192: How to Embrace Aging and Trust the Wisdom You’ve Gained | Maureen Spielman

[upbeat music] Welcome back to Mystical Sisterhood.

This is your host, Maureen Spielman, and I think a lot about the aging process, as I think probably most of us do who are living life.

And there's a lot of outer messages and inviting for us to dig beneath the surface for what is truly ours, what our story is going to be, what is going to dictate the choices that we make.

And I'll start first by saying I was really struck recently, and I, I think I wrote this down, but I was sitting in my dermatologist's office just for my annual well-skin check, and I saw a brochure on the wall that said, "Live your accomplishments, not your lines." And I just sat with that for a second because on the surface it sounds so inspiring, this marketing message of live your accomplishment, not your lines.

But underneath it, there was a message that I read that my lines and my aging were something I needed to apologize for.

And so that's just one version of the messages that come at us all the time.

And I think that as I walk this path of becoming more aware of myself, becoming more aware of how I'm influenced by outer messaging or expectations or even images that might be coming into my field that I'm being bombarded with that make me question or invite me into the question of how do I wanna live my life? How do I wanna live this life? You know, I'll say, too, that some of these messages might come across in the form of, "You look great for your age," which might [laughs] you know, for a moment be really fulfilling, but might also be a little bit shaky under the surface as to what that really means for you.

Because, you know, I remember even a time where I went when I was a young woman, a very young woman, I believe I was in college, and I thought I needed to lose a bunch of weight, so I did so.

And when people would say, like, "You look so great," it would bring up in me, like, "Well, wait a minute.

Are you seeing me? Is this all about my outer appearance?" So I think for me it started really young, and I could venture for many of us that is the case.

So comments like, "You look great for your age," or, "You barely have any wrinkles," or, "Did you get enough sleep?" "Isn't that outfit a little too young for you?" They're all comments on how we look, and I think ever since I was a young girl, I really wanted to be seen much more deeply than that.

They're so seldom the questions about who we're becoming.

I'm personally interested in this conversation and what it stirs in you, what comes up for you throughout, throughout what I suggest.

I'm not interested in making any current choices or interventions that someone might be choosing for their life, right or wrong.

Actually, I'm trying to get away from any of that.

This is more me reconciling the world I have grown up in and lived within and determining what is more important to me now more than ever.

I know I'm not alone in this journey, and it's having the conversations.

It's being willing to go there and say what really matters the most before we get to some place like our deathbed when they, when they say like, you know, five things the dying say that they wish they would've focused on, and it's bringing this conversation into a younger part of our lives.

Even if we're 50, 60s, 70s, it's still pertinent and relative of changing the conversation.

I wanna ask the question today, what happens if we stop measuring our age by our outer appearances and start measuring it by our wisdom and what we know to be true? I hope by the end of this episode you'll have a way to catch yourself the next time you make or receive one of these appearance comments.

You'll have a new lens for what your lines and the changes you're experiencing actually represent, and hopefully walk away with one question you can sit with this week to bring you more in touch with yourself.

If you're listening and you're younger, this may not fully land yet, and that's okay.

These messages don't disappear with a generation.

Whether you're Gen X like myself, a millennial, or Gen Z, we're all swimming in somewhat the same water, just at different times in our lives.

So this is less about age and more about noticing what you've absorbed so it becomes conscious instead of automatic for you.