Asha Paul:
Hello, dear listeners, welcome to the Empowered Life podcast. If you are seeking deeper insight into health, emotional well-being, resilience, meaningful living, and what it truly means to live and age well in today's complex world, you are in the right place. Through conversations with medical doctors, psychologists, authors, entrepreneurs, and modern thought leaders, we explore how people navigate challenge, transformation, meaning, and growth, both personally and professionally.
The individuals you will meet on this podcast come from many different walks of life, yet they share a common thread. Each has faced difficulty, uncertainty, or profound change, and discovered ways to live with greater awareness, purpose, and inner steadiness through the work they do and the lives they have lived. My hope is that these conversations feel less like interviews and more like meaningful dialogue, as though we are gathered together in your living room, engaging with the ideas, experiences, and insights that can help us live with greater awareness, purpose, and well-being.
I'm your host, Asha Paul, a board-certified holistic health practitioner and educator, focused on healthy aging, emotional well-being, mindful living, and the deeper patterns that shape how we experience life. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to a remarkable person. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Tom Stemple, a retired general surgeon and acupuncturist with a truly inspiring life story. Growing up in one of Mr. Carnegie's steel towns near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Stemple's formative years were deeply connected to America's industrial heartland. After earning his medical degree in Philadelphia, he sharpened his surgical skills during his residency in Massachusetts and then took on an important mission with the US Public Health Service. His work in Gallup, New Mexico, allowed him to immerse himself at the rich cultures and traditions of Native American communities, which significantly influenced his perspective on life.
As he transitioned toward the later stages of his surgical career, Dr. Stemple embraced a transformative mind-body wellness approach, seamlessly integrating acupuncture into his practice over the last 12 years. His deep passion for spirituality also led him to pursue a doctorate in ministry, where he crossed paths with my husband, Russell Paul, who was a faculty member in the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California. Through his engagement with thought leaders like Craig Hamilton and Terry Patton, Dr. Stemple has cultivated a holistic outlook on life that emphasizes evolutionary and integral spirituality. At 78 years old, he is a devoted nature lover who finds joy in hiking, camping, and exploring the beauty of the great outdoors, which was instilled in him by his grandfather. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Stemple back in 2013 during our retreat and pilgrimage in South India, and I was thrilled when he joined us again in 2024 for our final voyage. He's not only a wonderful person, but his genuine care for others truly make him special.
It's a privilege to call him my friend. Tom, how are you feeling, my friend?
Dr. Tom Stempel:
Hi, Asha. I am wonderful. It's a beautiful day.
And wow, I thank you for that introduction.
Asha Paul:
You're welcome. It's really inspiring, your life. Even when I met you, you've been an amazing person.
Knowing about how much you have spent your profession in the health industry, you know, means a lot to me because that is my field, as you know. So it's really a privilege to be speaking to you today.
Dr. Stempel:
Thank you. Thank you. And it's a joy to be here.
I appreciate the invitation to be here. And it's just a pleasure to be here with you.
Asha Paul:
Wonderful. Shall we get started? Let's do it.
Could you share a transformative experience in your life that has significantly influenced your sense of purpose and shaped your path?
Dr. Stempel
So what's coming to me and you saying that is my mother died when I was 10. She had developed breast cancer several years before that. And at that young age, I watched her decline physically.
And there's a lot of other stuff going on in our life at that time that I could see her declining. There were little rituals that she and I did together that I sort of had in my head a time that I knew she would be going. A number of things that came out of that one was having seen her go through everything she went through.
I said, when I grow up, I want to do something so nobody else has to go through that. Obviously, I haven't accomplished that. But still, that was sort of my initial direction into the healing practices that has also informed my entire life.
Nobody talked to me back then about what was going on, about what I might be feeling, about what I might be thinking. Part of that was because of our family being nonverbal, non-demonstrative. But also the sense that I project on it all of, oh, I'm just an eight year old kid.
What am I going to know? What am I going to grasp? And so I have spent my life working on not treating kids like little kids as beings who really have much more of a grasp and understanding of things than they're often given credit for.
Asha Paul:
Well, thank you for sharing that very personal story. I'm so sorry about your mother. I didn't know about that, that she passed when you were so young.
And that must have been so hard.
Dr. Stempel
So I'll give a cancer plug here, if I may. Sure, I'd love to hear that. My mother and both of her sisters all died of breast cancer, and they had a brother who died of prostate cancer.
