Aging
The Rewards of Positive Aging
How to achieve a healthy perspective in your 50s, 60s, and beyond.
Posted April 16, 2025 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
What does the word “aging” typically suggest? Well, it’s certainly limiting: running out of vitality; running out of possibilities, winding down the clock as we face our mortality, gazing into the ever-narrowing end of a funnel. This notion of aging is depressing.
Yet, profound medical advances are redefining how we might re- envision aging.
More and more people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, even 90s, are medically and physically fit. I read about a 93-year-old man who could get his heart rate up to 136 beats per minute almost instantly. He was focused on rowing and lifting weights. He didn’t begin his exercise regimen until he was 73. He’s 90 years young.
The data point to the possibility of staying fit, healthy, conscious, and sentient well into our 80s and 90s and, possibly further. This emerging reality is achievable if you’re open to adopting a new mindset.
We subvert ourselves when we reduce ourselves to our biological age. What we think, how we feel, and how we act is how we really communicate our age. The notion of positive aging requires a shift of mind.
Wisdom
One of the advantages of reaching a certain age is the ability to access wisdom.
Wisdom is about knowing how to live well. It’s about understanding what really matters, not getting caught up in the grind or living on the conveyor belt of conventionality and competing or acquiring. With wisdom we learn how to build relationships that enhance our lives, with minimal conflict and upset.
Longevity enables us to access wisdom on how to live well, with meaning and purpose. To elevate to this level, we must ask ourselves: What really matters?
Let’s look at how to accomplish that.
Curiosity Keeps Us Young
Aging and curiosity appear inversely correlated. We may spend the first 20 or so years of life engaged in learning, exercising curiosity to discover what's needed to succeed in life and/or inspired by new learning. Sadly the period of wonderment tapers off as we move into the success and acquisition stage of life. Curiosity, however, is essential at any age,
When we cease to be curious, our engagement with life becomes rote and predictable. As the years fly by, routine and predictability exacerbate aging, whereas curiosity and wonder keep us present and youthful. The deep participation in life they engender slows down the aging process, provided we take care of our physical and mental well-being.
What’s My Purpose?
Too often, we don't consider meaning and purpose when we are young, especially if we never developed a philosophy for living well. It is not possible to feel you have lived well without having meaning and purpose in your life. As we age and have fewer distractions, the need for meaning and purpose may manifest as a spiritual reckoning: “What is my life all about?”
For those who find themselve asking, “What would I do differently if I could live my life over?” there's a simple answer—the next moment presents an opportunity to live your life differently. Tomorrow represents a chance to live your life differently.
You don’t need to be young. You just need to be curious. Developing new relationships, new interests, and having new experiences are not just for the young.
You can still choose to live your life without regrets. You may not take on risky things physically, but you can take on risks emotionally and psychologically with positive aging.
Among the risks is having the conversations you previously avoided. Choose not to play it safe. What’s the risk? Open up, and ask new questions of yourself and of others. Embrace your vulnerability and share hidden parts of yourself.
Positive aging presents so many opportunities. And it's never too late to start.
Try a new path. Devote yourself to eating well, to exercising, to stretching your mind with new thinking and new learning. Create a new experience of life.
Think about what would provide you with meaning and purpose. What path can you venture down that you’ve never explored and dive in. The only risk is in not taking the opportunity.
There is vitality and energy in stepping into new terrain, asking new questions, having new experiences, and devoting yourself to your wellness. Choose differently, and you can experience the great rewards of positive aging replete with wisdom, meaning, purpose, and integrity.
