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Aging wisely begins with choices, attitudes, and relationships that help us stay purposeful, resilient, and engaged through life's later transitions.
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Welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens.
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Today I'm joined by Scott Fisher, co-creator of the Aging Wisely Project.
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Scott, welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens.
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Thank you, Tony.
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Glad to be here.
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Yeah, well, excited to share what you're doing with the audience.
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Is you know, what led you to creating the Aging Wisely Project and to publishing the Aging Wisely book?
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Well, you know, it's uh it's been an almost nine-year journey.
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And uh, you know, my my best friend and uh lifelong friend really, uh, he and I met our first year in college and were thrown together as roommates, and we stayed friends ever since.
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And uh and he and I were sitting around one day and we realized we were in our late 60s, and retirement was creeping up on us, and old age was creeping up on us even faster.
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And my friend said, he said, we ought to do something together.
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Well, Ben Green is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and my background is organizational psychology, and we decided it would serve us well to study how to get old successfully.
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And after reading much of the literature on aging well, we decided let's go interview some old people.
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And we spent the next couple of years, partly through the COVID pandemic, interviewing elders and sort of asking them to immerse themselves in a two-hour experience of telling us their life story.
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And we learned so much about them, but we learned so much about their journeys and how there was a similar pattern emerging in terms of what it takes to age well versus not so well, that we ended up writing a book, which was part of the journey and a big challenge for the two of us.
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But you know, it's it's kept us occupied with continued research and presentations and and just engaging people in a discussion about what the challenges are of aging wisely and and what skills and attitudes we need to work on to do this part of our life well.
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Well, that's that's great because I I you know, I mean, we're an aging society, so this is a very timely conversation.
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Is so when you use the term aging well, what do you mean by that?
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Well, you know, our focus uh for for those of your listeners who, you know, maybe took a psychology course in college, you know, we we sort of needed some framework.
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And we decided what interested us was the model developed about 75 years ago by Eric Erickson, who focused on psychosocial development and came up with a framework of eight life stages that we all go through as human beings.
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You know, Ericsson was a psychoanalyst, but he disagreed with Sigmund Freud that it was all only all about what was going on in our heads and the stuff we we didn't really understand because it was uncont, they were unconscious processes.
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Ericsson said, you know, it's that, but it's more.
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It's our genetic inheritance, it's the culture we're brought up in, it's the relationships we have with early caregivers, our parents, and the adults around us who help us get a worldview, a way of either trusting the world and feeling like we have some confidence in moving through our lives successfully, or we we grow up without that sense of confidence and confidence and trust in the world, and that and that causes problems.
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And you know, the limitation of Ericsson's model was that back in the 1940s and 50s, people didn't live nearly as long or as healthy as long as we are now, and so his last stage of life basically said, well, you get into your 60s and maybe your 70s, and you you bring your life to a uh a successful close by just understanding your journey and and feeling a sense of integrity in the way you lived your life.
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And we looked at the data we were collecting from the from the people we were interviewing.
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We said, look, people are living into their 80s and 90s and even into their hundreds, and and what are they doing with with that extra time, especially when they're relatively healthy for much longer?
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And we came up with a proposed ninth developmental stage that we called elder identity revision, which which really is focused on two things.
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How do you with one hand cope with all the losses that start accumulating as we get old?
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We lose our strength, we lose our hearing, we lose our sight, we lose we lose our friends, we lose our loved ones.
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How do we manage to cope with and adapt to that and at the same time continue to to to maintain purpose and meaning in our life and move forward successfully to the end?
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And and so that's what we wrote about.
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And and you know, from our standpoint, uh in order to do that well, it takes at least five key attitudes and skill sets that we called healthy habits.
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And and we put them into a uh an acronym called GRASP.
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So five letters G-R-A-S-P that stand for gratitude, resilience, active habits, self-acceptance, and purpose.
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And it was clear from our interview data and the analysis that came out of that, that that those those five skills and attitudes correlated very highly with aging wisely.
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So that's that's in a nutshell kind of where we've gone with the book and our research.
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Yeah, well, I'm just reflecting on it because you know it's not, you know, one of the things they talk about as you age is that, you know, a lot of our identity is tied up in our work life, but that's not anything in those five skills.
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And it's not anything that you hear from many other elders.
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You don't hear somebody say, Boy, I wish I'd gotten that promotion.
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Or I mean the old adage, you know, nobody says, you know, I wish I'd worked harder.
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Um, you know, but what's interesting about these five skills in my mind is that there's something that anybody can do.
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Uh, you know, that they're available to everyone.
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You don't need to be wealthy, you don't need to have any special physical talents or anything.
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And I think that's really cool.
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Well, I I think, and it was, you know, I think illuminating for us that so much could be accomplished by focusing on those five skills and attitudes.
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You know, if if if we ask ourselves, uh, are we more naturally an optimist or a pessimist?
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Do we feel like the glass is half full or half empty?
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It's not just our research, it's it's a lot of research over the past two generations that that validate that people who see the glass as half full are much happier and healthier, especially in old age.
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And there's a lot of research about how just something as simple as keeping a gratitude journal and every night keeping a little notebook by your nightstand and and jotting down the the th three things that you are grateful for that happen that day.
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They could be big things, they could be very small things, but focusing on the positive and focusing on what we have as opposed to uh getting depressed and angry about what we've lost or what we don't have or or what aches and pains we had to deal with that day is is very important in in in how we look at our lives.
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So would you say that's you know one of the easy well, not easiest things, but one of the things that can help people at least have a more optimistic view.
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I mean, you know, you're a psychologist, I'm not, but it seems like people are often hardwired to be an optimist or pessimist.