And at the beginning of COVID, I had a cousin call me and tell me his daughter had developed breast cancer and that she and he had tested positive for the BRCA gene. My mother was one of seven children. All of us in all seven branches have now tested for the BRCA gene.
Everybody was positive in every branch and there's been cancer in every branch. So for those of you out here who have cancer in your family, it's worth doing the testing to be aware of what your chances are and what you need to pay attention to and look for to to guard your health in a positive way.
Asha Paul:
Well, thank you, Tom. That's fantastic suggestion. One of the things and I would say myself included, we are frightened to get tested.
Right. It's better to get tested than not knowing. So could you kindly speak about that a little more?
Dr. Stempel:
Oh, sure. Well, we've had a great example of it in the family. My one cousin went and got tested, ended up finding a small breast cancer, and she is now far down the road.
OK with that. But because of heightened awareness, they also found an ovarian cancer and she had successful surgery without it all as well. Had another cousin who did exactly what you're saying.
She was in the health field, but she said to me at the time, I don't want to know. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to have to worry about it.
She, within the last month or two, has notified all of us that she has a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Now, had she gotten tested, had she been a little worried about it, she might have been able to pick up at an earlier stage. Right.
The fear is there. And in all that, that's such a personal thing. We live with whatever our baggage is from our growing up years.
And some people, for whatever reason, can't handle the pressure of knowing something might go wrong when when, in fact, we're all going to die of something.
Asha Paul:
There you go. Right. To have better quality of life.
And I'm an ardent advocate like you to at least do once a year, you know, do the basics. And if something happens, you know, or something is detected, then, of course, you know, you have a better chance, as you said, especially today. But the way technology is advanced and, you know, also using other alternative modes, which I would like to get into with you, you know, it's both and kind of a mindset to develop.
It's so essential, isn't it? Especially in today's world.
Dr. Stempel:
Oh, amen. Amen. I mean, annual breast exams, annual skin exams, annual pap smears and GYN exams, annual testicular exams.
Right.
Asha Paul:
And for men, prostrate and so on and so forth.
Dr. Stempel:
Colonoscopies starting at 50. And just the screening stuff that picks stuff up early and so many good advances in cancer therapies that it's crazy not to do it.
Asha Paul:
Exactly. Especially when you know that you may have a family history.
Dr. Stempel:
Yes. Yes.
Asha Paul:
Well, thank you. That's so well said. Tom, I imagine your career as a general surgeon was both demanding and high pressure.
What specific strategies did you incorporate to achieve a balanced lifestyle? Are there particular activities or routines you adopted to manage stress and maintain your well-being amid the challenges of your profession and personal life?
Dr. Stempel:
Oh, that was an assumption that I had a balanced life. I did not have a balanced life. The demands of being a surgeon leads one into a very unbalanced life.
Time wise, going in early, getting home late, being on call all night long, weekends, finding that the only good way to not be on call is to leave town so nobody can call you. It was very unbalanced. And I was thinking about this earlier today in relation to some questions you were going to ask me.
And I was thinking about Ken Wilber's All Lines, All Quadrants and how all of us have in different phases of our life will focus our energy on our education, on physical exercise, on family, on career. And when we're focusing our energy in that one direction, we tend to grow in whatever line that is. But the other lines for growth and evolution get stunted.
You don't pay attention to them because you're focusing so much on the one phase that really is most important to you in the moment. So that indeed, there was a strong period in my career that it was all about work. And personally, I suffered family wise, the spiritual growth wasn't there at all, just because you get pulled so, so much into your career.
And I'll use a paintbrush here that I see that in general, that in our teens and our twenties, we're working on building into whatever career we want. And then in thirties and forties, which is our prime work times, and maybe we'll go up to fifties here, you get so sucked in your career that you want to devote yourself to your career so you can get be successful in your career, be successful in life, do what you need to do career wise to make the rest of your life a success. But oftentimes the rest of your life suffers because so much energy is devoted toward career.
So that that did happen to me initially. I did always, as you alluded to in the introduction, have a connection to earth, had a connection to nature, to being outdoors, to doing hiking and physical activity. And, you know, Gallup, New Mexico, where I started my career with Indian Health Service is just such a magical land.
A magical part of the United States. And you're you're there in the high desert, but you're near southern Colorado and the Rockies, you're near ski areas, you're near mountains and streams and every type of topography imaginable in the US. So there is just a power and energy and it was all incredible.
So it it did feed me in a bunch of different ways, but the spiritual stuff was still sitting in the background.
