Prime Time - Jane Fonda [32]
ANNA-MAREE HARMAN, AMHPHOTOGRAPHY@YAHOO.COM.AU
My first big gobbler.
5. EATING A HEALTHY DIET
Never has the phrase “You are what you eat” been truer than in the Third Act. As individuals and as a nation we must pay more attention to reducing the amount of sugar and fats we eat, and to increasing our consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables and complex carbohydrates. There’ll be more on this in Chapter 7, “Now More than Ever, You Are What You Eat.”
6. MAINTAINING A HEALTHY, ACTIVE BRAIN THROUGH LEARNING
The current wisdom says that if you regularly do crossword puzzles or Sudoku, your brain will remain healthy. Maybe, if you’re not used to doing them! Certainly your brain is active during those activities. But I have chosen to use the word “learning” here rather than “mental activity” because what brain science tells us today is that to maintain healthy cognitive function, we need to do things we aren’t accustomed to doing—things that make new demands on our minds, force us to make decisions or choices. Furthermore, this learning has to be sustained over time. There will be more about the brain in Chapter 8.
I took a yoga class at Tara Stiles’s Strala Yoga studio in New York taught by this ninety-three-year-old instructor.
7. POSITIVITY: ENCOURAGING A POSITIVE ATTITUDE
Almost all the people I have met who are in their nineties or even older seem to have one thing in common: positivity. Scientists at the Stanford Center on Longevity adopted the word “positivity” to express what they, too, have observed. Positivity is an attitude, a way to approach life; it is expressed through humor, gratitude, forgiveness, playfulness, creativeness, and adaptability. I am conscious of this happening to me in my Third Act, which shows that what the experts say is true: We can attain these positive attributes even if we didn’t start off with them! This is one of the aspects of aging that fascinates me the most, and so I have a chapter to come on Positivity—Chapter 9.
8. REVIEWING AND REFLECTING ON YOUR LIFE
I was somewhat surprised when I discovered, in the writings of Dr. Robert Butler, that many gerontologists and psychiatrists advocate this for their older patients. In Chapter 2, I wrote about how important doing a life review was for me; in Chapter 10, I talk more about how to do it.
9. LOVING AND STAYING CONNECTED
Humans are hardwired to interact with others. Having friends, loving partners, and strong social supports have long been demonstrated to have a direct positive effect on health, better cognitive functioning, and longevity. I will explore the various aspects of connectedness—to friends and to spouses or to lovers—in Chapters 11 through 15.
10. GENERATIVITY: GIVING OF ONESELF
This term, coined by the social scientist Erik Erikson in his conceptualization of the stages of human development, refers to older people’s responsibility to care for younger generations by giving of oneself—one’s knowledge, experience, time, resources, and values. This can mean mentoring a child, being a coach, reading to your grandchild’s class—and making sure she is in class!—or helping girls and boys in your community or in the developing world. In Aging Well, Dr. Vaillant writes that “mastery of Generativity tripled the chances that the decade of the 70s would be for these men and women a time of joy and not of despair.”5 I discuss this subject in Chapter 16, “Generativity: Leaving Footprints.”
11. CARING ABOUT THE BIGGER PICTURE
Moving from a focus on oneself to caring about things greater than oneself makes us whole and strong so we won’t be overwhelmed by the inevitable losses that come in later life. This can mean a focus on your community, your nation, or the planet. You might, building on your experiences, talents, interests … your wounds, even