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So actually, maybe that's a good question.
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Are people hardwired to be optimists or pessimists?
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Well, it's it's interesting that you use the term hardwired, and I suppose you could find experts um, you know, who would argue both ways.
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I mean, my personal opinion is that rather than say we're hardwired, I'd say we're probably we're probably born with preferences.
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So, you know, there are some people who who just naturally are more optimistic than others, or or other people who are more pessimistic.
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But these are skills that can be learned.
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And so if I'm uh if I'm a very strong pessimist, but I but I focus a little more energy each day on the things that I'm grateful for, over time, I think you can move the needle.
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And and moving the needle maybe only 20 or 30 percent doesn't make you a raging optimist, but but but maybe it helps um it helps you look forward to things in life and helps you avoid the isolation and depression that tends to overwhelm us as we get older, if we if we allow it to.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
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And you know, as I reflect on this, there's there's so much here with what you're talking about that uh, you know, it's really gotten me thinking deeply about this is you know, isolation is something that's getting a lot of attention right now, you know, a study showing that isolation is like one of the worst health hazards for us as we age.
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I mean, would you agree with that that isolation is a health hazard?
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Or well, maybe not a health hazard, but uh an issue.
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I think I think it's a very significant issue, and and it affects it affects how we do how we make decisions about the living situation that we're gonna be in.
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You know, many of us, myself included, um have have made commitments to trying to age in place and to live in our home, my single family residence, as long as I possibly can.
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And and and and that's what most of us probably want to do.
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But at the same time, we have to recognize that that that that's that that's a risk in terms of isolation.
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It's important that we all realize that, you know, like uh for me, I've been struggling with hearing loss for the past dozen years.
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And I wear hearing aids and they're wonderful, but they're not the same.
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And they're they're not the magic solution.
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But the research is quite clear that if you have a hearing loss, the odds of death of of your have struggling with depression and um a higher likelihood of uh of having dementia is really significant.
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So I would I would encourage everybody listening out there if if uh if you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves or or saying what or or just not feeling like you're part of the conversation, go get your hearing tested.
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Go try out some hearing aids, as annoying as they can be, it can really make a difference.
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So isolation can be in the big in the in the macro sense of where the where you live and whether you stay connected to other people.
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And it can be also in in things like, you know, does it just seem too hard to get out of the house and go meet some friends?
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Um we have to we have to work hard to keep ourselves engaged as we get older.
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So when you talk about isolation um and uh you know community with other people, um is it physical actually getting out, or is a Zoom call enough?
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Uh, you know, for that, do people need to get out of the house and actually interact in person?
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Well, you know, one of the things Ben and I learned very quickly, Tony, is that every one of us is unique.
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We we all have that unique combination of our genetic inheritance, um our early childhood experiences with caregivers, and our our own life experiences that we've responded to and reacted to.
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So there's no there's no magic answer.
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But you know, I would encourage everyone listening to to think about what it is they need.
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And and and if and if you're a person who needs face-to-face physical proximity with people, then you need to find ways to do that.
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You know, get out there and play some pickleball.
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Even if you're even if you don't consider yourself particularly athletic.
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From the folks, I'm not a pickleball player, but I have lots of friends who are, who say it's uh it's m well over half the social connection they find with people.
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Play cards, play mahjong, get in get in a chess club.
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And yes, you can do that online, and for some of us, that's good enough most of the time, right?
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But there's some combination of exposure and experience and engagement with other people that's that's critical for all of us, and we all have to find that sweet spot for ourselves.
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You know, I think when when Dr.
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Green and I wrote this book, we we didn't we didn't want it to be your classic fluff book that said do these three things and you'll be happy.
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There's there's no magic wand for this getting older or aging wisely issue.
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We have to you have to do some thinking and some self-reflection, you have to understand yourself and something about your life trajectory and what your experience in life has taught you.
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And then you have to make decisions that serve you well in terms of engaging with people, keeping yourself as strong as possible cognitively and physically for as long as possible, um maintaining purpose.
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When we interviewed people, there were people who in their 70s and 80s and even 90s were still trying to say, you know, help the world be a better place and and do big things and found new organizations.
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Um and there were other people who said, you know, it's good enough for me to spend time with my grandchildren, or work in my garden, or pull together all my family photo albums into a into digital form so that I can pass it on to my kids and my grandchildren.
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It didn't make any difference what your purpose is, but you have to have it.
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And you know, I don't um I I think that's not unlike how you advise people about their financial health and well-being.
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You know, it's important to be intentional, to decide where you are, where you'd like to be down the road, and and think about the steps and the behaviors and the actions you need to take cloth take to get there.
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Yeah, I I I completely agree.
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And you know, for people who watch and listen to the podcast, see, you know, or subscribe to my newsletter, is I talk a lot about this, is to think about where you want to go and then find the tools, resources, and path to get there instead of just you know, random pieces.
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And and especially this is true in the monetary money world, is you know, we often start with Bitcoin.
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People have heard me picking on Bitcoin a lot, you know, because the question shouldn't be whether I should buy Bitcoin or not.
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The question should be this is my goal.
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Is Bitcoin going to help me get there?
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And like you said, is if your goal is to age in place, then you have to look at the tools and resources and what you will need to successfully age in place because sure you can age in place.
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But the question is whether you'll be successfully aging in place.
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And I just want to throw in a plug for a prior episode that I did with Carol Chang, uh, and I'll put the link in the show notes who talks about how to successfully age in place.
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She's an aging in place expert.
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I I don't know, do you know her, Scott?
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If you want to cross her.
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Okay.
