Are you on the downhill slope? | DFS 387

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and today I want you to consider the

question, are you on the downhill slope? Are you on the

downhill slope riding off into the sunset, slowly but surely,

or do you want to fall off the cliff? The choice is yours. I

was suggested. Somebody suggested to me that I read the

book younger next year, and they have a version for women,

technically called younger next year for women. The other one is

more well, it's not necessarily geared towards men, but it

doesn't talk about some things that are specific to women and

aging that are addressed in this this second book, and it is

written by Chris Crowley and Henry S Lodge, MD, so the

premise of the book is super Great. I love listening to it in

the audio format. Chris Crowley was in his 70s, and he went to

see Dr Henry Lodge, who's an internist, and he was talking

about the aging process problems. He was having aches

and pains. And Dr lodge said it doesn't have to be this way

every cell in your body is either growing or dying, and

that's where this notion of you can go into a slow decline or

fall off a cliff. And I was listening to the audio book, and

I was like, wait a minute, what? And I had to rewind it, because

I wasn't sure that I understood what they just said. And and

then it was like, Wait, I don't even, I don't even understand

what that means. And what that means is, do you want to sit

down in your easy chair, of whatever kind you have, mine's

actually a lazy boy recliner. Do you want to sit down in your

chair and just wait for death? Or do you want to live life to

its fullest until you fall off a cliff and die like quickly,

easily, without all the drama. And I will speak to this from

the point of view of my mom. She would say, in jest, in jest.

Mind you, I have just taken care of everybody my whole life. I

just would really like to just be on total life support. It was

a joke. It was a joke. She just was tired of taking care of

everyone. She had been married for 50 years, well, not quite at

that point, raised for kids, had grandkids that she helped with

some and, you know, loved hanging out with, but she would

say that all the time, words have power. People, words have a

lot of power. And at 62 years old, she suffered a massive

stroke and lived 11 years to the week. I really should get out a

calendar and get the exact dates, but 11 years to the week

and anytime she was left alone, something bad happened. There

was just enough cognitive impairment that my dad,

initially, when she came home from the hospital, would say,

I'm gonna run to the grocery store. Can you sit there and not

move? And he'd have her all set up with the TV, go on the remote

the whole bit, and she'd go, Yeah, I'm gonna stay right here.

And he would come home, and she'd be on the floor, and he'd

say, Phyllis, you said you were gonna stay in your chair. Oh, I

forgot. And it was like she forgot she had a stroke and was

completely paralyzed on the left side. And getting up and walking

was a struggle. She could but it was a struggle. And it wasn't

just pop up and go do the thing. So my mom lived 11 years, the

last four my dad battled kidney cancer, and kidney cancer is

terminal. They you know, once it has spread, they can't stop it.

I believe if they get the tumor early, before it has

metastasized anywhere. I think you can have a longevity with

it, but his had already spread a little bit when we found it, and

chemo, and then surgery to remove it, and then more chemo.

And for the most part, I'm going to say of the four years that he

lived after that, he was pretty good for the most part, and took

care of my mom really, really well again. And they died 12

days apart, and people make comments like, oh, they loved

each other so much they couldn't live apart. And, oh, your mom

died of a broken part. Heart, a little bit of that is all true.

However, I believe that my Mom hung on as long as she possibly

could because she didn't want to leave my dad. And I believe my

dad hung on as long as he could because he didn't want to leave

my mom. And as it turns out, my mom had oral cancer. We did not

know this, she had had all of her teeth pulled and dentures.

And once you do that, you know, go back to the dentist

regularly. She went to the doctor. And that doctor at the

hospice center, and I had a little bit of a head butt

because he said, Oh my gosh, your mom's eating up with oral

cancer. This is spread to her brain, through all of her bones

like I can just tell looking in her mouth how far this has gone.

And he said, Have you not gotten her to a doctor? And I went, are

you kidding me? She went to the doctor regularly. But when do

you go to the doctor and they say, lift your tongue. That's a

dentist's office. So we didn't know. And once, my father

succumbed to cancer and passed away, then 12 days later, my mom

passed away, and it was heartbreaking. It was absolutely

heartbreaking and heart wrenching. And you never when

you have especially when you have great parents, which I did.

