The body follows the head.
We use this saying in wrestling all the time.
If you want to control your opponent, control their head. Their body has to follow, because, they’re attached.
Wrestling someone who’s good at controlling your head is painful, frustrating, and can easily end in a loss.
Some of my most berserk moments as a coach is when my wrestler is getting their head controlled by their opponent. “Protect your damn head!” repeatedly comes out of my mouth, as I’m watching my wrestler lose.
This is a great lesson wrestling teaches us, because having other people control your head is also a painful way to go through life.
If you want to take control of the direction you’re living, you have to start with your own head.
When you look at how you’re living your life vs how you want to live it, the first thing you have to figure out is:
What thoughts are you having?
Are you controlling them? Or is somebody else?
Are we thinking our own ideas? Or are they other people’s thoughts that we allowed to get in?
Accepting beliefs of “You need to take it slower now,” or “You shouldn’t do that now at your age,” is letting society control your head.
Believing that we have to break down, slow down, get weaker and gain weight as we travel through our 2nd 50 years is having our aging process decided for us.
I see and hear this message everywhere.
The idea that we become less of ourselves as we age in our 2nd 50 is coming at us from all directions.
What’s worse, the studies that measure what happens when we age were performed on people who believed society’s defeating message, and lived it.
Scientists measure their premature decline, and report that’s soon going to be you. Without ever reporting on the real factor of aging: mindset and activity.
What about aging athletes like Robby Robinson? Mike Banks? Ernestine Sheppard? Ida Keeling? Satchel Paige? Gunhild Swanson? Isaak Hayik? Edwina Brocklesby? Jim Arrington?.......
Where are the studies on these glorious people who controlled their own thinking to show us that their abilities later in life can be our normal?
What about Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s famous quote? “We do not stop exercising because we grow old – we grow old because we stop exercising.”
If we google image “Aging Athletes”, We’ll be inspired and humbled by what’s truly possible for each and every one of us.
Why aren’t our doctors, society, or the evening news telling us this is how we should be?
Belief is nothing more than repetitive thought accepted as our personal reality. If you want to change your belief about who you are and how you age, you have to change what you’re thinking.
You have to control your own head.
This is no easier to do than in a wrestling match. You’re going to have to work for it, get society’s hands off of you, and fight back.
Start dominating your own way of thinking - for the better - with positive ideas of aging. And then show the world that it can be done.
Be the example of the New Breed of Aging!
This is how you get your hand raised in the second half of life.
So as you ponder the idea of being 2nd50strong, the most important step you’ll ever make is protecting and controlling what you’re thinking.
And always ask yourself;
Who’s controlling your head?
Get strong as hell,
Coach Ken