Asha Paul:
Well, thank you for being so honest, you know, when you were a general surgeon, that your life was not so balanced. So let me ask you this question, then looking back today, what would you say to your younger self to have done something different without having to curtail your drive for being successful as a surgeon? Let's suppose that there is a general surgeon or a surgeon listening to this podcast who is younger and who is trying to create balance or just need not be a surgeon.
It could be any person in their work and family life. How do you create balance? What would you have said or what would you say to your younger self?
Dr. Stempel:
Well, I'm looking back at my younger self. I'm not sure my younger self would have been open to my older self suggestions. I also look at a lot of this and say it's necessary to do an assessment in the moment of where am I, what are my needs in this moment, where do I want to be?
Maybe I'm okay being out of balance right now because this is letting me do what I need to do to be where I need to be.
Asha Paul:
Let me see. Let's let's forget the word balance. How about de-stressing?
You mentioned being in nature.
Dr. Stempel:
Yeah. Okay. De-stressing.
I like better. My form of de-stressing in those days came in many ways. One, just being being out in nature, being in touch with the earth, running, doing physical activity.
Asha Paul:
Okay.
Dr. Stempel:
I got invited to dances, other events that the people were putting on and going to those things and letting go of everything else that was going on in the moment and just being present to something new and wonderful, I guess was kind of a stress reliever that I didn't look at at the time as a stress reliever. I guess in looking at that, a stress reliever is anything we can do that lets us let go of what it is that's causing the stress and just enjoy where we are. That could be music, that could be reading, that could be meditating, that could be knitting, that could be building something.
And I'll segue off of that a minute, that quickie article I wrote on meditation a long time ago, that what we look at in getting ourselves into a meditative state of mind is frequently repeating a mantra, repeating something else that we sort of do an auto-hypnosis type of thing. And if you look at what people do, a mother singing to a child, the same song, the same lullaby, the counting when one is knitting and I don't know, one, two, three, pearl, whatever it is that they do. The repetitive counting of knitting, listening to the music and letting the music take you where you want to go.
The cadence of poetry, whether it's staccato cadence or musical cadence or whatever type of poetry you like that gets you where you want to go. If it's rap music, if it's classical music, whatever, it's doing the little things that you love to do.
Asha Paul:
That's so well said for me, especially after a long work day. One thing that I find that helps me de-stress is cooking. Nothing grand, but a simple meal, you know, to be able to touch the natural ingredients and to feel it.
So it's like letting go of your mind or mental space to come into the physical, move consciously. And I hear you saying that running, movement, rhythm. It does not have to be a big meal.
It can be so simple, even fixing a salad and a nice protein, right? And just to know that you're going to replenish your energy at the same time, letting go of stress.
Dr. Stempel:
Right, right. And I'll give you a cooking plug there that it's not just the joy of creating the meal, but then you're stimulating so many senses, your sense of smell, your sense of sight with what you're doing, your sense of sound. If you're listening to the splattering of the oil or snapping of beans or the wrapping of the knife on the cutting board.
But then the joy of the taste and smells and flavors of food when it's cooked and you're eating it. So bravo for cooking.
Asha Paul:
Oh, thank you. I'm totally on board with you. And better still, if you can cook with your family, you know, or with somebody else, it makes it more joyful because you don't feel that cooking becomes a chore, but it becomes more pleasant.
And as they say, the most meaningful conversations happen in the kitchen, right, or around the kitchen table. That's a great way to de-stress, especially if you have a very, very demanding career. But in today's life, people are juggling with a number of things, you know, family.
I mean, if you're retired, great. But those of us who are still continuing to work and raise family and also at the same time having the drive and the need to be successful in your chosen profession, rather than having a burnout, I think it's good to have some de-stressing times like how you have mentioned.
Dr. Stempel:
Very much so.
Asha Paul:
Tom, I'm intrigued by your journey studying evolutionary spirituality with Craig Hamilton for three years. And then jumping into two years of integral spirituality with Terry Patton. That sounds like such a transformative experience.
How have these two influential figures impacted your life and your perspective?
Dr. Stempel:
Well, I came across Craig Hamilton several years after I had finished my work at the University of Creation Spirituality. And I was driving in my car and Lord knows why Craig Hamilton was on the radio talking to me. And he was talking about how there are truths and in all the world's major religions in the indigenous wisdom.
