#16 Embracing Midlife: The Power of Subjective Aging with Dr. Allyson Brothers

In this episode, I discuss the fascinating topic of subjective aging with Dr. Allyson Brothers, a leading expert from Colorado State University. In this episode, we unpack the concept of subjective aging and its profound impact on midlife well-being. Discover why our perceptions of aging matter, how they shape our health outcomes and the societal implications of fostering a positive view of aging.  Dr. Brothers offers practical insights and actionable steps to cultivate a positive aging experience.

Resources

Recommended Book:
Breaking the Age Code How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live

Changing the Narrative:
https://changingthenarrativeco.org/

Colorado State Healthy Aging Center
https://www.research.colostate.edu/healthyagingcenter/

Ryff Scales for Psychological Well-Being

Longitudinal effects of subjective aging on health and longevity: An updated metanalysis (2023)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

intro here a minute, you know, would you. Would you prefer I call you Allison or Ali on the podcast, Ali, do you prefer Allison or Ali?

Speaker 2: 0:11

Ali's good.

Speaker 1: 0:11

Okay, and brothers, is that correct? Yep, okay, so I'm just gonna read this. I'll probably redo it, I'll probably mess it up, but here's just a feel for it. Today, we're honored to have Dr Allison Dr Allison Brothers, who is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Colorado State University. Dr Brothers won a Nobel Prize for her. I'm just kidding. Dr Brothers is a developmental scientist who's research centers on promoting healthy aging throughout the lifespan. I have really enjoyed reading her work on subjective aging and it's just an excellent match for the for the mission of this podcast. I'm really grateful she's agreed to join us. Join us on this podcast for an enlightening conversation. So welcome to the podcast, ali. So happy you're with us.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:57

You are welcome. Could you start by giving our listeners some background, some personal background, and how you became interested in the topics we'll be discussing today, particularly subjective aging?

Speaker 2: 1:07

You bet my background's in psychology. I have a bachelor's from Roanoke College and a master's from Penn State Harrisburg campus and I've always been interested in that intersection of where psychological and physical health meet.

Speaker 2: 1:24

And I just think it's so fascinating. I've always been interested in understanding coping with changes and with chronic illness and had the pleasure and opportunity to work in the neurology department at Penn State College of Medicine, working with patients with ALS, who are disease, and understanding how they and their families navigated a devastating diagnosis and how they did so gracefully. Yes, and in the research that we did there, we focused on caregiver support and cognitive changes and quality of life and all of these psychological and social variables that accompanied physical health, and I just knew that was the type of work that I really wanted to do, and it never occurred to me to study aging before and when. I found aging it's kind of. This field is just. It's perfect for being able to ask those kinds of questions.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Yeah, I love that because it really does have a such a fascinating relationship between your physical and your psychological and just your holistic well-being. So I'm really fascinated with this concept you've been writing about, which is subjective aging. So could you tell us a little bit more about this and how it might affect us in midlife?

Speaker 2: 2:41

The power of attitudes. So the field of subjective aging is actually this booming area of research right now, which I've been so fortunate to be a part of. That was a big part of my dissertation work and all the work that I did in graduate school, so I studied with Dr Monford Deal, who is a leading researcher in this field and subjective aging. The concept has been around for decades and we've been able to advance the measurement strategy around it, and so what I'm talking about with subjective aging is simply the perceptions of aging, how people understand their own aging process and what they think about it, how it compares to what they thought it would be, how they think other people are aging and what aging is supposed to be what they think about old people in general.

Speaker 2: 3:25

There's so many of these subjective aspects of how we think about aging and it turns out they're actually really important and we can measure what type of impacts they have later on.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Tell us more about that. How does it relate to our well-being?

Speaker 2: 3:43

Yeah, so um One way, we published a study in 2020 that found that age stereotypes predict our self-perceptions of aging and those, in turn, predict our physical and mental health.

Speaker 2: 3:59

And so what we were able to show with that study is that you know some empirical evidence to show support of some of the theoretical thinking in this area, in that we internalize age stereotypes so we think aging is the certain thing, and then it becomes self-relevant. At some point we turn it towards ourselves and it actually has measurable outcomes on how our physical health will be even stronger than mental health. But both oh wow.

Speaker 1: 4:31

So it's really really an important topic, and I'm thankful that you've been studying it and being able to share it with us today. So what are some things that affect our subjective well-being in terms of you know why we might have a positive, a lack or perhaps a negative, and especially for mid-lifers?

