Making Getting Older Better
There are things you can do to grow and thrive as you age and not capitulate to the “getting old” messaging all around us.
What I read: “Rather than fearing getting old, here’s how to embrace it” by Berit Lewis. Published April 10, 2024.
To my younger readers, I apologize that I frequently write about aging or about a topic from my older perspective. However, perhaps reading the writings of an older person or about related topics might inform your life in such a way that you learn from us older people’s successes and failings. In that spirit, I offer this post.
I’m lucky that I commune with a close and extended social network of people of all ages. For that I’m grateful. While the younger in that network can learn a few things from us who are older, the opposite is also true. I learn so much from my younger counterparts. They teach me every day and they seem to be open to gleaning whatever insight and wisdom they can from those of us who have traversed the planet for more years.
Berit Lewis offers her readers aging well insight and wisdom whether they are 20 or 90 years of age. So many young people are acculturated to dread aging. On its surface, aging seems like a bad thing, especially in the youth and beauty obsessed culture in which we live. But take it from this 70-year-old, it’s honestly not bad and advanced years also bring with them some distinct advantages and upsides.
While most of us in the developed world appreciate the medical developments that mean we can expect to live around six years longer than our grandparents, we don’t actually want to be old. Marketing and media messages tell us that life is all downhill from the age of 50, and we are offered copious amounts of ‘anti-ageing’ products or lifestyle changes that can help us avoid going down that hill.
The research to which Lewis alludes suggests that aging has its benefits. For example, research suggests that from midlife on our level of happiness tends to increase. That happiness level dips a bit after 70 but it’s not a drastic drop and I see my years ahead to likely be good and happy years.
Over time we accumulate wisdom, knowledge, and better emotional intelligence. These all contribute to happiness.
Lewis mentions something that always bugs me when I hear or read it, the concept of aging “successfully” which essentially translates into “don’t age at all.” Beauty product companies and tangential beauty media are in particular at fault for proliferating this concept and it’s one of my big complaints about that industry. I was a trained makeup artist in my youth, and it was that aspect of the industry that turned me off so deeply that I abandoned all thoughts of continuing down that path.
Anyway, Lewis offers her readers ways to embrace aging, allowing it to be “a catalyst for growth” rather than seen through the lens of detriment.
The first suggestion is to employ mindfulness as a form of mental training that provides a paradigm and structure for optimal health and wellbeing. There are various definitions of mindfulness and I recommend you not get too hung up on any one of them.
Some people utilize meditation to trigger mindfulness. Others use a physical practice. For me, it’s my daily random walks that provide the structure in which my mind reaches what I consider a mindful state. I’ve written before about the benefits of walking and consider it such a vital component of my own mental wellbeing that I try to do it every single day if possible.
Lewis points out five mindfulness-based ways to grow as we age rather than, to use a rightfully maligned phrased, “get old.”
Choose what you pay attention to.
Challenge your negative assumptions about ageing.
Don’t battle your discomfort.
Remember to be kind to yourself.
Step out of autopilot with a beginner’s mind.
I’ll let you read about each in depth in the article itself, but I’ll comment on just one from a personal perspective.
Most of my readers know I left corporate life in late 2022. To use the vernacular most favor I “retired” but I dislike that term for various reasons. In “So, About Retirement,” I wrote about the concept of retirement and my own relationship with it.
If you’re in or approaching your older years, or hopefully if you’re younger and you’re thinking about it now, it’s time to reframe “retirement” to something different, something more alive, something more fulfilling. We’ll benefit, and society will benefit.
I chose a path much like Lewis’ clients often have and simply replaced by 9-5 corporate efforts with entirely new or expanded personal passions and projects.
For instance, I have encountered many clients in their 60s who were nudged by the people around them to consider retirement but, after reflecting on their own desires and ambitions, they realised that they were nowhere near ready to retire. Quite the opposite. Instead, they continued working or found new passions and started new careers.
I contend people who leave full-time employment behind and find new ways to engage with people, their intellect, and values end up thriving much better and in my experience are certainly happier than those who choose to simply do nothing. I know there’s an argument to be made for the “do nothing” approach and I’m not going to try to counter those arguments, but I stand by my contention that the more fully one is engaged with life at any age the happier and more fulfilled they’ll be.
Read Lewis’ article for some wonderful tips on how to age well. I offer that suggestion to you whether you’re 20 or 90. The advice Lewis offers is universally applicable.
Check out Lewis’ book, Ageing Upwards: A mindfulness-based framework for the longevity revolution (paid link).
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