“Inertia” is a term from physics which indicates that physical objects have a natural resistance to any change in their state of motion (speed, direction, etc.). Inertia refers to the fact that a stationary object tends to stay stationary, while an object in motion tends to stay in motion – at its same speed and in the same direction. If we look at this from the standpoint of the human psyche we can see that human beings also have a natural resistance to change – be it thought, behavior, motion, or just about anything else for that matter. So, we too are subject to the laws of inertia (at least metaphorically). The implications for retirees are unfortunate, since it is my observation that most older adults seem to be striving for stability in their lives. The problem with this strategy is that once they are relatively stable, the tendency will be to stay that way until change is inevitably forced upon them.

I currently have 38 courageous older students (ages 52-80) who are attempting to proactively become a “Master” of their own aging process. The Dynamic Aging Program I am offering at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Furman University provides them with the knowledge, structure, and support to take a more informed and proactive stance towards their own aging process, and they are exceling at it – in spite of this human tendency to continue doing what we are currently doing.

Dynamic aging is all about change: change in speed, direction, comfort, capabilities, habit, behavior, and almost everything else except for our essential nature. My students have chosen to overcome their own inertia, and the social pressure to do what everyone else is doing, in order to systematically and proactively become as highly developed, flexible, adaptable, and changeable as possible. This is what is required if we are to optimize our aging process in today’s dynamically changing world, so why aren’t more people doing it?

Retirement is a Dirty Word

Most people who retire suddenly find themselves facing a whole new stage in life, with no outside definition of what it is they should be doing. So they usually do what they have always done, or what they always thought they would be doing after they retire: whether that is helping out with the grandkids, working on hobbies, serving on committees, helping others, working part-time, staying physically fit, playing golf or bridge, taking classes, relaxing, or having as much fun as they can. There is nothing wrong with any of these activities, but if this is all they are doing then what is the point of their lives? What is their meaning or purpose for living in this constant state of busyness until they can no longer function in these roles?

Obviously, if we give into our natural tendency to continue doing what we are already doing, this will one day become boring and otherwise problematic – but by this time it might also be too late to do anything about it. In the past, most people died shortly after retirement so this was not an issue. But today, with a healthy person’s life expectancy reaching 90 years or more, our past definition of “retirement” must change to reflect not only this reality of a longer life expectancy, but also the reality of a world that is changing around us at an accelerating rate. Retirement used to bring up visions of blissful peace, but now – given this new reality – it is a prescription for wasting the greatest opportunity a person will ever have for developing their unique potential as a human being. In my mind, retirement is now a dirty word, because the current images most of us have of retirement are completely inconsistent with the “truth” sitting right there in front of us.

I believe that people should be allowed to do as they will as long as they are not harming others, but the fact is most people who adhere to this false image of retirement are like a bunch of crabs in a pot of boiling water. They could easily allow the other crabs to use their claws to escape the pot, or they themselves could escape if that is what they wanted. Instead, they (along with a majority of their fellow retirees) prevent other people from escaping the pot by pulling them back into the boiling water.

This is normal crab behavior, so we can’t really criticize the crabs, but why do most older people resist the possibility of greatly improving the quality of their own lives and instead try to pull their more adventurous friends and neighbors back into their own state of inertia?

Mastery Has Inertia Too!

My students are courageous because they are pioneers, and pioneering is a lonely business – but they are also visionaries who have seen beyond the confines of so-called “normal” retiree behavior and are following what they view as a larger truth. And, the truth is if we want to flourish in this new reality, then we must become Masters of our own aging process.

If we want to be good at something we have to learn as much as we can about it, devise and implement practices to improve our skills, eliminate any obstacles, expand and develop our minds and hearts to accommodate a greater sense of Self, and then continue on in our quest for mastery in spite of hardship, plateaus, or a lack of support from others. This is the Path of Mastery – and in this case what we are trying to master, and thereby optimize, is our own aging process. Once we are on this path, then we might want to stay on it for good, because leaving this path is not so easy once we are on it (a body in motion tends to stay in motion), and if at any time we do decide to permanently jump off the path it will be even more difficult to get back on (a stationary body tends to stay stationary).

Inertia obviously works both ways. Once a person sees the truth about their retirement and begins to act upon it, they will increasingly grow and develop in a positive direction, become more open and adaptable, change what they are doing, how they are doing it, and move continuously towards what Abraham Maslow called Self-Actualization. Once a person is on this Path, the tendency will be to stay on it. In fact (and this is where the laws of inertia begin to change when applied to human systems), the tendency will be to continually escalate our personal rate of change – not only to match the accelerating rate of change in our environment, but also the positive changes we experience through this process will reinforce our more dynamic approach to retirement and motivate us to accelerate our efforts.

So, mastery is also subject to the laws of inertia, but instead of ultimately harming ourselves by trying to remain stationary and doing very little to optimize our aging process, we will find ourselves increasingly engaging with new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing things. Life will be exciting again – like when we were children and everything was new. We will continually be growing and developing, and moving forward in our lives – in spite of the physical problems associated with old age that ultimately and inevitably arise.

Inertia might be a natural state for human beings as well as other physical objects, but only humans can make the choice of which end of the inertia continuum to be on. Choose wisely, or you will have no one to blame but yourself.