You just never quit missing it, like, it's like, non stop,

you're always missing them. But they had choices before they got

to that point. Now they think a lot of my dad's kidney cancer

can be caused from massive doses of anti inflammatories, and he

was in the Air Force, and he tore up his knee, and was on

massive anti inflammatories for years, until, you know, every

time he would have surgery, whatever they think, there's a

link there. And my mom, even though she did smoke, she was

hitting in the neck with a baseball bat when she was 12,

the only blocked artery in her whole body her whole body was in

her neck, and it was on the side of the neck where the stroke

actually happened. So she had had an issue the year before

where she smoked a cigarette down until it burnt her finger.

Like, bad, like she didn't even know her finger was being burnt

until she smelled the flesh. How disgusting is that? Sorry. I

hope you're not having breakfast. And she went to the

doctor, and she said, my fingers are numb on my left hand. Like,

what's this about? The doctor was like, Oh, gee, I don't know.

And they didn't do any tests. They didn't look into anything.

She was 61 years old. There's no reason to suspect anything is

amiss. Well, when she suffered a stroke a year later, they said,

Oh, it appears she had a stroke about a year ago. Here's the

here's the proof of that. The evidence is showing on her

brain. And my dad said, oh, about a year ago, she burnt her

finger with a cigarette. We moved into a new house, and she

was so tired. She went to bed for a couple days. She was just

tired. And he said, Yeah, it was probably her brain and her body

recovering from this stroke. But I still come back to the idea of

I want to be on total life support that she said, in jest,

the universe doesn't understand jokes. It doesn't understand

jokes. So if she could do it again, because my mom was a

wonderful woman and my dad was a wonderful man and took great

care of my mom, but if you back it all the way up. If somebody

had told her that by saying that she was going to set up

circumstances to have it come true, she would have quit saying

it. I guarantee she would have quit saying it. I'm going to

speak for her now. I usually don't, but I'm going to speak

for her and say she wouldn't have done it. So the question

becomes, do you want to be on the slow downhill slope, or do

you want to fall off the cliff? I think in some ways now, at my

age, I'm actually more active, more social, and I use my brain

more now than I did 10 or 1520, years ago.

I got into a point in life where it was a bit of a rut. And every

now and then, some new project would come along at work that

would excite me for a little while, and then, you know,

routine would sit in. And now I'm like, in one of the greatest

seasons I've ever been in. At this point, I've had both my

knees replaced. I have finally, and that's a capital all capital

letters, finally recovered from the second one. It was a little

slower than the first. And I'm doing things I'm. Traveling a

lot. I have a couple of friends that I know that travel full

time. I'm not one of those people, but I travel a lot. I

have that flexibility, and I'm able to and when my husband and

I go on vacations and we see people with walkers and scooters

and wheelchairs and oxygen tanks. I say, I want to do this

now, while we can, I want to do this now, while we can, while we

can enjoy it, while we can physically get around. I had

several trips where it was hard on everybody around me because

my knees were so bad, I was just miserable. And I'm sure they

thought at the time she should have stayed home, like she

should have just stayed home. But we have the choice to

decide, and in this book, younger next year, I'm going to

keep coming back to it. Dr lodge talks about how if you increase

your physical activity, and add more healthy foods to your diet.

Don't smoke, drink less. You can literally change the physical

dynamic of your body in a year. And next year, your body will be

younger. Physiologically, you'll be younger. So the question is,

what do you want to be? How do you want to show up? I have a

friend, and when we first met and we first shared a hotel

room, who now she, I travel with her all the time, and when we

got there, I said, that was said about the thermostat. And she

said, I don't complain about the temperature or the traffic. And

I was like, Well, that was random. What's that about? She

said, Well, I get around old people and they complain about

how cold it is, and they're always adjusting the thermostat.

It's so cold in here, and everybody else is sweating to

death, and they're like, Oh, it's cold in here. And she said,

so I don't ever want to be the one complaining about the

temperature of the room. I think she's really sorry about that,

because I like the room colder than she does, but she just puts

on a sweater because she doesn't complain about the temperature

and about the traffic, she said, Man, you know, I'm from Southern

California. I'm there all the time visiting my family, and

people are always saying, oh my gosh, the traffic is so bad and

oh, there's construction Oh. And I was like, Oh my gosh, people

do that. You're right, they do. And I'm gonna add to that now is

everybody complains about the price of things. Oh my gosh,

it's so expensive. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And if you notice a

lot of that's the older people. A lot of us older people. I had

someone tell me recently, my children will never be able to

buy a house ever. And the next week, I hear of somebody else's

kids, kids, as in, grown people, just their children had just

bought a house. So is it true? What's really true? What's true

in your mind, as you know, or maybe you don't know. So I'll

share it here, but I do energy healings, energy clearing.

