A Positive Attitude on Aging Has a Positive Effect

While it may seem that older folks like Ginny are in denial or out of touch with reality, many scientific studies have shown that a positive attitude on aging can actually have significant health benefits and could even add years to your life.

The science

While part of your health can be attributed to your genes, the remainder is due to outside forces, many of which are within your control. That includes how you feel about getting older.

The impact of beliefs on aging is a subject that Dr. Becca Levy has pursued for more than two decades. First studying this topic as a Harvard graduate student, she investigated why the Japanese have the longest life spans in the world, learning that Japanese elders receive much greater respect than the older generation in the U.S. She also found that for the Japanese, old age is a period to be relished rather than feared.

Levy, now a leading expert on the psychology of successful aging and author of “Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Well and Long You Live,” has demonstrated that many health problems like memory loss, poor balance, hearing problems, and even cardiovascular events, once almost exclusively attributed to aging, can also be influenced by negative aging beliefs.

Perhaps most significantly, after conducting a 23-year study of 600 aging Ohioans, Levy concluded that those who were optimistic about their golden years lived a median of 7.5 years longer than others who dreaded this time. (This benefit remained after other factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and functional health were considered.) In other words, when you think you’re going to decline, you often do.

Related: 10 Reasons to Embrace the Gray

Impact of stress

The reason people with negative beliefs about aging have poorer health has been partially linked to stress levels. When you fear getting older, you may experience greater stress as well as have difficulty dealing with stress, which can lead to diseases like hypertension, heart disease, and diminished cognitive function.

On the other hand, thinking optimistically seems to have an insulating effect when it comes to the physical implications of stress. A positive attitude about aging may also motivate you to eat well, remain active, and engage in other healthy behaviors to maximize your health; whereas a defeatist attitude could make you simply throw in the towel.

Why all the negativity?

If you’re pessimistic about aging, your attitude likely has its roots in the negative ageist messages about growing old that you’ve received and unconsciously internalized all your life.

Many older people on TV and movies can’t move as quickly or think as clearly; they’re also often portrayed as cantankerous and unable to take care of themselves. On top of that, advertising inundates you with countless products promising to turn back the clock or reduce the signs of aging. Advancing age is also fodder for memes, jokes, and birthday cards. Overall, it’s suggested that old age is something to avoid, rather than embrace.

“For better or for worse, those mental images that are the product of our cultural diets, whether it’s the shows we watch, the things we read, or the jokes we laugh at, become scripts we end up acting out,” Levy wrote in “Breaking the Age Code.”

Changing your outlook

The American Psychology Association reported that ageism is “one of the last socially acceptable prejudices” in our society. “The narrative that age is decline, age is burden, hurts everyone: individuals, families, communities, and society,” says Nancy Morrow-Howell, Ph.D., a professor of social policy and expert in gerontology at Washington University in St. Louis.

However, there are many strategies for starting to change your own personal narrative about aging. Here are a few to get you started.

Strategies for embracing a positive attitude on aging

1. Keep a list.

Levy suggests writing down both positive and negative portrayals of aging for a week in everything from social media to your favorite TV show. She refers to this strategy as “age belief journaling.” If a show or book doesn’t include older people, note that as well. At week’s end, add up the number of mentions that are positive and negative and with those that are negative, try to think of a better, more upbeat way to portray that person.

2. Consider a different reason.

If you or another older person can’t remember something, don’t immediately chalk it up to age. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention when you first learned that information or didn’t have a good reason to remember it. Remember that younger people can be guilty of forgetting things, too.

Or if someone falls or has an accident in their car, remember that such events have many causes. Bottom line, there are many explanations for issues typically blamed on aging.

3.Create positive images.

To offset your fears about aging, Karen Hooker, co-author of an Oregon State University study on how self-perceptions of aging impact stress and, in turn, physical health, advises imagining your older self in a favorable way. To help create this positive image, think of older people you know or even characters in books or historical figures who you admire and would like to emulate.

4. Develop intergenerational relationships.

Throughout your life, it’s important to cultivate relationships across generations. Having friends of different ages keeps you from buying into stereotypes (about both those older and younger than yourself) and keeps your aging beliefs based in reality.

Aging can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you embrace a positive attitude on aging; when you stop facing the impending years with anxiety; when you start thinking of the years as a promising time, filled with activity, opportunities and insight – your future will look – and likely be – so much brighter!