But all of the major religions developed 2000, 3000 years ago, and none of them have really evolved to the point that they are strongly relevant to 21st century people. So many of them, or you could say all of them, if you want to dive into them deeply, you've got to withdraw from the world. You've got to go be a nun, be a monk, be an imam, be a whatever, and shut yourself off from the world and study, study, study.
And he talked about how so many people have a spiritual yearning that they want to connect. They want to go deeper, but they still want to stay connected to life, to family, to to the world. And I'm going to mix evolutionary spirituality integral together because they really do feed on one another in many ways.
Part of the focus of evolutionary spirituality as well as integral spirituality is all of the great wisdom traditions have their truths, but none of them have their whole truth. So the integral part, the evolutionary part, is to find what truths do we need to bring forward in all these religions and how do we bring them forward and make things more relevant to 21st century humanity? And then he said something to the effect of, OK, so don't tell me you're really busy on Tuesday evening and you just don't have time for this now, because I was sitting there in my car thinking that to myself.
He challenged me to take the class and I thought, OK, this is something I need to shake me up. I was just in a state at that time that I was doing some career transitioning and I needed some new lenses, some new ways of thinking about things, looking at things. And he was right on with that.
The focus of the evolutionary spirituality people is all of us are on a journey right now. There is the Big Bang and whatever this plane of existence is that we're in, it's all moving forward toward something. None of us know what that is.
And with my medical background, I sort of envisioned it as an evolving embryo. And one of Craig's big things was and I'll do it in relation to my medical stuff, whether you're a heart cell or a kidney cell or a skin cell or a brain cell, whatever you are, your individual responsibility to be the best that you can be, whatever this thing is, to become whatever it's becoming. So it's like I take on the responsibility for myself to be the best I can be to help whatever this thing we're in is evolving into.
Asha Paul:
Wonderful. Tom, I have to say this. Your fitness and agility are impressive.
As a health coach, I must ask you this question. I know you understand the importance of nutrition in maintaining your level of vitality. Could you share your insights on how nutrition plays a role in your daily life and enhances your performance?
And for the listener, what could they take away in today's world, given that everything becomes healthy under health foods category? So what would you recommend that one should look out for? And also, if you can speak from your personal experience.
Dr. Stempel:
One, I have to thank all my ancestors. Major plug for having good genes. Good.
I've got good genes. That being said, standard American diet, to use a pejorative term, is a very horrible, unhealthy, processed food, fat ridden diet, the supersize me diet, whatever else you want to call it. It's easy just to stop and get some fast food, which is horribly salt laden and horribly calorie laden, which if it's what we live with and what we grow up with, just gets us into weight problems, blood pressure problems, horrible problems all around health wise.
And if if you have genes that have a propensity to developing heart problems, atherosclerotic problems, circulation problems, diabetes problems, it just complicates things out the wazoo. Fifteen plus years ago, I found my cholesterol going up and decided, all right, I'm not going to take those statins. I'm going to change my diet and started looking for what do I need to do in my diet to improve my cholesterol and did dietary changes, started eating more salmon, avocados, nuts, olive oil, cutting out all the crap, the refined sugar, the refined flour and got my cholesterol down to normal.
I wasn't that far out of whack, so I won't take huge credit, but I'll take a little credit for it. What I find works for me is basically a whole food diet, a Mediterranean type of diet where I don't go out and binge shop. I don't have a house full of cookies and snacks and chips and everything.
I don't have a refrigerator full of food that I'm throwing out because it's been sitting there and I haven't used it. I will make a plan for what I want to do for the next week and get the whole foods that I need to make that or I'm not sure what I want. So I go to the store and find out what the store has that I can buy and make something so that it's a more planned diet.
A whole food diet is using fresh foods to cook and using fresh foods. You're not using processed foods. You're not using a lot of sugar.
You're not frying things. If you are cooking with oil, you're cooking with olive oil. And it goes along with the Mediterranean diet that it's heavy in beans, in protein sources other than meat.
I'm sort of at a block there. I'll let you take it from here.
Asha Paul:
So let me let me ask you this, then, if I were or if anyone you invited to your home and you opened your refrigerator, what would we find in any given day?
Dr. Stempel:
Well, you want to know what's in there right now?
Asha Paul:
Sure. Why not?
Dr. Stempel:
I went to the farmer's market Sunday, about a pound and a quarter of fresh salmon that I cooked. So there's still a little bit of salmon left. There are greens and veggies to make a salad, head of cauliflower that I steamed.
And there's still some of that in there. I bought a bunch of broccoli. There's still some of that in there.
