[Fis] Happy 250th Fourth of July !!!

[Plamen]

> Dear American friends and all the FISers who have kept feeding their American spirit throughout the years,
> 
> Happy anniversary of this great celebration to everyone who feels like being part of it! 
> Cheers for the next 250 years and 3x that much!
> 
> Here is something I wish to remind you - you certainly know it! - along with the article below I read this morning in Medium. I learned about this Harvard experiment perhaps a month ago from one of Joe Dispenza's interviews and realized that I have been doing so all the time since I got to know myself :-) 
> 
> So stay young, agile, striving and keep the American soul alive!
> 
> Best,
> 
> Plamen
> 
> This Harvard Experiment Made The Elderly Feel Younger in Just One Week
> 
> The unsettling Ellen Langer experiment that suggests ageing may be partly a mindset
> 
> 
> Yogi
> 
> Follow
> 4 min read
> ·
> Jan 29, 2026
> 9.5K
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> 130
> 3
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> 
> 
> Press enter or click to view image in full size
> 
> Picture taken by the Author
> We talk about ageing as if it is a one-way street. Wrinkles appear, joints complain, energy dips and we accept it all with a resigned shrug. This is what ageing looks like, we tell ourselves.
> 
> But what if some of it isn’t ageing at all?
> 
> What if it is habit? What if it is mindset?
> 
> That question sits at the heart of one of the most fascinating psychological experiments of the 20th century conducted by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, often called the mother of mindfulness.
> 
> Her work doesn’t promise immortality or miracle reversals. What it does is far more unsettling and far more hopeful. It suggests that how old we feel may shape how old we become.
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> The Counter-Clockwise Experiment
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> In 1979, Ellen Langer designed what later came to be known as the “Counter-Clockwise” experiment.
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> She invited a group of men in their late 70s and early 80s to spend a week at a retreat. But this was no ordinary holiday. The retreat was carefully designed to look, sound, and feel like it was 1959, twenty years earlier.
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> The furniture matched the era. The newspapers were from 1959. The radio played music from that time. Television shows, conversations, and photographs reflected that year
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> The men were asked to live as if it were 1959. They were told to speak in the present tense, discuss current events from that time, and behave as though they were their younger selves.
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> What happened next surprised everyone.
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> The Results That Made Scientists Uncomfortable
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> After just seven days, there were measurable biological and physical improvements:
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> Better posture
> Increased grip strength
> Improved hearing and vision
> Faster movement
> Enhanced memory and cognitive function
> No new medication.
> No special exercise program.
> No diet overhaul.
> 
> Just a shift in context, attention, and belief. The body, it seemed, was listening to the mind.
> 
> Why This Experiment Still Matters
> 
> Ellen Langer wasn’t claiming that time can be reversed. She was pointing to something subtler and more unsettling: we unknowingly participate in our own ageing.
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> We tell ourselves stories: “I’m too old to learn this.” “At my age, this is normal.” “What do you expect? I’m not young anymore.”
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> Over time, these stories harden into rules.
> The body follows instructions remarkably well.
> 
> Langer’s research suggests that many age-related declines are amplified and sometimes triggered by expectation rather than biology alone.
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> Ageing vs. Awareness
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> One of Langer’s central ideas is mindlessness, the way we operate on autopilot, following labels and assumptions without questioning them.
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> Age is one of the strongest labels we carry.
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> Once we accept it, we limit our movement because we “might get hurt”, we excuse forgetfulness instead of challenging it, we outsource strength, independence, and curiosity to “the young”
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> The Counter-Clockwise experiment didn’t make the men younger.
> It made them more present, more attentive, more engaged, more alive.
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> This Hit Me Harder Than I Expected
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> I first came across this experiment casually, the way one stumbles upon an article and expects nothing more than a mild “interesting.”
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> Because I recognised myself in small, uncomfortable ways.
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> The times I avoided learning something new because it felt “too late.”
> The moments I blamed fatigue on age rather than routine or mindset.
> The subtle narrowing of possibility that creeps in quietly, politely, almost invisibly.
> 
> What if we’re not tired because we’re ageing but ageing because we’ve grown tired of being alert?
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> Mindset Is Not Denial
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> What happens if we replace:
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> “I can’t” with “Let me try”
> “That’s normal at my age” with “Is it?”
> “I’m done” with “I’m curious”
> Small shifts.
> Big consequences.
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> Feeling Younger Isn’t About Acting Young
> 
> Langer’s experiment didn’t ask participants to dress younger or behave foolishly. It asked them to engage — mentally, socially, physically.
> 
> Feeling younger, in this sense, isn’t about denial.
> It’s about participation.
