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Do you believe it is possible to have your innermost desires fulfilled after 60?

Although each of us has our own unique desires, one thing we can all agree on is just because we are 60 and over doesn’t mean our innermost desires vanish.

In fact, our desires for more love, health, money, and happiness are accentuated for most of us at this stage of our lives.

So, how do you go about addressing your innermost desires, let alone achieving them?

This question and more will be answered in this new article and video series for Sixty and Me readers. Beginning today, we will take an inner journey together through the “5 Simple Steps to Be What It Is You Seek” and how to easily apply them to your life.

Let’s begin with the #1 obstacle to living joyfully through your desires.

Desires Don’t Live Outside of You

Contrary to how most of us were raised and educated, getting your desires met has little to do with the outside world.

You are the living embodiment of your desires!

This means your desires don’t live outside of you. They are in you.

As much as we all tend to make the outside world responsible for what goes on in our lives, the key to manifesting your desires begins and ends within you.

So, how does this work?

• If you desire more love in your life, start loving more of who you are.
• If you desire to be healthier, identify and get rid of unhealthy beliefs.
• If you desire more money, rewrite the story you are telling yourself about money.

These are just three of an endless array of examples.

Therefore, the #1 obstacle to living joyously through your desires is seeking for them outside of you.

We’ve all chased after our desires. Many of us still do.

But if we’ve learned anything in life to this point, it’s that we know the more we chase after something outside of us, the more stressed and exhausted we become.

Even if we catch what we seek, the inner void we were really trying to fill remains frustratingly empty.

How do you reverse this inverted process of having your desires met after 60?

Be what it is you seek.

Living Life on Autopilot

Being what it is you seek makes it easier to have your desires fulfilled with less effort, less struggle, and less resistance.

For when you seek to capture your desires outside of you, it is usually done so through limiting beliefs and unconscious attachments to the past. This all but guarantees you will get lost on the path to your desires.

I say ‘unconscious attachments’ because most people in pursuit of their desires are less focused on what’s going on within them presently and more caught up in their past.

This means you are living life on autopilot.

Autopilot is when you are functioning in the world without being aware of how you are going about doing it. You are detached from your present awareness and unconsciously going from Point A to Point B based on past thoughts and behaviors.

In this state, you are not consciously aware of the obstacles you face to fulfill your desires.

The solution to this, and what brings you out of being on autopilot, is consciously living life through your innermost desires. This is what it means to be what it is you seek.

Removing the Obstacles

In the next five articles and videos of this series, we are going to take an in-depth look at what each of these five steps are. For now, here is a brief description of the “5 Simple Steps to Be What It Is You Seek”:

Cut Ties with People-Pleasing

People pleasing is a disempowered mindset, stuck in cycle of permission driven self-worth. Therefore, step one to having your innermost desires met is cutting ties with people-pleasing.

Embodying Your Worthiness

Shift from a disempowered mindset to cultivating an empowered mindset. This requires an embodiment of unconditional worthiness of your innermost desires.

Be Responsible for How You Feel

Achieving your desires has less to do with taking aggressive action and more to do with being responsible for how you feel. This means reclaiming your power to choose the life you desire by accepting your emotional state is 100% your responsibility.

Embrace Your Authentic Self

This is about owning your gift, which is embracing your true, authentic self. This removes any lingering doubt you are not enough to have your innermost desires fulfilled.

Play with Your Desires

To play with your desires is to take time to imagine them being fulfilled in the outer world. This is about daydreaming your desires into reality.

These five steps are designed to help you remove obstacles on your path to fulfilling your desires after 60.

In the next article and video, we will look at step one, “Cut Ties with People Pleasing.”

In the meantime, join me in the video where I will share additional insights on these steps along with three journal prompts and an inspiring action item to help you integrate what you are learning.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you dream about becoming someone better/wiser/stronger? What is stopping you from achieving this dream? Do you think you are ready to embark on this journey?

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When we hear stories, our brains sync and
minds meld. We tend to think, “What’s in it for me?” so here’s some information
you may find helpful.

When Your Brain Hears, “Blah Blah Blah”

When you read or
listen to facts, or watch a PowerPoint presentation, the language processing
parts of your brain get activated. Your brain automatically decodes the words
into meaning. That’s it. Not much else happens.

A recent study by
the University of Maryland identified
the automatic process our brain goes through when it picks up spoken
language.

Listening to a Story

However, when you
hear a story, in addition to the language processing areas, parts which receive
and process sensory information like sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing,
and parts which activate motor movements and emotions, are also triggered.

In other words, our
brain is stimulated by stories in a way similar to stimulation by experience.

For example, if we hear a story about a sumptuous dinner, the part in our brain that processes taste starts to “taste” the food. When we hear how someone escapes from giant meat-eating lizards our motor cortex becomes active; we “experience” the act of running.

Depending on the
story, multiple regions in our brain work together to build rich images and
emotional responses. A story can light up our whole brain.

And We Sync Up

Not only that, the brains of the storyteller and the listener can synchronize, says Dr. Uri Hasson, a neuroscientist from Princeton University.

In an experiment
led by Hasson, a woman had to tell a story while in an MRI scanner, which
detected her brain activity by monitoring the blood flow to her brain. When the
blood flows to certain brain areas, they light up on a computer screen, showing
their engagement.

Meanwhile, a group
of volunteers listened to the stories through headphones, while their brains were
also scanned.

When the woman
spoke, the volunteers’ brains synchronized with hers. When she had activity in her
emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up,
so did theirs. Hasson found that the more the listeners understood the story,
the more their brain activity mirrored the storyteller’s.

Why Is Brain Sync Important?

After 60, unless we
go out of our way to maintain relationships or form new acquaintances, we could
become more isolated. By sharing stories, either with old friends or new, we
form connections.

We create a shared
understanding and increased intimacy. Sharing stories triggers brain chemicals
for social bonding. We gain trust. We form communities.

In an article in Psychology
Today, Lissa Rankin, M.D., said, “Every time you tell your story and
someone else who cares bears witness to it, you turn off the body’s stress
responses, flipping off toxic stress hormones like cortisol and flipping on
relaxation responses that release healing hormones like oxytocin, dopamine, and
endorphins.”

She adds that “this
turns on the body’s innate self-repair mechanisms and functions as preventative
medicine – or treatment if you’re sick.”

Dr. Rankin also
believes that listening to stories relaxes your nervous system and helps heal
your mind of depression, anxiety, fear, anger, and feelings of disconnection.

But There’s More

A study by St.
Catherine’s University, “The Effects Of Storytelling On Happiness And
Resilience In Older Adults,” concluded that finding meaning and maintaining a
sense of purpose can be vital to aging well.

The study suggested
that telling stories about our lives helps us find moments of wholeness from our
past. We can use these states of grace to create meaning in our present, which
in turn, may create a more positive future.

When we learn to find
meaning from our life stories, we develop a perspective on aging. We view
ourselves as having progressed toward a mature wisdom. This brings an increase
in confidence and wellbeing.

Basically, sharing stories
is fun and is good for our brains.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How often do you
share stories? Who do you share your stories with? Have you noticed a bond with
your listeners? Please tell us about the experience in the comments below.