Bean season. So I bought green beans and yellow beans. And there's a few of them left.
It is strawberry season. So I made a strawberry rhubarb compote, one of the few things I make with sugar, that I mixed with some yogurt. And I snack on that.
There's a little container of dark chocolate pieces.
Asha Paul:
Wow.
Dr. Stempel
OK. Dark chocolate is good for the heart from a Western perspective, an Ayurvedic perspective. It is bitter.
So it's also good for the heart.
Asha Paul:
Bitter to the mouth. You know, can you complete that? Bitter to the mouth.
Dr. Stempel:
I've been away from the Ayurvedic for so long. I mean, it's one of the five tastes. Right.
Asha Paul:
It's bitter to the mouth, sweet to the liver.
Dr. Stempel:
Sweet to the liver. OK, OK.
Asha Paul:
And vice versa, you know, sweet to the mouth, bitter to the liver. So you named all the foods that I have in my refrigerator, and I think we'll make a good team as cooks.
Dr. Stempel:
Oh, yes, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'd love having you around because you make all the Indian dishes, which I find too complicated to make.
Asha Paul:
No, no, I don't. That's the that's the thing I don't do. You've seen me only in the retreat setting and I'm not cooking there and at home.
No, my when I make meat dishes, I use a lot of Indian spices. But at home, my cooking is very simple. I use like you a lot of olive oil, lots of broccoli, cauliflower, kale.
And those are simply sauteed, generally speaking, with lots of garlic and ginger. So an Indian cook would say that I don't cook Indian, but I think I've perfected some of my meat dishes, which I'm so happy to say, because I didn't cook until I was twenty five. Oh, yeah.
And it was really difficult for me to bring a meal together because in the beginning I had no interest in cooking. I started cooking because of health reason. I didn't want to eat out.
And then it took me almost 10 years to feel confident. And now today, I'm even if I'm saying this, I love my food and Russell fortunately loves it, too.
Dr. Stempel:
So that's good.
Asha Paul:
Right. I could not have said that when I started. So I have to ask you this question.
Obviously, you like to cook, right? Correct. That's wonderful to hear.
If you are interested, I would love to invite you to one of my cooking classes. It would be great fun to collaborate and share culinary experiences with someone so well rounded as you. Would you like that?
Dr. Stempel:
Oh, my. Sure, if we can work out a timing. Why not?
Asha Paul:
Yeah. And the beauty is you'll be in your kitchen, I'll be in my kitchen and the students will be there in their kitchen. So that would be fantastic.
And it's it's it's not really fun, but it's also a communal experience where we come together and, you know, we'll find a time that works for you and do the only problem I would see.
Dr. Stempel:
I don't use recipes.
Asha Paul:
Don't worry about it. That's fantastic. So for a final question for this podcast today, from your extensive experience, how would you define the essence of an empowered life?
And what does graceful aging mean to you?
Dr. Stempel:
An empowered life, I think, is coming to a point where we finally find balance that we're happy with. And that's easy to say at this point in life where I don't have any relationship, any professional issues, any personal issues pulling me in one direction or another. That it's like, OK, I've done a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of that.
And it was all lovely and it helped me to get to where I am. So maybe that's as important as everything else. And I'll go backwards here.
We can look at the negative things in our life through a victim lens, a negative lens, a poor me lens, or we look at them and say, I'm grateful for that because it helped me right to where I am. Yeah, moment. And it gave me insights or power or wisdom that I wouldn't otherwise have had it not happened to me so that it's being able to look back on all the experiences that we've had in life, positive or negative, and say, yes, I'm happy where it's brought me.
And again, it's always an ongoing process of here's where I am. I'm happy to keep feeding the little parts of my life, or there's still this one area that I want to focus on more. so rather than getting ready to die, continuing to live.
What was the second half of the question?
Asha Paul:
The second half of the question was, what does graceful aging mean to you?
Dr. Stempel:
Graceful aging. I guess that's part of that as well. The thing I have not had to deal with is significant problems with my health.
Because you take good care of yourself in one sense, right? Because I take good care of myself, because I've got good genes, because I've gotten past the age where everybody else in my family was dying of cancer. But people die of cancer.
People die of heart attacks. People die of COVID. People die from car accidents.
People die from depression and killing themselves and or being beaten or whatever. And so if you make it through those substantive years that you have the joy of being able to age gracefully, it's one, as I say, continuing to live rather than waiting to die. It's maintaining one's mental activity and acuity.
