Have you ever wondered how you will like to age and have you ever imagined or even remotely thought about how you would like to die? I know these are not easy questions to answer but nevertheless are thought provoking because one day we will all be old and will be nearing death. When I look at my parents, I wonder what they think about their aging process and what lessons I can learn from them. Especially at a time when cosmetic surgery, botox and winkle reducing creams and the like seem to be the norm, these question become even more important.

Aging is a personal experience and we can learn a lot by spending time with people who are near to the end of human life span. Conversations around sharing your own experiences and understanding the perspective of an older aging person can provide much perspective and insight. Conscious aging means to ‘move on’ and confronting your own death. There are several myths around aging for instance, most think that retirement has a negative connotation associated with it. The popular belief is that retirement leads to identity crisis and that older adults have little contact with the younger generation. You will be surprised to know that research suggests that younger people are more lonely than older people and according to the theory of Gerotranscendence (The term Gerotranscendence comes from the words “gero” (“old age” in Greek) and “transcendence” (“to climb over” in Latin) ) by Lars Tornstam, a researcher in this area, Gerotranscendence is a developmental stage that occurs when an individual who is living into very old age shifts their perspective “…from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction.”

Isn’t that just fascinating! To know that old age can have such profound meaning is so gratifying. Being raised as a Hindu, I am aware that the religious scriptures define fifty two life stages and out of these, ten are the most important. These stages are called Samskaras. Some of the most commonly known Samskaras are that of childhood, of boyhood, of manhood and of old age and death. Similar to the Tornstam theory of Gerotranscendence, in the two last stages of life as described in Hindu scriptures (namely Vanaprastha and Sannyasa), a person withdraws himself from all worldly activities, retires in the forest and prepares himself for taking Sannyasa. As a Sannyasin, he or she renounces the world and leads a life of study and meditation. It’s interesting to see such similarity between recent western research and eastern view of purpose or path of life for an aging person. We become more and more like the Zen Buddhist as we age.

Tornstom conducted qualitative interviews of 50 participants between the ages of 52 and 97 years and identified three dimensions of change – The Cosmic Dimension, The Self Dimension and The Dimension of Social and Personal Relations. According to the cosmic dimension of gerotranscendence , a person transcends borders between the past and present and sometimes interprets his/ her childhood in a new reconciling way.An elder may report that they experience feelings of being a child, a young person, an adult and an older adult all in one moment. This view of time allows them to re-evaluate old events to gain new perspectives, and provides opportunities to right old wrongs. They begin to view death as a natural part of the life process; they appear to fear death less than those who are younger.

The dimension of self relates to self confrontation and through self discovery, one finds hidden aspects of their self – both the good and the bad. During this time, one may find removing the self from the center of one’s universe on one hand and on the other, if there is a lack of self confidence, a struggle to establish self-confidence that feels appropriate may happen. The care of the body continues but the obsession with it surely ends. These elders become less self-occupied and a shift occurs from egoism to altruism. Gerotranscendent elders remove their “masks” because they no longer feel the need to play their old roles; they can now be themselves. These individuals find themselves simply accepting the mysteries of life, acknowledging they can’t understand everything. When gerotranscendent older adults reflect back on their lives, they realize that the pieces of their life’s jigsaw puzzle really do form a wholeness.

According to the dimension of social and personal relationships, the meaning and the importance of relationship changes. These elders become more selective and less interested in superficial relationships and find an increasing need for periods of solitude. As they age, they often become more selective in their choices of social and other activities; they avoid social interactions they judge to be unnecessary. Gerotranscendent seniors report a decreased interest in material things, viewing too many possessions as burdensome.They express a greater need for “alone time” for thought and meditation, referred to as positive solitude. They also have an urge to abandon rules, while also understanding their necessity at times. They have ‘everyday wisdom’ meaning they show reluctance to superficially separating the right from the wrong and thus holding judgments and giving advice. They have an increased tolerance and broadmindedness.

I hope this blog helps you to understanding the aging process and how to age consciously. This may also help you to relate to what your older family members may be going through and will assist you to understand that process better.

Winnie Sun ,

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

An interview with

Dr. Joyce Knudsen

Dr. Joyce Knudsen, PhD, is an internationally published author of ten books, a successful entrepreneur, the CEO of The ImageMaker, Inc. Communications Group, and a a social media maven with a massive social network that is closing in on one million people.

She is also the youngest 71-year old I know.

