What if the way you think about aging could extend your life? Yale professor Becca Levy’s new book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live, makes a compelling case for this. It blew me away.
Levy’s research over decades has shown that individuals with a more positive view of aging live 7.5 years longer on average.
Now, what if the workplace was the one place we could turn age negativity to positivity, resulting in longer lives?
The good news presents a challenge
Initially, the book’s premise sounded ridiculous to me. I went into full-on skeptic mode. Embrace rainbows and sunshine and you’ll live longer? That’s a fairy tale. But her research on this topic has attacked the hypothesis many different ways, and the results never failed to confirm it.
So obviously we should all change our mindsets, right? It would seem any easy way to get a lifespan boost. The problem is that changing attitudes is more complicated than simply flipping a switch in our brains. Our views on aging are shaped by the messaging prevalent in society from a very young age, as well as our own personal experience. What can we do?
Why the workplace is a longevity opportunity
An important part of creating a culture where aging is positively viewed, is offering opportunities for younger people to have positive relationships with older people.
In some cultures, this occurs in the home, where multi-generational households are the norm. In the Western world, however, this is increasingly rare. In fact, single-generation housing developments restricted to those over 55—Del Webb, Margaritaville, and Sun City, for example—are a growing trend.
So, the workplace is the one arena where young people have the opportunity to develop positive relationships with older generations on a daily basis. Without these relationships, we cannot see that aging brings wisdom, growth, and all sorts of other gains. Young people can see that they, too, can enjoy these gains as they age.
Unfortunately, in an ageist workplace, this does not happen.
Add this to ageism’s negative impact
Not only does ageism in the workplace result in “thinning” older generations so that fewer young people have interactions with older people, but it is based on the view that as we age we become less valuable. When olders are discriminated against, youngers watch and learn that they too will be at risk someday. An attitude that can cut lives short.
There are plenty of behaviors we don’t permit at work because of health and safety issues. Shouldn’t ageist behavior be another? Not just for its intrinsic discrimination, but because it negatively affects our longevity.
How you can change your own mindset on aging
Is it too late for you to revise your own views on aging, to take advantage of the boost it can provide to your health and longevity? Levy says no. She recommends a practice I’ve also taken on, which is to create a list of older people whose qualities you admire. Include people from different milieus with different strengths. I often bring to mind a friend’s 89-year-old mother, traveling the country to see grandchildren; Margaret Atwood, still relevant and publishing at 82; Dan Rather, tweeting the news at 90, 16 years after retiring; and others. Referring to this collection of “mentors” often is a reminder that age has many rewards and opportunities.
I’ve also begun tracking the negative thoughts I have about aging. For example, yesterday an ambulance was at the house of our 85-year-old neighbor, a widow. She’s back home today and is doing fine, but the vision of the ambulance set my mind to thinking about aging as physical decline. I journaled about this, as well as the perhaps-faulty assumptions I made about her age and health. Ageist thoughts creep in all the time. But bringing them to consciousness is a way to keep them from becoming embedded.
Finally, it’s important to be aware of our own impact. How do our attitudes and behaviors shape the young people we encounter? Do we model optimism, growth, contentment, curiosity, or any of the positive qualities of aging? Awareness of our impact on the next generations can motivate us to set a worthy example.
Levy’s research has opened a whole new area of focus for extending lifespan. We have an opportunity in the workplace to contribute to this, to create environments where young people can see first-hand how aging is a plus, not a minus—and as a result live longer. Perhaps that will even help us olders to embrace the positive as well.
Photo by The Coach Space