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So yeah, so that's her whole thing is, you know, and for people watching and listening, the bottom line on her episode was that you have to be prepared to physically age in place, and you have to have a plan before things happen.
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Now, she's talking about the physical things that you need, but it's uh it's all part of this because what you're talking about is the mental preparation to age in place successfully.
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Yeah, and I think the you know, our focus was obviously about our psychological and social well-being as as we age.
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And and uh and I think to to be intentional is a critical part of that.
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If you want if you want to age in place successfully, what do you have to do?
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And then and how does that affect your financial planning?
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And and for instance, the need for long-term care insurance or the need to fix up.
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a basement so that p a potential caregiver could live could live with you if necessary or or what kinds of care management resources do you need to put together especially if you're starting to struggle with specific kinds of uh physical or mental challenges you know that eventually we're we're all gonna have to face them right the the there's we we none of us will escape the the end in one way or another unfortunately not um the other thing I want to emphasize here that I've heard from a lot of my guests your kids are not a caregiving plan so you know I'm sure you've run across that Scott is that you know quite often people say you know you ask them okay what's your caregiving plan?
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What's your aging plan?
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Oh and my kids will come take care of me.
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That's not really a solid plan because one it puts a lot of burden on your kids and two you don't know if they're really going to want to do it or not or if they're gonna be able to if they have young children can they take the time to come and take care of you.
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You know I I think these are these are very worthy things to have conversations with with your kids and even your grandchildren about you know because um yes all those limitations may exist and let's face it our kids and our grandkids are at a different stage in their lives they're they're trying to get through college and get their careers going.
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They're trying to have kids they're trying to put aside money for the kids their kids college funds.
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You know it's and and and what I've seen um is that is that uh there's as much or more stress on the caregivers that that are trying to to support us in various ways than there are for the for the people getting older themselves.
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It's um and so again this is something we need to to look at objectively and consciously and and and think about how we're gonna there's no one answer to this kids can help in some ways and other family members can help and partners are critical but one way or another we're gonna start losing our partners or they're gonna lose us.
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So uh and we can't necessarily foresee how that's gonna play out.
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But we have to know that the variables are all in play right yeah well I think what you talk about is something that I am encouraging people to do is to have these conversations start writing it out.
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So people um watching and listening may have heard I've just uh released a financial readiness plan.
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It's a free thing you can download from my website 10 domains.
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One of the domains is about aging plan and it urges people to have these conversations with your family so that everybody's on the same page and as you point out it can be a heavy burden on the kids and it will wear them out at some point.
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It's not easy to be a caregiver in a lot of situations.
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Well and I and I think there are decisions that we need to start thinking about that that weren't even available, weren't even there for people to think about in prior generations.
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You know it it behooves all of us to understand what what's legal in the state we live in in terms of uh receiving medical aid in dying and and and taking control of the end of our life in in one of several ways that wasn't available in the past.
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And and to be able to talk about that with partners and with family and have everybody as much as possible on the same page in terms of supporting each other and pulling the resources together to make that happen.
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We we have had we have seen several of the elders that we interviewed um you know decide to to activate medical aid in dying protocols.
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And you know while while it's very sad to see them go uh I for one am very happy that they were able to end their lives um in a way that made sense to them and and had and they had the support of their families to do so.
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So there are lots of things to think about.
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Yeah there sure are and you know as you point out is you know it's having these conversations you know I mean we have an advanced directive anybody's had surgery you know I I I know at least at Kaiser they have you fill out an advanced directive you know where you lay out your wishes for a number of these things.
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And I think that's something for adult kids is as uncomfortable as it may be is you have to respect your parents' wishes when it comes to these things.
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And that's something I've heard about or you know I I don't know quite the right word but you know that there's been friction where the adult kids are like well that's that's what mom and dad wrote but that's not really what they would have wanted.
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And that's difficult.
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Well I and I and I think that's why we've seen an upswing in the in the use of uh of services from hospice organizations or a family um engaging the services of a death doula to to to help the family members um carry out the wishes of their parents or grandparents you know uh so that everyone has integrity in the process.
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And that's there are there are always competing uh forces you know that you know yeah I I I know that mom and dad you know wanted a wanted this to happen but I want something else to happen.
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And who who who takes precedence in all that how do we balance those decisions in a way that makes sense for everyone and sometimes a third party resource can help with that.
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And it does it doesn't necessarily have to be of a a formal credential resource it can be another member of the family that plays facilitator or it can be a financial advisor or you know it it can be a clergyman that you trust.
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Yeah.
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Yeah but it's all about that communication and working things out.
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Um so um Scott to wrap things up I have what's called the get ready hot take trio these are three quick questions I ask all of my guests the first one is what's one myth about aging that you're trying to break oh wow I I think I think our society uh specifically is just full of all kinds of um is is is full of ageist i issues you know uh you know it's a it's a society a culture that that worships youth and and in some ways as we become elders we we tend to get messages that we're irrelevant and we don't have anything left to contribute.
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And and I will tell you both on a personal level and from um from from being invited to share the lives of of a whole lot of elders over the past several years that that that's just not true.
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We all we all can continue engaging and contributing and um maintaining meaning and purpose in our lives as long as we're still breathing.
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We can maintain meaning and purpose and you know this this came up for me uh recently when I was looking at something uh on Google and asked for age range and you know so there's age bands for every 10 years and then it's 60 plus and you know that's a pretty wide band with people yeah I mean it's not uncommon for people to live to a hundred but people in their 60s are very different than people in their 80s.