Love, Dudley

Most of you are probably already familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I believe this model explains why most older, retired adults are not motivated to pursue self-actualization – in spite of the opportunities created by longer lifespans and a greater understanding of how to postpone age-related physical and cognitive decline. Instead, there is the tendency for older adults to get caught up in what Martin Heidegger called “entangled everydayness” – and live their remaining lives in a state of mindless routine and busyness. Let’s look at this relationship in more detail.

Maslow’s theory holds that a certain amount of basic needs satisfaction is necessary before a person will become motivated to pursue higher order needs. In other words, a person will probably have to satisfy a certain level of their physiological and safety needs before they are motivated to pursue their needs for belongingness, love, and self-esteem. Then, these needs must also be somewhat satisfied before the person would ever be motivated to develop their unique life’s potential. All of these lower order needs appear prior to, and are “pre-potent” over the Actualization Tendency – so there is no motivation by the individual to actualize their potential until they have these other areas of their life in order.

The Problem with Retirement

The problem with retirement is that human beings were never meant to “retire” – no matter how old they got. Instead, the type of “work” we do is supposed to change. Now some older adults continue to work professionally almost right up to the point where they die. This is great if they need or want to work. However, some of us no longer need to work at a job that pays us a salary, so we have a different set of options. In America, there is a growing population of older adults who have the time and resources to do – more or less – whatever they want. These people are often forced to retire from their careers at around age 65, and then they have another 20-25 years of life expectancy to plan for.

The myth I see many people believing is that retirement is a time to do what you enjoy and/or never had time for when you were working. Since most people only understand “doing” something as a way to fill time, they immediately start visiting their kids and grandkids, travelling to more exotic parts of the world, volunteering their time, taking up a hobby, serving on community committees, playing golf or bridge, and partying at night with their friends. This doesn’t sound too bad, does it? I could probably do it for a few months, but to spend the next 25 years doing these things “exclusively” seems excruciating to me.

Loss of Post-Retirement Self-Esteem

Now – according to Maslow’s theories – a person will only become motivated to pursue self-actualization once they have met their needs regarding self-esteem. One would think that most older people should have high self-esteem because they punched their ticket day in and day out, either in the workforce and/or raising a family, for many years before retiring. And, in fact, most of them did retire with fairly high self-esteem – which means they felt accepted, respected, and valued by others under pre-retirement conditions. There was meaning in what they did and accomplished, and there was a sense of contributing to the greater good. So, what changes when one retires?

First of all, several sources of our prior self-esteem go away with retirement: our careers, work, raising a family, and certain friendships (especially those we had in the workplace where we also received the majority of our needed acceptance, respect, and value). At this same time we might also start to feel the physical effects of aging, and so we lose esteem for our bodies and sexuality – because we are in pain, lacking energy, or not as beautiful and/or strong as we used to be.

In other words, much of the self-esteem we had accumulated in the second third of life, dissipates as we head into the final third. The caricature of this, in my mind, is the retired business executive who cannot get over what they were in their prior life. They keep telling stories about when they were the boss, and all the deals they closed – but they never fully engage with anything else in life after that. Instead, they might play golf all day and party at night with the same people – telling the same stories over and over – never realizing that this last third of life is a gift that was not meant to be squandered.

Keep in mind that I don’t believe all older, retired adults are like this, but we all are familiar with enough examples of what I just described to know it is the truth for a good portion of our retired population – to various degrees. It explains why a majority of retired people are not motivated to find and actualize their own potential, and instead spend their remaining lives in a state of entangled everydayness.

Self-Esteem and Self-Actualization

Based on my observations, many older adults start to lose their self-esteem after retirement. They are no longer contributing except by spending their money and volunteering their time (seniors volunteer on average one day per week), and they have lost the sense of accomplishment and the respect of others that is most easily acquired through work. They feel they aren’t who they once were, and all they see is decline and death for themselves in the future. The tendency is to then go into denial about their ultimate deterioration and do nothing to either offset it, or develop new qualities that would help them to excel in other areas. Fear becomes the prime motivator but remains largely unconscious. And, all of this seems to result in a sort of confusion and numbness that leads to inaction.

There are many possible reasons why men seem to fall into this category of people more readily than women. My students these past two weeks noticed immediately that the men in the DAP were outnumbered 3.5 to 1 by the women taking the program. Men have always seemed to have a more fragile identity than women, and so the loss of self-esteem that seems to accompany retirement for many men probably results in higher levels of stress and defensiveness. Of course, there are many other reasons why retired men might have less interest in actualizing their potential than women, but my class seemed to find this one of most interest.

Anyway, the solution to a loss of self-esteem at retirement is to get out of your comfort zone. It makes more sense to engage completely with life, develop fresh skills and qualities, and find creative new areas of your life where you enjoy a higher level of accomplishment and self-esteem. Only then will self-actualization become a possibility for a majority of retired adults.

That’s it for now,

Dudley

I had dinner last night with some friends and acquaintances. One of them is a Ph.D. Psychologist who has spent his entire career doing large research studies of different diets and their effect on obesity and diabetes. We got talking about the Dynamic Aging Program I will begin teaching/facilitating at Furman University starting September 17, and I asked him if he would like to talk for 45-90 minutes with my students about his findings. This is where the discussion got interesting.

The Scientific Law of Averages
I don’t want to put this person down at all – because he has done some extremely valuable work over the years. His working with large masses of people representing a cross-section of the census population has produced knowledge about “average” lifestyles, habits, and the results of certain diets on health and well-being that have helped many people. This information is useful because it addresses what is happening or will happen with the general masses of the population. However, this is not the only form of valuable research. In fact, this type of research can actually distort – and dampen – our expectations of what a human being is capable of achieving in their lifetime.

