches us inner calmness to perceive and control/manage our emotions in a way with such grace and understanding that turns life’s challenges into powerful extraordinary wisdom. Meditate every morning, even if it’s just 10 mins before you get out of bed, and or before you put your feet onto the floor. Practice with gratitude attitude. When you meditate with gratitude attitude, you are aligning yourself with your true purpose. Practice daily the *gratitude attitude* as part of your meditation. Because thru meditation, God has your back and where miracles happens. So, what are you grateful for daily and Why? Always remember your Why. This way, it will lead you to be more grateful and with a humble heart. Stay grounded with gratitude, as it calms the Ego (the monkey mind) from deep within. Meditation helps align your center energies within you. This helps also boosting your immunity. As the energy with your your immunity carries messages of either negative or positive energy. So be mindful and responsible of the energy you bring into your own space or any space you go to as this will affect your health.
3. Exercise: Life is movement. Life is a motion. Life flows when we let energy flows thru motion of movement. When we move, we live better. We breathe better and we feel better. When we completely stop our body from exercising thru the act of motion, or when we are not consistent, we feel stagnant. We also feel lazy and procrastination starts to set it one after the other. Then it becomes a bad habit of excuses we tell ourselves until that lies becomes our own truth of belief system. The lack of energy flows blocks our mind, body, heart, and soul in aligning our true purpose- It affects our soul, our mind, heart and body whether we know it or not. Then, we dont feel well and we get sick. It is important to honour the motion of energy within our body system. To honour our body by putting it into motion in a form of exercise (whatever form of exercise it may look like to you- It can be running, walking, paddle boarding, kayaking or canoeing, or going to the gym, or hard physical labour at work, or swimming, and brain work exercise as well like mind game, etc), we give our own self a self-respect to honour our own temple- for it is the only vehicle that our soul lives in. Let me say that again with you: This human body of ours, it’s the ONLY vehicle that our own soul lives in. So honour the body by taking good care of it- it really counts by how and what we nurture it daily. Take time to rest and honour it too when needed, and not abuse it with full of excuses.
4. EMOTIONAL FITNESS: “Emotional State on Self Reflection”: As Bob Proctor said, “It’s HOW you use your intellect that’s going to dictate your Emotional State. Your Emotional State is going to dictate how you behave. If you’re in control of your emotions, you’re in control of YOUR life.” It is always important to do a self-evaluation thru reflection. We need to check our inner self on how we are doing and feeling emotionally. It is even wiser and healthier to learn to control our emotional state to manage stress in our day to day busy lives. When we do a self reevaluation on our emotional state, we give ourselves a gift to freedom from self-doubt and self-sabotaging. We then benefit with cultivating a healthy habit that will reflect thru our behaviour by how we use our filter of understanding with wisdom and grace. We respond better rather than reacting. We also give space not only to ourselves but to others to express their voice. When we learn to self-manage ourselves, we feel the stability that creates inner peace and joy that is only felt thru learning how to manage our emotional state within us first. We feel we are in a state of CERTAINTY. We can’t change others by using our own own fantasy of expectations of them, but we can only change our own perspective in how we perceive others and our own emotional state and the meaning we attach to it when we interact with others with wisdom. Learning daily how to manage our emotional state and OWNING it, it’s being responsible. This also play a huge role in our health as our physicality daily age and adapting with healthy habits.
5. Self-Acceptance: Self Acceptance is Love and loving yourself wholly that “I AM ENOUGH”. Learning to accept yourself is the very first step to healing from deep within before you heal others. Self acceptance is self love and it is not selfish at all. It is a necessity and a responsibility. It is a necessity part of your healing journey to process life as it is, and not how you think it should be, or how the world thinks it should be. It is also a responsibility as it is part of growth. Our world is bombarding our self-worth and self-image with fake worth and unrealistic expectations thru social manipulation that you are not good enough. They re-edit your profile to how to be ‘perfect’ like”Keeping up with the Jones” mindset. But the good news is when you are learning to know thyself, love thyself, be thyself and lead thyself, it is more than enough, because that is the key to the well-spring of life- and because you are being true to thine own self. So, practice daily, To Thine Own Self Be True. Then you can lead others to be unstoppable too. Because my dear sister and brother, YOU ARE ENOUGH. And the world needs your unique voice that others might learn to shine their own light of self-care, self worth, self love and self whole too. It all begins with self-acceptance- one foot onto the other at a time. Let’s not hide the scars, the dark beauty spots, or the beautiful freckles or stretch marks that shows the STORY OF ENDURANCE– Endurance is part of aging like wine. It is all park of the process of growth and let that be part of our Physical Exercise and Emotional Fitness too.

Maintenance thru nurturing your body, heart, mind, emotions, and soul is part of the process of self-acceptance and care with Love and such Grace. Because thru the process of movement with endurance of “I am Enough”, it is like coming from a place of life experiences with lessons of the Essence of Life. You are Enough. Let that be your sense of certainty.