How to age gracefully (with Phil)
There comes a point in everyone’s life when they find themselves faced with the inevitable truth of ageing.
Even though it’s happening from the very moment you’re born, it can be decades until you have to face the fact — not least because most of us are pushing it away for as long as possible.
For Phillip Schofield, that time came at just sixteen years of age, when his hair started to turn grey.
That sorry moment was the start of Phillips’s rocky relationship with ageing. He’s since spoken out about how he can’t stand it, and how for years he’s denied the fact that he’s getting older:
“I hate it. It causes me deep personal anguish,” he said in an interview with the TV Times. “I don’t like ageing, I don’t like being older, time is going too fast, and life is like a train running at high speed. I have a real problem with it.”
To fight back the years, Phillip would dye his hair a dark hazelnut brown in attempt to cover up the emerging grey. He only decided to stop over a decade ago, freeing his silvery locks for all the world to see.
Being such a well known personality, it was a risky move. But it would ultimately lead to him becoming the nation’s favourite silver fox.
By looking at him, you wouldn’t have known Phillip was battling ageing. You wouldn’t even have guessed he’d been working in a high-stress, high-pressure industry for over thirty years.
Somehow he’s managed to progress through time with grace. No doubt some thanks go to his impeccable sense of style, rigorous workout regime, and lifestyle that strikes a balance between work and family life.
But probably his biggest secret of how he remains such a spritely character on our screens every day is how he doesn’t allow himself to get hung up on numbers or what he sees in the mirror. In the same interview, he said, “I’m only about twenty-six in my head.” He admitted he is somewhat stuck in time and how he tries to let big milestone birthdays, like when he recently turned fifty, slide by unnoticed.
This can be incredibly difficult if you constantly undergo rituals that are synonymous with ageing — like dying your hair every few days or going to the clinic for routine botox injections. Perhaps most impactful of all these rituals is having to be constantly putting on and taking off reading glasses.
Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning, discussing and presenting a film of his Laser Eye Surgery experience at the London Vision Clinic.
If there was ever a way you wanted to remind yourself you’re over the hill and not getting any younger, it would be wearing reading glasses. Day after day they sit there right in front of your eyes, framing your view of the world and coming between you and every basic task such as reading and driving.
Not only that, but they’re unattractive, uncomfortable, inconvenient, and, worst of all, the most overt giveaway of your age.
For a long time Phillip himself wore glasses for a regular refractive error. But when he began to also need correction for reading vision — sometimes wearing two pairs at once — he decided enough was enough and it was time to have Laser Eye Surgery.
Phillip took the cameras along with him and documented his journey, right from the initial consultation all the way to the moment Prof. Dan Reinstein conducted the LASIK procedure.
Today, when Phillip appears on our screens, there’s not a pair of glasses in sight. If there was, he likely wouldn’t be such a silver fox. To think you’re only twenty-six is one thing, but to actually believe it and embody it is another.
Phillip is likely so successful because he has done away with all the unnecessary signs of ageing and made a conscious choice to live according to the age he feels. The decision to ditch the specs and have the treatment only takes a moment, but the effects can last a lifetime.
Roll back the years and stop reminding yourself of ageing by booking your Laser Eye Surgery consultation at London Vision Clinic today.