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You know and and and the research uh that's out there and that it's ongoing is really starting to differentiate differentiate between different levels of being old I mean in in general you know we're considered sort of young old while we're in our 60s and 70s but at 80 we become old and at 90 we become we start getting close to being super old and the challenges start shifting at each stage and we need to be aware of that um but but we're all on this journey and the odds are that if you know as my friends in the insurance business tell me I mean if you're in your early 70s today the odds are at least 5050 that you're gonna be around for another 15 years or so and and we need to to think about what what needs to happen over that time period.
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Yeah sorry I keep thinking of George Burns who said you know he goes I know I'm old when I'm no longer going to buy green bananas because he lived I can't remember how old he but he was well north of 100 I mean he was in a movie when he was 100 years old.
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You know that I mean there's uh I and I think it's true he he apparently signed uh a performance contract when he was 99 so uh you know maybe wasn't able to fulfill it but you know he was he was still engaged and still still intending on on contributing yeah and he was still funny as as anything I remember from being a kid so um you know let's get out the time machine for a minute Scott if you could go back in time knowing what you know now about aging and purpose what advice would you give your younger self well i i would uh i would certainly have told myself to s to uh to be more proactive about planning that transition out of the working world and into the retirement world um you know i thought i had thought about it i thought i'd planned for it but i'll i'll tell you on a personal level that first year after i stopped working full time at age 65 was uh was really pretty stressful and i and i didn't realize um how difficult it was gonna be to to transition from that mentality of of being uh a producer and a money generator to being freed of those constraints and and and and making the the the the transition comfortable to to being retired and and having having more time and the ability to do what I want when I want to do it and so and I would and I would probably would have given more uh energy to to figuring out my financial needs during that transition too yeah well that's something that's come up with a lot of guests on the show is talking about that transition you know that they're specifically switching your mindset from being a saver to a spender you know in the financial component but the bigger component is that mental shift because you lose a part of your identity you know because quite often you know that's how we identify ourselves if we're at a social event somebody says well what do you do and then all of a sudden you're saying uh you know my my my friend and colleague Dr.
00:36:05.840 --> 00:37:46.320
Green you know tells the story about uh having a a psychotherapy patient who was a retired recently retired physician and he had so much of his life wrapped around his status as a physician and his his name and his initials after his name on his d office door and and the perks and the respect that came with being an active practicing physician that when that suddenly stopped um he he really lost it and and became abusive of his wife and and um really quite self-destructive and it took it took some pretty intense psychotherapy over that transition period to to get him back on a on a reasonable path so um so these things are worth being thoughtful about definitely and for people watching and listening I have a conversation with Andrea Mays who has a great Substack on this your next edit which is inspired by her journey retiring as an executive and figuring out what was next for her when she retired but now she consults and coaches and has services but I'd recommend to everybody to check out her Substack Your Next Edit especially if you're not like okay I'm gonna retire in the next couple of years you know how how do you find purpose in that next stage?
00:37:46.639 --> 00:38:07.519
And I I would just reinforce the notion Tony that you know while other people can be a good can be good models for how to proceed and transition you know into this elder phase of life you know we really have to figure out how to do this ourselves for ourselves.
00:38:08.559 --> 00:39:23.280
And you know I think that's I'm gonna put in a a quick plug here this is this is the book and this is what my friend and I tried to do is give people a way to ask themselves the questions about how they need to age wisely and you can find the Aging Wisely project um Green and Fisher uh at any of your um online book rel retailers Amazon Barnes and Noble Thriftbooks and uh we also have a website it's just www.theagingwisely project dot com and you can learn more about us and our research and our journey and if you're interested in uh receiving our um monthly newsletter about uh through the Aging Wisely project we cover some of these topics on a monthly basis and uh just use the website and send me a note an email at Scott at the agingwiselyproject.com and we'll get you on the distribution list.
00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:51.360
Fantastic well you you you took away my last questionnaire so since you wrapped everything up uh that's fantastic and for people watching and listening as always you'll be able to find all of those links that Scott mentioned as well as links to pick up a copy of the Aging Wisely project book uh in the show notes so you can go there uh if you have access to the show notes so Scott thanks for joining us on Get Ready Before Life Happens.
00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:56.000
Thank you Tony it's it's been a pleasure it's been delightful talking with you.
00:39:56.400 --> 00:40:03.519
Yeah well I really appreciate these insights you've given me a lot to think about and I hope for everybody out there that this gave you a lot to think about.
00:40:03.679 --> 00:40:09.599
And if you know somebody who would benefit from this conversation please be sure to share with a friend.
00:40:10.079 --> 00:40:14.480
Thank you as always for listening to this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens.
00:40:14.800 --> 00:40:33.679
As I mentioned before you can go to my website and start your free financial readiness plan that's at TonyStewar.com you can also help keep this plan free and support my uh the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast by becoming a get ready insider because when life happens the way you think about money matters
00:00:16.239 --> 00:00:27.120
Aging wisely begins with choices, attitudes, and relationships that help us stay purposeful, resilient, and engaged through life's later transitions.
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Welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens.
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Today I'm joined by Scott Fisher, co-creator of the Aging Wisely Project.
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Scott, welcome to Get Ready Before Life Happens.
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Thank you, Tony.
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Glad to be here.
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Yeah, well, excited to share what you're doing with the audience.
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Is you know, what led you to creating the Aging Wisely Project and to publishing the Aging Wisely book?
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Well, you know, it's uh it's been an almost nine-year journey.
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And uh, you know, my my best friend and uh lifelong friend really, uh, he and I met our first year in college and were thrown together as roommates, and we stayed friends ever since.
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And uh and he and I were sitting around one day and we realized we were in our late 60s, and retirement was creeping up on us, and old age was creeping up on us even faster.
