Author Don Joseph Goewey’s recent article, “Neuroplastic Fantastic: The Power of the Mind to Change the Brain,” examined this monumental change in paradigms. “Breakthroughs in research have now proved that the brain responds to the mind. Mental practice can take a small village of high level neurons and build it into a humming metropolis, providing you with the power to produce optimal results in whatever you pursue.” Science now supports what many of us have long known intuitively – how we feel about our own aging can have an impact, positively or negatively, on how we physically age.
In her book, Mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer pointed out that we first use words to create categories (seniors, retirees, elderly) and then distinguish between them (frail, unproductive, hard-of-hearing), which ultimately shapes our world view. As aging stereotypes were ingrained by the media, our population mindlessly accepted them as fact. Until the mind challenges what the brain has been programmed to believe, millions will continue to suffer from pre-mature aging. We need our paradigms to make sense of the world around us; but if we do not continually question our views we can become trapped or constrained by them.
With the best of intentions, we replaced purpose with pills; productive lives with early retirement packages; personal significance with shallow volunteer opportunities; and meaningful involvement with mindless activities. Has our mindless acceptance of “retirement” as a disengaged life stage one of the root causes of rising healthcare costs, the growing incidence of diabetes, depression, and the fear that Alzheimer’s disease will be a part of everyone’s future? To mindlessly accept aging as a time of decline and loss can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The study of gerontology began with a positive goal – to understand the aging process and the problems of aging people. Fortunately, that is beginning to change with a focus on successful or positive aging. We all need to put our own minds to work on rethinking our own aging and view life’s second half as a time of renewal and meaning rather than a time to retreat from purposeful living. To continue the focus on decline perpetuates the myth that aging naturally leads to all kinds of health problems.
To view aging negatively not only impacts our self image but can literally affect our health – “Becoming mindless about our abilities to age successfully too often results in wasted potential, frailty and premature institutionalization and even death.” (Langer, 1989)
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