There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy and achieving success. We have to laugh and find humor every day. We have to learn something new everyday. We have to be a student all our life. The day we stop learning our growth and evolution stops. We have got to have a dream. When we lose our dreams, we die. The fourth and the most important secret is, never give up enthusiasm. Age wrinkles the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. 

We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up and evolving.

If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.

Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change. Have no regrets.

The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what they did, but rather for things they did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets. Learn from the past and move on.

The physical, mental and intellectual evolutionary process is still continuing. In modern times this evolution process seems to be, as if, suspended above an abyss. We can either continue our physical and rational development and fall into the abyss or we can develop and unfold our more subtle inner faculties to land safely on the other side. This inner growth is involution.

Each one of us has reached a certain point in our evolution, yet something is missing from our lives, because in spite of being surrounded by comforts and luxuries, we are comfortably and luxuriously miserable amidst increasing comforts and luxuries most of the time. This missing link is inner spiritual evolution. Purely physical, mental and intellectual evolution has limitations in its scope, whereas spiritual evolution offers infinite possibilities. The spiritual path does not lead to the abandonment of the external world. On the contrary, it leads to even more growth, enjoyment and accomplishment in day to day activities.

We can begin our spiritual evolution, or rather involution, by asking ourselves — Who am I? Where have I come from? What is the purpose of life? Did I exist before birth? Will I exist after death? Or is my existence limited between the womb and the tomb — the so called birth and death? If I existed before birth what was the nature of that existence? If I continue to exist after death what will be the nature of that existence? What is that eternal, absolute, infinite happiness? Will I ever attain it?, etc. — When we do so, Nature will begin to reveal its secrets to us.

This spiritual path is not something which is taught and practiced by a few deluded people with their “heads in the clouds”. On the contrary they were very practical people. They were the saints, sages, prophets, mystics, masters and yogi-s who have existed in all places, eras and societies.

Remember, growing older is mandatory. 

Growing up and evolving to a higher level on the spiritual plane is optional.

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.