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And my friend said, he said, we ought to do something together.
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Well, Ben Green is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and my background is organizational psychology, and we decided it would serve us well to study how to get old successfully.
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And after reading much of the literature on aging well, we decided let's go interview some old people.
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And we spent the next couple of years, partly through the COVID pandemic, interviewing elders and sort of asking them to immerse themselves in a two-hour experience of telling us their life story.
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And we learned so much about them, but we learned so much about their journeys and how there was a similar pattern emerging in terms of what it takes to age well versus not so well, that we ended up writing a book, which was part of the journey and a big challenge for the two of us.
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But you know, it's it's kept us occupied with continued research and presentations and and just engaging people in a discussion about what the challenges are of aging wisely and and what skills and attitudes we need to work on to do this part of our life well.
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Well, that's that's great because I I you know, I mean, we're an aging society, so this is a very timely conversation.
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Is so when you use the term aging well, what do you mean by that?
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Well, you know, our focus uh for for those of your listeners who, you know, maybe took a psychology course in college, you know, we we sort of needed some framework.
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And we decided what interested us was the model developed about 75 years ago by Eric Erickson, who focused on psychosocial development and came up with a framework of eight life stages that we all go through as human beings.
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You know, Ericsson was a psychoanalyst, but he disagreed with Sigmund Freud that it was all only all about what was going on in our heads and the stuff we we didn't really understand because it was uncont, they were unconscious processes.
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Ericsson said, you know, it's that, but it's more.
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It's our genetic inheritance, it's the culture we're brought up in, it's the relationships we have with early caregivers, our parents, and the adults around us who help us get a worldview, a way of either trusting the world and feeling like we have some confidence in moving through our lives successfully, or we we grow up without that sense of confidence and confidence and trust in the world, and that and that causes problems.
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And you know, the limitation of Ericsson's model was that back in the 1940s and 50s, people didn't live nearly as long or as healthy as long as we are now, and so his last stage of life basically said, well, you get into your 60s and maybe your 70s, and you you bring your life to a uh a successful close by just understanding your journey and and feeling a sense of integrity in the way you lived your life.
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And we looked at the data we were collecting from the from the people we were interviewing.
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We said, look, people are living into their 80s and 90s and even into their hundreds, and and what are they doing with with that extra time, especially when they're relatively healthy for much longer?
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And we came up with a proposed ninth developmental stage that we called elder identity revision, which which really is focused on two things.
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How do you with one hand cope with all the losses that start accumulating as we get old?
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We lose our strength, we lose our hearing, we lose our sight, we lose we lose our friends, we lose our loved ones.
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How do we manage to cope with and adapt to that and at the same time continue to to to maintain purpose and meaning in our life and move forward successfully to the end?
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And and so that's what we wrote about.
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And and you know, from our standpoint, uh in order to do that well, it takes at least five key attitudes and skill sets that we called healthy habits.
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And and we put them into a uh an acronym called GRASP.
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So five letters G-R-A-S-P that stand for gratitude, resilience, active habits, self-acceptance, and purpose.
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And it was clear from our interview data and the analysis that came out of that, that that those those five skills and attitudes correlated very highly with aging wisely.
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So that's that's in a nutshell kind of where we've gone with the book and our research.
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Yeah, well, I'm just reflecting on it because you know it's not, you know, one of the things they talk about as you age is that, you know, a lot of our identity is tied up in our work life, but that's not anything in those five skills.
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And it's not anything that you hear from many other elders.
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You don't hear somebody say, Boy, I wish I'd gotten that promotion.
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Or I mean the old adage, you know, nobody says, you know, I wish I'd worked harder.
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Um, you know, but what's interesting about these five skills in my mind is that there's something that anybody can do.
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Uh, you know, that they're available to everyone.
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You don't need to be wealthy, you don't need to have any special physical talents or anything.
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And I think that's really cool.
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Well, I I think, and it was, you know, I think illuminating for us that so much could be accomplished by focusing on those five skills and attitudes.
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You know, if if if we ask ourselves, uh, are we more naturally an optimist or a pessimist?
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Do we feel like the glass is half full or half empty?
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It's not just our research, it's it's a lot of research over the past two generations that that validate that people who see the glass as half full are much happier and healthier, especially in old age.
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And there's a lot of research about how just something as simple as keeping a gratitude journal and every night keeping a little notebook by your nightstand and and jotting down the the th three things that you are grateful for that happen that day.
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They could be big things, they could be very small things, but focusing on the positive and focusing on what we have as opposed to uh getting depressed and angry about what we've lost or what we don't have or or what aches and pains we had to deal with that day is is very important in in in how we look at our lives.
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So would you say that's you know one of the easy well, not easiest things, but one of the things that can help people at least have a more optimistic view.
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I mean, you know, you're a psychologist, I'm not, but it seems like people are often hardwired to be an optimist or pessimist.
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So actually, maybe that's a good question.
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Are people hardwired to be optimists or pessimists?
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Well, it's it's interesting that you use the term hardwired, and I suppose you could find experts um, you know, who would argue both ways.
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I mean, my personal opinion is that rather than say we're hardwired, I'd say we're probably we're probably born with preferences.
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So, you know, there are some people who who just naturally are more optimistic than others, or or other people who are more pessimistic.
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But these are skills that can be learned.
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And so if I'm uh if I'm a very strong pessimist, but I but I focus a little more energy each day on the things that I'm grateful for, over time, I think you can move the needle.
