The Aging Process

The looming reality of senior citizen status scares a lot of boomers. No need. Laura Carstensen, a top expert on aging, says life gets only richer with time.

Interview by Patricia B. Gray, Money Magazine contributing writer

(Money Magazine) — At 21, Laura Carstensen had an epiphany that could change your life. In a hospital for months after a car accident, she had a window on the world of elderly patients who, like her, were recovering from broken bones. Intrigued, she decided to study the psychology of aging.

Today, at 54, Carstensen is the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. Funded with a $10 million gift from Texas billionaire Richard Rainwater, the center sponsors research by scientists and other professionals aimed at improving the lives of older people.

Carstensen herself is among the most respected and provocative scholars in her field. She’s best known for research that debunked stereotypes of the old as slow and surly. We may lose a step on the tennis court and our memories aren’t as sharp, but as she tells contributing editor Patricia Gray, we get happier as we get older.

Question: Isn’t aging well just a matter of good genes and good luck?

A. You have more control than you think. Wealth and education are powerful predictors of quality of life in old age, and education may be the most important factor: Most college-educated individuals show almost no decline in functioning until their mid-eighties. They drive, dance, play sports. On the other hand, people with less than a high school diploma show a steady decline between 30 and 80.

Question: What can we do to better our odds of a happy old age?

A. Challenge yourself to learn new things. Learn a language. Take up the violin. Crossword puzzles and computer games aren’t going to do the trick. You’re retrieving information you’ve got in memory. Learning, though, seems to change the brain – it seems to improve resiliency.

Question: How important is physical fitness?

A. Obesity and inactivity will kill you. Aim for 30 minutes of exercise a day, but even just 10 minutes will help. Our bodies will benefit from any exercise at any age. Even frail, bedridden 80-year-olds benefit from regular programs of light weight lifting. After exercising they had fewer complaints of pain or discomfort.

Question: We boomers worry about financial security in old age. Many of us don’t feel that we’ve saved enough.

A. Nearly a third of people over 50 have retirement savings of less than $25,000. Why don’t we save? Uncertainty. We’re the first generation that can reasonably expect to live into our nineties, so we don’t know how to plan for it. My advice: Set a savings goal that sounds reasonable to you. Then get your employer to take the money out of your paycheck. Make saving automatic.

Question: Still, starting late means a small nest egg at 65.

A. We’ve got to rethink retirement. Unless you have health issues, there aren’t a lot of good reasons to quit working at 65. Work gives structure and meaning to life, though you may not want to work the same long hours as when you were young.

Catholic nuns live, on average, six years longer than the typical American woman. Nuns never retire. I once visited a convent in Milwaukee. These women were sassy and funny and smart. Even on their deathbeds they felt they had a purpose. They believed they were offering their suffering to God. Now that’s a rich life.

Question: Your research suggests that we get happier as we age. What about the proverbial grumpy old man?

A. That’s a stereotype. Old people are less likely to be lonely or depressed than younger people, even college students.

Question: Old age is sounding better all the time. Is there a downside to all this joy?

A. Unfortunately, yes. Older people are more likely to focus on the positive when making decisions. That can be dangerous, especially when it comes to finances. So be aware of this tendency and build in checks and balances. Make a list of the reasons you don’t need this item or this investment. Take more time to make important decisions. Consult someone you trust.

Question: So it’s important to maintain that circle of trust?

A. Social isolation is as big a risk factor for ill health as smoking. Maintain strong relationships with the people who matter in your life. That’s true wealth.

How many times have you heard yourself or your friends say, “I’m losing it”. EEKS… What are we doing to ourselves? Our words create our reality and if you are referring to forgetting things as you get older, I’d like to encourage you to reframe the experience. Isn’t it great that we forget a lot of our past – and even sometimes that we forget what we are saying at the moment? What do I mean?

