It's Not Your Father's Retirement...Keys To Getting Older Well
Until the past few decades, we all had the same image of a standard retirement: at age 60 or 65, you stop working, get a gold watch, start living off your pension, and putter around for awhile (golf, grandkids, early dinners) until you die.
No more. At the moment, over a third of Americans over 65 are still working for pay, and more than half spend many hours a week on organized unpaid work: childcare, community work, political organizing, or other volunteer work.
Some of those who are still working past the traditional retirement age say their motivation is financial, but many more say they simply like the work they do, or that they enjoy being active and staying connected to their colleagues.
As I've done research and interviewed seniors over the past few years for my new book about how to grow old well, The New Old, another important factor in this equation has emerged: more people are living longer. A hundred years ago, only 1 in 20 people were over 65. Now, in most developed countries, the figure is 1 in 6. And if you're one of those 65-year-olds, are reasonably healthy, and don't smoke, you have about even odds of living to be 90.
So, unlike previous generations–where you we lucky to make it to 65, and then to have a brief-ish epilogue till you died, now more and more people have a full third chapter of 20 or 30 years post-retirement age.
There aren't a lot of models out there yet for how to approach this new circumstance: many people in their 60s and 70s are still encouraged to think, 'to work or not to work, that is the question'–when there are in reality many more options than that. You can custom-design your third act. Here are three principles to help you do just that:
Ageism is, as many social scientists have noted, 'the last socially acceptable prejudice.' And one aspect of ageism is assuming that older people are dependent and weak-minded, and need other (younger) people to tell them what to do. You can work against this stereotype by continuing to envision the kind of future you want–and, since you're the boss of your own life, you can reject the false 'work or retire' duality that's often presented to us as our only choice.
Think about who you want to be as an older person, and what kind of life you want to have. Do you see yourself as a tribal elder, continuing to share your wisdom? Is learning most important to you? Connection with like-minded peers, or with family?
Once you have a clear sense of who you want to be and what you want your later life to be like, you can take the necessary steps to make that happen, and build an informal crew to support you in achieving it.
In The New Old, I reference a wonderful study done by the Yale School of Public Health, where they found that people who had a more positive view of aging and of being old lived 7.6 years longer than those with a more negative view. I can't tell you how happy this made me - I've been telling clients (and really, anyone who will listen) for almost 40 years about the power of mindset: that by talking to yourself differently, you can have a profoundly positive impact on your life.
Notice your internal monologue about aging in general and about your own aging. Are you saying negative, limiting things to yourself (It's all downhill from here, or Old people are a burden on society)? You can decide to change those internal messages to be more neutral of positive; to say to yourself instead, 'I want to discover what's great about being older.' or 'Older people contribute to society in lots of important ways.'
Try it: you may notice that speaking to yourself more positively about aging, as a number of studies have found, can make you feel more motivated, satisfied and hopeful.
Younger people tend to think that older people's lives are more stagnant and unchanging than their own. For instance, I took a fitness test online recently, where the results were organized by decade until 60 (e.g., 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60), and then it just said 'over 60.' Implying that the results I got at 73 wouldn't be much different than if I were 63…or 93?
In fact, as we get older, the changes come quickly–and they tend to be of the most challenging kind: changes that are imposed on us and aren't our idea. Death is the biggest one–of those we love and ultimately ourselves–but there are lots of other big change as well: in our health and our physical capabilities; in what we do and who the world sees us as being; in our relationships with children, grandchildren, friends and colleagues. We may make dramatic changes in our living situation (downsizing, moving to another community or even another country), or we might be living alone for the first time in decades.
Given all that, becoming more 'change-capable' seems like an important skill to develop as we get older. You might like this article I wrote for Forbes about how people go through change successfully. The core of the article is the understanding that when unexpected change comes at us, we tend to assume that it will be difficult, costly and weird. That is, we believe it wil be hard for us to make the change, that it will take from us things we value (identity, relationships, reputation, love), and that it will be strange and unnatural. One way to combat our mind's tendency to assume bad things about a change we're facing is to ask yourself three questions:
Because what we've seen in our research about change is that when people start believing that a potential change could be easy/doable, rewarding and normal (vs. only difficult, costly, and weird), they're able to make the change much more quickly, and with less stress and pain.
One unhelpful thing I found myself thinking about getting old, when I was in my fifties, was, 'All my 'firsts' are behind me.' I decided to say instead, 'I wonder what new, fascinating things are ahead for me?'
I have to say, the answer is turning out to be 'lots': my seventies may be the most interesting decade so far. I encourage you to use these principles to create a wonderful later life for yourself, as well…and I'd love to hear how it's going!
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