Longevity Science Without the Fear or Bullshit | Dr. Kerry Burnight

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It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
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Hey, hey, everybody. How we doing? I love this story.
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When my uncle, it's a short story, don't worry. When
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my uncle Peter, shout out to Peter. When Peter turned 60,
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he was asked how he felt and he said, off
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the hook. I love that story.
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And it represents two of the good things that can
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happen and often do happen when you get older. First,
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you start taking yourself less seriously. And second, you care
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less about what other people think about you. In other words,
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you have fewer fucks to give. The other good news
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about aging is the fact that your genetics are not
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your destiny. In other words, just because your parents may
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not have aged well, that doesn't mean it's going to
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happen to you. You have some agency here. There are
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practical things that you can do to increase your so-called
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joy span, which my guest will explain fully in a minute.
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But for now, just know that increasing your joy span
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increases both your health span and your lifespan.
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And there's more good news.
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Working on this stuff now, no matter what your age is,
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can not only lengthen your life, but it can also
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improve your life. In other words, it is possible to
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get the benefits of age, the wisdom that naturally accrues
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to many of us. It is possible to pull those
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benefits forward Whether you're in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s,
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your 50s, whatever. My guest today is Dr. Carrie Burnight,
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who spent many years teaching geriatric medicine and gerontology at
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the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. She's got
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a new book called Joy Span, The Art and Science
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of Thriving in Life's Second Half. We talk about some
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big misconceptions about the aging process, the many problems of
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the anti-aging industry. four core habits for aging well, how
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to diversify your social portfolio, coping strategies for adapting in
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the face of change, the key question to ask yourself
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if you want to live a longer and happier life,
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the strengths that come with age, some tools for navigating
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inevitable psychological dips, and much more. If you want to
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go deeper on how to make peace with the non-negotiable
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fact of change, we have a new meditation that comes
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with this podcast. It comes from our teacher of the month,
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Christiana Wolff. You should go check it out. Also to say,
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Cristiano will be leading our next live meditation and Q
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& A session tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18th at 4 Eastern.
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We do these every Tuesday at 4. Reminder, we're now
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doing these on Zoom instead of Substack. If you sign
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up at danharris.com, you'll get access to our twice-weekly meditation
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drops and once-weekly live meditation sessions.
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Go sign up.
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Finally, if you want to meditate with me in person,
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I've got two events coming up. I'll be doing a
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live taping of this podcast in New York City. November 18th,
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it's going to be a conversation with the comedian Pete Holmes,
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who's not only very funny, but he's got a long
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and deep spiritual practice. This event will be a benefit
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for the New York Insight Meditation Center. And then coming
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up on November 23rd, I'll do an intimate little meditation
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and Q & A sesh at a lovely little hotel
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in the Hudson Valley called Troutbeck. There are links to
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both events in the show notes. Okay, we'll get started
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with Dr. Carrie Burnight after this.
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Dr.
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Carrie Burnight. Welcome to the show.
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Thanks very much. Glad to be here.
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I'm glad you're here. Let me just start with a
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really basic question. I'm just curious, because I was raised
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by doctors and married to one. What was in your
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mind when you chose gerontology as your specialty?
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Why that?
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Right. Sometimes when I tell people I'm a gerontologist, their
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face kind of makes like that, ugh, yuck face, or
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they make that, oh, poor you face.
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Yeah.
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I think that because I was, I call it a surprise.
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Some people might say mistake. In my parents' lives, they
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had these grown teenagers and then a surprise pregnancy that
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was me. And I came out, my dad already had
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gray hair. So I think it was just on my radar.
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When people would talk smack about older people, as we do,
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it felt personal. And when I realized that there was
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something called a gerontologist, somebody who worked with and learned
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from older people, it really just felt like a fit.
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I love that story. That completely lands.
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And I'm starting to think about like my own son,
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who I was 43 when he was born. And he
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likes to point out the proliferation of grays on my pate.
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Just as an overarching question, as we move through this conversation,
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I read your material as not being just for senior citizens.
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I read this as something that It's content that I
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would have liked to have had in my 30s.
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How does that go down with you?
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Here's who it's for. It's for people who are aging.
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And who is aging? Every dang one of us. And
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if you're not, you are dead. So what we have
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found and what your podcast does every day is finding
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ways about living our best life. So things that help
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you do that between the ages of, say, 23 to
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24 also can hit between 93 and 94. So it
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is truly never too early, but also never too late.
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There's a lot of good news here.
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And there's one aspect of the good news I want
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to get you talking about in a second. But the
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first piece, the first aspect of the good news is
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if you're listening to this in your 20s or 30s
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or 40s or like me in your 50s, The good
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news is that the stuff you can do now to
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help you age well will just make you happier right
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now anyway.
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Correct. And so a lot of times people say, hey,
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when should I start this stuff? And I say, now
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think about it about with your body, for example. Would
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you ask me, well, when should I start cardio? It's
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like yesterday, right? Start as soon as you can. So
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I am very interested in what fortifies us internally for
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aging because it's not easy. And when people say, I
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just want to age gracefully, I say, I've watched thousands
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of people age and I have not ever seen one
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age gracefully. It's not a graceful thing. It's as hard
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as heck. And a lot of things happen. And because
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of that, we want to fortify ourselves as much as possible.
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So it's the opposite of toxic positivity. It's the opposite
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of head in the sand. It's like, nah, we're in
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it for this whole time. And the end result is
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always the same. And that is that we are all
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going to die. And I don't think that's a bummer.
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I just think it's a fact. So why don't we
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try to live and use this bonus time rather than
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languish in the suffering and regret and misery of it,
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which I have seen for way too many years with
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people that I've worked with.
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Side note, it's interesting and hilarious for me as somebody
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who says fuck a lot to hear you say heck.
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As much as you do.
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Well, give it a try. Okay.
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No, no, actually I will not. So I don't know
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why I said okay, because I don't mean that. Anyway,
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I agree with you and I appreciate your candor, but
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you just said that aging is not easy. It's not graceful.
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And yet one of your core arguments, and this is
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the second half of the good news thread that I
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was pulling on just a moment ago. One of your
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core arguments is that aging is something to celebrate, not
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to dread, that it's an opportunity. So how can all
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of those thoughts work together?
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Great question. OK, so our default thought process. myself included,
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is that aging is all decline. Everything about you and
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your life gets worse, less relevant, less attractive, less strong.
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And we believe it so much because it's our societal,
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like what we've come to believe, that the notion that
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actually there are things that get better as you get
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older isn't even on the radar screens. So when I
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say it's something to celebrate, it's because in the research
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and in watching thousands of people go through this phase
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ahead of us, I've seen reason to celebrate. You might
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be wondering, like, what the heck gets better? Oh, what
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the fuck gets better as you get older?
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Thank you. I consider that to be a personal victory.
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So things that get better as you get older. are
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not caring as much what people think. Greater appreciation of friendship,
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more emotional regulation, less self-importance often, greater humility. My God,
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the world needs that. Appreciation of music and nature and
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not getting entrapped in as much in all the trappings
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of fame and self-importance. So yeah, there's a lot to
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look forward to, but we won't even know that if
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we don't pull our head out and stop with this
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fear-based anti-aging nonsense.
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I have a million things I want to follow up
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on in what you just said, which was awesome and
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super interesting. But the thought that just keeps going through
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my head is, I get that there are aspects of
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getting older that are worth celebrating and relishing. And I'm
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here for all that because I have no alternative. However,
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the end of the line is still death. And death
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usually is, you know, I say this to somebody who
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spent a non-trivial amount of time in a hospice. You know,
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there's some discomfort that comes with the process, if not,
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you know, agony. So I just bump against that hard
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fact when you talk about celebrating.
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Yes. And I love that we're all thinking the same
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thing as we're listening. So here's the choice. Long life,
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hard stuff, and make it miserable. Long life, hard stuff,
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find a way to make it less miserable. And That
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is a choice and that is possible. And I, because
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I don't love suffering and I'm not relishing misery, I'm
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going to do what I can to try to think
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the result is the same. It's death. And how can
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we maximize this time that we have, given that I
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guarantee you there will be hard things, things you haven't
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even thought of. But I don't want to compound the
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misery of by throwing up my hands and saying, yep,
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when something tough happens to you, when you get a diagnosis,
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when your spouse dies, when you can't walk, you just say, yes,
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now my life is awful and sucks. To me, that's
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the tragedy.
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Okay, so you're saying you're not soft pedaling death. It
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is a reality. It is scary for most of us.
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And it can, depending on how things go, be painful.
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But if we all accept that that's the truth, how
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do we want to live now? And how do we
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want to prepare to live up until that moment? Do
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we want to make that a slog, a fear-based marathon
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of misery? Or do we want to increase the odds
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of as much happiness as possible up until and including
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that moment?
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That's what the caveat I wanted to add to what
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you said, which is it isn't up until that moment
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is within those moments. So the privilege of being a
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gerontologist is that I have been bedside. of so many
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people dying, so many people with very tough diagnoses. After
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you lose your spouse, people after they lose an adult
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child or a grandchild. So the goal isn't like, oh,
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just be happy until that rough time. It is, how
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can I continue all these learnings that you every day
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are promoting with people and giving people? How can we
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bring those into even the hard times and especially the
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hard times.
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Yes, that lands for me. And I apologize to people
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who've been listening to this show for a long time
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because I've mentioned it before, so I hope I'm not
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being too repetitive. But I did volunteer for many years
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in a hospice and so was able to witness many
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of the same things that you've been able to witness.
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And I have to say, generally speaking, while physical discomfort
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can be part of the package and no two deaths
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are the same. But overall, I noticed two things. One,
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there's an interesting sort of serenity that often kicks in
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toward the end. And I don't know what it is
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about the human animal that makes that so common. And
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then the other thing I noticed is just given the
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reality of modern medicine, and especially if you've chosen the
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hospice route, we can make you comfortable.
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Yes, that's exactly right. And the things that you are
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teaching and studying of meditation and love and otherness and
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all these millions of topics impacts that aging experience, that
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being old experience, and that death experience. It's not separate.
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And what we're doing now is not wasted. It's pulled
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into this final phase. And it becomes, in my opinion,
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most important then.
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What do you think it is, if we're both right,
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that anecdotally it is quite common for people facing death
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to be pretty calm. I mean, it's not everybody, for sure.
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But if we're right that that is quite a common
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human experience to achieve a kind of equanimity in the
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face of imminent death, what is it about the human
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organism that enables that?
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I don't know, number one. And number two, I try
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to think of it like birth. right? So if somebody
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were to say, okay, Dan, what you're going to do
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is you're going to squeeze through a tiny hole and
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be all bloody. And then like your arms are going
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to frail out and you're going to scream. And then
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strangers are going to grab you with gloves on. I mean,
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it's pretty like, what in the heck? And yet that
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is birth. And I think as beings, as humans, death
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is also that same thing on the other side that
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every single one of us is going to have. And
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I'm not saying it's easy or even always beautiful, but
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it is, right? It is factual. And so maybe when
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we get there, that kind of takes over of like, yeah,
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I was born and I'm on my way out. And
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that is natural and normal. And not one person has
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ever escaped that. Yes. All the time people come to
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me and they say, if my partner dies or if
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I die, it's always if. And so I do often
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take people's hands. I say, when, my friend, when?
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Yeah, two things come to mind as I listen to you.
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One is that there's an Indian epic that I've never read,
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and I'm going to pronounce the name poorly. I think
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it's the Mahabharata, something like that. That sounds like the
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Mahabharata sounds like really good cheese.
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I was going to say my Bharata. I think I've
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had that.
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The Mahabharata or whatever, however you pronounce it, there's a
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line from that. And I'm going to mangle this too,
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but it's like, what's the most wondrous thing in the world?