Everything is energy. Everything is made up of energy. And if we

can raise our vibration, if we can raise our energy, if we can

be more excited about things and find the positive in it, the

better we're going to be overall. Our overall health will

be better. So you have the opportunity to decide today,

right now, do you want to be younger next year, or do you

want to go down that slope? What do you want to do when I go on

cruises? I don't necessarily love, love, love cruises.

However, all my friends and family do and their business

cruises, so I end up cruising a bit. And one of the things I do

on the cruise, I've got a couple of hard and fast rules. One, I

have a salad every night with dinner. I am not a big salad

eater, but when somebody else is gonna wash the lettuce and put

it together and set it in front of me, I will eat it. Why don't

I do that for myself? I don't know. I'm not taking my own

advice to be younger next year, but when I'm on a cruise, I

order a salad every time, every single dinner, I have salad. The

second thing is, my brother in law and I came up with this

years ago, and that is, if we're eating any kind of sweet treat,

dessert thing, we will have one bite, one bite, if it's not the.

Delicious. We just put our fork down. We're like out on that one

bite and that's it. There's no point in wasting calories when

there are 47,000 calories coming at you every day on a cruise

ship to eat something that you don't love. The food is already

there. It's already prepared. It's going to be thrown out if

it's not eating anyway, so don't feel guilty and bad, just either

enjoy it or don't eat it and get something else. So those are my

my big things on travel is only eat the things you enjoy. I'm

getting ready to go on a cruise as I record this episode, and

I'm going on a group dinner one night a paid dinner on the ship.

They have specialty restaurants that you pay extra for.

Typically, always worth it. I don't complain about that at

all, but they pick the Asian restaurant. And I hate Asian

food for the most part. I don't eat onions, I don't eat

mushrooms, I don't eat asparagus, I don't eat seafood

or shellfish. So, yeah, that reduces my number. They have a

beautiful flay on there, but all the rest of the stuff about that

fly sounds terrible for me. So I've already made the decision

before I ever step on the ship, I'm going to go to that

restaurant. I am going to ask for the manager, Mater D of that

restaurant, and I'm going to ask them if they'll go to the steak

house, and if I can just order a regular steak and baked potato

and salad from the steak house. I'm sure they're going to say,

yes, everybody on the group dinner wants to go to this Asian

place. I'm not going to be the one to complain and ruin it. I

don't want to be that crotchety old fart. I don't I get teased

about complaining and whining. The other night, somebody goes,

Do you like wine? And I said, Oh no, not at all. And they were

like, really, because I figured you needed some cheese to go

with that wine. I just told a story about something that

happened. I wasn't complaining about it. But that's different,

right? It's different when you're finding the negative and

everything around you, you lower your immunity, your resilience

is reduced, your health is diminished. Your mental health,

for sure, is jacked up. So you have the choice. Do you want to

be younger next year? What are three things you could do to

enhance your life, to be better this time next year? What can it

be? You know, I'm the 12 minute success coach. Are you going to

start walking for 12 minutes a day. Ride an exercise bike for

12 minutes a day, something to move more than you are right

now. Are you going to be like me and every time you go on

vacation where meals are included, have a salad every

night? Are you going to start keeping a gratitude journal in

one of Oprah's books that she just wrote in the 2020s I don't

know exactly what year it was published, but in this book, she

makes the comment that for 10 years she wrote down every

night, three things she was grateful for, and over that 10

year period, her personal Life, her physical health and her

relationships and her business skyrocketed, skyrocketed. Being

grateful changes something in you, and it changes from the

inside out. So I asked the question one last time as I wrap

up this episode, are you on the downhill slope? Are you want to

fall off the cliff? I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for success,

and I would love to help you come up with the answer to that

and your next steps. Book a call with me. Your success call.com

I'd love to hear from you.