Boomer Myths and Misconcpetions Blog

The Pathway to Happiness - Turns Out to be Aging

With all the focus in recent commercials on nostalgia to attract Boomers, one would think the road to happiness lies in the past and not the future. Or, I suppose you could conclude that older adults have been waiting for Baby Boomers to get older to show the rest of those in life's third stage how to "reinvent" retirement.  as some pop culture consultants claim. Once again, it seems the consultants and Madison Avenue types trapped in yesterday's youth paradigms are wrong...again... or should I say still when it comes to understanding older consumers.

According to a 2006 University of Michigan Study, the belief that younger people are happier, a belief which is shared by the old and young, is just another myth or aging factoid. It would seem that older people "misremember" how happy they were as youths and young people "mis-predict" how happy or unhappy they will be as they age. While the young know older people are unhappy, they don't see themselves as unhappy in later life.

While the older people in the study tended to believe that other older people were unhappy, they reported self-happiness that was significantly higher than the ratings younger people gave themselves. Likewise, the self-reporting by young respondents documented that they perceived that they would be as happy at 70 as they are today; but that others their age would not be as happy and unhappiness would increase with age. The results however would document what Dr. Stephen Covey pointed out in his best selling 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, "No one sees the world as it really is; they only see the world as they are."

According to report co-author, Dr. Peter Ubel, "People often believe that happiness is a matter of circumstance; that if something good happens, they will experience long-lasting happiness, or if something bad happens, they will experience long-term misery, but instead, people's happiness results more from their underlying emotional resources - resources that appear to grow with age. People get better at managing life's ups and downs, and the result is that as they age, they become happier - even though their objective circumstances, such as their health, decline." (www.icaa.cc/Newsletters2006/ICAAResearchReview_6_22.htm)

In other words, with age comes the wisdom of experience.I wonder how many times similar studies will have to be published before the media, Madison Avenue, corporations, the senior living industry, and long term health care providers get it.

Wisdomkeeper's Guidance

I recently asked a friend of mine to facilitate a meeting of a group of marketing professionals on the topic, "The Native American Concept of Self and Community and What Businesses Could Learn from our Native Brothers and Sisters." My friend is Lakota Healer Gene Thin Elk; and his response to my request that he join our wisdom circle for a few days is worth sharing. In an eloquent way he was saying he would join us; but did not know for how long.

Since the concept of time is arbitrary, yet it is claimed to be a precise scientific measurement. When “times passes” nothing has truly been lost or gained. The essence of our memories, dreams, visions and our relation with them, through the act of free will give birth to reality. The condition of one’s spirit, in relation to one’s state of mind, is the eternal gift. When we understand cycles of dreams, visions, insights, memory, thoughts, their emergence, dissipation and re-emergence we will understand our eternal self that comes from the Wakan (Sacred/God).

Our privilege is to enter, learn, harmonize, give life to and move through Mother Earth and her (woope’) laws. Condition of our Spirit and the conditions in which our Spirit interplays are the eternal joys paramount to focusing on the temporal limiting conditions. Enjoy the moment for it is totally new and it is unfathomably old and yet it is neither, because we are the real expression of the Wakan and the relationships we have with all of creation are the REALity!

In the Lakota culture there are no elderly only Wisdom people called Elders.

What a wonderful message. With all of our technology and advancement, we left behind our respect for the elders of Society. As we become a nation dominated by older adults, we can only hope to end ageism and embrace all that the Wisdom People have to offer.

Positive Solutions from Posit Science

While drug companies continue to research pills to treat Alzheimer's disease, scientists in California have instead focused on how to use what they learned about lifelong brain elasticity to create a product to exercise one's brain and recapture cognitive loss. One company offering a product that can benefit anyone worried about memory loss is Posit Science (www.positscience.com).

According to Posit Science founder, neuroscientist Dr. Michael Merzenich, people of any age can learn new cognitive skills. Merzenich says scientists are now harnessing the brain's plasticity and encouraging healthy parts of the brain to take on jobs they don't usually do. Posit Science is now selling the Brain Gym for organizations serving older adults as well as a home game for less than $500. Since approximately half of Americans will suffer from dementia by age 85 this innovation offers incredible, positive hope that individual can control No more waitng for a magic pill; but rather we can now take control of our own cognitive development.

This wonderful product was featured on the CBS Morning Show on Sunday, January 15m 2006. if you missed it, go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/15/sunday/main1209916.shtml, you won't be disappointed. I am confident Posit Science is the first of many companies that will once again help our nation replace pills with purpose.