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The most wondrous thing in the world is that we
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can all be surrounded by aging, illness and death and
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yet not take in that we too are going to
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go through those things. The second thing that came to
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mind as I was listening to you, especially the first
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part of your last answer, was that when you were
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talking about people kind of accepting that this is just
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the way of things, I just remember being in the
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hospice and talking to an elderly person. gentleman who was
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out of his bed and, but, you know, he was
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in hospice. So he was sitting on a chair and,
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you know, in his final days, but able to have
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some level of mobility. And I was asking him, are
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you afraid? Cause I asked everybody that because I'm afraid.
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And he said, you know, I'm really not. I just
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feel like I'm part of something larger.
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Yes. Like the Dalai Lamas. We are all one. That's
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exactly right. And he said that over and over and over.
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I think that is part of it too. And conversely,
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I've seen people who are so rallying against it. It's like, no, no, no.
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And it feels like suffering twice. It's going to happen.
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And hopefully by sort of putting in the work and thinking,
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I mean, it seems to me that when you get there,
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you'll have thought more than anyone I know about all
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this stuff.
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My pain tolerance and anxiety levels are high enough that
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I probably just need to do more of this contemplative
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work in advance, but I can't promise I'm going to
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ace the test if there isn't even such a thing.
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Before I get into the details and the sort of
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pedagogical flow of your book, which is called JoySpan, before
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I get into that, I just ask one other question
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based on something you said earlier. You were talking about
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the anti-aging industry in not the most flattering terms. Can
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you say more about why that sucks and what it's
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getting wrong in the messages that we should bat away?
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Okay. So the messaging is how not to age. And
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it's appealing. Great. I'm just going to stay young forever.
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But the reality is, is that you do age. And
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even if you do all the stuff, you still age.
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So I would propose that we think how not. age,
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and that is with vitality, with purpose, with friendship, with beauty,
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like all the stuff. But it's sad to me when
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I see people putting so much of their time capital
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and attention to not age, and they're so proud that
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people might think they're younger than they are. Again, because
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I have seen it play out, and those people... They age.
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And it's really not fooling anybody. And here's a gerontologist thing.
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Wherever I'm at a party, some older people will come
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up and go, you are not going to believe how
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old I am. Guess. In my mind, I think 82.
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And they want me to guess 70 or 60. And
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when I was a younger gerontologist, I went with it
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with the game because I wanted to make them feel good.
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I'm like, oh, I don't know. Are you 53? Oh, no, no.
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And now I just say it right out. I go, 82.
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And they go, oh, yeah, that's right. I said, how wonderful.
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What a radiant 82. Like, oh, I love that. Because that,
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to me, that's the flex is like being awesome at
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the age that you are. But it does take a
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reformatting of our mind. to not buy into a multi-billion
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dollar industry that profits when we fear and loathe ourselves
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for doing what we are supposed to do, which is
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growing older.
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Okay, so let's see if I can inject a little
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bit of nuance here. I'm on your side, 100%.
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I get it. And does it not make a certain
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amount of sense to....
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I just say, and even as I'm saying this, I'm thinking,
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you know, maybe this, the words coming out of my
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mouth are going to be reflective of my internal delusion
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on this score. But like to look our best to
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a certain extent, you know, like I'm reluctant as I
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say that because who sets the standards, right?
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You know, look our best by whose metrics.
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But there's a certain amount of like skin care and
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et cetera, et cetera, that might be defensible. And might
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not fall into the trap of being suckered by the
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fear mongers.
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Fair. And I love looking my best. My mom, who
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is 96, loves looking her best. And we both put
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time and effort into it. And so... I think it's
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just trying to disentangle that that needs to be young.
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Like if we can say, I want my skin to
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be as nice as possible. I want my hair to
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do what I want my hair to do. And for
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some people, I want like piercings and I want to
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wear colorful clothes and I want glasses. I want all that. Everybody,
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it's different what good is. And I'm all for good.
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But we're in my opinion, I have gotten bogged down
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is when I think that good is young. If those
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are the same things, that's a little rougher of a
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gamble than just saying, yeah, I want to look good.
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And to me, this is what good is. And then
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I just heard somebody's thought out loud of saying, yeah,
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good is young. That's what it is for me. I
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want to look young. If you keep thinking about it
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a little bit more like i do because i'm obsessed
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with the topic if you take it really far you'll
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probably find that there will come a point regardless of
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what you do and how much money you spend and
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how much effort you put into it that you won't
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look young yeah and could you still find a way
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to look and feel good yes if you could start
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to differentiate.
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Those That way lies guaranteed suffering. If your goal is
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to look young, you will run out of road. So
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it's okay to want to look and feel good by
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whatever standards you choose.
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Hopefully they're healthy standards.
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But as long as it's the standard isn't, I want
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to look 30 years younger than I am or whatever.
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Right.
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And I don't care for the judging of other people.
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Because I don't know where the line for that is.
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So people assume as a gerontologist that I would say like, oh,
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don't do it. No, I'm not the boss of what
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other people do. Like people are doing different things. If
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somebody wants to do Botox, if somebody wants to do surgery,
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if somebody wants to color their hair, especially women, there's
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a lot of judgment about that. I think being a woman,
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being an aging woman is hard enough as it is.
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without having to prove that you don't color your hair
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or prove that you do. So it's going to be
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different from everyone. And sometimes I'll see somebody with a
401
00:23:17.720 --> 00:23:22.220
lot of plastic surgery and it looks to me like
402
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a little like scary. Then I have to talk to
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00:23:26.779 --> 00:23:30.269
myself to say, shut up. That's how she's doing it.
404
00:23:30.589 --> 00:23:32.769
You know what? That's her way. And we're going to
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00:23:32.849 --> 00:23:35.849
do this path a different way because there isn't a
406
00:23:35.910 --> 00:23:38.670
right and wrong. Those of you who are thinking, yes,
407
00:23:38.710 --> 00:23:42.970
there is, be natural. You need to just be completely natural. Oh,
408
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so then you don't, you're not okay with lipstick? Oh,
409
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you're not okay with a haircut? Like, don't brush your hair? Like,
410
00:23:48.829 --> 00:23:53.430
where is the line? So that's why I think doing
411
00:23:53.470 --> 00:23:57.119
it for yourself, but from a thoughtful place is probably
412
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going to lead you on a better path than trying
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to stay young or having these absolutes of what a
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person can or cannot do on this journey.
415
00:24:06.890 --> 00:24:09.799
I was talking about this. I've been very influenced by
416
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this woman whose name I drop a lot on the show,
417
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Evelyn Triboli, who is one of the progenitors of intuitive eating.
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The idea of intuitive eating, as you're nodding your head,
419
00:24:18.880 --> 00:24:20.849
you already know what it is. But for the listener
420
00:24:20.869 --> 00:24:22.130
who may not know what it is, it's kind of
421
00:24:22.170 --> 00:24:26.329
like the anti-diet. Instead of following somebody's rules about what
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you should and shouldn't eat, you have a kind of
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backdrop of like a basic, gentle understanding of what's healthy,
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but you Then allow yourself to eat what you want
425
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when you want it with the caveat that you're tuning
426
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into what your body actually needs. So you're just learning
427
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to trust your own intuition about when and what to eat.
428
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And there's quite a bit of data to suggest that
429
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this is a healthy route. And I've adopted it as
430
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my own. I don't take sides in the diet wars here.
431
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You should do you. This is just what's worked for me.
432
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And I was talking to Evelyn the other day. and
433
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was complaining a little bit. I'm willing to complain to
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her more than I do in public, although I guess
435
00:25:03.450 --> 00:25:05.420
now I'm about to do it in public. Complaining to
436
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her a little bit about, you know, I work out
437
00:25:06.900 --> 00:25:09.019
a lot, but I still don't have the, I don't
438
00:25:09.059 --> 00:25:10.880
look the way I used to look when I worked
439
00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:12.880
out a lot in my 30s. My body just doesn't
440
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:15.559
respond the same way. And I was asking, like, what's
441
00:25:15.619 --> 00:25:18.799
a thing I can say to myself in the moment
442
00:25:18.839 --> 00:25:21.509
when I'm looking in the mirror being like, yeah, like,
443
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why do you have such a paunch or whatever? And
444
00:25:24.049 --> 00:25:25.930
she said, when you look in the mirror in that
445
00:25:25.970 --> 00:25:29.640
judgment spiral, just reframe it as like, look how far
446
00:25:29.680 --> 00:25:32.269
this thing has gotten me. This meat sack has been
447
00:25:32.289 --> 00:25:35.230
around for 54 years. I've dragged it all over the planet.
448
00:25:36.250 --> 00:25:38.950
I've mistreated it in many aspects of my life. And
449
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I can still work out and I can still walk
450
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and I can still work. And I found that to
451
00:25:45.349 --> 00:25:49.210
be really helpful. I like those little moments of counter-programming.
452
00:25:50.269 --> 00:25:54.210
I think that's so important. And I was thinking intuitive aging,
453
00:25:54.250 --> 00:25:57.880
that would be such a good Corollary. Yeah, exactly. I,
454
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the other day, had my shirt inside out, as I
455
00:26:01.279 --> 00:26:05.059
do sometimes, and my girlfriend said, your shirt's inside out.
456
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Because I had a sports bra on, I thought, okay,
457
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I'm going to take my shirt off and switch it around.
458
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And as I did so, I know that I showed
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00:26:13.400 --> 00:26:19.200
my pooch. And, you know, I'm like you, I'm 55,
460
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:24.680
and there's no washboard there, despite lots of exercise. And
461
00:26:24.839 --> 00:26:27.960
then I thought, if I saw someone else with that,
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I wouldn't like them less. I'd like them more. I
463
00:26:32.900 --> 00:26:36.119
would think, look at you. You're like me. And these bodies,
464
00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.400
as you said, have been around for a long time.
465
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And they're not going to look like we see, because
466
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even the people we see don't look like that. And
467
00:26:44.609 --> 00:26:48.950
sometimes I run into celebrities, because I live near Los Angeles,
468
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and they don't look the way they look on TV.
469
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social media or on TV or movies. I mean, nobody
470
00:26:57.609 --> 00:27:01.470
actually really looks just like that. So we're supposed to
471
00:27:01.490 --> 00:27:03.609
look a little bit different as we get older and
472
00:27:03.769 --> 00:27:05.289
get used to it. I love your thought.
473
00:27:06.009 --> 00:27:07.630
I wish I could take credit for it. It's Evelyn's
474
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per usual.
475
00:27:08.609 --> 00:27:09.650
I love Evelyn's thought.
476
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Coming up, Dr.
477
00:27:13.769 --> 00:27:16.710
Carey talks about the concept of joy span, four core
478
00:27:16.769 --> 00:27:20.900
habits for aging well. three critical factors for continued growth,
479
00:27:21.279 --> 00:27:33.930
how to diversify your social portfolio, and much more. I
480
00:27:33.970 --> 00:27:35.390
forced you to do a lot of chatter before we've
481
00:27:35.410 --> 00:27:37.609
actually gotten into the meat of your book. So let's
482
00:27:37.710 --> 00:27:40.349
talk about your book. It's called Joy Span. If you're
483
00:27:40.470 --> 00:27:42.059
open to it, I would love to hear you explain
484
00:27:42.599 --> 00:27:45.119
what the title refers to very specifically.
485
00:27:46.279 --> 00:27:52.220
Yes. So Joy In the longevity world, we rightly talk
486
00:27:52.259 --> 00:27:56.880
about lifespan, how many years you live. And we understandably
487
00:27:56.940 --> 00:28:00.880
want to maximize that to 100 years, to 110 years,
488
00:28:00.920 --> 00:28:06.130
some 120 years. Then, more recently, we've expanded the notion
489
00:28:06.250 --> 00:28:09.690
to what we call health span, how many years you
490
00:28:09.750 --> 00:28:13.490
live in relatively good health. And the work of Peter
491
00:28:13.509 --> 00:28:17.309
Attia and a lot of people has moved healthspan to
492
00:28:17.349 --> 00:28:20.369
a common word. And I love it because we want
493
00:28:20.390 --> 00:28:25.170
to live as healthy as possible and do these things physically.
