What is your mentality about aging? They say Age isn’t a number, it’s an attitude.  I used to say, I had a Peter Pan mentality and thought that was a good thing. I’m not so sure anymore.

A Peter Pan mentality to me was about having a youthful mentality, staying young at heart. He would say I won’t grow up and he would sing about that.

But for me it wasn’t about not growing up, it was about not growing old. I didn’t want to get an old mentality, an old rigid negative attitude. The kind where, people start complaining about how old they are, and how they don’t want to celebrate their next birthday.

If you don’t celebrate your next birthday, what’s the other choice? You’re not living anymore.

MENTAL ADJUSTMENT

So I really do want to have a positive attitude toward aging.

This year I turned 64. Ever heard the old Beatles song? They had a song about turning 64 and I can’t even imagine thinking like that. So my view about Peter Pan was about youth fun, enjoyment, joy. Nothing like that song.

But I got thinking.

I started wondering.

Is having a Peter Pan mentality is really kind of a ruse? Do I need a mental adjustment?

What are your thoughts about aging, about getting older?

Where are you in the timeline? In your 30’s, turning 40, turning 50, turning 60, 70, 80, 90, 100?

I’m believing to live 120 years because the Bible says I can.

But it’s not like if I make it to 120, I win something or something like that.

WHAT ABOUT PETER PAN

And see, that’s the ruse that the whole Peter Pan thing wants to throw at us. It’s this ego centric thing.

One of the things I thought that was good about Peter Pan was childlikeness. Jesus said to be like a child with our faith, to be quick to believe that things of God.

Other good things Peter Pan was:

• a leader
• resourceful
• spunky
• imaginative
• he cared for the lost boys, the fatherless, the parentless people

All these are things that are good. And I liked that.

But I started wondering what is the story about Peter Pan?

I did a little bit of research on it. And he’s got dark and varied paths depending on where it comes from. And that’s because Peter Pan is a made up character. He’s a fictional character that someone just created. And that’s not bad. That’s just the way it is.

But I also discovered there’s a thing called Peter Pan syndrome. OMG! I didn’t know that. Did you?

The Peter Pan syndrome is a metaphor for patterns of behavior for people who refuse to take responsibility to grow up. They don’t want to work. They don’t want to do the things an adult does. They don’t want to do adulting.

Well, that’s not me.

I started seeing that Peter Pan had a lot of real negative qualities about him also. He was:

• an instigator of trouble
• mischievous (which isn’t always bad)
• focused on his own entertainment
• irresponsible
• obsessed with escapism (that used to be me when my trauma pain raged)
• boastful
• careless
• self-centered.

Ugh.

Now, if you know me, you know that I am for the self. The self is where our choice resides. My process I take all my clients through is the acronym S. E. L. F.

I believe the self is very important but I don’t believe being self-centered is good. Being self-ish, where you pay attention to yourself so that you can give and be healthy, to be good for other people, that’s good.

But self-centered? Uh uh, that’s not good.

What helps with aging is serious cognition – thinking and understanding. You have to truly grasp that everybody ages. Everybody dies. There is no turning back the clock. So the question in life becomes: What are you going to do while you’re here? —Goldie Hawn

A BETTER WAY

So this is where my mentality on aging is going to change. There’s got to be a better pattern to follow, a better mentality to have.

There’s a person that I kind of dabbled in a little bit. It’s a guy named Caleb and he’s a guy who’s in the Bible.

What I knew about Caleb and what I retained about Caleb was, hey, Caleb was 85 when it says, “he took his mountain”.

So Caleb was healthy and strong when he was 85. So I was like: hey, I want to be like Caleb, healthy and strong when I’m 85!

But there is so much more to the story of Caleb, than about his age. Caleb was not all about living a long time, and not dying.

To think that way is really missing the point of life.

If all we think about is not dying then we’re not thinking about living. That is why I thought the Peter Pan thing was cool, because it was about enjoying life. Jesus came to give us life and that abundantly, right?

But the thing with Caleb, his whole story is it was about his heart.

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. —Samuel Ullman

See, Caleb was this guy in the Bible, if you’re not familiar with him. He’s back in the Old Testament. Way, way, way, way back in the Old Testament, when the Jewish people, also called the children of Israel, had been in slavery for a bunch of years. Caleb was one of them.

Then this guy Moses, if you’ve heard of him, he came. God sent him to lead them out of Egypt. Caleb was one of those people who came out of Egypt through a miraculous deliverance.

Plus Caleb’s a real person. So we can learn about Caleb, and someone’s not going to keep changing the story, like you can with Peter Pan, because he’s fictional. When you’re talking about a real person, you got to look at what the real things are that happened.

