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What inspires you?

When you think about the people and experiences that have really inspired you, what was it that struck a chord with you? In each case was it a novel learning experience, uplifting or even life changing? When you have been inspired into action did you find that the steps you took were more creative, smoother and took less effort than something you felt forced to do?

The purpose of Inspire Ageing.com is to raise our expectations of what our true potential for health and well being is – irrespective of our genetic makeup, gender, ethnicity – and especially our age. It is about looking at easier ways of achieving this and making what we learn habitual so we remain resilient and robust whatever our age. Over the coming weeks one of our most interesting and up-to-date themes will be covered in the ‘Habit for Habit’ series. If you are serious about making changes and sticking to them this could be of immense practical benefit to you.

It is also about keeping an open mind about what we think we know and understand; what we believe about our health and well being and how this affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviours each and every day.Towards this end we will cover a diverse range of topics, from enhancing mood to advancing movement, from healthy eating and drinking to avoiding the slippery slop to senescence. We will include practical and simple exercises which will help to assess your current status and may be the trigger to literally taking the first step towards a life you love.

Lastly we all have an ability to empower to inspire others. When we pursue our daily lives with passion and enthusiasm, we already have something which is very valuable to us and everyone around us.

Join me regularly on Inspire Ageing. Let’s just see how much more healthy and well we can feel every day.

H4H You may have more will power than you think. IF-Then and Smart Practice can help.

H4H You may have more will power than you think. IF-Then and Smart Practice can help.

How do some of us resist the temptation to overeat palatable (pleasurable) food, get through the last exhausting mile in a marathon, and force ourselves to make tough decisions when it would be easier to give in, stop and/or walk away respectively? Is will power or self-control just a learned (habitual) skill or could it…

H4H Habitual patterns: a spectrum of learned behavior

H4H Habitual patterns: a spectrum of learned behavior

Although there is some debate as to whether an illness such OCD or severe depression can be learned like any other habit such as driving a car competently, or addictions to alcohol and gambling are somehow different to habits such as overeating, what I hope to show you is that the similarities in the learning…

H4H Introduction: What makes a habit? An overview.

H4H Introduction: What makes a habit? An overview.

It has been estimated that about 40-45% of what we do each day is habitual although as we shall see this may depend on the characteristics of an individual’s make up and experience. In the main habits are really useful learnt routines sometimes involving quite intricate behaviors and/or complex skills which help us to operate…

H4H Habit for Habit: A preview of the series

H4H Habit for Habit: A preview of the series

This article is the first in a series which will be devoted to the Habit for Habit (H4H) strategy for change which we have referred to in other posts. For those of you who are interested in learning a new skill and/or unlearning a bad habit and replacing it with a new and more useful…

Fries or Fried: Is there a key to successful ageing?

Fries or Fried: Is there a key to successful ageing?

This is more about successful ageing, and what we need to do or stop doing to achieve that, than chipped potatoes or how we cook food! Fries refers to James Fries about whom more later; Linda Fried is a doctor working in the US who led a group of researchers who proposed criteria for the…

‘Health-style Habits’: 5 tips to increase your odds of being in the healthy 60% of the population.

‘Health-style Habits’: 5 tips to increase your odds of being in the healthy 60% of the population.

Did you know that: In the UK, 22 million people, or a third of the population, are aged 50 years or over? 40 percent of people aged 65 and over have a long term limiting illness? If nothing is done about age related illness, in less than 16 years, it is estimated there will be…

When is depression not depression?

When is depression not depression?

Six tips to help you avoid taking taking long term medication. Why is this important? Because in a 2013 report in the BMJ, professors Christopher Dowrick and Allen Francis drew attention to the evidence that depression is over diagnosed and over treated at the expense of ‘medicalising’ a normal human experience such as sadness or…

Moving towards a life I love: 5 steps to making it happen

Moving towards a life I love: 5 steps to making it happen

Five steps towards making it easier to learn the habit of moving more often and more regularly. When do you need to start to do what you need to do and how easy will it be? Basically the idea is first to move, then move more often and then move regularly and frequently. As you…