494
00:28:26.049 --> 00:28:30.009
Health can be defined to include both physical health and
495
00:28:30.049 --> 00:28:34.150
emotional or psychological health, but too often it seems to
496
00:28:34.190 --> 00:28:38.880
be stuck on physical health. And there wasn't enough conversation
497
00:28:39.319 --> 00:28:42.720
because I would have patients who would live a long life, lifespan,
498
00:28:43.180 --> 00:28:47.509
in pretty darn good health, health span, and they were miserable.
499
00:28:48.250 --> 00:28:52.289
So that is just a long life of miserable. That's
500
00:28:52.369 --> 00:28:55.390
not great. That's suffering, and I don't want that, and
501
00:28:55.410 --> 00:28:58.849
I don't want that for anyone. So I started to think,
502
00:28:59.170 --> 00:29:04.960
how can we address the well-being component, the psychological, emotional,
503
00:29:05.259 --> 00:29:08.160
spiritual part to it? And I tried out different words
504
00:29:08.200 --> 00:29:11.880
with my patients. I tried out well-span, and people thought
505
00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.650
I was saying wealth-span. which is important too. But I
506
00:29:17.150 --> 00:29:21.289
landed on the word joy or joy span because joy,
507
00:29:21.470 --> 00:29:26.009
as defined by the American Psychological Association, is defined as
508
00:29:26.430 --> 00:29:31.250
well-being and satisfaction. And so I thought, yes, joy is
509
00:29:31.309 --> 00:29:37.390
not ecstasy. It's not smiley, smiley. It's well-being and satisfaction.
510
00:29:37.869 --> 00:29:40.799
And there is a great body of research as you
511
00:29:40.920 --> 00:29:48.269
well know, of what practices contribute to well-being, to satisfaction
512
00:29:48.309 --> 00:29:52.230
with your life, or as a more catchy term, to
513
00:29:52.309 --> 00:29:53.470
your joy span.
514
00:29:55.470 --> 00:29:57.309
Well, let's talk about it because in the book, you've
515
00:29:57.349 --> 00:30:01.799
got these four areas. where we can focus in order
516
00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:05.680
to increase our joy span. If you're cool with it,
517
00:30:05.700 --> 00:30:07.319
let's just kind of march through the four.
518
00:30:08.039 --> 00:30:10.180
Okay, so when I dug into the literature to find
519
00:30:10.299 --> 00:30:13.960
out why do some of my patients thrive in longevity,
520
00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:17.529
even with this rough stuff that they carry, and my
521
00:30:17.630 --> 00:30:21.250
other people, it's awful. Like, what is this? There were
522
00:30:21.430 --> 00:30:25.849
thousands and thousands of variables from different research articles. And
523
00:30:25.910 --> 00:30:29.869
I was like, I can't work on or suggest thousands
524
00:30:29.900 --> 00:30:33.750
of things. That's daunting. So I spent years digging, like,
525
00:30:33.910 --> 00:30:37.970
how do they group? And happily, they do group into
526
00:30:38.049 --> 00:30:43.109
four categories. And I made sure to phrase them all
527
00:30:43.289 --> 00:30:48.349
as verbs because they all take work. And so the
528
00:30:48.509 --> 00:30:51.529
easy thing is to look at somebody thriving at 95
529
00:30:51.529 --> 00:30:55.670
and say, oh man, she's got great genes, or wow,
530
00:30:55.710 --> 00:30:58.160
she's just so lucky. But what we found in the
531
00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:02.420
research that genetics is less than 25% of it. In
532
00:31:02.859 --> 00:31:06.259
some studies, it's only 13% of it. So that means
533
00:31:06.299 --> 00:31:09.319
there are things that we can do. And I tried
534
00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:14.059
so hard to make these four areas a little catchy acronym.
535
00:31:14.200 --> 00:31:16.980
And I would spend hours and hours in coffee shop
536
00:31:17.049 --> 00:31:22.430
making it spell stuff. And it was artificial and hokey
537
00:31:22.529 --> 00:31:26.009
and lame. And then one day in disgust, I said,
538
00:31:26.089 --> 00:31:28.289
I'm just going to have it be the words that
539
00:31:28.309 --> 00:31:33.130
they are. So, sorry. But you can remember them. It
540
00:31:33.190 --> 00:31:36.029
starts with a G and ends with a G. Like, oh, G.
541
00:31:36.710 --> 00:31:39.829
And then C-A is in the middle. And I'm from California.
542
00:31:40.250 --> 00:31:43.069
So that gives you a little something. But the first G,
543
00:31:43.150 --> 00:31:47.829
which is a verb, is grow. That humans are intended
544
00:31:47.869 --> 00:31:50.910
to grow. And the research shows us that people who
545
00:31:51.009 --> 00:31:55.359
consciously decide to to keep growing and it can be
546
00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:59.319
in many many different ways are people who tend to
547
00:31:59.380 --> 00:32:06.019
have that greater emotional stability and higher sense of well-being
548
00:32:06.619 --> 00:32:10.099
and that means doing hard things like not taking the
549
00:32:10.119 --> 00:32:12.509
foot off the pedal and saying I'm not going to
550
00:32:12.549 --> 00:32:16.369
do anything hard now that I'm older it means really
551
00:32:16.430 --> 00:32:20.289
sparking your intellectual curiosity. And so that's something in the book.
552
00:32:20.329 --> 00:32:22.329
I have kind of a checklist to get you going,
553
00:32:22.369 --> 00:32:25.769
but it's only the start. That's the first one, grow.
554
00:32:26.549 --> 00:32:28.490
Let's stay here for a second because I want to
555
00:32:28.529 --> 00:32:29.470
go deep on each of these.
556
00:32:29.750 --> 00:32:29.970
Yay.
557
00:32:30.230 --> 00:32:33.880
So you said the first of the four starts with
558
00:32:33.900 --> 00:32:37.519
G and it's grow. In the book, you write that
559
00:32:37.539 --> 00:32:45.180
there are three critical factors for ongoing growth, self-acceptance, curiosity,
560
00:32:45.240 --> 00:32:48.220
and humor. Can you dig in a little bit with these?
561
00:32:49.079 --> 00:32:54.099
Yes. So in order to grow, there has to be
562
00:32:54.119 --> 00:32:59.680
a level of self-acceptance. And that's hard, right? Because if
563
00:33:00.640 --> 00:33:05.069
we think like, oh, I'm just constantly not enough and
564
00:33:05.109 --> 00:33:06.869
I'm not going to be able to do all this stuff.
565
00:33:07.529 --> 00:33:10.430
And look at this old fat belly with all these
566
00:33:10.630 --> 00:33:14.009
neck wrinkles. It doesn't put us in a place to
567
00:33:14.069 --> 00:33:17.289
have enough kind of headspace. to think, how can I
568
00:33:17.349 --> 00:33:20.130
put some attention to growth? So like a first step
569
00:33:20.700 --> 00:33:24.940
is recognizing, I am getting older. This is a new
570
00:33:25.059 --> 00:33:29.160
phase for me. And we talked a little bit about self-acceptance,
571
00:33:29.259 --> 00:33:33.779
about consciously countering that narrative in our head that we
572
00:33:33.799 --> 00:33:37.809
are failing because we're growing older or that it's not
573
00:33:37.890 --> 00:33:41.390
okay that we have wrinkles or that we need glasses.
574
00:33:41.509 --> 00:33:44.349
And So even just like something simple as looking in
575
00:33:44.380 --> 00:33:48.269
the mirror and when your mind says, oh no, look
576
00:33:48.309 --> 00:33:52.430
at that. Just to say inside your mind, like, yeah,
577
00:33:53.490 --> 00:33:56.569
who cares about that? You have so many other things,
578
00:33:56.589 --> 00:33:59.049
like just to try to counter the narrative that is
579
00:33:59.509 --> 00:34:03.039
pounding in our mind. So that's self-acceptance. I know the
580
00:34:03.079 --> 00:34:06.019
third one is humor. And the second one is? Curiosity.
581
00:34:06.279 --> 00:34:06.839
Curiosity.
582
00:34:06.859 --> 00:34:13.980
So curiosity is? Allowing yourself the space to think, now what?
583
00:34:14.380 --> 00:34:17.500
Am I a little bit interested in Bitcoin? Gosh, would
584
00:34:17.519 --> 00:34:21.139
it be cool if I could grow a vegetable garden? Or, wow,
585
00:34:21.400 --> 00:34:24.320
I know my next door neighbor is having some real troubles.
586
00:34:24.340 --> 00:34:26.199
I wonder if I could go over and help. Just
587
00:34:26.579 --> 00:34:29.539
to kind of open up that spark of curiosity, knowing
588
00:34:29.599 --> 00:34:34.019
that you might have 40 years ahead and want to
589
00:34:34.079 --> 00:34:38.559
try to continue to grow. It takes that initial spark.
590
00:34:39.030 --> 00:34:41.829
And then the last is humor, which is with all
591
00:34:41.869 --> 00:34:45.570
this hard stuff, you got to laugh. And I found
592
00:34:46.110 --> 00:34:50.519
in my patients and in the literature that humor plays
593
00:34:50.599 --> 00:34:54.840
a role in enabling us to have the bravery to
594
00:34:54.900 --> 00:34:58.110
move forward. And maybe you're going to stink at something
595
00:34:58.150 --> 00:35:00.409
that you're going to try. And that's a good thing.
596
00:35:00.849 --> 00:35:03.699
It's good to stink, should be something that we take
597
00:35:03.739 --> 00:35:06.039
from this. You're going to be bad at things and
598
00:35:06.260 --> 00:35:08.519
being bad at things is the first step in growing
599
00:35:08.579 --> 00:35:11.079
in things. And it's good for your mind and it's
600
00:35:11.119 --> 00:35:14.059
good for your longevity and it's good for your inflammation.
601
00:35:14.480 --> 00:35:16.550
So that was the last one is humor.
602
00:35:17.230 --> 00:35:20.309
Are there levers we can pull to get better at
603
00:35:20.349 --> 00:35:20.949
the humor piece?
604
00:35:21.030 --> 00:35:21.329
Yes.
605
00:35:21.409 --> 00:35:22.849
I mean, I kind of think of it as a
606
00:35:22.889 --> 00:35:24.409
factory setting, but I'm curious.
607
00:35:25.230 --> 00:35:28.750
No, I don't think so. The research shows that hanging
608
00:35:28.889 --> 00:35:33.650
out with people who make you laugh, with making a
609
00:35:33.710 --> 00:35:36.719
decision to laugh out loud and say out loud. So
610
00:35:36.880 --> 00:35:41.119
this morning, it has cleared the air, but I put
611
00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:44.360
some eggs and cottage cheese and spinach on the stove
612
00:35:44.420 --> 00:35:46.219
and then went upstairs to do something, and then I
613
00:35:46.260 --> 00:35:48.489
burned it. So my whole house is filled with smoke,
614
00:35:49.110 --> 00:35:52.269
and so was the little fire detector was going off
615
00:35:52.329 --> 00:35:56.110
and making so much noise. I just decided, like, I
616
00:35:56.199 --> 00:35:59.300
have to laugh. Like, I'm doing my dream podcast and
617
00:35:59.320 --> 00:36:01.159
it's going to be all smoky in front of me.
618
00:36:01.500 --> 00:36:03.780
I can't figure out how to turn this fire alarm off.
619
00:36:03.980 --> 00:36:07.639
I have 10 minutes till this thing starts. And wiggling,
620
00:36:07.659 --> 00:36:10.699
wiggling came down and I broke the whole thing. And
621
00:36:11.380 --> 00:36:15.119
I was like, nice, Carrie. That's a choice right there
622
00:36:15.420 --> 00:36:19.000
to decide I'm going to laugh. And I have unending
623
00:36:19.059 --> 00:36:23.010
material as a human because humans screw up every day.
