How to age gracefully (with Phil)
There comes a point in everyone’s life when they realise the inevitable truth of Ageing. Even though it’s happening from the very moment we’re born, it can be decades until we have to face the fact — most of us 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 was the start of Phillips’s rocky relationship with ageing. He’s since spoken out about how he can’t stand it, for years denying 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.”
For years, Phillip would dye his hair a dark hazelnut brown 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. A risky move which would later lead to him becoming the nation’s favourite silver fox.
By looking at him, you wouldn’t have known he 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 Phillip has 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 good balance between work and family.
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. But perhaps most impactful of all is having to constantly wear 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 by wearing reading glasses. Day after day your glasses sit there 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, 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. He 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.
Stop reminding yourself of ageing and book a Laser Eye Surgery consultation at London Vision Clinic today.
