Happiness Is Fitting into a 'Free Size' Dress

Have you ever thought about the dress sizes? I certainly have. One of the most bizarre size they have is the Indian 'Free Size' label. I have often thought: what does it mean? Who are these people who can fit into them? What size are they? Now I know! They are somewhere between small and medium size people. 

So, I have lost some weight. It is given. Contemplations on active aging has gotten me into thinking about my health and about my size as well. It has taken nearly four years, but now I can say that I fit into 'Free Size'. It is also proven by that fact that I recently acquired a free sized dress and it looks good on me. 

It is a wondrous feeling to take a dress from the rack, put it on and I fits. Yes! With the big exclamation mark. That's how it feels. On the other hand, the free size can also look like a house on you. And after putting all that hard work into completely changing your lifestyle by discarding everything you knew before and re-educating yourself about what you could eat and not, I want to enjoy my size. 

The only way to do it, is to put on a dress that is the right size. And then it is a question if a 'Free Size' is the right size. Hah! It fits. How wonderful.

So, here are two people wearing the 'Free Size' dress that fits them both. The other one is small and the other one is now a medium size person. Of course neither can really fit their breasts in as the dress is from India and obviously declares that Indian women have smaller breast size that the Western women, but you get the idea. The dress is the same, but it looks different depending on the size of the person who put it on. 

I am so happy, I tried. Now I know that I am a real person and if anyone says that I am not the right size, I will answer: but, but, I do fit into the 'Free Size'. Do you? 

Obviously, it is debatable if the free size is the size we should aim at or not. But it was good fun anyway. And now that I know, I know that I might live longer because people who fit the free sizes can smile at the dress shops. And smiling makes us more positive and positivity makes us live longer. Right?  

So, I am obviously promoting good health, here and now, and greatly enjoying the experience of fitting into 'Free Size' at last.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Contemplation on how the slogan ‘Aged to Perfection’ fits with the slogan ‘Growing Younger’

Lately, most frequently popped up slogans of my Internet searches on active aging have been ‘Aged to Perfection’ and ‘Growing Younger’. It has lead to me thinking a lot about their meaning in relation to active aging. Somehow they seem to be in opposition to each other but at the same time I am suspecting that they co-operate to form a meaningful framework for the dignified aging paradigm.

For me the term ‘Growing Younger’ has two connotations. The first implication is that the age we are in is not acceptable and that as an aging person, especially a woman, we have to abide by the popular culture of our western world and by the Hollywood model which encourages us to do whatever we can to look younger and to keep up appearances that youth is desirable over mature age.

The second suggestion is more positive, as I am sure the slogan was meant to be, that we as aging persons are not bound by the destiny but instead can by our own actions keep our health into older age. In fact that is how I found this slogan.

It first popped up to my consciousness from the realage.com while doing ‘the real age test’ that tells you what your age is in relation to your health.  The suggestion in doing the test is especially to make people aware of their health situation that can affect the process of aging if not attended to.

The slogan ‘Aged to Perfection’ calls to that personal  and fundamentally positive and humorous mindset that always sees the world through the ‘pink classes’ allowing the positive experiences counter the negative experiences . It ensures that despite the pitfalls of the aging process, it is our own attitude that dictates how we tell the story of our lives. In fact it first showed up in my consciousness while searching for suitable cards to send to friends celebrating their mature age (the 80^th) birthdays. 

This week, I have also been reading an interesting book called Positivity by one of the leaders of ‘the positive psychology movement’, namely Dr Barbara L. Fredrickson. I have been really impressed by her research for some time now and would recommend her ‘positivity ratio’ test to everybody in any age group.

According to her research the 3-to-1 ratio of positive experiences overriding negative experiences can make a huge difference in how our lives are shaped. From there we can detect that the way we experience our own life is fashioned by how we actively decide to train our brain to be aware of the positivity of any situation that can affect how we feel about living to older age.

For me it is interesting to note that while we are celebrating birthdays, be they of any age, we can let the light heartedness of the moment take charge and for that day see the humour of age creeping upon us, but when we are consumed by our daily tasks and focused of a particular ailment or fault we detect in our body, we suddenly see the whole assumed horror of aging and feel like needing to look young makes us think better about ourselves.

My suggestion then is to celebrate every day as a birthday and look at any given situation from a positive mindset rather than a negative one. It is how we each of us can take charge to actively colouring our lives ‘pink’ or ‘purple’ or whatever the fancy takes us at any given moment of time while ‘Growing Younger’ to the ‘Aged to Perfection’.

References:

http://www.realage.com/  - take ‘the real age test’ here

http://www.50thbirthdayparty.com/aged-to-perfection.html  - find cool birthday cards here (the picture on this blog is from here)

http://www.positivityratio.com/  - take ‘the positivity ratio’ test here