624
00:36:23.579 --> 00:36:25.619
You can laugh at those things. You can choose to
625
00:36:25.699 --> 00:36:29.360
watch funny movies. You can choose, especially in this environment
626
00:36:29.400 --> 00:36:33.039
where there is so much that is heartbreaking and scary
627
00:36:33.179 --> 00:36:38.340
and awful, that we can feed ourselves by also deciding
628
00:36:38.659 --> 00:36:40.889
to find the humor in the things that we can
629
00:36:40.989 --> 00:36:41.849
find the humor in.
630
00:36:42.769 --> 00:36:43.369
Amen to that.
631
00:36:43.389 --> 00:36:47.550
On this issue of being open to growth perpetually as
632
00:36:47.590 --> 00:36:51.949
a way to increase your JoySpan, specifically on learning. I
633
00:36:51.989 --> 00:36:54.139
was struck, my parents are both in assisted living.
634
00:36:54.159 --> 00:36:57.579
They're a lot younger than your mom. My mom's about.
635
00:36:57.440 --> 00:37:00.179
To be 82. Or actually, by the time this posts,
636
00:37:00.340 --> 00:37:02.860
she may be 82. I go there once a month
637
00:37:02.900 --> 00:37:05.059
and teach some meditation. And I was sitting in the
638
00:37:05.519 --> 00:37:08.230
session before. My mom goes to like, she carries around
639
00:37:08.250 --> 00:37:11.110
the activity sheet and just goes from activity to activity
640
00:37:11.170 --> 00:37:13.389
all day long. And this woman was an editor at
641
00:37:13.409 --> 00:37:15.969
the New England Journal of Medicine and now plays bingo.
642
00:37:16.309 --> 00:37:18.480
And to watch her adjust....
643
00:37:19.010 --> 00:37:21.170
To this new phase of her life has been really
644
00:37:21.210 --> 00:37:24.010
cool because she's really taken to it. I never, she
645
00:37:24.050 --> 00:37:27.019
was not super social as a younger person. And now
646
00:37:27.059 --> 00:37:30.280
she's like the mayor of this assisted living facility and
647
00:37:30.619 --> 00:37:32.679
does all the stuff. And I was in the middle
648
00:37:32.699 --> 00:37:35.699
of the session before my meditation class. And they were
649
00:37:35.719 --> 00:37:40.329
like doing some not very good slideshow for the codgers.
650
00:37:40.889 --> 00:37:44.070
And my mom was like totally engaged and asking questions
651
00:37:44.150 --> 00:37:45.630
and asking for more information.
652
00:37:45.750 --> 00:37:47.769
And I was so impressed.
653
00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:51.400
And that just speaks to, I think, what you're talking
654
00:37:51.420 --> 00:37:54.280
about of growth as a necessary contributor to joy span.
655
00:37:55.059 --> 00:37:59.949
And how incredible, because she could just as easily poo-pooed
656
00:37:59.989 --> 00:38:02.530
this all as beneath her because she's the editor of
657
00:38:02.710 --> 00:38:06.750
New England Journal of Medicine, but she didn't, right? She decided,
658
00:38:06.769 --> 00:38:09.690
I'm going to jump in. I'm going to do this phase,
659
00:38:10.110 --> 00:38:14.449
which is a choice of reduced suffering because you're going
660
00:38:14.530 --> 00:38:18.050
with it. Yes. That's my hope. for myself is that
661
00:38:18.130 --> 00:38:21.659
I would follow your mom's path of saying, and I
662
00:38:21.699 --> 00:38:24.460
get to this too, is how can I adapt to
663
00:38:24.500 --> 00:38:26.780
try to make the most of this and continue to grow?
664
00:38:26.820 --> 00:38:29.719
And sometimes the growth is things that we would see,
665
00:38:29.760 --> 00:38:32.219
but sometimes it isn't. I have a patient, for example,
666
00:38:33.079 --> 00:38:36.929
who is a very well-regarded businessman, and he made a
667
00:38:36.969 --> 00:38:41.130
realization that he has never been an actual real listener.
668
00:38:41.530 --> 00:38:46.969
He is a wisdom and leadership and he's not big listener.
669
00:38:47.010 --> 00:38:49.289
And he decided like, that's going to be my growth.
670
00:38:49.389 --> 00:38:51.710
I'm going to learn to listen because I never actually
671
00:38:51.750 --> 00:38:55.039
learned that. And so the act of shutting the heck
672
00:38:55.219 --> 00:38:59.920
up was his growth. And interestingly, his kids and grandkids
673
00:38:59.960 --> 00:39:03.019
and people he's around now flock to him because I
674
00:39:03.039 --> 00:39:07.489
think we all crave being authentically listened to. And that
675
00:39:07.530 --> 00:39:09.829
gave me hope. I thought, gosh, I could be a
676
00:39:09.869 --> 00:39:12.630
better listener. And that's something I continue to grow on
677
00:39:12.809 --> 00:39:14.420
all life long. Yes.
678
00:39:14.739 --> 00:39:17.800
I mean, these stories about people who pick something up
679
00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:19.719
late in life or make a change late in life are,
680
00:39:20.059 --> 00:39:22.849
there's a reason why they're so galvanizing, so exciting to us.
681
00:39:22.860 --> 00:39:25.130
And my friend of mine, two days before this interview,
682
00:39:25.530 --> 00:39:28.130
sent me an article about a woman who started powerlifting
683
00:39:28.170 --> 00:39:31.530
in her 60s that was really just... achieving some virality,
684
00:39:32.010 --> 00:39:34.969
the article was. And, you know, I found it incredibly
685
00:39:35.010 --> 00:39:38.210
exciting to read. Yeah, it's just a liberating notion that
686
00:39:38.289 --> 00:39:42.510
you can make substantial changes at any point.
687
00:39:43.590 --> 00:39:46.789
Absolutely. I read one recently. It's a man who had
688
00:39:46.829 --> 00:39:50.699
a very high position in the military. And when he retired,
689
00:39:51.320 --> 00:39:55.159
he found that there were a real lack of bus
690
00:39:55.179 --> 00:39:58.119
drivers after COVID. And so he thought, well, I'll just
691
00:39:58.179 --> 00:39:59.920
try it out. I don't know if I would really
692
00:39:59.980 --> 00:40:02.719
do that. And so he started driving the bus and
693
00:40:02.739 --> 00:40:05.590
he started impacting each of the children. And then he
694
00:40:05.630 --> 00:40:08.170
changed it. So instead of going to the bus wash
695
00:40:08.530 --> 00:40:11.489
every Saturday, he held a bus wash where all the
696
00:40:11.530 --> 00:40:14.210
children and the families would come and wash the bus. Well,
697
00:40:14.250 --> 00:40:18.199
he's really changing lives. in a way that he actually
698
00:40:18.280 --> 00:40:21.659
never had before. And that, you know, you store these things,
699
00:40:21.719 --> 00:40:25.079
you think, wow, it's not an anomaly to continue to grow.
700
00:40:25.219 --> 00:40:28.320
It is what humans do when they flourish.
701
00:40:28.639 --> 00:40:28.860
Yes.
702
00:40:29.900 --> 00:40:32.460
My nanny growing up, Juanita, she's no longer with us.
703
00:40:33.219 --> 00:40:36.260
After we got into high school and we didn't need
704
00:40:36.300 --> 00:40:41.030
a nanny anymore, she moved to Maine and became a
705
00:40:41.050 --> 00:40:43.909
school bus driver for students with special needs. And every
706
00:40:43.949 --> 00:40:46.510
kid who got on the bus every morning got their
707
00:40:46.570 --> 00:40:47.690
own hug from Juanita.
708
00:40:48.550 --> 00:40:53.019
Wow. Wow. And talking about a win, win, win. Yeah, exactly.
709
00:40:53.159 --> 00:40:56.329
For the parents, for her, for those children. Yes.
710
00:40:57.380 --> 00:40:59.780
She also used to smack us with a spatula. So,
711
00:41:00.219 --> 00:41:01.519
you know, it wasn't all perfect.
712
00:41:02.039 --> 00:41:04.440
So did my mom. So there's that.
713
00:41:06.739 --> 00:41:08.909
Just one little factual point on my mom. She was
714
00:41:08.949 --> 00:41:11.030
not the editor of New England Journal of Medicine. She
715
00:41:11.070 --> 00:41:14.969
was an editor, but she was an eminent physician at
716
00:41:15.010 --> 00:41:18.179
Harvard for many, many decades. And it's very cool to
717
00:41:18.219 --> 00:41:21.760
watch her adapt to her life as a resident of
718
00:41:21.840 --> 00:41:23.360
a assisted living facility.
719
00:41:23.739 --> 00:41:24.400
As the mayor.
720
00:41:25.030 --> 00:41:25.889
As the mayor, yes.
721
00:41:26.090 --> 00:41:30.280
So, okay, there are four ways to increase your joy span.
722
00:41:30.340 --> 00:41:34.030
We've talked about one, which is growth. The second is connect.
723
00:41:34.309 --> 00:41:35.030
Please say more.
724
00:41:35.949 --> 00:41:40.590
So an abundant amount of research, much coming out of
725
00:41:40.670 --> 00:41:43.210
Harvard in the longitudinal study that was an 85-year study
726
00:41:43.230 --> 00:41:49.389
of what really were the biggies in a long life,
727
00:41:49.769 --> 00:41:54.800
well-lived and satisfaction with life or what I'm calling joy span.
728
00:41:55.179 --> 00:41:58.820
And what they found, it was connection, the degree to
729
00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:06.760
which people felt that they had meaningful relationships. And sometimes,
730
00:42:06.980 --> 00:42:09.119
some of us who like to be alone, I am one,
731
00:42:09.659 --> 00:42:12.159
you can think, oh, well, not me. I don't really
732
00:42:12.219 --> 00:42:14.639
need anybody. I'm just happy just to chill by myself.
733
00:42:15.269 --> 00:42:18.030
It's actually, when you dig into the research, it's all
734
00:42:18.070 --> 00:42:20.630
of us have a need for human connection, even though
735
00:42:20.670 --> 00:42:23.829
it's expressed a little bit differently. And the problem is,
736
00:42:24.070 --> 00:42:27.780
as we get older, my mom at 96 has lost,
737
00:42:28.199 --> 00:42:32.340
I'd say 99% of her friends have passed away. So
738
00:42:32.380 --> 00:42:35.380
one of the things we talk about is diversifying your
739
00:42:35.440 --> 00:42:40.070
social portfolio in the same way you diversify your financial portfolio.
740
00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:44.239
so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket.
741
00:42:44.380 --> 00:42:49.719
So that is making younger friends. And that requires you
742
00:42:49.760 --> 00:42:52.949
to recognize how much you have to offer. Because sometimes
743
00:42:52.989 --> 00:42:55.429
we say, oh gosh, you know, now I'm 55. I
744
00:42:55.550 --> 00:42:58.010
don't know if a 30-year-old would want to hang out
745
00:42:58.070 --> 00:43:01.110
with me. And actually, there's so much benefit to hanging
746
00:43:01.150 --> 00:43:04.239
out with people who walk in front of you. And
747
00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:07.630
it's usually not the younger person who is saying, I
748
00:43:07.670 --> 00:43:09.829
don't want to hang out. It's often the older person
749
00:43:09.869 --> 00:43:12.809
putting these limits on themselves. So that's one step of
750
00:43:12.869 --> 00:43:16.070
it is diversifying. If you just have one best friend
751
00:43:16.150 --> 00:43:19.210
and then they die of cancer, you're in worse shape
752
00:43:19.650 --> 00:43:22.699
than loving your best friend, of course, but also thinking
753
00:43:22.780 --> 00:43:25.960
I'm going to have multiple friends. And then when you think,
754
00:43:26.139 --> 00:43:30.900
how do I do that? I call that being that friend.
