06 Jun Are You Living Just To Die?
Moss Jackson, PhD
Success Psychologist
Welcome back!
I am a SUCCESS PSYCHOLOGIST. My mission is to coach and teach people how to navigate an extraordinary life, a long life of Success, Accomplishment and Happiness. No small feat but, then again, why not?
Who Died Recently?
Who died recently? Anyone in your family? Friends? Colleagues? People you loved and will miss? Maybe people you never liked and secretly wished for them to die? Many people died in recent years, including Steve Jobs, Roger Ailes, David Bowie, Carrie Fisher, Prince, Nancy Reagan, Mohammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Eli Wiesel and Frank Sinatra, Jr, along with many other celebs and sports figures.
No one Escapes
In our past and into our present lifetime, everyone has died. No one has yet escaped the illness called death. It is just a matter of time. This may change some time this century but not right now. The oldest human being on record lived to the age of 122 years, but I imagine there are some who will live even longer, probably in one of The Blue Zones of the planet – five unique geographical areas where people appear to live far beyond their expectations of death. In our American culture, where Chronic Stress Syndrome is rampant, men live to around age 87 and women to 88.
How Old Are You?
I am76 years old, soon to be 77 on June 8th. This is my chronological age in terms of years on the planet. My experiential age is closer to 35 and my biological age is probably around 60. So which is right, the number of years you are living on the planet, what you experience your life to be, or what your body’s scorecard indicates? Am I 77, 35 or 60?
Close Calls
How old do you feel? What does aging depend on? Can you outlive your predicted time of death? If the life insurance actuarial are right, I should be dead and gone in ten years. But, since I have never been a rule follower, I do not think so. I have had three near-death experiences: when I was 70, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given less than one year to live. It was time to “get my affairs in order” as they say. One year later, my aortic value wavered as I was driving my adored 540 BMW and I lost consciousness at the wheel, passed out and two hundred yards later, smashed into a stone retaining wall. The wall won and I lost! I was left with a broken back, a useless heart valve, some broken ribs and fluid in my lungs, all contributing to a rather unpleasant recovery period. Then, at age 75 I contracted severe pneumonia, blood poisoning and a meningitis, a bacteria brain infection. Three organ systems were failing, my liver, lungs and kidneys and I was given a 5% chance of recovery. Five days later I emerged out of a coma with my family in attendance. No one could predict the outcome: Did I have a stroke? Could I speak? Could I recognize anyone in my family?
Who Won?
No problem, my 35 experiential self won out. Although battered and shaky and requiring considerable rehab work and several months of intravenous antibiotics treatment, I got back on my feet, stronger than ever. Gradually, I got myself back in the saddle again. Today I am more productive and focused than ever, my chronic Attention Deficit is gone and I am more successful, accomplished and happier than ever. I live each day as it comes and I bring a daily intention for well-being into my life. I have a life purpose, considerable gratitude, no jealousies and, usually, a generous heart.
Immortal Life Energy
Bottom line, my 35 year-old is winning against the aging and death spiral. I am symptom free, breathing is excellent and heart quite healthy. I am still a little wobbly on my feet due to nerve damage from my car accident, but I take on physical challenges notwithstanding. I just finished my fourth book, this one on Navigating the Psychology of Immortality and am contemplating my next one, along with a video series on Navigating Relationships. My passion for life, my focus on taking action and my trust in living in a user-friendly universe are all propelling me toward ‘age reversal’. I am pausing the Age Button to see how long I can go. I am shooting for 125 and then I will look at my options. I have no interest in retiring, contracting a chronic disease and losing my mental and physical functioning. I am generating what I call “Immortal Life Energy.”
Strategies for Life Extension
If you would like to know my secrets for my recovery, increased vitality and energy, please feel free to read my book. But just in case you do not feel like it, here are seven strategies to enhance your health, tap into Immortal Life Energy and perhaps extend your life. It would be terrific to have some of you to hang around with at age 125. These actions are offered as actions designed to enhance your well-being, sense of feeling grounded and freeing yourself up from the incessant barrage of negative thoughts that dominate your daily living.
- Every morning before you even get out of bed, take ten deep, slow breaths and then think about and feel five thingsyou are grateful for. Really experience them and feel them in your body. The more sensory and emotional the imaging, the more empowering the exercise.
- Create an intention for the day, such as “I do everything with a quiet mind,” or “I bring a sense of generosity to my interactions with everyone.” This intention is your “North Star” for the day, your direction to keep you on the life energy path.
- “Water yourplants and pull your weeds.” We are all bombarded with about 2,500 conscious thoughts a day, 2,000 of which are negative and dark, while only 500 are positive and of a light energy. Nurture and enhance your positive thoughts and smash down your negative ones. More of this in future posts.
- Take a Safety Action every day, such as relishing in your gratitudes, or practicing recovery exercises every two hours where you take a time out from reality and chill out. Also, create some beliefs that activate positive energy to stimulate your life force.
- Take a Connection Action everyday such as practicing empathy toward others, listening attentively and hanging out with happy people.
- Take a Power Action everyday such as creating and living into a powerful vision, creative powerful beliefs orconstantly looking for opportunities to further your dreams.
- At the end of the day review your “Victories of the Day,” all the little gains and appreciations that fueled your day. These reflections activate secretion of dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter.
These are just some tactics and practices to keep you navigating the life you want. Rather than living unconsciously and reacting to what life throws at you, you are instead navigating the life you want to be experiencing. It is not that complicated, it just requires you take full responsibility for it every day. You might also consider using my formula for success: Success = Passion + Goals + Specific Actions + Resiliency. In others words, fall in love with something, set specific goals to work toward, take small actions daily toward your goals and keep pushing forward no matter what.
Life Navigators use this formula to design their futures, rather than waiting for their life to turn out. They vision a desired future and then take total responsibility to make it materialize. They are unrelenting in moving forward.
I hope you found this post useful and if you want to learn more about life extension and this success formula, feel free to check it out in my book, “I Didn’t Come To Say Goodbye.”
If you want to learn more about living life as a Navigator and enhancing the three pillars of the Immortal Self, sign up below for my blog series.