Modern science, taken to its extreme, treats people that are different (both positively and negatively) as aberrations from the norm. These people who are a couple of standard deviations or more from average are largely ignored in these studies, because the purpose of the research is to determine generalized knowledge which may or may not be true for any particular individual.

For instance, in my Dynamic Aging Program I am much more concerned about what an aging adult’s “potential” is – rather than how most older adults are actually behaving or what the averages show us. To do this, I am intentionally starting out with a group of exceptional and motivated older adults, rather than a cross-section of the older population. The research I plan to conduct over the next few years on dynamic aging should provide new information on how a person taking a more knowledgeable and proactive approach might optimize their own aging process – living a longer life of higher quality – while hopefully also observing a process of growth, development, and self-actualization that many older adults are capable of achieving in the last third of life – provided they are motivated to pursue this path.

My Psychologist friend said he was uncomfortable talking to any group of adults about their so-called potential, because he believed his research showed that people mostly acted from their conditioning, genetic blueprint, and/or social beliefs. In essence, he didn’t believe that older adults have the ability to achieve anything out of the ordinary in the last third of life. Instead – in his belief system – they will always fall back into the parameters of so-called “normal” behavior.

Crabs in a Pot
When I ponder the effect this type of scientific thinking has on an older population, the story about “Crabs in a Pot” comes to mind. Shellfish tend to taste better if they are boiled while still alive, but if you throw only one crab into a boiling pot of water, it will quickly use its claws to scramble up the side of pot and out onto the floor. The trick is to place several live crabs into the pot at the same time. In so doing, any single crab trying to scramble out of the pot will be pulled back in by the other crabs, and they all get cooked together.

The scientific determination that people are truly represented by a bunch of norms and averages creates a belief in our society that we have no options – that we have no potential that is any different from anyone else, and that we will all get pulled down by our friends and neighbors to the same set of common denominators. Science has actually created its own “social construction” of reality through this belief system, which acts as a barrier for anyone who is trying to live an extraordinary life. However, instead of boiling to death like our crab friends, most people adopt the belief that they have little or no control over their own aging process, and then cook in the slow process of age-related decline that is inevitable if one does not take proactive measures to constantly be changing and developing their potential.

In my belief, being like everyone else and having little or no hope for positive change would be a form of living death. Where else – other than my own growth process – could I find the same experience of adventure, excitement, the unknown, and the joy of constantly becoming a better person? How could I fulfill my need to achieve some unknown potential? What would I do with my time – play golf, bridge, take vacations, surf the internet? Shoot me now please.

I am not saying that my beliefs are even close to being widespread in our society today, but it could easily become that way if more people opened their eyes, saw through the lies created by the scientific paradigm and the social construction of reality, and quit trying to pull everyone else back into the pot with them. If you want to play golf every day until you can’t any more, or play bridge until you are so bored you can’t stand it and your butt hurts from sitting all day – then that is great. However, please don’t try to tell me that my ideas and aspirations are wrong. It just seems a little too convenient that a person can dismiss the possibility of something simply because it is not part of their past experience or belief system – especially when that something has such a tremendous possibility for improving their quality of life.

Instead, this dismissal of the possibility that we each have something great to achieve in the last third of life seems a little too much like “denial” – and the use of this and other defense mechanisms to take what we might think is the easy way out. But is that what you want – to take the easy way out of this life? Is this the meaning and purpose we have created for ourselves? Is this why we were born to this earth? Is this really going to make us happy? I don’t think so, but I guess I could be wrong.

It is nice to be blogging again after spending the entire summer promoting the DAP in the greater Greenville community. I am happy to say this effort appears to have paid off, because every available position in the program was quickly filled and I have even allowed more students to register than originally intended. There are currently close to 40 students enrolled. I am looking forward to the challenge of helping this brave group of older adults who are not willing to simply sit back and cook like crabs in a pot along with their friends and acquaintances. Now we’ll begin to see if an exceptional group of individuals can actually do exceptional things with their remaining lives.

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Until then.

Love, Dudley

When most of us talk about “belief” it is usually with regard to religious or spiritual beliefs – but we all have many beliefs that become expressed in our everyday thoughts, ideas, and actions. For instance, most of us believe that we must go see a doctor or take some pills if we get sick. Many times this belief turns out to be true, but there is a growing body of scientific evidence that suggests we all have the power to heal ourselves from many of the illnesses, injuries, and pain we sometimes experience. If this is true, then it might be our belief that only a doctor or drug can make us feel better that keeps us from successfully treating these conditions ourselves.

Beliefs can be conscious (often called our “core beliefs”) or unconscious. However, a belief can only be called the truth if it can be proven – at which time it then becomes knowledge. Our beliefs, along with our programmed conditioning and the knowledge attained as we get older, represent a psychological foundation in our mind from which all action arises.

What are our beliefs about aging?

With regard to aging adults, our beliefs about getting older (our perceived limitations, capabilities, ideas about self-worth, potential, etc.) are often shaped by society’s views of the aging process, and we tend to adjust our self-image and behavior to coincide with these beliefs. In other words, what we, and our society, believe about the aging process tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy – as actions which coincide with this belief system naturally emerge and are reflected in our behavior. As George Herbert Meade indicated – we tend to perceive ourselves to be how we perceive other people are perceiving us. This is especially true of how we perceive a group of “significant others” are perceiving us (friends, family, work associates, neighbors, etc.), but is also true for a larger group of “generalized others” which is represented by the perceptions we receive indirectly through the media, advertising, people we don’t know, and the like.