755
00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:34.199
And that friend is the one who picks up the phone,
756
00:43:34.719 --> 00:43:37.679
who does the text, who makes the plan, who says,
757
00:43:37.760 --> 00:43:41.820
can I drive you to your chemo appointment, who remembers
758
00:43:41.860 --> 00:43:44.449
that it was two years ago today that your dad died,
759
00:43:44.719 --> 00:43:47.269
who has a list of things. So it takes quite
760
00:43:47.309 --> 00:43:49.869
a bit of proactive. And when my patients come to
761
00:43:49.909 --> 00:43:53.230
me and say they are lonely, I, of course, I
762
00:43:53.289 --> 00:43:56.710
take it very seriously because loneliness is as dangerous to
763
00:43:56.769 --> 00:44:01.800
our health as smoking 14 cigarettes a day. And I
764
00:44:01.980 --> 00:44:04.300
ask them, tell me what you're doing in terms of
765
00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:08.130
reaching out. And they'll say, well, Nobody's reaching out to me.
766
00:44:08.590 --> 00:44:12.280
Nobody's including me. That's why I'm lonely. And so then
767
00:44:12.300 --> 00:44:14.679
we always have to turn it around and try to think,
768
00:44:15.179 --> 00:44:18.300
what can you do? So if your mobility is limited,
769
00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:21.070
a text is a way to work. If you don't
770
00:44:21.139 --> 00:44:24.730
text because your eyesight is limited, there are phones and
771
00:44:24.789 --> 00:44:28.070
solutions where people can go next door and knock on
772
00:44:28.090 --> 00:44:31.150
the door and say, hey, I picked some lemons. Or
773
00:44:31.210 --> 00:44:33.530
when you go to the coffee shop, Do you know
774
00:44:33.590 --> 00:44:36.170
the name of the person who is serving the coffee?
775
00:44:36.230 --> 00:44:41.050
Because over time, those connections, those micro connections are what
776
00:44:41.170 --> 00:44:45.130
enable us to build this social portfolio that will sustain
777
00:44:45.230 --> 00:44:48.300
us for these very long lives. Yeah.
778
00:44:48.320 --> 00:44:51.380
And your comments there seem to be directed toward your
779
00:44:51.619 --> 00:44:55.679
gerontology patients, but this is massively important at any age.
780
00:44:56.059 --> 00:44:59.000
And if you want to live a long, healthy, happy life.
781
00:45:00.070 --> 00:45:02.550
you need friends. And that's true for introverts. You just
782
00:45:02.590 --> 00:45:05.309
need fewer friends or you may just need fewer friends.
783
00:45:05.349 --> 00:45:08.389
So it's just a key thing to work on. I'll
784
00:45:08.409 --> 00:45:10.949
say just I feel like I may have maybe doing
785
00:45:10.969 --> 00:45:12.670
too much talking in this episode, but I'll say one
786
00:45:12.710 --> 00:45:15.829
last little anecdotal thing here, which is that one area
787
00:45:15.849 --> 00:45:19.250
of growth for me in my 50s has been I
788
00:45:19.309 --> 00:45:22.789
really have become the guy who organizes stuff. I never
789
00:45:22.829 --> 00:45:24.809
was that guy would go to your party, but I
790
00:45:24.869 --> 00:45:28.150
never organized stuff. So now like I organize a a
791
00:45:28.190 --> 00:45:31.710
little meditation retreat for some friends every year too, actually.
792
00:45:31.789 --> 00:45:35.289
And then I have three or four recurring dinner groups.
793
00:45:35.369 --> 00:45:38.030
And two of them, I'm like, I really am like,
794
00:45:38.070 --> 00:45:40.860
I set up the WhatsApp chat and I book the
795
00:45:40.900 --> 00:45:43.300
table and I do the head count. And I have
796
00:45:43.340 --> 00:45:46.300
to say, I get enormous enjoyment out of it. I'm
797
00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:47.989
surprised how much I like it.
798
00:45:48.280 --> 00:45:49.380
It's also a pain in the ass.
799
00:45:49.420 --> 00:45:51.199
And like you see, when you're organizing a thing, people
800
00:45:51.239 --> 00:45:53.769
are kind of rude. And I realized how rude I've
801
00:45:53.809 --> 00:45:55.349
been in the past. It's like, oh, they're going to
802
00:45:55.389 --> 00:45:57.530
bail out the last minute or they don't. give you
803
00:45:57.570 --> 00:46:00.500
an RSVP, you know, so you can't get a head count.
804
00:46:00.820 --> 00:46:03.440
So I can find myself getting a little resentful at times.
805
00:46:03.780 --> 00:46:07.159
And yet it doesn't outweigh how good it has been
806
00:46:07.219 --> 00:46:09.079
for me. And knowing that it's doing a lot of
807
00:46:09.119 --> 00:46:09.960
good for the other people.
808
00:46:11.280 --> 00:46:14.340
I couldn't agree more. And the earlier we start, the better.
809
00:46:14.360 --> 00:46:16.960
And it is a pain in the rear. And you
810
00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:19.320
kind of get uncomfortable because you're putting yourself out there.
811
00:46:19.920 --> 00:46:23.579
Some girls were talking about their book group. And I
812
00:46:23.619 --> 00:46:26.380
had this realization like, I love books and I'm not
813
00:46:26.440 --> 00:46:28.789
in a book group. So I reached out to them
814
00:46:28.849 --> 00:46:31.070
and I said, oh, I love books. Maybe, you know,
815
00:46:31.170 --> 00:46:33.349
I could be in that book group. And they're great girls,
816
00:46:33.809 --> 00:46:36.780
but they just, they're women. But they said, oh, we
817
00:46:36.800 --> 00:46:38.639
made this pact that was going to only be the
818
00:46:38.679 --> 00:46:40.980
same group and that we're going to travel with that
819
00:46:41.099 --> 00:46:44.860
group because it's really well established, which I understand. But
820
00:46:44.900 --> 00:46:46.860
then I needed to do the next step, which is
821
00:46:46.900 --> 00:46:50.019
to make my own book club. So I called it
822
00:46:50.099 --> 00:46:53.179
the No NBD, No Big Deal Book Club. And it's
823
00:46:53.219 --> 00:46:55.199
not even required that you read the book. You could
824
00:46:55.219 --> 00:46:58.519
just come and we'll never judge you. And we're on
825
00:46:58.579 --> 00:47:01.199
about our third meeting. I thought, why didn't I do
826
00:47:01.239 --> 00:47:04.510
this 10 years ago? Why didn't I do this at
827
00:47:04.510 --> 00:47:07.550
45 or 35 or 25? I, too, was a person
828
00:47:07.590 --> 00:47:11.130
who waited to be included. And then maybe, like you said,
829
00:47:11.190 --> 00:47:15.190
I wouldn't show up or wouldn't respond. So, yeah, I
830
00:47:15.230 --> 00:47:16.989
was one of the annoying people, but I'm trying to
831
00:47:17.030 --> 00:47:17.940
move to the other side.
832
00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:26.130
Well, come on in. The water is lukewarm. Coming up, Dr.
833
00:47:26.170 --> 00:47:29.369
Carey talks about some coping strategies for adapting in the
834
00:47:29.389 --> 00:47:32.289
face of change, the strengths that will come with age
835
00:47:32.369 --> 00:47:34.769
for most of us, and some tools that you.
836
00:47:34.670 --> 00:47:36.570
Can utilize when your joy dips.
837
00:47:46.320 --> 00:47:49.500
The next skill set for increasing joy spans, we've talked
838
00:47:49.539 --> 00:47:51.460
about growth, talked about connection.
839
00:47:51.980 --> 00:47:54.900
The next is adapt. Please say more.
840
00:47:55.789 --> 00:48:01.780
So the recognition and the realism that there will be
841
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:04.980
changes on this long life journey if you live a
842
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.650
long life. And so rather than we're just denying aging
843
00:48:10.250 --> 00:48:13.179
or just don't think about it, don't ever think about it.
844
00:48:13.429 --> 00:48:15.489
I had somebody the other day tell me, I was
845
00:48:15.550 --> 00:48:18.789
watching your mom who lives home alone at 96 and
846
00:48:19.269 --> 00:48:22.039
I just can't understand why she said she needs to
847
00:48:22.139 --> 00:48:24.630
use a walker because I'm not going to ever do
848
00:48:24.670 --> 00:48:26.789
that because my legs are going to always stay so
849
00:48:26.869 --> 00:48:31.010
strong because I do leg exercises. And I had to say, like,
850
00:48:31.429 --> 00:48:34.550
I think you really haven't been around older people quite
851
00:48:34.610 --> 00:48:38.210
enough because there are changes. And you can do the
852
00:48:38.269 --> 00:48:41.949
whole checklist of all the wonderful things and every burpee
853
00:48:42.360 --> 00:48:45.639
and every green drink and all the stuff. And still
854
00:48:45.699 --> 00:48:49.739
there will be changes. A diagnosis you didn't expect or
855
00:48:49.800 --> 00:48:54.260
maybe macular degeneration or maybe your partner dies. In my case,
856
00:48:54.340 --> 00:48:58.250
when I was writing and researching about adaptation using some
857
00:48:58.309 --> 00:49:03.750
research from Israel about measuring how adaptable you are, my
858
00:49:04.150 --> 00:49:09.590
middle daughter, who is 25, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Sorry.
859
00:49:10.329 --> 00:49:14.909
I was like, no, this is wrong. It could be me.
860
00:49:14.949 --> 00:49:17.030
It could be my 96-year-old mom. It could be my
861
00:49:17.050 --> 00:49:21.289
57-year-old husband. But wait, my daughter? I hadn't factored in
862
00:49:21.309 --> 00:49:25.250
that that could happen. But she's doing well, and she's
863
00:49:25.289 --> 00:49:28.309
in medical school, and every six months we're doing an MRI.
864
00:49:29.650 --> 00:49:32.329
But it's not my first choice, but also it made
865
00:49:32.369 --> 00:49:35.449
me realize, like, yes, there is going to be stuff
866
00:49:35.530 --> 00:49:40.889
in this journey. I guarantee it. And when... Your stuff comes.
867
00:49:41.710 --> 00:49:45.320
It's how you respond, how you adapt, how you get
868
00:49:45.340 --> 00:49:48.380
your mind around it. The work that takes to adapt
869
00:49:48.440 --> 00:49:51.980
to that which you didn't want really impacts the quality
870
00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:56.239
of your life. So my patients who are just consistently
871
00:49:56.579 --> 00:50:01.489
pissed off about something happening, it's a choice to stay
872
00:50:01.829 --> 00:50:05.909
forever mad. and shaking our fist at that thing. Like,
873
00:50:05.949 --> 00:50:08.150
it's not fair that my kid has this, or I
874
00:50:08.230 --> 00:50:10.849
can't believe I had all these plans to travel with
875
00:50:10.889 --> 00:50:13.630
my husband, and then he passed away suddenly. Like, all
876
00:50:13.690 --> 00:50:17.570
these things. So adapting, it's not that it's easy, but
877
00:50:17.590 --> 00:50:20.840
it is possible, and we know it's possible because I
878
00:50:20.900 --> 00:50:24.400
see it all day, every day, with people of all ages.
879
00:50:25.079 --> 00:50:28.280
So in the book, you talk about some ways to
880
00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:32.059
boost our ability to cope, which is a cousin, if
881
00:50:32.099 --> 00:50:34.989
not a synonym, with adapting. And you list some internal
882
00:50:35.030 --> 00:50:36.909
strategies and some external strategies.
883
00:50:36.949 --> 00:50:39.369
Can you just pick a few and walk us through them?
884
00:50:40.190 --> 00:50:43.510
Sure. I call these the coping strategies toolbox. And some
885
00:50:43.570 --> 00:50:46.269
are things we do inside of ourselves and some are
886
00:50:46.289 --> 00:50:48.150
things that we reach out. So I'll give you just
887
00:50:48.170 --> 00:50:53.199
a couple of examples. An internal coping strategy that many
888
00:50:53.239 --> 00:50:56.739
people find helpful is even just journaling to try to
889
00:50:56.860 --> 00:51:01.030
process the emotions. And In the book, I list out
890
00:51:01.110 --> 00:51:04.309
maybe about 10 different options and then you can check off,
891
00:51:04.369 --> 00:51:07.389
have I tried this? Was it even helpful? Because some
892
00:51:07.409 --> 00:51:11.690
things are helpful for some people. Another internal strategy is
893
00:51:12.130 --> 00:51:14.320
something you might know a little bit about, which is
894
00:51:14.400 --> 00:51:18.099
to meditate. That is one that I often fall off of.
