These reflexive clichés do more than trigger an eye roll: They can affect your health. Decades of research from Becca Levy, a professor of public health and psychology at the Yale School of Public Health, and author of Breaking the Age Code, show that the messages we absorb about aging and then repeat to ourselves are linked to how long and how well we live. People who hold more positive beliefs about aging tend to walk faster, heal quicker, take better care of themselves, and show fewer of the brain biomarkers associated with dementia. Levy’s research has even found that older adults with positive beliefs about aging can reverse mild cognitive decline.
That's why rethinking our language is so essential. Here are the phrases experts wish we'd stop saying—about other people and ourselves.
Instead, Applewhite challenges you to replace “old” with the more specific word that describes what you mean. (Maybe, for example, you’re just not interested.) The same advice applies to what might seem, on the surface, like an innocuous statement: “I don’t feel old.” What does that mean? she asks. “You don’t feel incompetent, you don’t feel invisible, you don’t feel useless?” Use the word that describes how you actually feel: “I feel energetic, I feel optimistic, I feel hot.”
“I’m having a senior moment.”
Her research has also found that people with more positive age beliefs tend to show better memory performance over time. Plus, certain cognitive skills—like metacognition, or the ability to think about thinking—actually tend to improve in later life.
It’s meant as a kind of triumph—proof that they’ve defied the aging script. But Gendron, chair of the department of gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It, gently pushes back. “No, you’re 70, and you feel like you’re 70,” she tells them. “It’s just not what you expected it to feel like.” Your 70 is going to look different from somebody else’s 70—but it’s still, indisputably, your 70.
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
People can learn new things at any age—and science backs it up. “Older people can benefit from the same cognitive strategies that people of all ages benefit from,” Levy says. “There’s also some nice research on neuroplasticity, so we know that in later life, older people can continue to form new neuronal connections when they have challenges.”
It doesn’t have to be. In a recent study, Levy and her colleagues followed a nationally representative group of older adults for up to 12 years and tracked two markers of function—cognitive function (including memory and mental-processing tasks) and walking speed, a key indicator of physical health. Almost half of people showed improvement on at least one of those measures over time. “A meaningful number of people are defying that statement,” she says.
“You look good for your age.”
Applewhite has a go-to response to this backhanded compliment: “You look good for your age too.” Or she might simply ask: “What do you mean by that?" “Then they have to reflect,” she says.
When people call Applewhite, who’s 73, a “young lady,” they probably think they’re being nice. “But intention does not let you off the hook,” she says. That’s why she always points out the ageism baked into the compliment. “It gets uncomfortable,” she says. “But if we don't say anything, and if everyone stays in their comfort zone, nothing changes.”
“I’m not old, I’m just vintage.”
Go ahead and groan the next time you hear this one. Gendron thinks of euphemisms like this as red flags that someone is afraid to identify as old. “Until we destigmatize what it means to be old, there's never going to be a word that replaces it that makes it OK,” she says. “So stop saying ‘I'm not old, I'm just seasoned or vintage or mature or experienced.’ No, you’re old, and there’s nothing wrong with being old.”
The same goes for the activities you're "supposed" to age out of—or into. There's no expiration date on getting a tattoo, taking up skateboarding, or starting a new career, just as there's no minimum age for taking a nap or buying sensible shoes. So if you want to wear that miniskirt at 70, wear it, Applewhite says. And if you don't, don't—just make sure it's because you genuinely don't want to, not because someone decided it wasn't for you anymore.
“Can you believe she’s still working?”
The same goes for its close cousin, “When are you going to retire?” The question assumes both that you want to and that it's anyone else's business. It also rests on a flawed premise: that retirement is a natural endpoint to adult life. “Retirement is not a life stage. Retirement is a social institution,” Gendron says. "It doesn't tell me who you are. It doesn't tell me who you're becoming. It tells me that you used to work."
“Now that’s successful aging.”
The phrase sounds like a compliment—who wouldn’t want to age successfully?—but Gendron isn’t a fan. “If you woke up this morning and you’re breathing, you’re succeeding at aging,” she says. The problem with framing it as something you can ace is that, by definition, it means other people are flunking. “There is nobody who’s failing at aging,” Gendron says. The phrase also promotes ableism, suggesting that staying mentally sharp and physically active is the only way to age well—a standard that ignores the reality that most of us will, at some point, age into some form of disability.
There's another problem, too: "Successful aging" assumes you already know what a good life will look like for you decades from now. You don't. "Don't project your current self onto your future self," Gendron says. The activities you can't imagine living without today may matter less to you at 80—and you may have picked up a whole new set of passions by then.
Hence then, the article about stop saying these 12 things about aging especially to yourself was published today ( ) and is available on Time ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Stop Saying These 12 Things About Aging—Especially to Yourself )
Also on site :