All of this can be explained neurologically as a set of conditioned synaptic pathways in the brain that control our thoughts, emotions, and behavior. These pathways originate from our belief structures, and then become reinforced over time through our thoughts and actions. Our original beliefs become reinforced through a process called “confirmation bias” – where we tend to pick and choose those experiences which register in our consciousness, based on our desire to confirm what we already believe. This tends to make us feel better about ourselves, and so we continue to do it – reinforcing and deepening the original pathways until they become habitual and largely unconscious. In other words, we act on our beliefs, believing they are knowledge, and then only see the data arising from our actions that confirm these existing beliefs. In this manner we often mistake our beliefs for knowledge – which causes us to lead a partially delusional life.

One of the biggest delusions I see older people having is their belief that they will feel the same – 5,10, even 20 years from now. They will be just as healthy, have the same physical capabilities, the same brain capacities, same interests, same friends, etc. We hear stories about 90 year old plus people who are still active and involved, but how many of those are there – really? It makes a great story, but most people who live to that age today were never subjected to the idea they could actually do something to stave off age-related decline. So instead, they just let aging happen to them, and in most cases it was simply a roll of the genetic dice. Those with good genes and an injury/disease free life lived relatively long pleasant lives. They became the inspiration for many hopeful stories that somehow make us feel better, because that just might one day be our story. This story sounds so nice that we want to believe in it – so we do.

There is no question that medical science is going to keep many of us living a lot longer than our parents or grandparents, but how are we really going to spend those extra years. Are we simply going to believe they will be OK, or are we going to do everything we can to make sure we have the highest quality of life possible during those extra years? If you want to roll the dice, go right ahead. But if you want to proactively impact your own aging process, you are probably going to have to first change your beliefs.

Why Do We Defend Our Existing Beliefs About Aging?

The point I am trying to make is that most of us are in denial of what our future might look like. We don’t want to think about what an extended old age would be like, if we were physically and mentally challenged. In fact, being physically challenged is one thing but, if we are senile or worse, we might not even be able to think about it – we would just be sort of “out of it.” Denial is a frequent condition for most older adults, and it serves to maintain their existing beliefs about aging. Denial is the tool many of us use to maintain our belief that we have little or no control over our own aging process.

OK, so why are we in denial about this thing called aging, and ability to positively impact our own aging process? First of all, people have never lived this long on the average. It has simply never been an issue in the past for a vast majority of people. Second, medical science has been so intent on extending human life in the past decades, it failed to investigate how we might improve our quality of life (QOL) in the process of living longer lives. Third, it has only been recently that other sciences – such as psychology, neuroscience, and gerontology – have done the studies to prove that people really do have control over roughly half of their destiny, as opposed to it being determined 100% by their genes, conditioning, and/or fate.

The shift that is occurring in human consciousness is from being mostly passive people – who allow life to happen to them and rely on others to tell them what to do – to becoming autonomous human beings who understand that they largely control their own destiny. We are moving towards a belief that we really can positively change our own lives – but the quality we must attain to accomplish this feat is “will.” We must have the will to do what is so obviously best for us. We cannot allow ourselves to remain in a state of denial about how we spend the last 10-20 years of our life.

The “Science” of Positive Thinking

The most significant development in human science I have seen in many years are the recent discoveries using brain scan technology. Over the last two decades, as this technology has developed, scientists have discovered that we really are what we think. So, for most of us, if we don’t believe we can positively impact our own aging process – beyond what we are already dong with regard to diet and exercise – then we won’t. If we believe we are going to be stiff and sore when we get out of our chair, then we will be. If we believe we are sick or crippled in some manner, then we will become the physical manifestation of that belief.

Quite simply, the negative messages most of us have going round and round in our heads limit us from becoming all we can be. But what if we could change these messages to something more positive and life affirming? We could positively impact our own QOL. We could get up out of our chairs and start walking without any discomfort. We might even be able to heal ourselves – just by believing we can do so. By changing our internal messages from negative to positive, we might be able to do almost anything.

The possibility that older adults might someday practice “self-directed neuroplasticity” to improve their attitudes, reduce fear, positively alter their personalities, break bad habits, become more optimistic, be happier, feel closer to others, or just about anything else, is a new idea. Sure, we heard all this back in the 60’s and 70’s during the New Age Movement, but that was just a load of bunk – right?

Most scientists and medical professionals have said this form of positive thinking was delusional and, that if we really wanted to get better, we needed to do what doctors and scientists told us to do. The problem with this is that medicine is largely based on a view of empirical science, which says that if something can’t be observed and measured, then it doesn’t exist. In the 60’s and 70’s we couldn’t see the mind or measure it – so it didn’t exist except as a block of interrelated conditioned responses. Now, through brain scanning technology we can see the mind at work, and we can see how it lights up when we do one thing and goes dark when we do another. We also now realize what an amazing machine our mind is, continually producing new brain cells and having the ability to forge new synaptic pathways to accomplish almost whatever we want to do.