895
00:51:18.159 --> 00:51:19.639
And then when I get back to it, I think,
896
00:51:19.679 --> 00:51:23.400
oh my goodness, I have resources internally that I didn't
897
00:51:23.440 --> 00:51:28.610
know I had because this incredible gift called meditation, something
898
00:51:28.650 --> 00:51:32.369
that my mom and I both do is a gratitude
899
00:51:32.429 --> 00:51:35.869
practice where every single day we write down three things
900
00:51:36.070 --> 00:51:39.349
in a journal that we're grateful for. And she, in
901
00:51:39.449 --> 00:51:43.420
her book, is up to 590 items. And she'll flip
902
00:51:43.480 --> 00:51:46.300
through those items on days that she's feeling blue. And
903
00:51:46.659 --> 00:51:49.920
sometimes it's just as simple as, I'm grateful I have
904
00:51:49.960 --> 00:51:52.119
a bed. I'm grateful I have a pillow. I get
905
00:51:52.159 --> 00:51:54.239
to have my cup of coffee. I get to take
906
00:51:54.280 --> 00:51:57.960
a shower. So then if we turn to the external
907
00:51:58.119 --> 00:52:02.400
coping strategies, seeking support from friends and family and letting
908
00:52:02.460 --> 00:52:04.780
them in to know that I am having a hard
909
00:52:04.820 --> 00:52:07.059
time with this. I am a person who loved to
910
00:52:07.139 --> 00:52:10.980
walk and now I can't walk and I am mad
911
00:52:11.079 --> 00:52:14.480
and frustrated and disappointed and I didn't expect this to
912
00:52:14.559 --> 00:52:17.699
be my thing and I hate this. Let's talk about it.
913
00:52:17.840 --> 00:52:21.150
And that can be really helpful because they also have
914
00:52:21.190 --> 00:52:23.309
a thing and you guys can talk about those things.
915
00:52:23.860 --> 00:52:25.920
Sometimes your friends don't know what to say. And so
916
00:52:25.960 --> 00:52:29.460
consulting a therapist or a counselor can be really helpful.
917
00:52:29.760 --> 00:52:33.889
And there are therapists and counselors who can help at
918
00:52:34.110 --> 00:52:37.989
every age. And that includes in our later years. There's
919
00:52:38.190 --> 00:52:44.710
geropsychologists and geropsychiatrists who do absolutely incredible work. And I'll
920
00:52:44.750 --> 00:52:51.550
just name one more external coping strategies. One is thinking
921
00:52:51.650 --> 00:52:56.719
about not marinating as much in that thing that is
922
00:52:57.179 --> 00:53:01.400
rough that you're needing to adapt to and consciously trying
923
00:53:01.480 --> 00:53:05.000
to go to somebody else and what their thing is.
924
00:53:05.219 --> 00:53:08.099
And so when my daughter was diagnosed with that brain tumor,
925
00:53:08.400 --> 00:53:11.519
all I could hear was vestibular schwannoma. It was just
926
00:53:11.579 --> 00:53:14.800
like my walking thing and it was all about me.
927
00:53:15.110 --> 00:53:18.170
And then I tried this to try to look up
928
00:53:18.250 --> 00:53:21.369
and I looked over at my friend who had lost
929
00:53:21.429 --> 00:53:25.510
a child and I said, first of all, I'm so
930
00:53:25.590 --> 00:53:28.789
sorry that when you were going through this, I wasn't there.
931
00:53:28.809 --> 00:53:32.969
And second of all, I want to think about you
932
00:53:33.010 --> 00:53:36.969
and learn from you and be with you now. And
933
00:53:37.190 --> 00:53:40.329
getting my focus away from my own problems and onto
934
00:53:40.369 --> 00:53:44.539
somebody else made a huge shift. And I think maybe
935
00:53:44.559 --> 00:53:45.320
good for her, too.
936
00:53:45.340 --> 00:53:51.519
One of my perhaps too glib thoughts. taglines is you
937
00:53:51.559 --> 00:53:53.159
know the view is so much better when you pull
938
00:53:53.179 --> 00:53:55.420
your head out of your ass and to be clear
939
00:53:55.460 --> 00:53:59.380
this is not about catastrophic altruism or people pleasing it's
940
00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:03.760
more that it just feels really good we're wired we
941
00:54:03.800 --> 00:54:07.699
survived as a species because of our capacity to cooperate
942
00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:10.380
and so if you can just get out of your
943
00:54:10.420 --> 00:54:13.079
own stuff and be useful to somebody else it really
944
00:54:13.480 --> 00:54:14.679
is elevating.
945
00:54:14.849 --> 00:54:17.510
It saved me. I watch it a lot with people
946
00:54:17.530 --> 00:54:20.389
of all ages where you, all of a sudden, like
947
00:54:20.429 --> 00:54:22.809
you said, you pull your head out and you're like, what?
948
00:54:23.030 --> 00:54:25.670
Other people have stuff too? You know?
949
00:54:26.190 --> 00:54:27.710
Yeah. Okay. So the fourth.
950
00:54:28.750 --> 00:54:31.119
So we're at the fourth. And so, you know, it
951
00:54:31.139 --> 00:54:33.139
started with a G, so it's going to end with
952
00:54:33.199 --> 00:54:38.400
a G. And this one is give. And that gets
953
00:54:38.659 --> 00:54:43.309
out nothing new. The age old from all these different
954
00:54:43.690 --> 00:54:50.079
philosophies and practices and religions and learnings of the ability
955
00:54:50.360 --> 00:54:57.380
to give of yourself really impacts how you will experience
956
00:54:57.420 --> 00:55:00.670
your longevity and indeed how you will experience your life.
957
00:55:01.329 --> 00:55:05.130
And so often when people think about legacy, they're thinking
958
00:55:05.210 --> 00:55:09.389
about giving money. And for most of us, money isn't
959
00:55:09.550 --> 00:55:11.920
the thing that we have. So that's why I think
960
00:55:11.960 --> 00:55:15.519
it's more apt to think about giving of yourself and
961
00:55:16.099 --> 00:55:20.420
thinking of ways you can look for needs and then
962
00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:25.300
step in and fill them. And our internalized ageism sometimes
963
00:55:25.400 --> 00:55:28.920
prevents that. So we think, man, you know, here I am.
964
00:55:28.940 --> 00:55:33.820
I'm 87. What do I have to give? And that's
965
00:55:33.840 --> 00:55:39.010
such a shame because the world has what older you brings.
966
00:55:39.679 --> 00:55:41.820
And so in this world where everyone's saying, look at me,
967
00:55:41.889 --> 00:55:44.489
look at me, look at me, myself included with having
968
00:55:44.530 --> 00:55:48.889
just done a book tour, the fact that humility matters
969
00:55:48.989 --> 00:55:51.250
and that it can get stronger as we get older.
970
00:55:51.269 --> 00:55:55.250
And if I have an 87-year-old come to me and
971
00:55:56.150 --> 00:56:00.429
with their presence and with their words remind me about
972
00:56:00.550 --> 00:56:04.809
what humility does and the power of it, I need that.
973
00:56:05.269 --> 00:56:08.829
So get out of your way and think, I do
974
00:56:08.949 --> 00:56:12.070
have what the world needs and I'm going to offer
975
00:56:12.170 --> 00:56:15.789
it and it's not going to land every time. So
976
00:56:16.289 --> 00:56:19.659
an example recently, I have a friend who I think
977
00:56:19.679 --> 00:56:23.940
is about 84 and her neighbor has four young children
978
00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:27.179
and she's a single mother. So my friend said, I
979
00:56:28.400 --> 00:56:31.500
would love to, because I had four children as a
980
00:56:31.519 --> 00:56:33.119
single mother, I'd love to go and knock on the
981
00:56:33.159 --> 00:56:36.610
neighbor's door and say at dinnertime, If it's helpful to you,
982
00:56:37.230 --> 00:56:40.210
maybe I could hold or entertain some of the kids
983
00:56:40.269 --> 00:56:43.250
so that you could cook. And I encouraged her because
984
00:56:43.510 --> 00:56:47.739
I would have loved that. And this woman practically closed
985
00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:50.760
the door on her face. And so it was like, okay,
986
00:56:50.800 --> 00:56:54.219
that didn't work. But then we said, okay, it was
987
00:56:54.539 --> 00:56:57.659
such a good thought. That just wasn't the right one.
988
00:56:57.800 --> 00:57:01.010
We got to kiss some frogs. Let's find it. And
989
00:57:01.179 --> 00:57:04.829
she did. She found another. This was a single father.
990
00:57:05.360 --> 00:57:08.920
who is an incredible guy and he has two kids
991
00:57:09.300 --> 00:57:12.659
and she with gusto and bravery offered it. And now
992
00:57:12.719 --> 00:57:16.219
she goes over every Tuesday and Thursday and she's there
993
00:57:16.260 --> 00:57:18.590
with the kids while he's putting dinner together and they
994
00:57:18.610 --> 00:57:22.090
have this beautiful friendship and it's really giving of herself
995
00:57:22.190 --> 00:57:24.230
with what she has, which is her time and her
996
00:57:24.289 --> 00:57:25.369
desire to give.
997
00:57:26.210 --> 00:57:27.309
And expertise actually.
998
00:57:27.510 --> 00:57:27.809
Yes.
999
00:57:28.909 --> 00:57:30.650
So you made a nod to the fact that some
1000
00:57:30.670 --> 00:57:33.429
people may have a whole story about like, I don't
1001
00:57:33.570 --> 00:57:36.199
know what to give. You in the book have a
1002
00:57:36.639 --> 00:57:41.070
sort of four steps for cultivating this habit of giving.
1003
00:57:41.610 --> 00:57:43.889
I'll just say them all out loud and you can
1004
00:57:43.929 --> 00:57:46.010
just pick up on whichever one you want to say
1005
00:57:46.050 --> 00:57:48.570
more on, if not all of them. The first is
1006
00:57:48.590 --> 00:57:51.889
to find what sparks you, reflect on what your passions
1007
00:57:51.969 --> 00:57:55.130
and interests are. The second is to brainstorm ways to
1008
00:57:55.340 --> 00:57:59.000
use that spark. The third is to imagine the future you.
1009
00:58:00.010 --> 00:58:02.170
you know, like your older self and what they're doing
1010
00:58:02.190 --> 00:58:04.510
and how they're giving. And the fourth is to try
1011
00:58:04.710 --> 00:58:07.769
out some form of giving to just do some experiments.
1012
00:58:08.380 --> 00:58:10.519
Do I have that right? And if so, like anything
1013
00:58:10.539 --> 00:58:11.039
more to add?
1014
00:58:11.519 --> 00:58:14.440
You have it right. And I wanted to expound on
1015
00:58:14.480 --> 00:58:18.039
the one that is imagining this best possible future you.
1016
00:58:18.460 --> 00:58:23.300
So often we forget to continue to dream about the
1017
00:58:23.340 --> 00:58:28.809
best possible. So it does require you picturing, wow, I
1018
00:58:28.869 --> 00:58:34.139
see myself. I'm at the whatever, doing this. Go ahead
1019
00:58:34.179 --> 00:58:38.559
and dream it first. And then we as humans naturally
1020
00:58:38.699 --> 00:58:43.699
work toward that. So really picture yourself, let's say, at
1021
00:58:43.699 --> 00:58:46.360
90 years old. And what do you look like? What
1022
00:58:46.389 --> 00:58:49.789
are you doing? But do it the best possible version.
