1. Be in love…
The main anti-age virtue of love is its ability to accelerate our heart beats, much more than when jogging or playing tennis… And if our heart beats, it keeps us on the path of life… I remember that a well-known French poet, André Breton, used to say that “love happens when we find someone that gives us news about ourselves.” It took me sometime to understand this line. But today I know what it means: love, whether it grows from feelings or physical attraction, is a way of knowing one-self, of gaining experience, of measuring our openness to give in to the joys of life… When you get to know this and put it into practise, Time will always stay behind…
2. Sleep…
Go for a minimum of 8-hours sleep at night. It’s the necessary amount of time required to rest enough and recover from the efforts of the day, avoid stress and strengthen the immune system. A good night-sleep makes us look better, with a rested complexion and no dark spots under the eyes. When our body is unable to relax enough, it will tend to accumulate and take up much more time to burn them. Having a frugal dinner before going to bed will help you fall as sleep easily. Going to bed early (at least before midnight) and sleeping well will also influence on our weight, and even help us lose some pounds, because bad or interrupted sleep usually causes the increase of apetite-related hormones.
More and more studies and scientific investigations suggest a connexion between bad sleep and mental disorders. Disruptions during sleep is also associated with an increase in the levels of stress hormones, which result in anxiety attacks during the day and trouble to process and react to emotional stimulus.
If we feel bad tempered or anxious, we eat more and mistreat those around us, we’ll be far from looking and feeling our best.
I’m rather a Cinderella myself. I always try to get back home early and go to bed before 1 am, because I do enjoy my early awakenings. And if I can sleep more than 8 hours, even better!
3. Exercise...
The only way to turn back time is exercising, moving, sweating and getting to know each of your muscles to trust them and take out all of their strength. Training is one of the essential engines to feel good about us. Being sedentary is one of the worst possible attitudes and also one of the unhealthier. A woman or a man not moving is sentenced to early aging and, more important still, health issues of relevance such as overweight or high blood pressure.
Exercise is, above all, an extremely important measure of prevention to protect our health and beauty. So, find the time to work out during your day! Thirty minutes are enough to keep your weight. With more than 20 minutes, you’ll start burning calories.
Everything counts: from climbing stairs at home or in the office to participating in marathons. Combining different work-out programs at your local gym will help you strengthen your upper and lower muscles. Use machines, weights or practise Pilates. Everything will do! Exercising will lift your spirit, help you burn calories and get you ready to face the chores of day. But will also push you to release serotonin, which is the “good mood hormone,” used by the brain to handle our different states of mind. That is, exercise makes us feel good and this reflects in our face and can be witness by others.
For me, there’s no exercise such as Yoga to give a woman a harmonious and pleasant air. I’ve discovered that it’s the best way to be conscious of our postures and of the intimate connexion between our brain and the parts of our body. It also helps us align our muscles and walk correctly, allowing our feet to contact the ground firmly and thus give us a solid base.
4. Be curious…
Wanting to know, seeking the secrets of the world and of human beings, trying to understand the mysteries of the wind, the sea, the stars, etc. is the best school of youth. I’ve noticed that people lacking this attitude have a tendency to face the world from a position of indifference…. And that, for me, is a sign of age.
So, have no fear: make thousand questions to those sharing your table, to all those you meet by chance, to those wise-men in your way, to the artists you might bump into… Ask them about the wonders of their craft… You’ll soon realize that your mind will stay eternally renovated, happy and at work!
But beware: do not confuse curiosity with indiscretion…
5. Make your head and body work in unison…
The wise men of the Past got this right much earlier than us: there’s no use for a young body with an aging spirit. Thus the origin of the famous “mens sana in corpore sano.” Never forget that strong muscles or a sculpted silhouette are worth nothing if they don’t contain a live, working and fast brain. This is why I believe that each work-out routine cannot be complete if it doesn’t finish with the reading of a great novel. Start with some exercise for your legs, and end up “massaging” your soul with Proust or Fitzgerald. Make war to wrinkles and orange-skin legs but only if you also fight against intellectual cellulites, which causes far worst effects than a couple more pounds…
6. Learn something everyday… Even something unuseful…
Anything: verses from Racine, a page by Proust, the name of China’s provinces, words in Ancient Greek or archery… Whatever, but learn… Do learn something everyday! A neuro-biologist friend of mine once told me that our brain is like a muscle and its neurons are the fibers. And those lovely cells need to stay busy, shaken and forced to incorporate new data constantly.
For years now I’ve been practicing this type of “work-out” with joy… Sometimes my head boils up like a volcano… I feel happy as if I would feel when leaving a beauty spa where they’ve taken care of my face… I’d like to study German again… And why not, Japanese?
7. Know the differences…
There are two types of people. Those who, when facing a new landscape, say: “Look, this landscape reminds me of this and that…” And those who, when in front of the same view, prefer thinking: “How strange… Here, the trees seem greener, the flowers less smelly and the people more charming than those on the site this landscape reminds me of…”
In one case, they love repetition. In the other, they crave diversity. The gift of perceiving the differences is essential to stay young. Our spirit should be in eternal awe. Never give up to the temptation of the identical, which leads to boredom and stillness.
8. Escape from the excesses…
Certain habits can be very harmful. Nothing ages and wrinkles the skin, ruins the teeth and dries the hair, not to mention the inner harms, than smoking. Nicotine makes cigarettes highly addictive and alchitran turns them cancerous. Although we are all aware of this, I still see lots of women smoking. This is why, I insist, we must quit this addiction that takes away everything and gives back almost nothing in return. There are many treatments nowadays, and it’s never too late to start one.
Another awful habit is alcohol. It’s so outrageous to see a woman drinking to much! How her features, her skin, her beauty fades in the abuse of drinks!
It’s so important to be disciplined. And this involves also your diet. Reduce unhealthy fats that accumulate toxins in the liver, the organ in charge of eliminating germs and bacteria from our blood. Choose food rich in antioxidants, vitamin C and minerals, such as tomato, kiwi, lemon, papaya or avocado, a true cleanser of the body. And drink plenty of water! Our health cannot be separated from what we eat, do and think.
9. Travel…
Nothing is more useful and vital than movement. We could verify this just by being conscious that immobility is quite close to death…. Travelling, going away, changing habits and food menus is such an important school. Make and un-make your luggage all the time, try the lack of comfort of the means of transport, met the wonders of new landscapes, of unknown faces. Your body will intake these experiences as if they were youth pills.
Today is easier to find Dorian Grey on planes or trains, that on the boring comfort of salons…
10. Fight against the “sad passions.”
A friend of mine once told me that we get through life on three feet: the genetic heritance (which cannot be changed), nutrition (which we can change) and attitude towards happiness. I was intrigued by this “attitude” and I was told that it could be achieved by fighting against the “toxins of the soul:” jealousy, melancholy, vanity, resentment, hate towards others and, above all, towards one-self. Spinoza, the philosopher, called those the “sad passions.” Each time we indulge in one of these, it’s like a new wrinkle popped-up around our eyes, on our forehead, in our cheeks. I’ve been trying to fight this “toxins” all my life. My personality and the people around me have taken advantage of this spiritual diet. I strongly recommend it you…
This is one of the articles I wrote for the last issue of Mustique magazine. I hope you’d enjoyed it!
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