Stay Young

The Stay Young Book

How does it work?

“Let’s unwrite these pages …”

You can stop getting older. The fix does not involve drugs. It does not take a lot of time. It does not cost any money. It does not require belief in anything. It is not difficult.

What it will take is some commitment, a willingness to pay attention to certain details, and a few small but oh so important changes in your life.

If you are in a hurry to get started, skip this chapter. Jump ahead to the next one and read about “pitchfork moments.” This chapter contains some of the ideas behind the steps that follow.

Growing up vs. growing old

When you were young growing up was the most exciting adventure in the world. There were so many dreams of what you were “going to be” someday. Every time you got a little taller you wanted someone to mark it on the wall. Every birthday was a thing to look forward to. If you had decent parents they probably told you that you could do or be anything. There was so much opportunity. It was definitely something to look forward to.

Somewhere along the way, that changed. “Growing up” became “growing old” and that was a thing to be feared. People started to tell you to “act your age,” “quit being a baby,” or “grow up!” It was no fun. The excitement you felt about getting older grew less. You did poorly on some things in school or at sports or had trouble getting along with some people. You began to suspect that you have a lot of flaws. The list of things you could do or be “when you grew up” got a whole lot smaller. Birthdays became a thing to be feared. Age became the enemy.

Why? What changed to make such a huge difference? The problem seems to be this: No one ever told you what it means to grow up. Because you didn’t know, you probably tried a lot of different meanings. It was easy when you were young. Growing up was getting bigger. For a while it was school and grades, or success in sports. Later it was dating and finding a job. When you got a bit older, it might have been getting married or having children. Later it was success or position at the office, a bigger house, or more toys. Over the years you have tried many definitions for “growing up,” but you were never really sure.

Right now, if you were pressed to define what it means to “grow up,” could you do it? Could you give a good answer?

If you are honest with yourself, you will probably discover that you have no idea. You don’t understand what it means to grow up. You may remember that it used to be fun. You know that now it is not. You probably remember that every time someone told you to “act your age” or “grow up” they wanted you to do or be something that was no fun. All of this has likely left you confused. You know that anything that is fun is probably childish. If you want to be a “grown up” you know that you need to avoid being childish. You want to be a “grown-up” but you are really not sure what that means.

You have been lied to. The people encouraging you to grow up didn’t know what it means either. The ones who taught them were equally in the dark. They had no idea but they cared about you. So they pushed you in whatever direction made sense to them at the time. The encouraged you to “grow up” but could not tell you how to get there. They confused growing up with getting old.

Every single time anyone ever said to you, “Grow up!” they were really telling you, “Grow old.” They may have meant well, but they were encouraging you to get sick and weak. They were telling you to lose your sense of joy. They were encouraging a kind of slow suicide.

Growing up was healthy when you were young and it is healthy now.

Growing old is not healthy.

Getting confused by these two has dug a hole that most of the world has fallen into. In order to climb out of this hole, you need to make one simple but very important distinction. You need to realize that growing up is not the same as growing old1.

If you are four or 24 or 84, it is healthy to keep growing up. You can do so without growing old. Once you realize that difference, you can start again growing up. You can begin to do so in a healthy way. And you can stop growing older.

The theory

How does it happen, this aging thing? Most of us imagine that each day, each minute, each heartbeat… we get a little bit older. That answer makes sense, but that is not how it works. Remember the last time you had a big blow-out fight with someone, or got into trouble at work. Remember the last time you had something to do that you really didn’t want to. How did you feel afterward?

Have you ever heard anyone blame someone else for their aging? Maybe as a teen one of your parents complained, “You gave me three new grey hairs last night!” I heard a mother say to a friend, “My daughter gave me all my grey hairs.” People who have been in war, violence, or life-threatening situations will tell you that it aged them. They grew much older, sometimes in a very short time.

Intuitively, you may already know that stressful and difficult situations age you. At some level you may realize aging comes, not in a constant, even way, but in fits and starts. You might even recognize some of those moments when they happen. You do not grow steadily older over the years. You age—in small or large amounts—every time you go through certain stressful moments.

Since aging is just dying in small steps, let’s call those stressful times “dying moments.” A lifetime full of these little dying moments adds up. Eventually, if you are lucky and live long enough, you have saved up a whole lifetime of dying moments. So many small pieces of you will have died that you aren’t able to live healthy any longer. You get weaker and weaker, and you collect still more dying moments. Once too many pieces have died, not even the “miracles of modern medicine” can keep you alive. Your body shuts down and you leave it behind.

Stopping this aging process is simple. First, learn to recognize those dying moments. Next, learn to respond differently to them. The truth is that those moments themselves offer a dangerous opportunity, but they are not harmful. It is your response to them that ages you.

How it’s done

Dying moments happen to us many times every day. To completely stop the aging process, we need to respond to all of them in a healthy way.

This book will show you how to be constantly on the lookout for these moments. It will explore different types of them and explain how to respond to each of them. It will give you a series of steps that is easy to remember and easy to use when responding to them. The method is not time-consuming. Within a month, you should be able to respond to most them in seconds.

It will also show you how to look back over the day and the week and find patterns. By studying and changing the patterns of your responses you will go through a lot less of these dying moments. You will discover the greatest sources of aging in your life and you will learn to prevent them before they happen.

The steps are designed to be so easy that eventually you will not have to think about them. They will become as unconscious as breathing. In the process of staying young, they are as important as breathing.

The first week of using this process will probably be a difficult time. Within one month you will be comfortable with the simple steps needed to respond to the dying moments. Within three months, you will be able to respond with almost unconscious ease. Within one year, if you want to, you will be able to design your own next steps to this process.

By following the steps, you will find an increasing sense of peace with your life. Your stress level will lower. Life will become easier and more fun. Most importantly, you will slow down the aging process and eventually stop getting older altogether.

Next Chapter