1023
00:58:50.050 --> 00:58:52.730
Because I think sometimes we do the opposite. We imagine
1024
00:58:52.769 --> 00:58:59.059
this old, spooky, decrepit, poop-in-our-pants version of And I don't
1025
00:58:59.079 --> 00:59:02.110
think that's helpful. I think that, yeah, you then kind
1026
00:59:02.150 --> 00:59:07.090
of are inadvertently working toward that. But this 98-year-old Dan
1027
00:59:07.190 --> 00:59:11.159
doing his thing, organizing his meditation group right? Like really
1028
00:59:11.219 --> 00:59:12.699
picture that how you're going to do it.
1029
00:59:14.780 --> 00:59:16.559
This is a move I've made several times throughout the
1030
00:59:16.920 --> 00:59:20.320
course of this conversation. But you, given your training, you
1031
00:59:20.360 --> 00:59:24.780
really do, I think, focus quite rightly many of your
1032
00:59:25.110 --> 00:59:28.829
comments toward your patient population. And I just want to
1033
00:59:29.269 --> 00:59:32.570
say that If you have an altruistic mindset, which again
1034
00:59:32.650 --> 00:59:37.349
is not people-pleasing and it is not giving away all
1035
00:59:37.369 --> 00:59:40.610
of your shit and leaving yourself with nothing, but just
1036
00:59:41.050 --> 00:59:46.000
as the great meditation teacher and author Ram Dass, no.
1037
00:59:45.940 --> 00:59:48.019
Longer with us, wrote a book or co-authored a book
1038
00:59:48.260 --> 00:59:49.219
called How Can I Help?
1039
00:59:49.980 --> 00:59:52.960
If you use that as just a lens through which
1040
00:59:53.019 --> 00:59:55.300
you see the world, and look, you're not always going
1041
00:59:55.320 --> 00:59:58.269
to be in that mindset sometimes. you just don't want
1042
00:59:58.289 --> 01:00:00.550
to help. You need to set boundaries and that's fine.
1043
01:00:00.590 --> 01:00:03.539
But just more often than not, if your mindset is,
1044
01:00:03.900 --> 01:00:06.679
how can I help? There's a lot of data to
1045
01:00:06.739 --> 01:00:10.420
show that that will improve your life at any age.
1046
01:00:11.039 --> 01:00:15.110
Absolutely. At every single age. And I love that simple, like,
1047
01:00:15.570 --> 01:00:18.929
how can I help? I love Eleanor Roosevelt who said,
1048
01:00:19.070 --> 01:00:22.489
when you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
1049
01:00:22.510 --> 01:00:27.460
And There is research out of UCLA, Stephen Cole, where
1050
01:00:27.500 --> 01:00:30.800
he looked at how people who feel that they have
1051
01:00:30.840 --> 01:00:35.429
a sense of purpose age have different epigenetics than those
1052
01:00:35.610 --> 01:00:39.150
who don't. And by that, I mean how genes are
1053
01:00:39.230 --> 01:00:44.889
expressed in terms of inflammation and antiviral load are impacted
1054
01:00:45.389 --> 01:00:48.530
when you feel that there is something for you to
1055
01:00:49.429 --> 01:00:53.750
do or give of yourself. And he didn't expect that.
1056
01:00:53.849 --> 01:00:56.070
And so they wrote about it in the New York Times.
1057
01:00:56.130 --> 01:00:59.550
And I remember thinking, look at that. I mean, if
1058
01:01:00.070 --> 01:01:03.760
purpose and giving was a drug, we would all be
1059
01:01:03.880 --> 01:01:06.440
clamoring for it. And yet it is something that is
1060
01:01:06.500 --> 01:01:11.380
within our reach that can be done, but takes work.
1061
01:01:11.460 --> 01:01:12.460
It doesn't just happen.
1062
01:01:12.480 --> 01:01:16.039
The penultimate chapter of your book is called Filling Your
1063
01:01:16.119 --> 01:01:18.719
Joy Tank. You talk about a couple of things in
1064
01:01:18.739 --> 01:01:21.110
here that are interesting to me. One, you kind of
1065
01:01:21.170 --> 01:01:25.250
referenced this earlier, but one way to fill your joy
1066
01:01:25.269 --> 01:01:28.730
tank is to reflect on the things, the strengths that
1067
01:01:28.869 --> 01:01:32.429
come with age. Again, you did reference this earlier, but
1068
01:01:32.469 --> 01:01:34.250
can you just say a little bit more about the
1069
01:01:34.329 --> 01:01:38.039
good stuff that inevitably accrues to us as we get older?
1070
01:01:39.079 --> 01:01:41.480
Yes. I like to talk about it because you don't
1071
01:01:41.559 --> 01:01:44.409
ever hear about it and there's no money in it.
1072
01:01:44.559 --> 01:01:48.519
I can attest to that. So one of the things
1073
01:01:48.579 --> 01:01:51.110
that research shows gets better as you get older is
1074
01:01:51.170 --> 01:01:53.889
that you don't care quite as much what other people
1075
01:01:53.949 --> 01:01:56.750
think about you. And that can be really liberating. And
1076
01:01:56.789 --> 01:02:00.030
we could, and I've asked my patients who are ahead
1077
01:02:00.070 --> 01:02:05.199
of me, like, does this continue? This liberation that I have, like, oh, well,
1078
01:02:05.340 --> 01:02:08.639
I have crap on my teeth. That doesn't kill me anymore. Like,
1079
01:02:09.050 --> 01:02:13.090
Like it did when I was a teenager. And people say, yes, yes,
1080
01:02:13.469 --> 01:02:17.639
I have continued to be less encumbered by what other
1081
01:02:17.659 --> 01:02:21.000
people think about me. And it feels great. Other things
1082
01:02:21.079 --> 01:02:24.199
that it shows that are emotional stability. So we don't
1083
01:02:24.239 --> 01:02:28.239
get as rocked about things as we used to. And
1084
01:02:28.360 --> 01:02:31.840
that continues as we get older and older to be
1085
01:02:32.139 --> 01:02:34.800
just have this nice, not so up and not so
1086
01:02:34.840 --> 01:02:39.420
down place to be. other things are our appreciation of
1087
01:02:39.500 --> 01:02:46.230
our friendships, our appreciation of nature and art and music
1088
01:02:46.789 --> 01:02:53.250
and stillness and recognizing the collective unity of things that
1089
01:02:53.289 --> 01:02:56.829
sometimes in our younger years we're so identified with being
1090
01:02:56.869 --> 01:03:00.769
a separate self, achieving and accolades and trying to make
1091
01:03:00.829 --> 01:03:04.969
ourselves enough. And when we get older, we can have
1092
01:03:05.010 --> 01:03:08.820
a tendency to recognize we're okay as we are and
1093
01:03:08.840 --> 01:03:12.469
we don't need to keep somehow proving that we're okay
1094
01:03:12.570 --> 01:03:15.170
because we can start to say, yeah, this is me.
1095
01:03:16.070 --> 01:03:19.489
There's some literature showing that we become more ourselves as
1096
01:03:19.530 --> 01:03:22.170
we get older. And then the question is, is that
1097
01:03:22.190 --> 01:03:24.610
a good thing or a bad thing? And so by
1098
01:03:24.670 --> 01:03:28.900
starting this stuff early, that's the way to make it
1099
01:03:28.940 --> 01:03:31.599
a good thing to become more like yourself as you
1100
01:03:31.639 --> 01:03:32.139
get older.
1101
01:03:33.429 --> 01:03:36.250
My uncle Peter was asked on his 60th birthday, how
1102
01:03:36.289 --> 01:03:39.150
he felt. And he said off the hook. And I
1103
01:03:39.190 --> 01:03:41.449
really liked that. You know, it's like, he didn't feel
1104
01:03:41.469 --> 01:03:43.460
like he had so much to prove at that point.
1105
01:03:43.860 --> 01:03:45.840
That would be a great name of a book off
1106
01:03:45.860 --> 01:03:46.300
the hook.
1107
01:03:47.940 --> 01:03:50.699
And it strikes me that we can pull forward the
1108
01:03:50.940 --> 01:03:55.860
naturally occurring benefits of age. If we work on it.
1109
01:03:56.789 --> 01:03:59.349
Yes. It doesn't just happen. Like he's not just not like,
1110
01:03:59.510 --> 01:04:02.650
Oh yay. I'm, I have met plenty of older people
1111
01:04:02.690 --> 01:04:06.829
who are not wise. So it's not a natural thing.
1112
01:04:07.139 --> 01:04:11.320
But with intention and effort, in the same way that
1113
01:04:11.440 --> 01:04:17.780
we work on our physical body using cardiovascular strength training, flexibility,
1114
01:04:18.300 --> 01:04:22.139
and agility training, we can work on our inside self,
1115
01:04:22.599 --> 01:04:27.269
which is about growing and connecting and adapting and giving.
1116
01:04:27.409 --> 01:04:29.090
And it just gives us a little bit of a
1117
01:04:29.190 --> 01:04:33.789
vocabulary to think, hmm, with this joy span matrix, where
1118
01:04:33.829 --> 01:04:36.030
am I strong right now? Where am I not strong
1119
01:04:36.070 --> 01:04:38.610
right now? And you might think, huh, yeah, actually I
1120
01:04:38.710 --> 01:04:41.570
am connecting and I am adapting to this thing and
1121
01:04:42.170 --> 01:04:46.679
I'm giving over here through my volunteer, but man, I
1122
01:04:46.719 --> 01:04:49.280
don't actually have a grow right now. What would it
1123
01:04:49.340 --> 01:04:51.780
be like? What would be something that I might add
1124
01:04:52.280 --> 01:04:56.639
or subtract that would enable me to grow as a person?
1125
01:04:56.659 --> 01:04:59.880
So- And then toward the end of the book, you
1126
01:04:59.900 --> 01:05:03.480
talk about what happens when your joy span dips. And
1127
01:05:04.079 --> 01:05:08.340
there's some science behind why this inevitably happens, even if
1128
01:05:08.400 --> 01:05:12.000
we're going whole hog on all four aspects of the
1129
01:05:12.059 --> 01:05:12.900
joy span matrix.
1130
01:05:13.760 --> 01:05:17.980
Yes, I call it when your joy span dips because
1131
01:05:18.039 --> 01:05:21.550
it is when, not if. So these are the things
1132
01:05:21.610 --> 01:05:25.550
that can cause dips and will cause dips. You feel
1133
01:05:25.750 --> 01:05:31.420
frustrated by health setbacks. You feel left out or disconnected.
1134
01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:36.429
You feel discounted by society. Like people look at me
1135
01:05:36.550 --> 01:05:39.590
differently now that I'm in my 80s or 90s. It
1136
01:05:39.630 --> 01:05:41.969
could also be that you feel like a burden. Maybe
1137
01:05:41.989 --> 01:05:44.449
you can have some care needs and people are helping
1138
01:05:44.510 --> 01:05:47.420
you and it doesn't feel very good to be helped
1139
01:05:47.500 --> 01:05:49.619
when you've always been the one to pride yourself on
1140
01:05:49.659 --> 01:05:53.559
being the helper. So there are some very real reasons,
1141
01:05:54.059 --> 01:05:57.139
feeling heartbroken, right? You know, the death of somebody that
1142
01:05:57.179 --> 01:06:00.320
you love, a friend or a partner, or maybe you
1143
01:06:00.360 --> 01:06:03.260
feel like the best days of life are behind you.
1144
01:06:03.960 --> 01:06:08.610
So when these things happen, and they will, things that
1145
01:06:08.650 --> 01:06:12.190
we can do is things like finding role models, like
1146
01:06:12.409 --> 01:06:15.980
looking to people who have experienced these same kinds of things,
1147
01:06:16.119 --> 01:06:20.460
how did they walk with it? Focusing on things that
1148
01:06:20.599 --> 01:06:25.320
are possibilities rather than everything being like consuming yourself with
1149
01:06:25.360 --> 01:06:30.610
the limitations. And these small meaningful steps toward recognizing that
1150
01:06:30.710 --> 01:06:35.230
you can, you're not just a victim to these changes
1151
01:06:35.670 --> 01:06:39.769
and that you can be making a little change that
1152
01:06:40.030 --> 01:06:43.530
impact what this period of life is going to look like.
