Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

JANUARY 1
Amazing Things Are Possible
Having a fresh year stretched out ahead of you like untracked snow speaks of boundless possibility. As you embark on this year of becoming younger by the day, let possibility be the keynote. It is fully possible for you to look and feel younger this time next year than you do right now. It is absolutely possible that you can come to love the age you are, and the ages you'll be in the future, even if that seems like a stretch today. It is completely possible that as you go through this year, you'll come to see midlife and later through your own unbiased eyes, without society's often skewed opinions clouding your vision.

All these things, and what you yourself want from this year, are possible. You can't force them to come about, but you can think and act in a way that allows them access to your life. Today, all you have to do is have a holiday. Eat black-eyed peas-good luck for the New Year according to Southern tradition, and a way to get some fiber and disease-preventing phytochemicals while you're at it. If making New Year's resolutions is a tradition for you, make them, but consider altering the process a little. Call them "possibilities" instead of "resolutions" that takes the pressure off. Write them in the present tense as statements of fact dated January 1, Next Year. This way, instead of the standard "I will work out every day," you'll write "I am fitter and healthier than I've been in years" a statement of possibility fulfilled.

REJUVENATE YOURSELF WITH ACTION: Keep in mind through the month of January that all manner of wondrous things are possible, and that you are open to all possibilities.

JANUARY 2
Seeing Your Age in a Bright New Light
One day while walking our dog, my daughter Adair met a woman who told her that, as a child, she had had a similar dog. "His name was Brownie," the woman said. "Let's see, I'm ninety-five now, so that must have been ninety years ago." Adair is not quite twenty. This may have been the oldest person she'd ever met. She was in awe. To someone her age, I'm old, too, just not the cool kind of old.

It's a funny thing: all your life practically everybody is older than you and then one day most people are younger. It's like crossing the International Date Line, but it's an age line instead. On one side of the line there's you, along with the people your age and older. On the other side is everybody who thinks you're old. To see your age in a new light, it is necessary to stop thinking of anybody as old. Think of everyone, yourself included, as ageless eternal even.

If you believe in the soul, you know this already. If your soul is indeed who you are, your body is simply its vehicle. Some souls are buzzing around town in jazzy new sports cars. Others are in vintage sedans. In the big picture, your current chassis is pretty much irrelevant. Souls don't have VIN numbers, or birthdays. When you make a point of seeing everyone as a soul living in a body, the age of the body means a great deal less and the quality of the soul a great deal more.