How to change our beliefs

My own observation of this process, is that a person must first “believe” they can positively change their mind and its responses. This is difficult to do – at the level necessary – because our society has been brainwashed into thinking doctors and scientists are the smart ones, and that in order to get better we have to go see a professional – whether that is a doctor, a surgeon, a psychologist, a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, or whatever. What most of us actually believe, at the deepest levels, is that we do not have the personal power to change our own lives. If that is what we consciously or unconsciously believe, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, how does a person go about changing what it is they believe in? At one level I believe that I can make my own positive changes without the help of anybody, but at a deeper level I have my doubts. So, I don’t practice my own version of self-directed neuroplasticity as much as I could. How can I change this deeper set of beliefs – which I know are false to some degree – so that I can have the freedom to mold myself into whoever I want to become?

In Buddhism, they stress the importance of a Teacher and a Sangha in a person’s development. A teacher is someone who knows more about a particular subject than you do and is willing to share their knowledge. There aren’t many dynamic aging teachers running around today, and even those individuals who have aged in a naturally dynamic manner may not be able to provide much insight into your aging process – because each of us needs to approach optimal aging in our own unique way.

A sangha is a group of fellow practitioners, at all levels of development, who are trying to create the same set of beliefs and changes in themselves as you are. They act as the support system most people need to proactively experience transformational change. Without a sangha – or support group – many of the changes required to age more dynamically cannot be readily achieved. If we surround ourselves with people holding the belief systems of the mass consciousness, then we will more than likely continue to hold these beliefs – at some level – in spite of our having a different conscious understanding of our capabilities. Our beliefs go beyond a simple cognitive understanding of things – they are a set of neural synaptic pathways that have been forged through the interplay of belief, cognition, emotion, genetics, experience, and probably many other factors of which we are not even aware.

The bottom line of this discussion is “don’t try to do this alone.” You need support to age optimally. You need to surround yourself, at least initially, with a group of fellow believers. Find them. Organize them. Do and discuss things with them. Practice with them. This is one of the most important and least understood keys to optimal aging.

That’s all for now,

Dudley

I have been telling my students for over ten years that we need to live more on our “edge” as we get older. I say this because I have observed many older adults who seem to be sort of “coasting” – settling back, doing what is easy, doing what is fun – instead of challenging themselves, pushing their boundaries, and engaging mindfully with the world around them. I would personally find it very difficult to just coast along knowing that I only have a limited number of coherent years remaining – but others apparently can. I often wonder why this is the case.

One reason could be that older people have been motivated by others to do things their entire lives – build a career, raise a family, participate in community service, and so forth. In the first two thirds of life, we don’t really question these things we do, because everyone else (it seems) is doing the same thing. The pressure is to fit in and do what others do, because “how could so many people be wrong?”

When we think of “Ageism” in America, we most often think of the negative prejudices our society holds against its most aged members: physical and mental deterioration, uselessness, non-productivity, a drain on society’s resources, and the list goes on and on. However, ageism also holds some seemingly benign assumptions about growing older, one of which goes something like this: “Retirement and old age is a time to kick back, relax, enjoy, savor, and do as little as you can get away with.” Due to a lack of any other strong messages out there, this seems like the right thing for many people to do when they retire. Many people also travel quite a bit, spend time with family, volunteer, go to OLLI, exercise, have a hobby, etc. – but these activities are also condoned by our society, and none of them require that the person be on their edge. In fact, these activities are well within the comfort zone of most individuals. People might be active as they age, but they are not necessarily on their edge.

Living on the Edge and Personal Development

Living within your comfort zone is not a bad thing, it just won’t lead to much growth or development. When we associate with the same people, do the same activities, interact with others in the same ways – we are rarely challenged, and there is no felt need for improvement. Everything is fine the way it is, and we are fine the way we are. And, if you associate with a like-minded group of people, there will be a collective feeling that we are all fine the way we are because there is no one of importance within the group who is rocking the boat. Fitting in has some wonderful advantages, but leading a daring, meaningful, and exciting life of self-actualization isn’t one of them.

I think a major reason why people tend to support this view of trying to live a “comfortable” lifestyle after they retire is because there has not been an acceptable alternative presented to our society’s aging population until now. I believe that dynamic aging is that alternative, and being on one’s “edge” a good deal of the time is a very important and visible quality of someone who is aging dynamically – and for good reason.

How does living on your edge contribute to the dynamic aging process? First of all, being on one’s edge – or “dynamic instability” – is a necessary condition for personal development. In other words, someone who is trying to maximize the amount of personal development in their lives will frequently be on the edge of their comfort zone, capabilities, skill levels, emotional and cognitive tolerance, self-imposed restrictions, deep seated fears, capacity to hear feedback; and their ability to be authentic, love their self and others, be mindful in everything they do, and interact with others in a meaningful and honest manner. It is a condition of being “on” – mindful, self-aware, inquiring, exploring, fearless, attuned – but also knowing when to back “off “ to take care of yourself, re-charge your batteries, and chillax (a combination of the words “chill out” and “relax” that my niece taught me).

I find myself on my personal edge a lot lately. There has been a lot of going out and meeting with new people who might partner with me in the DAP, giving presentations on the material, dealing with the bureaucracy at Furman and OLLI, learning a completely new teaching style, and trying to “walk the talk” by doing the practices and interacting mindfully with everyone and everything I encounter. Being an introvert, most of these things are out of my natural comfort zone, but instead of being stressed out, wrung out, or worn out – I am energized by all this interaction, and experiencing new growth and development every day.