Afflicted in childhood with a vision impediment that prohibits her from driving, Knudsen overcame the limitations put upon her and launched a company that helps others overcome theirs. She helps clients understand and improve the image they project through their appearance, communication style, and behavior. On a deeper level, she helps clients address the self-esteem issues that hold them back: “I think of failure, according to other people’s standards, as a starting point for my path toward even bigger success,” she said, and she coaches her clients to do the same.

Knudsen launched her home-based image consulting business in 1985. She obtained her doctorate at age 54 and started building her social media empire in 2009. These days, she works around-the-clock to keep up with her international clientele and substantial social network. Between Skype calls and social engagements, Knudsen squeezes in time to work on her eleventh book, entitled “Refusing to Quit: True Stories of Women Over 60.” She seems perfectly suited as one of its subjects.

Knudsen strives to make a difference in at least one person’s life every day. She once helped a six-month coma survivor regain her confidence after a traumatic accident, and that client now owns her own business. She also helped another client achieve her goal of becoming the President of the American Veterinarian Association. “If I don’t [help someone] by the time I’m falling asleep…I reach out on social media. I love the interaction,” she said.

The positivity Knudsen espouses is an inspiration to older women who are fast approaching traditional retirement age and will continue to work, either by necessity or by choice. According to a 2014 Transamerica Retirement Survey, more than half (52%) of working women plan to continue working after they retire. Three out of five women over the age of 65 cannot afford to cover their basic needs, which forces them to stay in or return to the workforce indefinitely.

Why are older women so strapped for cash? It seems to come down to one simple fact: women live longer but earn just 78% of what men earn, according to a 2014 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The lingering effects of a recession combined with threats of Social Security benefits cuts make retirement planning difficult, but the truth is, the advantages of working past 60 may exceed the supposed downsides.

Financially, working past the traditional retirement age makes sense. The longer you can hold on to your employer-paid contributions to your 401(k), the better. Continuing to work past 60 means you’re living off a paycheck instead of drawing from your savings, allowing you to continue feeding your retirement funds. Healthinsurance provided through work can be cheaper than Medicare and provide you with more comprehensive coverage.

But even more than that, science shows that working longer keeps you younger. Ceasing work can be detrimental to your health. Retirement often means participating less in both mental and physical activities, which means both the mind and body begin to deteriorate.

Retirement can also lead to a drop in self-esteem since so many people tie self-worth to their jobs. Combine that with fewer personal interactions with other people on a day-to-day basis, and you have a recipe for loneliness and depression.

Dr. Joyce certainly is not the type of person who lets age limit her goals or allows modern culture to dictate what older generations are capable of doing. She firmly believes that age does not determine a person’s worth in the job market, and workforce studies back her conviction. According to CareerBuilder.com, 54 percent of employers hired workers ages 60+ in 2014, up from 48 percent in 2013. A 2015 AARP study makes the case that mature workers ages 50+ are highly valuable within many organizations — particularly in industries such as healthcare or energy that require highly skilled workers or those with unique skill sets. These older workers scored high marks for listening, writing and communication skills, leadership qualities, and a high level of employee engagement.

To women who may feel inferior because they must work well into their 60s and 70s out of financial necessity, Knudsen would encourage them to look at what might appear to be failure as an opportunity instead. “You can’t think [working past traditional retirement age] is a bad thing, but a step towards success,” she said. “You have to push yourself to keep going, be persistent, and believe in yourself.”

It should come as no surprise that Knudsen doesn’t ever want to stop working. She dismisses the idea of retirement completely. “No, it’s a silly question,” she says. “I have so much fun, and I hope I live long enough to do it all. I’m going to be 100. I want to be one of those centenarians.”

Knudsen’s story is evidence that a thriving work life past 60 is not only possible, but also rewarding. She is one of five entrepreneurs profiled in my free eBook “The Modern Entrepreneur, Secrets to Building a Thriving Business from Home,” which I wrote in collaboration with personal finance community MoneyTips.com. The study found that 97% of successful entrepreneurs who work from home truly enjoy it, making it an attractive option for workers over 60 who still want or need to work.

Winnie Sun is the Managing Director and Founding Partner of Sun Group Wealth Partners, a trusted financial consulting firm providing financial planning services to small business owners, senior executives, celebrities, tech elite, and established families throughout the West Coast. She has appeared on CNBC Closing Bell, Fox Business News, Huff Post LIVE, and is host of the The Renegade Millionaire show, and founder of the TheMillennialStudy.com. Follow her isms on Twitter: @sungroupwp.

Winnie Sun is a registered representative with, and securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Sun Group Wealth Partners, a registered investment advisor and a separate entity from LPL Financial.

Want to practice conscious aging?

