How to Thrive in Old Age? Believe in Yourself

Old age is not just a number — it’s our last chance to wake up to beauty and wisdom

Andrej Lišakov for Unsplash+

My Epitaph Will Read: I Had a Blast!

I want to play one last prank and bring some laughter and joy to the somber graveyard atmosphere. That’s also what I want to do here on Substack as well. I want to share the good news about aging — that it keeps getting better if you have the right beliefs.

You heard that right — good news and right beliefs. In the US, the default position on old age is that it’s all downside. All bad news. So bad that anti-aging products are needed to fight against aging, as if getting old were an unnatural, terrible disease.

That is nonsense.

Old age is the natural continuation of the groundwork we laid in youth and middle age. My practice of Zen Buddhism has helped me to accept the impermanence of everything: that everything is constantly changing and aging, and nothing lasts forever. Not even my personality. Not even my hangover.

Without impermanence we would never grow from infancy to childhood to adulthood. And old age is just another period of growth, giving us the time to learn that we don’t have to be anything but ourselves in order to be happy and useful.
— Susan Warren, Substack

And our self is constantly changing. What we think of as our self doesn’t exist. I no longer have 1950s stainless steel braces on my teeth and a bad case of acne like I did at age 12. I no longer work for a corporation like I did for 15 years.

I’m literally a different person every day. That’s the foundational tenet of Buddhism: that everything changes and nothing lasts forever.

We think we’re the same person we were as a child, but we’re vastly different; although inside, we’re still that child. We still love to play pranks on people and have a blast, even in old age.

At least we should. Last time I checked, there’s no law against having fun — even when we’re old as dirt. Fun is all about the beliefs in our heads. Even if we don’t walk so good, hear so good, or remember so good we can still have fun — if we follow Steve Job’s advice and “Think Different.”

Believe differently.

What I think of as my self is an aggregate of all the things I believe to be me. However, my true self does not exist as a solid entity. You might say everything about me is contingent on my beliefs.

I am made of beliefs.

Older people with more positive perceptions of aging performed better physically and cognitively than those with more negative perceptions; they were more likely to recover from severe disability, they remembered better, they walked faster, and they even lived longer.
Dr. Becca Levy, Breaking the Aging Code

You Can Supercharge Your Old Age By Changing Your Beliefs

I’ll bet you didn’t know that there is an esteemed professor at Yale University conducting groundbreaking research on how our beliefs about aging influence our health.

She’s Dr. Becca Levy, Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Dr. Levy studies the impact of age stereotypes on the health and well-being of older adults. Her book, Breaking The Age Code, is a must-read.

In study after study, she “found that older people with more positive perceptions of aging performed better physically and cognitively than those with more negative perceptions; they were more likely to recover from severe disability, they remembered better, they walked faster, and they even lived longer.”

Dr. Levy’s longevity study about the lives and outlooks of the inhabitants of the small town of Oxford, Ohio, “found that the single most important factor in determining the longevity of these inhabitants — more important than gender, income, social background, loneliness, or functional health — was how people thought about and approached the idea of old age.”

Read that again.

The single most important factor in determining longevity was people’s positive (or negative) self-perceptions of aging.

The Power Of Belief

We are all laying the foundation for our old age, brick by brick, with our beliefs.

But Dr. Levy says it is never too late to change our beliefs about aging and gain the benefits. But we should do it before the mortar dries and negative beliefs harden into our reality. It all comes down to these two questions and which one we believe.

1. Is old age an inevitable decline from middle age into frailty, helplessness, and decrepitude?

2. Or is it a period of continuous learning and growth, in which we can be happy and useful, even in our 70s, 80s, and 90s?

You Can Change Your Mind and Change Your Life

So let’s just stop it with the “senior moments,” and “over the hill,” birthday card crap all around us, infecting our brains with negative stereotypes about aging. These stereotypes are a killing joke, and we are the butt of the joke.

It’s not that way in other countries, such as Japan. In Japan, there is a national holiday called Keiro No Hi, which translates to “Respect for the Aged Day.”

All over the country on this holiday, people were cross-crossing the archipelago by high-speed train, boat, and car as they returned home to visit their elders. That day, restaurants would serve free meals to seniors; for those less mobile, schoolchildren would prepare and deliver bento boxes full of fresh sushi and delicately fried tempura.
— Becca Levy, PhD, Breaking The Age Code

It almost brought tears to my eyes to read Dr. Levy’s words and think about how seniors are perceived and treated in the USA. I’m thinking about our healthcare, home care, long-term care, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The quality of a nation is defined by how it treats its children, its poor, its immigrants, and its elders.

Here’s just one example: long-term care for low-income seniors. It is available through Medicaid, but not until a person has exhausted their personal funds, pensions, savings, and other assets.

You have to be nearly bankrupt in order to qualify for long-term care, and even then, there is a years-long waiting list for it. However, there is little we can do about that now unless we can afford long-term care insurance like I have.

Rather than succumbing to helplessness, bitterness, and anger about our lot in old age, we can harness the power of our minds to live a longer and more fulfilling life. We can give the finger to all the dangerous and untrue stereotypes about older people that have polluted us since we were children.

I accepted my old age at 68. Began meditating daily at 76. Decided to become a writer, and did it at 77. I’ve been writing on Medium for nearly four years, and now I’ve expanded my reach to Substack.

So far, I have learned two life-changing lessons that I want to share.

First, we must believe that we can learn new things and do new things to improve our lives, even in our 70s and 80s.

Secondly, we have to do the work. But since I love writing, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s actually fun to have a purpose and direction in my life at 80. And if a geezer like me can do it, anyone can.

I have just one last thing to say, which is such a cliche that it must be true.

Believe in yourself.