This experience has been just the opposite of what I might have previously believed. Instead of feeling drained at the end of the day, or afraid of standing before an audience and talking about my ideas, I am completely invigorated by these experiences. There is clearly an increased energy generated by my interactions, and I can almost feel the growth of new neurons and synaptic pathways in my brain due to all the new things I am doing, and people I am meeting.

Also, through this meaningful engagement with my environment, I have been forced to learn a lot more about computers, websites, social media, and technology in general. I have been forced to change my teaching style to become more interactive and experiential. I am being pushed to make personal changes that will allow me to interact more effectively with other people, deal with higher stress levels, teach more effectively, and behave consistent with the subject matter I espouse. By engaging meaningfully with my environment, I am forced to keep up with the changes occurring in the world around me – and by so doing, I can become a better promoter of my ideas on dynamic aging, and positively affect more older adults through my interactions.

Living on your Edge Promotes Personal Development in Two Ways

You see, when you are on your edge and engaging meaningfully with your environment, you are creating growth and personal development in two ways. First of all, the increased interaction with new people, ideas, ways of doing things, etc. will result in the discovery of more inconsistencies between our self-perception and how other people view us. We will also have the opportunity to see that many of our opinions and ideas are flawed or out of date, and in need of change. Perhaps even our deepest beliefs will be challenged and undergo a modification that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Interaction naturally creates more learning opportunities, and our personal development is a lifelong learning process that embraces and capitalizes on these opportunities.

The second way engaging meaningfully with our environment causes development is the need to learn new qualities and skills created by having an external meaning and purpose. To achieve this meaning and purpose I must keep up with all the changes going on in the world that affect the achievement of my potential. In my case, this has been technology, teaching methods, emotional and social skills, certain qualities of personality such as acceptance, patience, compassion, empathy, and others. I have to develop these qualities and skills or else I will not be able to effectively communicate my ideas to the world. And, I will not be able to compete with people who are more adept in these areas than I, even though they might have lesser ideas. If we want to make a significant contribution during our remaining life, we cannot dis-engage from our rapidly changing world. We must instead keep up with those changes that can give us an advantage with what we are trying to accomplish.

The dynamic instability created by having an external meaning and purpose in your life, and engaging mindfully with the world as a means of achieving this meaning and purpose, will produce more personal development, higher energy levels, and generate more new brain cells and synaptic pathways, than any other thing we can do. And it is more stimulating, interesting, and exciting than hanging around with the same people and doing the same things, day in and day out. There is no way a person can lose following this strategy, even though it might seem so at first. All it takes is a mindshift, the motivation to start hanging out on your edge more often, a little persistence to create a new habit, and then the rewards of being on your edge will ultimately make this process self-perpetuating. You will be having so much fun, there is no way you could go back to living solely within your comfort zone.

Regards, Dudley

Chris and I attended a session with our Diamond Approach group in Atlanta this past weekend, and one of the things the teachers talked about were two kinds of ignorance inherent to the human condition: learned and innate.

Learned ignorance is all the conditioning we experience growing up in interaction with our parents and society in general. It is the conventional point of view that we have all sorts of limitations, certain things are worth pursuing and others aren’t, certain beliefs and ideas are better than others, we are each completely separate individuals, etc. Most of the ways in which this type of ignorance is expressed is in self-serving behavior, or self-centeredness. This type of ignorance is inherent to the human condition because it is unavoidable to some degree – no matter how wonderful our parents or community were when we were growing up. Learning to overcome this type of ignorance is a lifetime journey that I call personal development.

The second type of ignorance is inherent to the human condition as well. It is the ignorance of what we don’t know – about all things in general, as well as our potential as a human being. I gave a talk in the community where I live three weeks ago, and I titled the presentation “You don’t know what you don’t know about the aging process.” There is no truer statement than this, and yet my experience with other people is that they often think they know all there is to know on certain subjects – and thereby actually remain ignorant of a lot of information that could vastly improve their lives. This is a blissful type of ignorance that feeds the ego with all sorts of self-serving messages such as: “I am great,” “I am doing all that I can,” or “I don’t need to listen to that other person or read that article because I already know everything that is important on the subject.”

The truth is that almost all of us enter the last third of life with an extremely narrow view of reality. We simply don’t know a lot of things because the object of the middle third of our lives was to build a career, raise a family, put money aside for retirement, etc. We may have been an expert in one field or another, a “Captain of Industry,” a “Great Mom or Dad,” or a “pillar of the community,” but these are only very narrow slices of life – and not even the most important ones when we get older.

The fact is that most of us enter the last third of life with an exceedingly limited set of opinions, beliefs, and perspectives – and our knowledge is usually confined to only a small portion of reality. We most likely move into this stage sharing a fairly conventional view about how the world works while, at the personal level, we are likely to be relatively unconscious, defensive and resistant to change, and almost completely unaware of the conditioning that our egos and superegos have placed upon us.

We might be highly intelligent, but the expanse of our intelligence is miniscule compared to all there is to know of importance. Add to this the lack of development around our learned ignorance, and the lack of any societal understanding of what it is like to age in today’s world – and so most of us wander into the aging process with no idea of how to make it better, and don’t even believe we can.

