From the mouths of babes

"Do wrinkles hurt?"

My mom is an elementary school teacher. Last week, out of the blue of course, one of her little girls asks her if wrinkles hurt. ouch. They may hurt the ego a little bit... My mom's no sack of wrinkles by any means, but there are things each of us can do to help preserve our youth a little bit.

So you know about sunscreen and drinking plenty of water and rest/meditation and sleeping plenty and training and joint mobility...that's all fine a good, but if you have the body and no brain to move it, the body is worthless.

In the Brain That Changes Itself, (yes, you've heard me speak of it before- I LOVE it!) the author reminds us how important using our imagination is. When we were young and learning the world, we'd act out or recreate scenes from movies, we'd play school, and barbies, and crazy water games. I used to spend hours playing with friends or even just by myself. The house rule was if the weather is nice, go outside and play until the street lights come on.

I remember when we lived at Fort Knox (that would be Kentucky where a big chunk of our gold lives) I used a bar stool and our big toy barrel as a bus. I set up shop in the hallway and "went on a road trip." I'm amazed at how creative kids can be. There's a huge tree behind our house here and the neighborhood kids all gather at it after school to just play. I have no idea what they're doing...I don't think they do either. But they're actually using a part of their brain we lose as we age. It's a use it or lose it brain, remember?

What's imagination got to do with aging? Imagination isn't just making up random scenarios like kids might do, it's the act of visualization. (I'm about to go "The Secret" on you, so be prepared.) There is validity to "mind over matter." If we can create a successful dialog and outcome in our brains, it is more likely to play out successfully in real life. Lifters do it before a big lift, public speakers do it before a speech. If you "see" yourself succeeding, you're more likely to succeed. Conversely, if you see yourself failing, you're more likely to fail. These mental stories play out in our imagination. A well greased imagination can lead to success in anything from picking up a barbell to getting a promotion. Our brain doesn't know what's real and what's not, it's our mind that interprets reality. (Relativity anyone?) In some cases what's real to us wasn't truly real anyway. If we can manipulate the mind to believe or not believe, then we can get the body to follow (reasonably speaking, of course).

If you want to create more success in your life, you have to get your reps in, just like anything else. One simple way to do get more reps in is by using your imagination. "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." Napoleon Hill