Want to live longer? Your mindset about aging matters.

Sure, we all want to live longer. Your mindset about aging matters.

How many of you have joked about having a “senior moment?” How many of you complain about the effects of aging on your looks, your joints, or brain? I admit it, as a 73-year-old woman I often join in the conversation with my friends when they start the negative aging talk.

But did you know that how we think about aging has a powerful impact on our lives? Older adults with a positive attitude and mindset about aging live an average of 7.5 years longer than those who harbor negative perceptions about aging (click here for a link to the study by Dr. Becca Levy.)

I’ve been a fan of Dr. Becca Levy’s research on aging and attitude and enjoyed reading her book, Breaking the Age Code to gain insights into the power of psychology on how we age. To sum up her book, “older people with more positive perceptions of aging performed better physically and cognitively than those with more negative perceptions.” Her research shows that what is believed about aging can “steal or add nearly eight years to your life.”

Developing our mindset about aging starts when we are young. We develop perceptions about aging that we carry with us throughout life. Once we reach whatever age we consider to be “old,” we accept those stereotypical mindsets without questioning their accuracy. It doesn’t help that media images of older adults…befuddled with technology, pictured as alone and lonely, and disconnected and dependent can reinforce our view of aging. A report from AARP confirms visual portrayals and stock photography used in media build and reinforce ageist stereotypes. You know the images well….an older man bent with a cane, an older woman with a grey hair bun and bifocals looking lost and confused.

This year let’s all make it a goal to change our stereotypes about what happens with age. If we think that becoming more forgetful is inevitable as we age, that self-fulfilling prophecy is likely to come true. A positive mind-set might not mean everything when it comes to optimal aging, but it surely means a lot. And optimal aging is not simply a matter of feeling invincible because that mind-set can lead some—young and old—to avoid a visit to the doctor when one is necessary.

As Dr. Levy reminds us, “negative age beliefs are the most tolerated of all types of implicit bias. Our age beliefs are the product of cultural biases, rather than scientific facts. Only 25% of our health is due to genes. That means three-quarters of our health is determined by environmental factors, many of which we can control.”

Perhaps the best news in all of this is that a positive mind-set about aging costs us nothing more than changing whatever negative perceptions we might have been harboring. So, next time you are tempted to say you are having a “senior moment” simply say you are having a moment….everyone forgets something now and then.