At the age of 32, Cindy Joseph started seeing signs of aging in the form of gray hair. By the time she was 44, it had grown in all around her face and thought to herself that she wasn’t gonna have it. She went straight to the salon and got a dye job.
At the same time, she realized that as she was getting older, she was becoming happier, healthier, wiser, and more authentically herself. She also realized that this was happening to her friends too.
They realized that getting older meant getting better—not worse. During that time she decided to stop dyeing her hair because she felt like she was covering the very sign of her own aging and never looked back.
And guess what happened right after that? She was approached on the street by a casting agent and asked to model for a worldwide fashion campaign.
She took that as a sign from the universe telling her: stop covering up, embrace your age, and here’s what happens. Your beauty becomes visible to the world.
The same thing can happen to you. A great place to start is by transforming the negative ideas about women and age that society has planted in your head.
When you do, you will feel and see the difference!
Here’s how:
1- Remember how you felt about getting older when you were a kid!
Remember how excited and proud you felt about getting older when you were little?
When we were kids, we’d claim every last bit of age that we possibly could—“I’m nine and a half!” “I’m seven and three quarters!” When we were little, getting “older” meant getting “bigger.”
As in more knowledge, more independence, more mastery, more adventures. Guess what? It still does. As we get older, our capacities expand.
We all knew that truth when we were kids. Remind yourself!
2- Re-draw your graph of life.
You know, that one that’s in the shape of a mountain. Supposedly, life goes uphill until we hit this imaginary peak called “the prime of life,” and then it’s all downhill from there.
But who drew that picture? It certainly doesn’t match the experiences of the women we know.
We just keep expanding! Our graph of life feels more like an uphill journey all the way. So we re-drew our own picture. You can too.
3- Look at your language.
Language is powerful. The words we use to describe ourselves carry all sorts of emotional associations we don’t even think about.
But words matter. When Cindy started calling her “gray hair” silver, all of a sudden her feelings about it—and what she was communicating to the world about her own aging—totally changed.
“Gray hair” is drab, a drag; something thousands of advertisements have spent thousands of hours telling us to cover up. “Silver” is shiny, precious, beautiful, and a prize.
Pay attention to how you talk about yourself! The tiniest changes in language can totally reshape the way you see yourself—and the way the world sees you.
Give yourself the value and recognition that you deserve---and you’ll find that reflected back to you tenfold.
