Mental Wellness

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It is the very things that we think we know that keeps us from learning what we should know.


Mental Wellness 活到老,學到老

For our seniors cohort, an overall fear will be living too long, longer than our health and wealth permits. But for the senior who kept physically fit, the most worrisome thing about growing too old is ‘losing our minds’. Dementia, whether Alzheimer or some other forms of dementia is a frightening image probably more dread than ill-health in general.

The brain (the nerve centre) is our lifestyle control centre. When we say ‘as a man thinketh, so he is’ it means exactly that. We ask our seniors cohort to REVERSE our traditional thinking into ‘Thinking Young’, we put it in front of actually REVERSE lifestyle to live actively. Without our mind telling us to get going, thinking young alone is probably not going to REVERSE our ageing process. So what can we do to sharpen our minds ? Fortunately, our brain is one of the ‘use-it-or-lose–it’ type body parts. The brain is made out of billions of neural connections (nerve cells). Scientists have discovered that these cells needs stimuli to spur their growth.

Lifetime Learning
We can enroll into formal classes to study a new subject, read a book or search the web for new information. But the most natural way for man to learn had been to observe our surrounding and learning from our fellow human being. Chinese has a saying ‘among 3 cobblers, there bound to be a Chu Guo Liang 諸葛亮’. Come join us in REVERSE, a cohort of seniors (maybe not as agile in minds but certainly has bigger data banks) and stimulate each other and learn/teach each other as we interact daily.
Stay curious
Instead of saying ‘we have eaten more salt than the younger man has eaten rice’, we need to be humble to acknowledge there are numerous subjects we have yet to master e.g. astronomy, micro-biology, different cultures, languages, history etc.etc.. Challenge yourself to recognize one new thing or fact you picked up each day.
Remember your 6 best friends
Just as asking and probing with the ‘Why, Where, When, What, Who and How’ in our younger days helped us get the best of life, it is even more important in our advanced age to keep close company with our 6 best friends. Don’t assume we know it all. Just ask and discover from others what is the real truths of life.
Trust and Be Grateful
Just as all the motivational gurus teaches us to stay positive, it is surely important for our mental wellness and emotion wellness to cut away negative or pessimistic thoughts. It will help us to fend off stress which is one huge factor in ageing. Trust everything will work out and when it do, be grateful of the outcome.
Pick up music
Mothers are asked to sing to their foetus in their womb because nerve cells starts recording. Dementia patients cannot remember most things but will be stimulated when hearing old songs that they loved in the past. Music is the language of the soul. Learn this new language of the soul and keep yourself young at heart.

Taking Action

You are never too old to learn. If you want to start your second life young, then you have to think young and act young. Do what the young people do. If society jeer or laugh at you as some do when a 80 year-old enroll in a university to fulfill a missing part of his/her life, do so within the mature, understanding community of REVERSE. Everyone of us had lived through different experiences, time for each of us to teach what we learn from the ‘university of hard knocks’ to others. REVERSE will be running Classes, Seminars and tuition centres staffed by ourselves for ourselves to keep us actively learning and inquisitive.

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