The Eight Happiness Essentials: HEALTH Edition
Before You Say “At My Age...” Ask This Today
Happy Thursday!
Years ago, I sat in a pickup truck in Alaska with Colonel Norman Vaughan. He was ninety-four.
In the distance, the end-of-day sun was kissing the top of Denali while Norman told me about a mountain he had spent most of his life wanting to climb.
It was his mountain, at least in name.
During polar explorer Admiral Richard Byrd's first Antarctic expedition in the late 1920s, Norman managed the dog sleds. Byrd later named a 10,302-foot peak after him: Mount Vaughan.
Norman wanted to stand on top of it.
There was one rather significant problem. He was a dog musher with no mountain-climbing experience.
So, in his eighties, he learned.
He found someone to train him in his Alaskan backyard. Eventually, Norman and his expedition team made their way to Punta Arenas, Chile, their launch point for Antarctica.
Then the money ran out.
While everyone worked on raising more, Norman kept training. He put on his ski boots and climbed the stairs of the lodge where he was staying to keep his legs strong.
Almost a year later, the money finally came through.
On December 16, 1994, three days before his eighty-ninth birthday, Norman stood on top of Mount Vaughan.
Sitting beside him a few years later, listening to his story, I remember thinking: age was just a number.
I thought of Norman again this month as I explore Health—mind, body, and spirit—one of the eight Happiness Essentials I write and teach.
Mostly because of three words that can close a door before you have really considered whether it needs to be closed:
“At my age...”
At my age, I should slow down.
At my age, I cannot start over.
At my age, I am too old for that.
Getting older comes with real changes. Sleep can change. Energy can feel different. Recovery may take longer. You may need to pay closer attention to what works for you now.
The question is what you tell yourself those changes mean.
A slower recovery after a long day may simply mean you need more recovery. It says nothing by itself about whether you can learn something new, begin again, take on a physical challenge, or finally do the thing you have been thinking about for years.
Just because you have told yourself something for years does not make it true.
This summer, Stanford's Healthy Aging conference included a discussion of a Yale study that followed 660 adults age fifty and older for more than two decades. Those with more positive views of their own aging lived, on average, 7.5 years longer.
Of course, no one is saying that thinking positively about aging gives you another seven and a half years. Health and longevity are far more complicated than that.
Still, seven and a half years is enough to make you pay attention to the way you talk to yourself about age.
“At my age...”
Where did your ideas about getting older come from?
Family. Culture. Advertising. Movies. Watching other people age. The reaction you get when you tell someone your age. Even birthday cards that turn aging into an endless joke about bad knees and lost keys.
Hear something long enough and someone else's idea can start sounding like your own.
Norman knew he was nearly eighty-nine. He also knew climbing that mountain required preparation. He found a teacher. He trained. When the expedition stalled, he kept his legs strong.
He took his age into account without letting it make the decision for him. It was just information.
Health, as I think about it, involves your wholebeing—mind, body, and spirit. Paying attention to what is happening physically matters. Paying attention to what you believe about it matters too.
The next time you hear yourself say, “At my age...,” listen to whatever comes next.
Then ask yourself whether it is actually true.
Try this: Listen for the Sentence
For the next day, notice when you use age to explain a choice, a limitation, or something you have already ruled out.
Write down the whole sentence:
"At my age, I..."
Leave it there for a moment. Simply notice what you are telling yourself.