1153
01:06:44.130 --> 01:06:49.510
Things like cultivating gratitude and self-compassion. So sometimes I'll even
1154
01:06:49.769 --> 01:06:53.920
talk out loud to myself when I'm going through something rough.
1155
01:06:54.559 --> 01:06:57.380
And I'll say, even out loud, like, well, you did
1156
01:06:57.400 --> 01:07:00.940
your best. Or that's okay, care. I'll call myself care. Like,
1157
01:07:01.320 --> 01:07:03.460
that's okay, care. Just to try to, and you've heard
1158
01:07:03.480 --> 01:07:07.190
this before, to be as civil to ourselves as we
1159
01:07:07.250 --> 01:07:11.369
are to other people. Because sometimes our inner voice is
1160
01:07:11.489 --> 01:07:16.860
real bitch. And sometimes like countering that and saying, you know, yeah,
1161
01:07:16.960 --> 01:07:19.780
that was rough and you gave it your best or, well,
1162
01:07:19.800 --> 01:07:22.219
at least that's a laugh or maybe I'll do that
1163
01:07:22.300 --> 01:07:23.380
differently next time.
1164
01:07:24.699 --> 01:07:28.380
Another evidence-based practice. I can't say this enough. Self-compassion, ton
1165
01:07:29.400 --> 01:07:32.320
of evidence. It's not letting yourself off the hook. It
1166
01:07:32.440 --> 01:07:35.429
is moving from an inner drill sergeant to an inner coach.
1167
01:07:36.090 --> 01:07:38.710
Coach doesn't let you off the hook. He or she
1168
01:07:38.789 --> 01:07:41.349
will point out when you've made mistakes. They're just not
1169
01:07:41.369 --> 01:07:43.780
jerks about it. And You can do that for yourself.
1170
01:07:43.840 --> 01:07:47.119
And one of the ways to do it, CARE just demonstrated,
1171
01:07:47.139 --> 01:07:51.260
which is literally just talking to yourself the way you
1172
01:07:51.280 --> 01:07:54.320
would talk to a good friend. And it's massively, massively helpful.
1173
01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:56.639
As you know, because you've listened to this show, I
1174
01:07:56.980 --> 01:08:01.570
end by asking two questions. One is, is there something
1175
01:08:01.610 --> 01:08:03.349
you were hoping that we would get to that we haven't?
1176
01:08:04.690 --> 01:08:08.070
Yes, I just want people to remember that they can
1177
01:08:08.289 --> 01:08:14.809
actively reshape revolutionize what it is to be old. Because
1178
01:08:14.829 --> 01:08:17.350
I think most people go, yeah, the way that we're
1179
01:08:17.369 --> 01:08:19.949
doing old isn't right. The way we treat older people
1180
01:08:20.029 --> 01:08:24.520
isn't right. The way that we change it is by
1181
01:08:25.350 --> 01:08:27.319
our road. And I don't think it's ever going to
1182
01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:30.539
be a 20-year-old saying like, aha, I see the value
1183
01:08:30.579 --> 01:08:34.300
of aging. I think it's going to be people stepping in.
1184
01:08:34.380 --> 01:08:36.460
And when people say, oh my gosh, you don't even
1185
01:08:36.600 --> 01:08:39.670
look 75. You could say, this is what 75 looks like. Like,
1186
01:08:41.260 --> 01:08:44.020
I think that we can, in the same way that
1187
01:08:44.479 --> 01:08:47.579
we used to say things like that women couldn't run
1188
01:08:47.659 --> 01:08:51.810
businesses because they were too emotional. We have proven that
1189
01:08:51.859 --> 01:08:55.130
is baloney. And this whole thing that old people don't
1190
01:08:55.210 --> 01:08:58.109
have value or that are less than or gross or
1191
01:08:58.189 --> 01:09:03.550
scary or irrelevant. it isn't true. And it is very
1192
01:09:03.609 --> 01:09:07.109
harmful to ourselves and to society. So I call it
1193
01:09:07.149 --> 01:09:11.529
the joy span legacy. Let's try to change the way
1194
01:09:12.250 --> 01:09:14.810
that we perceive our own aging so that the people
1195
01:09:14.869 --> 01:09:18.409
who follow us can have a different path to take.
1196
01:09:18.550 --> 01:09:20.569
And what a world that would be if we could
1197
01:09:20.909 --> 01:09:26.140
like step into old being like, yeah, I'm old. Bring it.
1198
01:09:27.979 --> 01:09:31.600
Right. Would you frame it that way of like, it's
1199
01:09:31.659 --> 01:09:35.199
less about some rah-rah thing for myself, but it's more
1200
01:09:35.239 --> 01:09:40.659
about creating a world where my son can age happily.
1201
01:09:40.939 --> 01:09:41.880
It's very motivating.
1202
01:09:42.800 --> 01:09:47.369
It is. And it is possible. And Just because for listeners,
1203
01:09:47.470 --> 01:09:50.430
if your parent died early, it doesn't mean that you're
1204
01:09:50.470 --> 01:09:54.600
going to die early. Or if your parent lived with dementia,
1205
01:09:55.359 --> 01:09:57.920
it doesn't mean you're going to have it. And conversely,
1206
01:09:58.079 --> 01:10:01.479
like for me, my mom had this, she really worked
1207
01:10:01.520 --> 01:10:04.859
hard on her joy span. She does all these things.
1208
01:10:05.170 --> 01:10:07.930
It doesn't mean that I'm automatically going to live this
1209
01:10:08.010 --> 01:10:11.789
really long life or enjoy a long joy span, that
1210
01:10:11.949 --> 01:10:17.079
each of us are contributing something. to our path. And
1211
01:10:17.819 --> 01:10:19.680
so it's just not default. Because I have a few
1212
01:10:19.739 --> 01:10:22.380
friends who say like, my mom died at 52. I
1213
01:10:23.479 --> 01:10:25.560
don't even really need to think about getting older because
1214
01:10:25.600 --> 01:10:28.319
I'm probably not going to get older. And that's actually
1215
01:10:28.340 --> 01:10:32.930
a fallacy. It doesn't mean your parents' experience is your experience.
1216
01:10:33.829 --> 01:10:34.350
Final question.
1217
01:10:34.369 --> 01:10:36.250
Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book?
1218
01:10:36.289 --> 01:10:40.010
And also, please just plug anything and everything that you're
1219
01:10:40.050 --> 01:10:40.449
working on.
1220
01:10:40.470 --> 01:10:44.550
Oh, that is so nice. So it is called Joyce Bands.
1221
01:10:45.470 --> 01:10:49.989
And it is sold everywhere. And I would be so grateful.
1222
01:10:50.130 --> 01:10:52.909
And I want to tell the listeners that I put
1223
01:10:52.949 --> 01:10:56.819
the workbook inside the book. Like you can mark it up.
1224
01:10:57.260 --> 01:11:01.819
But I didn't do another workbook. But all these kind
1225
01:11:01.859 --> 01:11:06.319
of scam artist AI things did work. And so there
1226
01:11:06.340 --> 01:11:09.970
are tons of JoySpan workbooks that have nothing to do
1227
01:11:10.010 --> 01:11:12.510
with me. So I just want you to save your
1228
01:11:12.569 --> 01:11:16.050
money and know that there's no workbook. It's just the book.
1229
01:11:16.710 --> 01:11:18.630
And if you're a person who likes to listen to
1230
01:11:18.670 --> 01:11:22.310
things on Audible, I read it on Audible. I can't
1231
01:11:22.350 --> 01:11:24.810
listen to it, but other people say that they can
1232
01:11:24.829 --> 01:11:26.989
listen to it. So that's a good thing. And then
1233
01:11:27.029 --> 01:11:29.850
sometimes because it's a workbook, some people are doing both
1234
01:11:29.890 --> 01:11:32.449
of those so that they can mark it up. And
1235
01:11:32.510 --> 01:11:35.609
it's for any age. You're not too young for it.
1236
01:11:36.329 --> 01:11:39.310
And it's a polite gift to give to somebody who
1237
01:11:39.489 --> 01:11:42.010
on a big birthday, if they're turning 60 or 70
1238
01:11:42.010 --> 01:11:45.090
or because it isn't saying like, oh, this is a
1239
01:11:45.130 --> 01:11:47.609
book called You Are Old. This is a book of
1240
01:11:47.750 --> 01:11:50.380
joy span, like lifespan and health span. So it can
1241
01:11:50.399 --> 01:11:54.239
make a nice gift. And I am not selling anything
1242
01:11:54.319 --> 01:11:56.659
except the book, but I do have a website if
1243
01:11:56.699 --> 01:11:59.960
you want it. I put some stuff on there, drcarybernight.com.
1244
01:12:00.819 --> 01:12:03.550
And I do kind of do a lot of Instagram
1245
01:12:04.170 --> 01:12:07.189
because I've learned that by turning the camera on my
1246
01:12:07.210 --> 01:12:12.409
96-year-old mom, we can really show the learning points as
1247
01:12:12.489 --> 01:12:15.899
opposed to, and we have somewhere like 6 million people
1248
01:12:15.949 --> 01:12:19.680
watch do things. And that has been funny for us.
1249
01:12:19.850 --> 01:12:22.119
And we don't sell anything on that either. We just
1250
01:12:22.180 --> 01:12:26.119
do it because it's fun. And that Instagram is the
1251
01:12:26.699 --> 01:12:31.399
underscore gerontologist, if you'd like to follow that. And I
1252
01:12:31.739 --> 01:12:35.319
am just really so grateful that we're talking about aging.
1253
01:12:35.510 --> 01:12:39.600
That's my absolute dream. Talk about it. Think about it.
1254
01:12:39.970 --> 01:12:42.989
Be proactive about it. And know that old is not
1255
01:12:43.010 --> 01:12:46.800
a bad word. And staying young is not actually a
1256
01:12:46.840 --> 01:12:47.399
real thing.
1257
01:12:49.020 --> 01:12:52.550
Well said. Dr. Carrie Burnight, thank you very much.
1258
01:12:52.949 --> 01:12:53.630
Thank you.
1259
01:12:58.630 --> 01:13:00.590
Thanks again to Dr. Carrie Burnight.
1260
01:13:00.710 --> 01:13:03.850
That conversation made me feel much better about many things.
1261
01:13:04.489 --> 01:13:08.210
Don't forget, this episode comes with a custom meditation to
1262
01:13:08.250 --> 01:13:12.119
help you deal with the non-negotiable fact of change. That
1263
01:13:12.159 --> 01:13:15.729
comes from our teacher of the month, Christiana Wolf. If
1264
01:13:15.770 --> 01:13:18.210
you sign up at danharris.com, you'll get our meditations that
1265
01:13:18.270 --> 01:13:21.090
come with each of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. You'll also
1266
01:13:21.489 --> 01:13:24.430
get access to our weekly live meditation and Q &
1267
01:13:24.069 --> 01:13:27.649
A sessions. Christiana will be doing our next one tomorrow
1268
01:13:28.090 --> 01:13:31.970
at 4 Eastern. We do these every Tuesday at 4. Also,
1269
01:13:31.989 --> 01:13:33.789
don't forget the two events I've got coming up. If
1270
01:13:33.829 --> 01:13:36.229
you want to come meditate with me in person, New
1271
01:13:36.270 --> 01:13:38.970
York City on the 18th with the great comedian Pete Holmes,
1272
01:13:38.989 --> 01:13:43.039
and then on the 23rd, a little event at Troutbeck,
1273
01:13:43.140 --> 01:13:46.520
the hotel in the Hudson Valley. Links in the show notes. Finally,
1274
01:13:46.539 --> 01:13:48.060
thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make
1275
01:13:48.100 --> 01:13:51.649
this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili.
1276
01:13:51.659 --> 01:13:54.250
Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks
1277
01:13:54.289 --> 01:13:57.369
over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer.
1278
01:13:57.409 --> 01:14:00.789
Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our
1279
01:14:00.829 --> 01:14:04.430
executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote
1280
01:14:04.600 --> 01:14:04.949
our theme.