Escaping Your Cultural Captors – Your Portal May Be Pooping On Your Potential!
Have you ever thought of yourself as being in a “cultural fishbowl?”
News alert! You’re in one!
If you’re 16, you are in a cultural fishbowl with the world watching to see how well you manage your rebelliousness and bone-headedness.
If you are 60, your cultural fishbowl is being watched by a crowd with a bias that favors the young and cloaks you in all sorts of portal-based expectations.
You know the type of expectations I mean. They’ve been pounded into you by the powerful “P’s” in your life: parents, peers, professors, physicians, politicians, pundits.
Expectations like:
- Act your age
- Don’t go beyond the pale, stay in the pale
- Getting old will be difficult
- Your DNA is your destiny; you’re a slave of your genetics
- Longevity is fixed, not learned
- Expect decline
- Wind down, not up
- Take it easy, don’t push yourself
- Don’t start a business
- Senescence is automatic and guaranteed
- Don’t over-exert yourself
- Don’t fall in love again
- Be silent, be hidden
Portal? What’s a portal?
I first wrote about cultural portals a couple of years ago (go here) referencing the work that neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez has done on the power of cultural beliefs in his two excellent books “The Mindbody Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Are Inherited” and “The Mindbody Code: How to Change the Beliefs that Limit Your Health, Longevity, and Success.” (pd links).
According to Dr. Martinez, a cultural portal is a “– culturally defined segment of expected beliefs and conduct.” He offers up a list of cultural portal with the following categories: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age. With the help of social scientists and clever, exploitation-minded marketers, we’ve moved to seven from the two (child-adult) we had 120 years ago.
Every portal has it’s own degree of acceptance and it’s own set of constraining rules. In the middle-age and old-age portal, the acceptance and the rules can take on a nefarious tone, especially when it comes to self-acceptance.
In Dr. Martinez’s words, the old age portal “— defines what you can longer do in the present and future that was allowed in the past portals. For example, strenuous physical activity, falling in love again, good health, physical strength, good memory, and expectations for a bright future are redefined based on the premise that aging is a process of diminishing returns.”
Dr. Martinez makes the point that we can step out of a portal but first have to recognize that there is life beyond the cultural fishbowl. He evens suggests that a touch of rebellion needs to be applied to overcome what we are expected to do.
Alas, in the sixth and seventh portals, we are not so much into being rebels, more into acceptance and have, perhaps, used up our ready reserve of rebellion.
And that’s where we may just poop on our potential.
We ain’t done yet!!
Here’s a 10-point plan for exiting your “old-age” cultural fishbowl – and continuing to realize your potential.
With loads of help from Dr. Martinez – – – – –
1. Be an outlier and defy cultural restraints and move on to self-discovery. Get serious about letting your true self out.
2. Be patient and don’t give in to the admonitions from family and friends that say “it’s for your own good” or “relax and enjoy your retirement” or “you’re not as young as you think.” Remember, they are co-authors of the cultural belief and are, Dr. Martinez reminds us, “responding from their own fishbowl and are unable to see beyond their culturally imposed limitations.”
3. Find co-authors and other rebels or outliers your age and watch how they thrive outside their fishbowl.
4. Refuse senior discounts and other entitlements for being “old.”
5. Bypass family illnesses and don’t let family talk you into believing they are inevitable. After age 65, genetics plays virtually no role in what may afflict us.
6. Move from entitlement consciousness to resource consciousness. Be a font of wisdom and share it with others.
7. Maintain a sense of humor. Don’t take yourself or life too seriously – you’re not getting out alive. Laugh along the way. Make what you have left a game.
8. Look surprisingly younger. It starts with attitude and how we carry ourselves and convey energy. And a consistent dose of aerobic and strength-training exercise coupled with current dress won’t hurt either.
9.Rethink your retirement. Entering the culturally defined retirement portal means embracing the limitations therein i.e. the retirement consciousness, the trap that says not to plan beyond the actuarial tables. We can turn this portal into a purpose-driven, meaningful time that leverages dreams, talents, skills, and experiences into something that impacts the world around us.
10. Explore going beyond the pale. We can seek paths that can lead to our individuation.
Dr. Martinez wisely reminds us:
“Since our biology is influenced by our cultural beliefs, our mindbody conforms to what we are expected to be in each portal” and that “- we need to be mindful that cultural portals influence our identity and we unwittingly co-author the process.”
Our cultures mold helplessness or empowerment.
Which fishbowl do you want to be in?
Leave a comment below and tells us how you’ve avoided the cultural portal trap. Thanks for being part of the growing “tribe”. Tell your friends about these free weekly articles and refer them over to www.makeagingwork.com where they can receive a free 25-page ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full Life Potential” for signing up.
Hi Gary … opened your email this am and saw the eye ‘pooping’ title which caught my attention. And loved reading it ! I’m 82 and always in need of some inspiration as once people know my age they unconsciously try to put me ‘ in my place’. However, most of friends are 10+ years younger and I try to keep physical and mental fitness a priority. It takes a ‘mindset‘ , and this article is great-I’m printing and saving it. 😊
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