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And and moving the needle maybe only 20 or 30 percent doesn't make you a raging optimist, but but but maybe it helps um it helps you look forward to things in life and helps you avoid the isolation and depression that tends to overwhelm us as we get older, if we if we allow it to.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
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And you know, as I reflect on this, there's there's so much here with what you're talking about that uh, you know, it's really gotten me thinking deeply about this is you know, isolation is something that's getting a lot of attention right now, you know, a study showing that isolation is like one of the worst health hazards for us as we age.
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I mean, would you agree with that that isolation is a health hazard?
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Or well, maybe not a health hazard, but uh an issue.
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I think I think it's a very significant issue, and and it affects it affects how we do how we make decisions about the living situation that we're gonna be in.
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You know, many of us, myself included, um have have made commitments to trying to age in place and to live in our home, my single family residence, as long as I possibly can.
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And and and and that's what most of us probably want to do.
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But at the same time, we have to recognize that that that that's that that's a risk in terms of isolation.
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It's important that we all realize that, you know, like uh for me, I've been struggling with hearing loss for the past dozen years.
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And I wear hearing aids and they're wonderful, but they're not the same.
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And they're they're not the magic solution.
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But the research is quite clear that if you have a hearing loss, the odds of death of of your have struggling with depression and um a higher likelihood of uh of having dementia is really significant.
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So I would I would encourage everybody listening out there if if uh if you find yourself asking people to repeat themselves or or saying what or or just not feeling like you're part of the conversation, go get your hearing tested.
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Go try out some hearing aids, as annoying as they can be, it can really make a difference.
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So isolation can be in the big in the in the macro sense of where the where you live and whether you stay connected to other people.
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And it can be also in in things like, you know, does it just seem too hard to get out of the house and go meet some friends?
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Um we have to we have to work hard to keep ourselves engaged as we get older.
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So when you talk about isolation um and uh you know community with other people, um is it physical actually getting out, or is a Zoom call enough?
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Uh, you know, for that, do people need to get out of the house and actually interact in person?
00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:51.279
Well, you know, one of the things Ben and I learned very quickly, Tony, is that every one of us is unique.
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We we all have that unique combination of our genetic inheritance, um our early childhood experiences with caregivers, and our our own life experiences that we've responded to and reacted to.
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So there's no there's no magic answer.
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But you know, I would encourage everyone listening to to think about what it is they need.
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And and and if and if you're a person who needs face-to-face physical proximity with people, then you need to find ways to do that.
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You know, get out there and play some pickleball.
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Even if you're even if you don't consider yourself particularly athletic.
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From the folks, I'm not a pickleball player, but I have lots of friends who are, who say it's uh it's m well over half the social connection they find with people.
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Play cards, play mahjong, get in get in a chess club.
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And yes, you can do that online, and for some of us, that's good enough most of the time, right?
00:17:06.799 --> 00:17:23.279
But there's some combination of exposure and experience and engagement with other people that's that's critical for all of us, and we all have to find that sweet spot for ourselves.
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You know, I think when when Dr.
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Green and I wrote this book, we we didn't we didn't want it to be your classic fluff book that said do these three things and you'll be happy.
00:17:41.359 --> 00:17:48.799
There's there's no magic wand for this getting older or aging wisely issue.
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We have to you have to do some thinking and some self-reflection, you have to understand yourself and something about your life trajectory and what your experience in life has taught you.
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And then you have to make decisions that serve you well in terms of engaging with people, keeping yourself as strong as possible cognitively and physically for as long as possible, um maintaining purpose.
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When we interviewed people, there were people who in their 70s and 80s and even 90s were still trying to say, you know, help the world be a better place and and do big things and found new organizations.
00:18:41.920 --> 00:19:02.000
Um and there were other people who said, you know, it's good enough for me to spend time with my grandchildren, or work in my garden, or pull together all my family photo albums into a into digital form so that I can pass it on to my kids and my grandchildren.
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It didn't make any difference what your purpose is, but you have to have it.
00:19:09.359 --> 00:19:20.319
And you know, I don't um I I think that's not unlike how you advise people about their financial health and well-being.
00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:37.200
You know, it's important to be intentional, to decide where you are, where you'd like to be down the road, and and think about the steps and the behaviors and the actions you need to take cloth take to get there.
00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:41.680
Yeah, I I I completely agree.
00:19:41.759 --> 00:20:01.119
And you know, for people who watch and listen to the podcast, see, you know, or subscribe to my newsletter, is I talk a lot about this, is to think about where you want to go and then find the tools, resources, and path to get there instead of just you know, random pieces.
00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:08.720
And and especially this is true in the monetary money world, is you know, we often start with Bitcoin.
00:20:08.880 --> 00:20:15.359
People have heard me picking on Bitcoin a lot, you know, because the question shouldn't be whether I should buy Bitcoin or not.
00:20:15.519 --> 00:20:17.839
The question should be this is my goal.
00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:19.920
Is Bitcoin going to help me get there?
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:37.119
And like you said, is if your goal is to age in place, then you have to look at the tools and resources and what you will need to successfully age in place because sure you can age in place.
00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:40.960
But the question is whether you'll be successfully aging in place.
00:20:41.039 --> 00:20:51.440
And I just want to throw in a plug for a prior episode that I did with Carol Chang, uh, and I'll put the link in the show notes who talks about how to successfully age in place.
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She's an aging in place expert.
00:20:53.119 --> 00:20:54.799
I I don't know, do you know her, Scott?
00:20:55.039 --> 00:20:56.319
If you want to cross her.
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Okay.
00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:13.279
So yeah, so that's her whole thing is, you know, and for people watching and listening, the bottom line on her episode was that you have to be prepared to physically age in place, and you have to have a plan before things happen.
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:25.200
Now, she's talking about the physical things that you need, but it's uh it's all part of this because what you're talking about is the mental preparation to age in place successfully.