The Institute of Noetic Sciences, a member of the Conscious Aging Alliance, has identified nine practices to help people engage in life fully:

1. Reflect on your worldview, beliefs, stereotypes, and assumptions. How might they be limiting you or holding you back?

2. Reframe Your Inner Talk. Take note of your critical self-talk… reframe these internal messages as more positive and self-compassionate.

3. Shift Your Perspective away from the popular media and the weapons of “mass distraction” that shape the dominant culture’s view of aging. Find opportunities to pause and ask yourself where you find joy, goodness, and connections.

4. Practice Mindful Attention. Bring your attention toward greater self-awareness. What do you need to surrender or leave behind? How can you conserve your energy for what has heart and meaning? What still needs healing or forgiveness?

5. Set Intentions. Ask yourself, “What matters most? What values do I want to adhere to?”

6. Build New Habits. Challenge your brain with new learnings, explore new activities…or do something new every day.

7. Find Guidance. Connecting with others offers a way of living into new patterns and behaviors.

8. Move from I to We. Altruism and compassion born of shared destiny, rather than duty or obligation, can emerge and add joy and purpose to your actions.

9. Death Makes Life Possible. As people grow older, as they come to face their own mortality, they can bring greater awareness to the transformative process that allows a deeper experience of their life journey.

Live it forward

I agree, growing older shouldn’t mean an end to our growth. As philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.” Sounds like a fine future to look forward to!

So spake the great geriatrician, psychiatrist and elder advocate, Robert N. Butler, who died in December 2010. According to his biographer, W. Andrew Achenbaum, he helped

“…to transform the study of aging from a marginal specialty into an intellectually vibrant field of inquiry.”
Personally, I doubt I would have become an elder advocate myself without having had Butler’s books to teach me.

Robert N. Butler cover artRobert N. Butler, M.D. is the title of this just-published biography of the great man who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1975 book, Why Survive? Being Old in America and before that, in 1968, coined the term “ageism” as an analog to racism and sexism.

”Butler well understood that ignorance, prejudice, and stereotypes clouded the vision of vital, productive, fruitful aging that he wished to promulgate,” writes Achenbaum.

“In late life,” he continues, “Butler concluded that ageism was even more pernicious than he initially had realized…Butler now called ageism a disease, a morbid fear of decline and death that crippled individuals.”
Robert Butler may not have crushed ageism during his long career but his other achievements transformed attitudes and beliefs about old age that continue to help elders’ well being now and will continue to do so into the future.

Butler was appointed by President Gerald Ford to be the first director of the National Institute on Aging. Later he established the first U.S. department of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

In 1990, he founded the International Longevity Center (ILC-USA) to pursue the study of health and productivity of old people. Among the organization’s projects was the Age Boom Academy created in 2000 to

”…deepen the understanding on the part of 150 journalists of how the perils and promises of societal aging affected their respective news beats. Ideas germinated in the academy often found mass circulation,” explains Achenbaum.
In 2009, I was privileged to be one of the dozen journalists that year at the week-long Age Boom Academy – all expenses, as every year, paid in full. Dr. Butler brought together the crème de la crème of age researchers and experts from every sub-field imaginable and by the end, it was like being granted a masters degree in aging. Here is one of my stories about the Age Boom Academy.

[DISCLOSURE: Achenbaum quotes from my 2008 interview interview with Dr. Butler which you can read here.]

Achenbaum, who is professor of social work and history in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Houston, does a fine job of recounting Butler’s achievements that benefit elders – the remarkably large number of reasons the book is subtitled, Visionary of Healthy Aging.

But it is the many quotations from Achenbaum’s previously unpublished conversations with Butler along with the book’s epilogue – Butler’s unfinished “life review” in his own words – that most captured my attention.

Some thoughts from Butler you too may find provocative:

“Why do we have so much trouble enjoying the moment? This was not as true when we were children.”
“When a young person writes a novel he writes an autobiography; when an old person writes an autobiography, he writes a novel.”
“There is a dark side to the lives of those of wealth and privilege; they do not need to carry out the most elemental aspects of existence, the preparing of their own food and taking care of their own personal needs. In a perverse sense, elementality is a luxury of poverty.”
“Old age is no longer equivalent to disease, infirmity, frailty, decrepitude and slowing down. The brain is proving to be subject to repair and growth and this plasticity promises greater cognitive health.”
“The challenge is how to better understand, shape and value this new old age. Older persons themselves should define this portion of their lives, and not passively allow the culture to do so.

“They are the pioneers who have interest in the redefined old age and do not accept aging and disability as inevitable, unpreventable and untreatable. Society and culture, of course, have catching up to do.”