The Power of Positive Thinking in Aging

[caption id="attachment_853" align="alignnone" width="292"]

by Barbara Knickerbocker Beskind[/caption] At a recent presentation at the USC/Davis School of Gerontology, these thoughts came to mind when I was asked to speak on the power of positive thinking in aging. In my experience, preparing for healthy aging is a life-long investment. Just as you don’t start your retirement account when you reach 65, starting to live a healthy life style as you face your senior years is foolish thinking. Facing the senior years can be scary. It is a time when your challenges may be greatest when you have fewer resources – physical, emotional and financial. In order to prepare a powerful platform for aging, certain factors are key: a lifelong education, curiosity and passion; a broad personal and career experience; an identity separate from your spouse; and a positive identity in your older stage of life. Be proactive! Every challenge you have already met has honed your coping skills so that you have better resources with which to cope now. The keys to healthy aging that are apparent to me are life styles and choices, positive personal traits, and a healthy adaptation to loss – in my case, vision loss. I will elaborate on these three keys. 1. Life style becomes choices for healthy living Don’t abuse the good genes you were given. Avoid addictive drugs and alcohol. Keep pain killer medicines to a minimum by good exercise in physical therapy, attitude, and posture. Maintain a suitable diet and exercise. Get a good education, have broad interests and read widely. Consider a new focus of passionate interest every eight years. A breadth of interests and meeting life’s challenges head-on gives strength in aging. Faith – Don’t go into the aging years without it. It is less important as to which faith or religious or spiritual bent shapes your deepest beliefs. In an Army interview about 75 years ago, I was asked, “What would you do if you became a P.O.W.? What do you bring to the situation?” In other words, how would you mentally endure a long or difficult set of circumstances such as having a life-changing accident or developing a serious health condition? God sits on my shoulder and makes decisions for me even before I know I need them. 2. Developing positive traits throughout life Be well-organized, self-disciplined, self-motivated and self-reliant. Be resourceful and a good problem-solver. Preserve the skills and interests that insure personal safety/security as well as leisure/pleasure, and the joy of doing for others. “… What do you bring to the situation?” (see above ARMY interview) This is true for positive aging. What strengths do you bring to see you through difficult times? Give yourself KUDOS when you struggle for minutes and finally achieve it. When coping with aging and low vision, as in my case, you learn to budget your energy, voice, time, and resources. To keep young at heart and mind, I make a concerted effort to always make friends and engage people who are several generations younger. 3. Healthy adaptation to loss – such as vision loss The more challenges you have met and surmounted already in your long life, the better prepared you are to face new and ever-demanding challenges. My loss of vision due to Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is an inconvenient truth, but it does not define me. It is my belief that my visual impairment may indeed be God’s gift, so that I can analyze and use my design skills – skills of observation that do not depend on sight. Loss of sight does not preclude loss of vision. Although I have less eyesight, I can still engage my skills as follows:

• Cognitive vision – what I have seen all my life is stored in my memory. I don’t need to have a clear picture of scenery and common items around me. I can simply draw upon the memory bank to suffice.
• Visualization of spatial-relations has been emblematic of designing in 3D throughout my life. Even in my sleep, images of viable design solutions come to mind.
• Envisioning future plans, be it tomorrow’s trip or the details envisioned for the next book or lecture. I have fewer visual distractions, enabling me to focus better.

AMD is NOT a terminal disease. It is scary at times when you first get the diagnosis, or are declared “legally blind,” or face the impact of change from the dry AMD (foggy bottom) to the wet AMD which portents more serious “black holes.” Most scary of all is the little-known aspect of AMD that doctors often forget to mention: Charles Bonnet Syndrome, when visual hallucinations suddenly appear. Without knowing that this is a part of AMD, people may understandably think they are losing their minds as well as their vision! Some may not want to share the experience, even with their family. Keep a sense of humor and make it a part of you. LAUGH at errors. Once, for example, I sent a Valentine meant for a girl to my 13 year old grandson! Another time, I mistook a person at my dinner table for a woman named Doris. “Doris? Do I look like DORIS?” said a deep male voice. Just laugh. As the saying goes, “laugh and the world laughs with you! Cry, and you cry alone.” In summary, although we are talking about healthy aging, there are life changes we cannot control. However, there are aspects of healthy aging we can control. Life is an artform. Every life has beauty and value. It can be as mundane as a wall-to-wall carpet or as richly complex as a Bokhara Persian rug – perhaps a rare, azure blue one, never completed by its maker without its own, identifiable signature error. See also April 6, 2016 post on Getting to Know Barbara Knickerbocker Beskind by special guest contributor Barbara Knickerbocker Beskind