There is a lot of societal inertia contributing to this state of ignorance. First of all, it feels good to think we are so smart and already doing all we can. It is obviously easier, because we don’t have to do anything new or challenging. It certainly doesn’t buck up against any societal norms, since the mass consciousness is soundly asleep – or at best lethargic. Also, most of us have been brought up to believe that we have to be “doing” something outside of ourselves in order to be productive – and many of us are good at this type of thing. So, as we get older we set up a workshop in our basements, take up knitting or some other craft, become an “artist,” play golf six times a week, volunteer, take a history class – the list of “doing kind of things” is almost endless.

There is nothing wrong with doing these things. If you enjoy doing something, then do it. But, if you want to overcome the ignorance I have described in this blog and make the most out of your remaining years, you also need to intentionally engage with some form of self-development, while opening yourself up to the increasing body of knowledge around the aging process and how to optimize it. Then it becomes a different type of doing, but a “practice” is still a form of doing – and so should be understandable to most people.

There are many forms of practice that will improve the quality of your life as you get older – positivity, brain-training, meditation, exercise, nutrition, gratitude, forgiveness, and the list goes on and on. However, it is my belief – that while all these things are also important – the most important thing a person can “do” is mindfully engage with every person, activity, experience, feeling, reaction, and so on that you encounter each day. This doesn’t require any additional time on your part – only a change in how you spend your time.

Instead of unconsciously going through the motions – thinking about where you have to be next, or what you would rather be doing – make each moment an inquiry into who you are and what you are experiencing. This form of practice only requires a change in mind, while providing the following benefits:

• Make your life much more interesting,
• Keep your brain cognitively sharper than any brain-training program,
• Decrease learned ignorance and create an increasingly greater self-understanding,
• It will eventually make you happier, and
• Improve the quality of your interactions with yourself, others, and the world around you.

Better yet – you can start doing this right now.

Love,  Dudley

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One of the basic principles of my LIFE Model is the concept of “Interaction.” It is my belief that, as aging adults, we must find new ways to engage and interact more mindfully with our environment in order to:

• Escalate our own personal growth process,
• Maintain or even improve cognitive functioning,
• Become more resilient in the face of increasingly higher rates of personal and external change, and
• Improve energy levels through our relations with new people, ideas, ways of doing things, etc.

For me, the key to this type of interaction is that it must be conscious and meaningful – not just the same familiar interactions I normally have with family, friends, familiar places, and old ways of doing things. Instead, I have found my most engaging and energizing interactions are realized when I am on my personal “edge” – of my skills, capabilities, comfort zone, healthy stress levels, and so on. I have found this edge to be a place of exhilaration, intense and often wonderful emotions, animation, happiness, challenge, flow, and aliveness. Let me provide a recent example.

In my current life, I have found this edge with my work on dynamic aging. Being an introvert by nature, I am clearly on my edge when talking on this subject with other people – especially large groups of people. Last Thursday evening was my first major presentation on dynamic aging to a large audience – over 90 older adults from the community in which I live. At first I was a little nervous, but once I got rolling it became a thrilling experience – and I have been receiving wonderful feedback on the event ever since from those who were there, or even those who only heard about it from others.

Of course, in my mind I could have always done better – and it is true that I could have given more concrete examples, not covered so much material, had better eye contact, been more attentive to the needs expressed by the audience, and other things. But this isn’t the point I am trying to make. The point is that I was on my edge, interacting meaningfully with lots of other people, fulfilling the purpose in life I have been given at this point in time, helping other people understand there is a greater potential for themselves in the last third of life than our society would have them believe – and, I was having a ball!

I am still energized by the event, and can easily feel the personal growth I experienced during that hour presentation – development of myself as a public speaker, my own knowledge of the dynamic aging process, my feelings of empathy and compassion for what other people are going through in their lives, my love of life, and my ability to rise above all that is challenging in my own aging process by helping others. I am so joyous to have finally found meaning and purpose in my life that I began crying while writing the first draft of this blog entry. I can’t imagine being a luckier person than I am right now.

I believe that meaningful, purposeful interaction with others, while on your personal edge, is the key to optimal aging. However, there is a lot that goes into this new paradigm for the aging process. Finding your own meaning, purpose, and personal edge requires a little different journey for everyone. It is a highly individualized process, because by the last third of life we are each a truly unique person; each with our own capabilities, limitations, personalities, experiences, and conditioning. There is no cookie-cutter approach one can adopt – at least that I am aware of.

Instead, I believe one must experiment. Get out there. Be bold. Start interacting in new ways. Meet new people who are interesting, excited about things in their own lives, who talk about subjects they are passionate about, who don’t suck the energy out of you, and who seem more alive than yourself and others. Seek out new ideas and ways of doing things – putting your own ego and conditioning aside – and then become open to the wave of change that will envelop you when this occurs. Engage completely and mindfully with everyone and everything you do – noticing each of your own thoughts and emotions as they arise, while inquiring into their origins and the effect they are having on yourself and others.

I know this is a lot to take in, but the bottom line is to go out and do everything as mindfully, and with as much self-awareness, as you can. And, you can start doing this right now.

This type of interaction is its own reward. It creates a richness and quality to life that cannot possibly be generated if we only interact in our old, habitual, and conditioned ways. It might require a little effort at first, but I am certain it will instantly make your life more energized and interesting. And – I guarantee you – through this process true meaning and purpose will emerge. Maybe not tomorrow, or next month, or even next year – but one day. And, it will not be society’s meaning, or that of the mass consciousness – but your own truly autonomous and joyful meaning to life. The choice is yours to make: inertia or interaction. What are you waiting for?

