Getting Old or Growing Elder?
This mashup of Marginalia and Tips from Tom’s inbox was triggered by an email from our friend James Flaherty linking to a blog post by Chip Conley entitled, Age is Just a Number (& an Encumber). I’m going to keep this post short, because I want you to follow some links and go read some books that have helped me understand that focusing on the “growing” and on the aspiration to “elderhood” make all those negative thoughts about getting old disappear (most of the time).
I know, I’ve written about the benefits of aging before, e.g., Ripples of Impact and Wise Up. But hey, there’s no escaping it (well, there’s one way, but not a good option), so when I learn about new evidence I have to share.
Embrace Your Age
That’s the title of James’ latest book, with the subtitle You Can Be Better Than Ever. He published it in 2022 at the age of 87 and is still going strong, so he knows what he’s talking about.
One of my favorite tips to inspire a positive outlook at any age:
“If you’ve been healthy enough or blessed enough or worked hard enough to be lucky to be living life in your seventies or eighties, celebrate. That’s right — celebrate. Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day.”
I’m just a kid of 73, but that statement rings true for me.
The Worst Ageism Is When You Apply It To Yourself
In Conley’s post, he opens with a statistic from Yale researcher Becca Levy’s work and her book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & How Well You Live:
“… we gain 7.5 years of additional life when, in midlife, we shift our mindset on aging from a negative to a positive.”
That finding could probably be turned around — and perhaps have more impact on our mindset — to say that having a negative view of aging can subtract 7.5 years from your life. Read the subtitle of Levy’s book carefully. Then go read the book and learn why.
If you’re wondering how the way you think about age could possibly affect your physical and mental health and your lifespan, consider Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer’s 1979 experiments with elders who spent a week in an environment designed to replicate life in 1959, to behave as they did twenty years ago.
The results were astonishing, with improvements in memory, hearing, grip strength, joint flexibility, height, weight, gait, and posture. Objective observers shown before and after photos judged that the participants looked “younger” after their time-travel experience.
Get Langer’s book, Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possiblity.
Further Reading
Here are a few more books that can help you see the positive possibilities for your elder self and work toward achieving them:
Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives, by Carl Honore
Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age, by Sanjay Gupta
Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain & Do Everything Better, by Wendy Suzuki
Learning to Love Midlife, by Chip Conley
No matter your current age, you should be thinking about your own attitude toward aging. How you think about and behave toward elders affects them, certainly, but it also affects you. If you have a negative view of aging and your elders, you are subconsciously applying that same attitude to yourself as you age. As Bob Newhart says, “Stop it!” (click to watch the video of this hilarious skit)
If you can learn why and how to change that attitude, I promise your life will be better and the science says you’ll have more years to enjoy it!
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