Young You vs. You Now: Do You Remember yourself young?

 Growing older may not be fun, but the alternate option is not acceptable, so we all go through this process; maybe grudgingly, but we go through it.

I frequently think about my life in retrospect and I enjoy reliving my youth and childhood very much.  Do you ever stop to think about how you were when you were a child or teen?  Does thinking about that make you happy and make you feel like your life was good?  If your answer was yes, congratulations.  If your answer was no, then now may be the time to reframe your childhood into one that can and does make you happy and feel better.  I know, you don't think this is possible, but it really is.

There is quite a lot of scientific evidence that you can control your thoughts and feelings.  That you can choose what you want to think about and how you choose to feel about things. Just because you experienced life one way, it does not mean that you have to view that past experience negatively.  Reframe it into a more positive way so you can choose to feel good about it. Here are a few articles about how you can do this:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intentional-insights/201604/how-manage-your-thoughts-feelings-and-behaviors

https://www.betterup.com/blog/how-to-control-your-mind#:~:text=But%20what's%20important%20is%20that,talk%20rather%20than%20put%2Ddowns

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/er/healthierminds/mental-wellbeing/young-people/recovering-my-mental-wellbeing-self-help/#:~:text=If%20we%20challenge%20our%20thoughts,change%20unhelpful%20feelings%20and%20behaviours.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2016/06/15/this-is-how-your-thoughts-become-your-reality/?sh=1f94a625528

Now let's talk about how you lived your life when you were a young child or an early teen.  What do you remember that you did?  How did you feel at that time in your life?  Did you have goals about your life then and did you reach those goals or did life intervene and you had to settle for something else? If you answered in the latter, don't panic, you can start where you are and reset your goals.  Here are some articles that explain just how to do that:

https://www.betterup.com/blog/starting-over-in-life

https://lifeasmom.com/improve-your-life/

https://markmanson.net/how-to-change-your-life

https://personalexcellence.co/blog/101-ways-to-live-your-life-to-the-fullest/

Now that we have explored what you were like as a youngster and we have looked at how you control how you think and feel and what you can do to start over if you don't like where you are now, let's play.  Below is a quiz about 

1. What did a gallon of gas cost on average back in your youth?
2. When did the USA launch its first satellite into space?
3. What was the popular music in the 1950s?
4. How did you and your family travel around?
5. What type of telephone did you have in the 1950s?
6. When was the first McDonald's built and where?
7. What was the name of the first video game console?
8. What did you call homemade cars to race in?
9. What is the game where you wrote boxes that were numbered on the ground and you hopped from one box to the next?
10. If you sat on the ground around a chalk circle and forced round spheres at other spheres inside that circle, you were playing what?
11. When was Barbie released?
12. What was the name of the plastic object you would twirl around your waist?
13. Who invented "The Twist"?
14. What cards where popular to collect in the 1940s and 1950s?
15. What time did you have to come home?
16. What did girls have to wear to school that boys did not?
17. When was Monopoly released?
18. What was the first television show broadcast in color?
19. What did you play a record on?
20. What did you pull down at night in your windows?

Answers:

1. $.25-$.35
2. January 31, 1958
3. Rock 'n Roll
4. by automobile
5. a dial hard wired phone
6. April 15, 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois
7. Atari
8. Soap Boxes
9. Hop-Scotch
10. Marbles
11. March 9, 1959
12. Hula Hoop
13. Chubby Checkers
14. Baseball cards
15. When the street lights came on
16. Skirts (no pants where allowed)
17. 1935
18. I Love Lucy
19. a phonograph player
20. shades