The Featured Columnist is Joanne Tombrakos.

The search for the great elixir of youth runs rampant. And the older you get the more desperate it seems people are in their quest to find it. Face creams professing to erase wrinkles, vitamins promising to restore the vitality of youth, serums that just might reverse the aging process. Lasers for every body part including those designed for vaginal rejuvenation. And for those who think this pursuit is a female obsession, think again, and think Viagra. 

But the one elixir that doesn’t get talked about so much, the one that goes overlooked by so many and yet is so very easy to get your hands on is learning. 

Yes, learning. 

If you are really searching for the fountain of youth make it your mission to push the envelope on your learning curve -- every day.

When people remark to me how much younger and happier I look since I left corporate America three years ago they assume it is because I have no stress. Others conclude it is because I am doing work I love. 

As for stress, that has not gone away. I am still toiling towards earning the type of financial living I once did and that, make no mistake, causes stress. The difference now is because I am laboring from my passion it doesn’t show up on my face the way it used to.

But the real secret is I am learning, everyday, at a rate reminiscent of a newly graduated college senior starting out in life. It became very evident to me in the last months before my book was published. Every day I had to wrap my head around something that I knew nothing about. I was not the senior person on the sales management team, but the newbie entrepreneur turned author who had not done any of this before. I felt charged and alive in a way I had not felt about my work in a long time. My body might be housing a fifty-something year old woman but my soul felt like a that of a twenty-something. Because of the renovation my life is undergoing, I get to look at the world with that same wide eyed wonder I had back then, when everything was new and fresh and awaiting my discovery.  Learning new things, trying a different way, being open to thinking that is imaginative and creative, these are the true elixirs of youth.

My mother is 89. If you were to meet her you would not think her a day over 80. I asked her what her secret was. She told me it was being happy with yourself, and not comparing who you are and where you are with others. All true statements. But in observing her actions throughout her life, I have seen a woman who was always willing to take on something novel, whether it was a new brand of ice cream she found a coupon for or  learning to drive a car when she was 50. She took up t’ai chi in her seventies and is still always ready to try Oil of Olay’s newest anti-aging cream.

Newness sparks life. But you have to be receptive to it. The reverse of my mother is the curmudgeon who refuses to try anything new, certain before they take a step or a taste of something that is not what they are used to, they won’t like it. They say no before the offer is on the table. They are not interested in learning anything they don’t know about already. And in that nod of the head that says no,  they have not slowed the aging process, but in fact have  sped it up.

Test drive my idea, if you dare. You don’t need to overhaul your life to employ this concept. And it need not be expensive.  It can be as simple as a new route to the office, a cranberry orange scone instead of your usual poppy seed bagel, reading a book on a subject you know nothing about by an author you never read before or  taking one of those free classes at the Apple store that are courtesy of the iPad you got for your birthday. Then watch what happens. See if you notice a spark in your eyes that has been long missing or if you are walking a little lighter than the day before. And if you do feel the change, remember, the easiest way to keep it there, is to keep on learning.

What new idea or project will you introduce into your life today? 

Joanne Tombrakos is a writer, business coach, speaker  and author of a novel, The Secrets They Kept.She blogs on living and working after corporate America at http://onewomanseye.blogspot.com.  One of Joanne’s coaching specialities is manifesting change in your life. For more information visit www.joannetombrakos.com