And again, there, if I'm stuck with Alzheimer's, I don't have much choice in the matter. But there's an intellectual capacity and portion to that as well as physical, that a lot of people, bad knees, bad hips, bad backs, whatever, they can't walk, they can't exercise, but they can still maintain a mental, a positive mental attitude. It's, oh, what came up for me just now was the Ram Dass book, Fierce Grace, that he wrote after he had his stroke.
He talks about all these deaths he's gone through in his life, that he got to the stage where he was no longer, was he Richard Alport? Whatever his Anglo name was, died and he became Ram Dass. And then there were things in the Ram Dass years that he came to a point where he died to move into the next phase of life.
And now his healthy body has died and he's living in this new phase of life and just somehow finding the inner strength and wisdom and grace to deal with what God has given us, what the universe has given us, whatever we're experiencing in this moment. And I've had to deal with bad plantar fasciitis for the last couple of years. Matter of fact, I was having issues with it when we were in India.
I look at that and I say, compared to what other people have gone through in their lives, that was nothing. And yet I know the frustration and depression that I went through with that, not being able to do all the things that I was accustomed to doing. So I guess graceful aging is also being okay with the frustration, the anger, the depression of, I'm not what I used to be.
I'm not being how I used to be. I'm not capable of being what I want to be. How do I get past this and move?
Right.
Asha Paul:
See, also being proactive. And when you said the term, wanting to live and not waiting to die, part of wanting to live is also being proactive and not just give up. So there's nothing I can do about it because you do have a choice.
You know, we don't know when any of us would pass on. But until then, whatever we could do, where you said about self-responsibility and how we can better take care of ourselves, right, like self-care. Very much so.
Would you say that? I would definitely say that. Okay, great.
And how do you do that, Tom?
Dr. Stempel:
It's a combination of stuff, which I, again, have fallen out of because of the plantar fasciitis, which has really resolved enough to let me start doing things over the last couple of months. And I've been doing a lot of traveling, so I haven't been able to get back into the phase. But the plans for the future, get back into pickleball once or twice a week, get back into yoga once or twice a week, get back into hiking once a week, to get back into working out at the gym, weight training once or twice a week, power walking, speed walking a couple times a week, playing with my granddaughters.
Asha Paul:
Hanging out, having fun. And certainly food. Food, of course, plays a great role.
Dr. Stempel:
Food is always important.
Asha Paul:
Tom, I'm genuinely grateful for your generosity in sharing your wisdom with me. It has been a privilege to have this conversation. Thank you so much.
Dr. Stempel:
My pleasure. It's just been a joy. And I love spending time with you.
Asha Paul:
Oh, that's fantastic. Me too. Me too.
That's great.
Asha Paul's REFLECTION:
As I reflected on this conversation, one thought stayed with me long after we finished recording. Healthy aging is not simply about adding years to life.
It's about remaining deeply engaged with life itself. As we grow older, it's easy to focus almost exclusively on what we may lose. Our physical strength, memory, energy, or our independence.
Yet, I have come to believe that healthy aging invites us to ask a different question. How do we continue to grow rather than simply grow older? That question echoed throughout my conversation with Dr. Tom Stemple. As Tom and I explored topics like spending time in nature, nourishing ourselves well, staying active, and continuing to learn, one theme kept returning. The choices we make each day shape not only our bodies, but also the way we experience life itself. An aspect of healthy aging I have been thinking about lately is our cognitive well-being.
Many people understandably worry about losing their memory as they age. Yet, perhaps healthy aging is not simply about preserving memory. It is about preserving our relationship with life.
For example, remaining curious, continuing to learn, staying connected to others, finding purpose in each new stage of life. In fact, emerging research paints a hopeful picture. Our brains, like the rest of our bodies, are influenced by the way we live.
Through movement, nutrition, deep sleep, meaningful relationships, continual learning, and how we respond to stress. It's also the inspiration behind my next article where I will be exploring what current research is revealing about memory, cognitive health, and the everyday habits that may help us age with greater vitality and mental clarity. Until then, perhaps each of us might ask a simple question.
What is one small choice I can make today that will help me continue living fully tomorrow? Because in the end, an empowered life is not about resisting the passage of time. It's about meeting each stage of life with curiosity, responsibility, and the willingness to keep growing.
You can also visit me at ashapaul.com where I share articles, podcast conversations, and resources on healthy aging and living a more empowered life. Until next time, take good care.