Love,  Dudley

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As I continue to inquire into my own aging process and that of others, I am finding there is a recurring question many of us over 60 years of age are asking ourselves: “What is my purpose?”

Obviously, not everyone asks this question. Probably not even most people. They either simply don’t think about it, or are too afraid of the answer. But more and more, I am listening to people talk about meaning and purpose, and how they feel a need to re-define it for themselves now that they are getting older.

As healthy older adults, we are living in masses 10-20 years longer than our grandparents. Not all of us, but those of us who are already 65-70 years of age, disease free, and take care of ourselves by exercising regularly and eating well, will probably live to 90 or beyond. The simple fact is that some of us will live a lot longer than our parents and grandparents, and many of us that fall into this category also have the means to do something really special with this extra time. The basic question is: “What?”

The stories we heard about retirement or growing old when we were younger play heavily into this. The word “retire” means to “stop work willingly,” “withdraw,” or “go to bed.” As a result, many of us grew up thinking retirement would be this wonderful life of repose and contemplation – a time to dis-engage from worldly pursuits and live a life of leisure and enjoyment.

Other people retire and want to keep doing the same thing that was meaningful to them during midlife. I know a couple of doctors like this. Being consumed by work, accumulation of knowledge, and patients for 40 years, they don’t know what to do with themselves after they retire. Many cannot see themselves doing anything other than being a doctor, but knowledge in that field fades rapidly when you aren’t seeing patients or working with colleagues. Some people – who similarly cannot let go of their past – remain overly attached to their children and grandchildren, unable to move beyond the role of parent. Many fail to recognize that their children are trying to make it on their own, and don’t need their advice and caretaking any longer. Other people, who can, might continue to work – maybe at a job that is different from the one they held in their primary career, but for them it is important to just keep doing something “productive.”

The baby-boomers have fueled a new paradigm for aging in America. It is called “Activity Theory.” We all know people like this: they work hard, party hard, travel whenever they have the opportunity, visit friends and family, have projects they work on when they are home; play softball, tennis, jog, bike, swim. They are always on the go, always active, always doing something. I know many people like this, and they are generally great people. However, this is clearly not a sustainable strategy into the indefinite future.

The one thing in common between all these different ways of aging is that there is no emphasis on finding new – age-appropriate – purpose or meaning in the final third of life. They are either acting out some role thought to be appropriate after retirement, trying to maintain an identity structure they had during midlife, or else trying to get as much enjoyment out of life as possible from the ways that made them happy when they were younger. Most people seem to either give in to the aging process, or else fight it for all they are worth.

If we look at this from different stages in life, we can generally see that in the first third of life our purpose was given to us by our parents and our peers. We were told to go to school, get a job, find a mate, build a career, start a family, or some variant of these societal directives (or the occasional “reaction formation” by an individual against conformity into a completely alternative lifestyle). I know there are lots of exceptions to this sort of upbringing, but probably not among those looking at this website. So, if you are reading this blog, then I am sure you recognize there is a clear upward trajectory to this stage in life, taking us to the next stage.

The second third of life is again heavily influenced by societal directives, because we have not yet reached a stage of psychological development where we have any degree of autonomy, and the purpose of this stage is clear: raise your family – while building self-esteem and security through career, role fulfillment, making money, paying off the mortgage, building a 401K, etc. Our identities are strengthened as we decide whether we are liberals or conservatives, for or against abortion, religious or not religious, and so on. At this stage in life our purpose is to develop a strong identity and then learn to feel somewhat good about who we are. Again, there is a clear upward trajectory – we have purpose and meaning in our lives.

However, now we get to the final third of life, and most of us face a shattering of our old identity structures: Our looks and strength are in decline, we retire (or get retired) from our careers, our children grow up and move away. In some ways, every day provides a new blow to our egos. We look in the mirror and ask ourselves: “Who the hell is that?”

Now, what does society tell us our purpose should be for this last third of life? It really depends on whom you are listening to. Some people say it is time to dis-engage from an active life and prepare for death. Others say the purpose is to maintain your identity from midlife for as long as you can. Still others say to keep active for as long as you can. Probably the thing I hear most from older people is that they want to have fun and be happy.

Now happiness means a lot of different things to different people, but I generally agree with this strategy – except for one thing. I am also now seeing many of those people who initially chose this strategy beginning to question if there isn’t more to life than just having fun. They are starting to look for something meaningful to do, some purpose; they are looking to put some upward trajectory back into their lives – similar to their prior life stages. However, this time there is no one telling us what that purpose should be, nor are there any consistent societal norms. This time, we must find our purpose within ourselves – and most of us have never done this before. We don’t even know how.

This gets us down to a very basic structural component of human nature. We seem to need to be striving for something larger than ourselves in order to be truly happy. We don’t seem to be able to simply retire and be happy – especially if we now have all these additional years to think about it. Eventually we get bored, we feel like we are missing something, things don’t feel quite right, the zip goes out of our lives, a grayness sets into our brains, and we lose our passion for living. We can’t go back to who we once were. We also can’t simply remain who we are now, and stabilize things forever – that’s obviously crazy. We have to find some way to instill new meaning, purpose, and growth into our lives – or these extra 10-20 years many of us now have are going to become a living hell.

I think this is all I am going to say about this for now. But I think you get the point. We need to find new – age-appropriate – meaning and purpose for ourselves in this final stage in life, or else we are losing the opportunity of our lifetime. Think about it.

Love,  Dudley

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