And so the big story with Caleb, is he came through this deliverance thing. And when they got to a place that God told them was called the promised land, which was this awesome place to live, and it’s going to have all this great food, and is going to be beautiful.

Like moving to the beach, if we think about it in our day and age. Or if you’re not a beach person, maybe you want to move to the woods, think about the best place you would ever want to live. And then imagine that for the sake of the story.

So they get to the outskirts of this property where they’re supposed to go and move into this place. But there’s people living there already.

And this is Old Testament, so there’s a lot of war, and people fought about a lot of stuff. And so they had to get these people out, and they were going to move in. So first they went in to see, what’s the story about this property? So Moses sent 12 guys in there to spy out the land to see if it’s awesome like God said it is. And when they came back they said yeah, it’s awesome. Just like God said, but the people who live in there are big and huge giants and we can’t do this.

But Caleb, and this other guy, Joshua, the two of them were like, yeah, we can. God said, We can do this. So we can do this.

And the others are like, No, we can’t.

And they’re like, yes, we can.

No, we can’t, yes, we can. No, we can’t, yes, we can…

Well, the short story of that is, they suffered for 40 years, because God wanted them to move in. And they just wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t do what needed to be done to get the victory that God wanted them to have.

But Caleb, and Joshua, the two of them would have. And the awesome thing is, God didn’t punish them for the mistakes of the other people.

Have you ever been in a group project at school, and you’re the only one who does the work, and everyone else doesn’t do the work? And then you guys get a bad grade, and you suffer because everyone else really sucked at this group project?

I always hated stuff like that in school.

God didn’t do that.

With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. —Psalm 91:16

GOD HONORS THE HEART

Even though the 10 guys didn’t do their job, Caleb did his. And the Bible said that he wholeheartedly followed God. And so for 40 years after that, they wandered around the wilderness, which is a story all on its own.

But after that, 40 years, it became time to go into this new land again, but this time, it was a little different. They had all different people going in, because all those other people had died over that period of time, except for Joshua and Caleb.

Caleb was 40 at that time.

Add 40 years wandering around the desert because of that other guys. Then 5 more years brings us to 45 years later.

Caleb is 85 years old when he comes to Joshua, who’s in charge because Moses had died. (Moses was 120 years old when he died for the sake of just letting you know, I’m not a nutcase for thinking 120 years old, but that’s in the book of Genesis and that’s a sidetrack.)

Back to about Caleb. He came to Joshua and said, Hey, Moses said I could have this mountain it was called Hebron. He said I could have that. So will you give it to me? Do what he said? I am just as strong today because God has kept me alive and strong.

And see there is a little bit of the difference.

THE DIFFERENCE

See, Peter Pan was going to never grow up, never grow old and he was just going to live forever. Just because he wanted to, he thought he could just do that just because. Plus, he’s fictional.

But I see that having that mentality is to trust in ourselves, that I can just live forever and do whatever I want. That I’m just going to rely on myself.

Peter Pan had no faith and Peter Pan was reliant on himself.

But Caleb had faith in God. He was a faithful person who believed in God, and he was God, reliant, instead of self-reliant.

So when it came time for him to get what God had promised to him, he was strong enough to do that.

So I want to have a Caleb mentality, instead of a Peter Pan mentality.

WHAT DO WE REALLY WANT?

I want to be a faithful person, I want to be God reliant.

And I want to take care of myself as best as I know how, so that I can be strong to do whatever God’s called me to do, and live out my days in strength.

That’s one reason why I’m creating resources about this aging well in faith.

I collected some scriptures which you can get here and I’m going to be gathering other information about being healthier.

Being emotionally healthy, mentally healthy, physically healthy, spiritually healthy, and relationally healthy. There’s all different ways to be healthy. And it’s not just about not dying.

Aging well is so much more than that.

So I am switching from having a Peter Pan mentality, to having a Caleb mentality. And I want to invite you to join me in that mentality so that you can have a good and victorious life like Caleb who got his mountain, conquered all the giants that were in there. He had children, and he was able to bless his daughter with a special request he had.

He was blessed because he had a right heart and a right mentality.

And that’s what being a victorious soul is all about having life on the inside. Not just having a long life, but having life on the inside and having good relationships and healthy relationships and enjoying your everyday life. Having peace in your mind and peace in your heart and hope and faith and love and all those good things that you can’t store up in a closet. The best things are stored up in your heart because those are the things that matter.

NOW WHAT

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Danielle Bernock

Author, Coach, and Speaker helping men, women, and organizations EMERGE with clear vision of their value, TAKE ownership of their choices, and CHART a path to their promise, becoming Victorious Souls who Embrace The Change from survive to thrive through the power of the love of God

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