This has nothing to do with coloring your hair, or beard in my case, using wrinkle cream, or how much exercise you get. Exercise is certainly helpful – you’ve got to keep moving – but it’s not the only answer.

One way to keep young? Be with young people. Volunteer with them. Keep up with the amount of change they absorb on a daily basis as they grow. You’ll keep current, and you’ll be giving them your time and wisdom, which will help them grow stronger.

What is your attitude like?

How do you react to change? When something changes, are you excited for something new or miserable because it’s not the same as it was before?

There’s multiple situations and layers to the above questions, but the one that popped up in my mind recently was related to technology. I was listening to the biography of the Wright Brothers (Wilbur and Orville, the first to fly an airplane) earlier this week. Orville was excited to build his own printing press while still in high school. The brothers got “into” bicycles because they were the technological innovation of the day. The author of the book even included commentary from anti-bicycle people who were upset that children could get so far away from their parents – miles! – in just minutes, and certainly all this outdoor activity would be bad for their studies.

The photo with this post is one of the (rare!) Wright Bicycles, preserved at the Air & Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

Sounds laughable now, doesn’t it? It’s a repeatable human trend – some people joyfully engage with change and make more with it, while others downplay change or outright refuse to even work with it. Change is inevitable. Your reactions to it are controllable.

What are you going to learn today?