> 
> What This Means for Us, Right Now
> 
> You don’t need a 1959 retreat to test this idea. Experiment this from TODAY. From NOW.
> 
> Ask yourself:
> What am I no longer doing because I decided — consciously or not — that it’s “too late”?
> 
> Then tell your mind you are at the age where you can do it. Stay in this mindset for a week and see what happens.
> 
> The Real Takeaway
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> The Ellen Langer experiment doesn’t promise youth. It offers something better — agency. It reminds us that while we can’t stop time, we can stop surrendering to it prematurely.
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> Ageing is inevitable. Ageing unconsciously is optional.
> 
> And sometimes, feeling younger begins not with turning back the clock but with paying attention to the moment you’re in.
> 
> I enrolled myself for piano and singing lessons. I am planning to learn Spanish. We are not limited by our age, we are limited by what we tell ourselves.
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Thank you for reading.😊
> 
> This article is published in Women Write Publication. A growing, strong community built by women for women. All thoughts are welcome.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 10:56 PM Bernie Baars <baarsbjwhite at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thank you, Plamen, and I believe you are definitely part of it also.
>> I'm an immigrant kid, but I've grown to appreciate this huge experiment
>> in human government. 
>> So far, so good!
>> Bernie
>> 
>> 
>>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 12:39 PM Dr. Plamen L. Simeonov <plamen.l.simeonov at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Happy anniversary of this great celebration to everyone who feels like being part of it! 
>>> Cheers for the next 250 years and 3x that much!
>>> 
>>> Best
>>> 
>>> Plamen
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 8:50 PM Bernie Baars <baarsbjwhite at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>>>> From: Bernie Baars <baarsbjwhite at gmail.com>
>>>> Date: Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 6:16 AM
>>>> Subject: Happy 250th Fourth of July !!!
>>>> To: Bernie Baars <baarsbjwhite at gmail.com>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> The US Constitution and Declaration are the two most successful of the Western Enlightenment: John Locke, Voltaire and all those fellows and gals. In EUrope the aristocracy was too powerful to allow rational change, and it took the bloody French Revolution, followed by the Napoleonic Wars to resolve the revolutionary fervors - which are still laying out.
>>>> We think of Europe s being "democratic" but the
>>>> EU is anything BUT democratic. Nobody votes for the EU, except the undemocratic establishments. As a direct result, the EU keeps doing crazy things like Net Zero, importation of millions of hostile warriors who will not assimilate, and a foreign policy that has practically sunk the British Navy. It's all crazy, ideological stuff far removed from reality.
>>>> We do have our suicidal ideological madness, too, but we are correcting that aberration, I hope. We are still on a knife's edge, but there is hope. 
>>>> The 250th Anniversary is a time to celebrate 250 years of fairly stable Constitutional government, far longer than any dem/republican form of government in the world. 
>>>> And yet, half of our political class (the delusional half) is determined to kill off the most successful and prosperous form of government ever devised by crazy humans.
>>>> Look around the world, and you'll see mostly pathological forms of government. Even Britain, the Mother Country,  has figured out ways to sabotage its achievements. Maybe it is in human nature to live on the edge of disaster. 
>>>> So let us celebrate a very genuine achievement of 250 years of relative peace and prosperity, A "light unto the nations" and always ready to topple. We certainly have fanatical enemies both inward and outward. 
>>>> In the 19th century some wit wrote that "God protects orphans, widows and the United States." All kinds of weird and irrational stuff is happening, and AI is now waiting to make things worse.
>>>> So pray for the Ship of State to make it through today's turmoil and madness. Try to fix the Ship of State just like the old-time sailors, always rushing back and forth to pump out bilge water and change the sails to catch every favorable wind and tide. 
>>>> And don't listen to the happy saboteurs who want to bring it all down. 
>>>> And most of all, trust in our dumb luck, which has kept us afloat for 2 1/2 centuries so far. 
>>>> I don't know if we will make it through the next 100 years, but if we do, it will be by remembering the Founders and their clever ship construction.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 🇺🇲🇱🇺🇮🇱🥸🌐😭😛😨😵‍💫😎🤠🥸👿👺👽🙊👁️👄💅🙇🙋💁🙆🙅🤷🤦🙍🙎🧑‍🦼🧑‍🎓🧑‍💼🧑‍⚖️🧔💏🌹🍁🌈🌘🐻🦌🦩🐞👹💖🛌🧛🍪🍩🍯🎇✡️🔯🕎👁️‍🗨️🧑‍🧑‍🧒 '"HAPPY FOURTH of JULY"anc  consider the alternatives!!!
>>>> Bernie
>>>> 
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