00:21:25.519 --> 00:21:36.480
Yeah, and I think the you know, our focus was obviously about our psychological and social well-being as as we age.
00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:43.599
And and uh and I think to to be intentional is a critical part of that.
00:21:43.759 --> 00:21:48.720
If you want if you want to age in place successfully, what do you have to do?
00:21:48.799 --> 00:21:52.160
And then and how does that affect your financial planning?
00:21:52.319 --> 00:21:59.519
And and for instance, the need for long-term care insurance or the need to fix up.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:58.799
a basement so that p a potential caregiver could live could live with you if necessary or or what kinds of care management resources do you need to put together especially if you're starting to struggle with specific kinds of uh physical or mental challenges you know that eventually we're we're all gonna have to face them right the the there's we we none of us will escape the the end in one way or another unfortunately not um the other thing I want to emphasize here that I've heard from a lot of my guests your kids are not a caregiving plan so you know I'm sure you've run across that Scott is that you know quite often people say you know you ask them okay what's your caregiving plan?
00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:00.079
What's your aging plan?
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:02.480
Oh and my kids will come take care of me.
00:23:02.799 --> 00:23:16.880
That's not really a solid plan because one it puts a lot of burden on your kids and two you don't know if they're really going to want to do it or not or if they're gonna be able to if they have young children can they take the time to come and take care of you.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:45.279
You know I I think these are these are very worthy things to have conversations with with your kids and even your grandchildren about you know because um yes all those limitations may exist and let's face it our kids and our grandkids are at a different stage in their lives they're they're trying to get through college and get their careers going.
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:52.079
They're trying to have kids they're trying to put aside money for the kids their kids college funds.
00:23:52.640 --> 00:24:15.680
You know it's and and and what I've seen um is that is that uh there's as much or more stress on the caregivers that that are trying to to support us in various ways than there are for the for the people getting older themselves.
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:44.240
It's um and so again this is something we need to to look at objectively and consciously and and and think about how we're gonna there's no one answer to this kids can help in some ways and other family members can help and partners are critical but one way or another we're gonna start losing our partners or they're gonna lose us.
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:52.720
So uh and we can't necessarily foresee how that's gonna play out.
00:24:53.519 --> 00:25:08.799
But we have to know that the variables are all in play right yeah well I think what you talk about is something that I am encouraging people to do is to have these conversations start writing it out.
00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:15.440
So people um watching and listening may have heard I've just uh released a financial readiness plan.
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:19.680
It's a free thing you can download from my website 10 domains.
00:25:19.839 --> 00:25:40.240
One of the domains is about aging plan and it urges people to have these conversations with your family so that everybody's on the same page and as you point out it can be a heavy burden on the kids and it will wear them out at some point.
00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:44.319
It's not easy to be a caregiver in a lot of situations.
00:25:45.519 --> 00:25:57.920
Well and I and I think there are decisions that we need to start thinking about that that weren't even available, weren't even there for people to think about in prior generations.
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:23.599
You know it it behooves all of us to understand what what's legal in the state we live in in terms of uh receiving medical aid in dying and and and taking control of the end of our life in in one of several ways that wasn't available in the past.
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:41.839
And and to be able to talk about that with partners and with family and have everybody as much as possible on the same page in terms of supporting each other and pulling the resources together to make that happen.
00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:55.599
We we have had we have seen several of the elders that we interviewed um you know decide to to activate medical aid in dying protocols.
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And you know while while it's very sad to see them go uh I for one am very happy that they were able to end their lives um in a way that made sense to them and and had and they had the support of their families to do so.
00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:21.119
So there are lots of things to think about.
00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:42.960
Yeah there sure are and you know as you point out is you know it's having these conversations you know I mean we have an advanced directive anybody's had surgery you know I I I know at least at Kaiser they have you fill out an advanced directive you know where you lay out your wishes for a number of these things.
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:52.559
And I think that's something for adult kids is as uncomfortable as it may be is you have to respect your parents' wishes when it comes to these things.
00:27:52.640 --> 00:28:08.559
And that's something I've heard about or you know I I don't know quite the right word but you know that there's been friction where the adult kids are like well that's that's what mom and dad wrote but that's not really what they would have wanted.
00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:10.559
And that's difficult.
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Well I and I and I think that's why we've seen an upswing in the in the use of uh of services from hospice organizations or a family um engaging the services of a death doula to to to help the family members um carry out the wishes of their parents or grandparents you know uh so that everyone has integrity in the process.
00:28:48.079 --> 00:29:05.359
And that's there are there are always competing uh forces you know that you know yeah I I I know that mom and dad you know wanted a wanted this to happen but I want something else to happen.
00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:19.279
And who who who takes precedence in all that how do we balance those decisions in a way that makes sense for everyone and sometimes a third party resource can help with that.
00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:38.960
And it does it doesn't necessarily have to be of a a formal credential resource it can be another member of the family that plays facilitator or it can be a financial advisor or you know it it can be a clergyman that you trust.
00:29:39.119 --> 00:29:39.440
Yeah.
00:29:40.160 --> 00:29:46.559
Yeah but it's all about that communication and working things out.
00:29:46.799 --> 00:30:40.240
Um so um Scott to wrap things up I have what's called the get ready hot take trio these are three quick questions I ask all of my guests the first one is what's one myth about aging that you're trying to break oh wow I I think I think our society uh specifically is just full of all kinds of um is is is full of ageist i issues you know uh you know it's a it's a society a culture that that worships youth and and in some ways as we become elders we we tend to get messages that we're irrelevant and we don't have anything left to contribute.
