Aging

In January, my next book comes out, “Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age.” In honor of the subtitle, I did a little research on 12 things that are prized for their age—wine, pickles, whisky, beef, cheese, leather sofas, jeans, flannel sheets, mattresses, slippers, trees, and whales.

Nowadays, there are a lot of products being marketed to enhance your Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV), which is the idea that a person’s life expectancy can increase at a faster rate than their biological aging. For example, if you were 55 with a life expectancy of 86 and achieved Longevity Escape Velocity, your life expectancy could rise to 88 (or higher) by the time you turn 56, adding a year or more to your life span.

MEA alum and faculty member Ashton Applewhite has an enduringly great Big Think three-minute video on why much of life gets better with age. She highlights so many of the things that are part of our MEA “reframing aging” curriculum, including:

Ellen Langer challenges the idea that the limits we put on ourselves, as we age, are real. Opening our minds to what’s possible, instead of presuming impossible, can lead to better well-being, at any age. We need to realize that our perspective on aging is often based on old assumptions about aging and that we can cast them aside for real possibilities.

Thanks to MEA alum Amy Beilharz for these five quotes that will remind you that aging and growing are not mutually exclusive.

Dr. Bill Thomas has been a thought partner of mine since before I wrote “Wisdom@Work.” For those who know his story, he was appointed the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York more than 30 years ago, which he described as “a repository for old people whose minds and bodies seemed dull and dispirited.”

I never saw this coming. I see myself in the mirror and think, “Good God man…you are dying.”

Last year, I wrote a blog post, “Longevity is Becoming Shortevity.” It was 1,000 words and had lots of stats pointing to the steep decline in longevity in the U.S. However, a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words, as the graph below shows. Take a second look, and you’ll see how one of the wealthiest countries in the world (and the one that spends the most per capita on health care costs) has a full-blown system failure with longevity in freefall, and all at a time when the rest of the world is seeing a post-pandemic recovery.

Recently, MEA hosted an online event with Dr. Mark Hyman, a New York Times #1 best selling author and internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. (You can watch it here if you missed it.)

I love our MEA global community. The vast majority of you are not alums. You’re part of a movement of people who want to make aging aspirational. Let’s face it, you’re “age-fluid.” A number doesn’t define you.