Oh hey! I want to talk about… my wrinkles. And yours too! Let’s discuss a topic that’s a little bit controversial these days: aging. Oooo, yeah we’re going there!

a wrinkle in time

The other day I looked in the mirror and noticed the trenches in my forehead getting deeper. Now, I’ve always had an extremely expressive face made out of several thousand elastic bands. I love to laugh and make stupid faces and, as a result, I am approaching my 39th year on this planet with definitive visual proof of my age. And so far I’m totally cool with it.

Personally I think the term “anti-aging” is ridiculously funny. I know it’s essentially a marketing term to sell skin care products and injectables, but it’s silly when you consider what it means. You’re against aging? As in… you’re against the natural progression of human life and existence?

I think what people who use this term mean is that they want to look and feel vital and healthy. Doesn’t that little tweak in language sit a little bit better?

Honestly, how have we arrived at a place where aging is bad? As kids, most of us can’t wait to grow up. Now entities like the fashion industry, Hollywood and Instagram have exposed us to fully altered Kardashian/Jenner types and we’ve decided aging is the worst thing that could happen to us. How dare we let the passage of time change our appearance!

Now, I’m not here to give you a lecture about Botox or butt implants or lasering off years from your face – you do you, boo! I want to focus on the reason behind it.

We’ve all watched this obsession with beauty and perfection go off the rails (see: Madonna) and we’re bombarded with marketing campaigns for products that “reduce the signs of aging” on a never-ending basis.

So let me hop up on my soapbox so you can hear me when I say…*ahem*.. there is abso-f!@#ing-lutely nothing wrong with aging!

don’t you dare compare

As I’ve mentioned before, I used to be an actor (and a model for, like, 5 minutes). For a while, my whole life consisted of getting rejected for not being tall enough, young enough, old enough, hot enough, thin enough, brunette enough – it was brutal.

So you can imagine as my hair started to thin in my late 20’s there was some natural panic that set in. “Oh perfect, now I’m going to be bald!” I thought. My agent at the time said “Come on, just shave your head. Bald guys are sexy! Look at Jason Statham!” Well, sir, Jason Sataham is a muscular action movie star and… I ain’t!

The worst part is my older brother Jeff has a decent head of hair and my younger brother Curtis has the most frustratingly thick hair I’ve ever seen, that little bastard. But therein lies the problem – comparison.

Let’s be real – there are so many factors that go into looking and feeling “young”. We’ve all got different genes, different ethnicities, different body types, different stresses and different lifestyles. So why the hell are we so obsessed with comparing ourselves to people who aren’t us?

face it: life is happening

Cut to me, on my 33rd birthday. We were living in San Diego and I went for a haircut. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and asked the barber for the clippers. I went full Britney and just shaved my hair off. It was just as empowering as it was terrifying.

If I’m being honest (and I am), I really struggled with my hair loss for about a year after shaving my head. Every time I walked past a mirror I was like “who the F is that guy!?”. I was mad at my hair for leaving me. Now that I’m older and wiser I realized I didn’t lose my hair, it just found its way to my back (shoutout to Kristie at Collingwood Wax Studio).

Now when I show people who have only known “shaved head Daniel” an old headshot or my wedding photos, they always say I look “weird with hair”. And I get it – I mean, why was I distracting the world away from this face for so long? ;)

the answer to aging

So what do we do about this fear of aging?

How do we accept that time is passing and that it’s okay?

Here’s the answer I’ve arrived at: Love. Yourself. Unconditionally.

What if we found pride in our aging appearance?
What if we focused on looking and feeling healthy instead of hot?
What if we stopped giving a flying $#!% what other people think?
What if our standard of beauty was based on how we treated ourselves and others instead of how smooth our foreheads are?

How we look can absolutely affect how we feel, but let’s reverse engineer that and start working from the inside out to strengthen the love we feel for ourselves. Doesn’t that make more sense?

So why not let go of this societal pressure to be beautiful and “perfect”, and instead, focus on being perfectly YOU. Invest your time and energy into feeling good from within, and radiating that goodness out into the world. After all, a healthy and happy heart is much more appealing than any flawless face.

And, of course, if you’re looking for some natural ways to get your mind and body into a great state to promote health and vitality – I know a place. Our red light session can help with wrinkles and fine lines, our halo session can help with skin issues, our infrared session is detoxifying and great for the skin – and lest we forget that every session at Vortex works to reduce the stress which makes us look and feel tired. You know where to find us.

Stay beautiful!…on the inside ;)