00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:58.079
And and I will tell you both on a personal level and from um from from being invited to share the lives of of a whole lot of elders over the past several years that that that's just not true.
00:30:59.519 --> 00:31:13.279
We all we all can continue engaging and contributing and um maintaining meaning and purpose in our lives as long as we're still breathing.
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:45.759
We can maintain meaning and purpose and you know this this came up for me uh recently when I was looking at something uh on Google and asked for age range and you know so there's age bands for every 10 years and then it's 60 plus and you know that's a pretty wide band with people yeah I mean it's not uncommon for people to live to a hundred but people in their 60s are very different than people in their 80s.
00:31:46.240 --> 00:32:55.359
You know and and and the research uh that's out there and that it's ongoing is really starting to differentiate differentiate between different levels of being old I mean in in general you know we're considered sort of young old while we're in our 60s and 70s but at 80 we become old and at 90 we become we start getting close to being super old and the challenges start shifting at each stage and we need to be aware of that um but but we're all on this journey and the odds are that if you know as my friends in the insurance business tell me I mean if you're in your early 70s today the odds are at least 5050 that you're gonna be around for another 15 years or so and and we need to to think about what what needs to happen over that time period.
00:32:56.480 --> 00:33:13.200
Yeah sorry I keep thinking of George Burns who said you know he goes I know I'm old when I'm no longer going to buy green bananas because he lived I can't remember how old he but he was well north of 100 I mean he was in a movie when he was 100 years old.
00:33:13.599 --> 00:36:05.679
You know that I mean there's uh I and I think it's true he he apparently signed uh a performance contract when he was 99 so uh you know maybe wasn't able to fulfill it but you know he was he was still engaged and still still intending on on contributing yeah and he was still funny as as anything I remember from being a kid so um you know let's get out the time machine for a minute Scott if you could go back in time knowing what you know now about aging and purpose what advice would you give your younger self well i i would uh i would certainly have told myself to s to uh to be more proactive about planning that transition out of the working world and into the retirement world um you know i thought i had thought about it i thought i'd planned for it but i'll i'll tell you on a personal level that first year after i stopped working full time at age 65 was uh was really pretty stressful and i and i didn't realize um how difficult it was gonna be to to transition from that mentality of of being uh a producer and a money generator to being freed of those constraints and and and and making the the the the transition comfortable to to being retired and and having having more time and the ability to do what I want when I want to do it and so and I would and I would probably would have given more uh energy to to figuring out my financial needs during that transition too yeah well that's something that's come up with a lot of guests on the show is talking about that transition you know that they're specifically switching your mindset from being a saver to a spender you know in the financial component but the bigger component is that mental shift because you lose a part of your identity you know because quite often you know that's how we identify ourselves if we're at a social event somebody says well what do you do and then all of a sudden you're saying uh you know my my my friend and colleague Dr.
00:36:05.840 --> 00:37:46.320
Green you know tells the story about uh having a a psychotherapy patient who was a retired recently retired physician and he had so much of his life wrapped around his status as a physician and his his name and his initials after his name on his d office door and and the perks and the respect that came with being an active practicing physician that when that suddenly stopped um he he really lost it and and became abusive of his wife and and um really quite self-destructive and it took it took some pretty intense psychotherapy over that transition period to to get him back on a on a reasonable path so um so these things are worth being thoughtful about definitely and for people watching and listening I have a conversation with Andrea Mays who has a great Substack on this your next edit which is inspired by her journey retiring as an executive and figuring out what was next for her when she retired but now she consults and coaches and has services but I'd recommend to everybody to check out her Substack Your Next Edit especially if you're not like okay I'm gonna retire in the next couple of years you know how how do you find purpose in that next stage?
00:37:46.639 --> 00:38:07.519
And I I would just reinforce the notion Tony that you know while other people can be a good can be good models for how to proceed and transition you know into this elder phase of life you know we really have to figure out how to do this ourselves for ourselves.
00:38:08.559 --> 00:39:23.280
And you know I think that's I'm gonna put in a a quick plug here this is this is the book and this is what my friend and I tried to do is give people a way to ask themselves the questions about how they need to age wisely and you can find the Aging Wisely project um Green and Fisher uh at any of your um online book rel retailers Amazon Barnes and Noble Thriftbooks and uh we also have a website it's just www.theagingwisely project dot com and you can learn more about us and our research and our journey and if you're interested in uh receiving our um monthly newsletter about uh through the Aging Wisely project we cover some of these topics on a monthly basis and uh just use the website and send me a note an email at Scott at the agingwiselyproject.com and we'll get you on the distribution list.
00:39:25.280 --> 00:39:51.360
Fantastic well you you you took away my last questionnaire so since you wrapped everything up uh that's fantastic and for people watching and listening as always you'll be able to find all of those links that Scott mentioned as well as links to pick up a copy of the Aging Wisely project book uh in the show notes so you can go there uh if you have access to the show notes so Scott thanks for joining us on Get Ready Before Life Happens.
00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:56.000
Thank you Tony it's it's been a pleasure it's been delightful talking with you.
00:39:56.400 --> 00:40:03.519
Yeah well I really appreciate these insights you've given me a lot to think about and I hope for everybody out there that this gave you a lot to think about.
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And if you know somebody who would benefit from this conversation please be sure to share with a friend.
00:40:10.079 --> 00:40:14.480
Thank you as always for listening to this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens.
00:40:14.800 --> 00:40:33.679
As I mentioned before you can go to my website and start your free financial readiness plan that's at TonyStewar.com you can also help keep this plan free and support my uh the Get Ready Before Life Happens podcast by becoming a get ready insider because when life happens the way you think about money matters