Well, I don’t know about you, but, the memories I want to replay in my head are the ones where I was victorious, where I felt unconditional love and where I was at my peak. I remember these without hesitation. The other stuff — I may as well forget. Most of us dwell too much in our past anyway. We think it’s who we are when in fact, it’s no longer our truth. So, forgetting the past can be a very good thing.

What about forgetting mid-sentence what you were about to say? I find these moments sobering and they give me a chance to get centered and to ask myself, is this what I want to be thinking and saying right now? In other words, it keeps me more conscious – and that’s a good thing.

What about you? How do you feel about forgetting? Let’s hear from you here now.

I had an interesting conversation last night with some of my friends who have a few years on me. They were excited about what I am doing. We have never really had any mentors to show us the positive aspects of aging, they both agreed. All we ever heard was – hide the wrinkles, watch the crows feet, and by all means don’t go grey.

What are these messages trying to tell us? It’s not okay to get old? I used to think that the world was prejudiced towards men and now I am seeing a distinct prejudice toward youth. Maybe it’s always been there and I never noticed it before – having been among the youth – but I really feel such a strong call now to change these messages. It’s truly time to reinvent midlife.

 

Abundance is defined as the state of having more than enough..  Does anyone here ever feel as if they have more than enough?  More than enough bills maybe, and more than enough worries and more than enough to do…but, many of us live as if Scarcity was the law of the Universe.

Just the opposite is true, We live in an Abundant Universe.  But, somehow, we have inherited myths about scarcity.  Maybe when we were told to share as children, we interpreted it to mean that there is not enough to go around. When we see our world as deficient, everything reflects that. What we SEE in life, is what we get. It’s time to replace the scarcity mentality with sufficiency thinking. I like the word sufficiency. Just enough – not too much and not too little.  Enough to enjoy life, enough to have all your needs and wants met. Do you know what would be sufficient for you?  It’s a good exercise to figure it out.

There’s a great story that illustrates this-  set at Christmas time,  the message is timeless.

I was doing some last minute shopping in a toy store and decided to look at Barbie dolls for my niece. A nicely dressed little girl was excitedly looking through the
Barbie dolls as well, with a roll of money clamped tightly in her little hand. When she came upon a Barbie she liked, she would turn and ask her father if she had enough money to buy it. He usually said yes, but she would keep looking and keep going though their ritual of do I have enough. A little boy wandered in across the aisle and was sorting through the Pokemon toys. He was dressed neatly, but in clothes that were obviously rather worn, and probably a couple of sizes too small. He had money in his hand, -no more than five dollars or so at the most. He was with his father as well, and kept picking up the Pokemon video toys. Each time he picked one up and looked at his father, his father shook his head no.

The little girl had chosen her Barbie, a beautifully dressed glamorous doll that would have been the envy of every girl in the block when she had stopped and was watching the interchange between the little boy and his father. Rather dejectedly, the boy had given up on the video games and had chosen what looked like a book of stickers instead. He and his father then started walking through another aisle of the store. The little girl put her Barbie back on the shelf, and ran over to the Pokemon games. She excitedly picked up one and raced toward the check-out, after speaking with her father.

I got in line behind them. Much to the little girl’s obvious delight, the little boy and his father got in line behind me. After the toy was paid for and bagged, the little girl handed it back to the cashier, and whispered something in her ear. The cashier smiled and put the package under the counter. I was rearranging thing in my purse, when the little boy came up to the cashier who rang up his purchases and said, “Congratulations, you are my hundredth customer today, and win a prize”. With that, she handed the little boy the Pokemon game, and he could only stare in disbelief. It was, he said, exactly what he had wanted.

The little girl and her father had been standing at the doorway, and I saw the biggest, prettiest, toothless grin on that little girl that I have ever seen in my life. Then they walked out the door, and I followed, close behind them. As I walked back to my car, in amazement, I heard the father ask his daughter why she had done that. “Daddy, didn’t Nana and PawPaw want me to buy something that would make me happy”? He said “Of course they did,” and with that she giggled and started skipping toward their car.

She had decided she had the answer to her question “Do I have enough?”