Speaker 2: 4:48

Right, right, what are the antecedents of our self-perceptions of aging? It's such an interesting question. I think the field has a lot more work to do here. Actually, there's some mixed evidence as far as does gender matter, socioeconomic status, or you know, we've done some international work and it seems like there is quite a bit of individual variability that we're still trying to pin down.

Speaker 2: 5:10

But if you think about it, you think about what a family has experienced and how our earlier experiences might shape how we think about aging. So imagine if you were a child and you were living with someone with dementia and it wasn't going well and there was some aggression and paranoia and it was maybe scary and you didn't know how. No one was there to help you interpret what was happening. Right, that can shape experiences later on. You know, maybe there's families who are caring for an older relative and they're able to do it at home and avoid that revolving door in the emergency room and, you know, maximize time together as a family and enjoy the way that we care in our families and are able to. Age is so different for every person and every family, and so I think those experiences really can impact what we think about aging. And then we also know aging stereotypes are just rampant in all different realms.

Speaker 2: 6:05

You know, if you work in the tech field, you're more likely to be seen as old, but before you're even 40. If you're, unfortunately, receiving healthcare, there's documentation that even well-intentioned healthcare providers which there's so many may have more negative views about aging, just simply because they're seeing the sick, older adults in our population and maybe not having as much exposure and experience to the ones that are healthy and thriving. So there's just there's negative aging stereotypes that are rampant. I mean, there's depends on what. Maybe who will send you birthday cards, right? Are they sending you the birthday cards that you can't control your body anymore and you won't remember anything? And that's what's aging is. You know these stereotypes? That's still kind of socially acceptable to make fun of aging and older people and the remaining um isms. That's kind of still allowed to have humor in our society at this point.

Speaker 1: 6:57

That's exactly right. That's exactly right and I love that your work is kind of advancing that and you've chosen to spoke with me, because that's one of the things I like to do in here is change that narrative, like let's think about this you know it is subjective and think about the messages that we are receiving. So just for my own kind of clarifying we may have to edit this out, ali, but I just want to make sure I'm with you. It seems like there's an internal piece in how you you know respond to signs that you're aging. You know you may be getting more gray hairs or you may be seeing, you know. You know, maybe struck as from something so long ago. You somebody doesn't know what Pac-Man is, for example. You know, and then also you're receiving it. You know there are other people that are putting that perception on you. So are you saying that it's it's both, that we are working on both ends of that?

Speaker 2: 7:44

That's exactly right. So more of my research has focused on the former. So the construct that I've been involved in creating a measurement for and assessing in different cultures, and it's called awareness of age related change, and it's simply that how do we become aware that we're growing older? And we've measured it across five different domains. So how do you feel about aging? And cognitive domain versus physical, versus leisure, versus family and interpersonal, and so so those perceptions matter, but certainly they're influenced by the way you're treated, so the way that you may perceive it as discrimination or microaggressions, or you might not even notice it.

Speaker 2: 8:23

most people don't even notice it and it's just messages, and I think one of the harms comes when we don't question what these messages are.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Yeah, we just accept what we're hearing or we accept how society, what society has told us about it, and I could see where that would really make a difference on kind of I would, I would guess your resilience in terms of aging or your outlook on aging.

Speaker 2: 9:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've definitely been able to link these. And so, talking about I teach a course on resilience I'm more in a teaching focused world these days, but I'm still somewhat involved in the research as well but I teach a course on resilience. And, yeah, when we get to the later part of the lifespan, and talking about resilience, we're talking about some of these psychological variables that can help make a huge difference. And so and our research has shown that the perception of age related gains. So I was talking about how we measure the perceptions of aging across these five different domains social versus cognitive versus physical, et cetera. We also measure gains and losses, so perceived gains and losses.

Speaker 2: 9:56

So, because we're acknowledging how complex and multifaceted subjections, subjective experiences of aging are right, you might feel old in the work realm, but young in the family or the leisure maybe your youngest person on the tennis court in the group that you play with, or whatever, and so we recognize that there's gains and losses across all of these domains as well, and so people who report more gains we're actually finding a offering effect where that can offset the negative impact of stereotypes and self-perceptions of aging on health. So I think for me that's the buffering effect is really fascinating.

Speaker 1: 10:31

That is so interesting. You know I'm blown away talking to people like you about kind of the midlife experience and that's a theme that's came up is that it's both a theme of growth and decline and in some past episodes we've discussed how keeping those in balance like it can be easy to focus on one side or the other and I think it's easier to focus on maybe the negative component of it. So you know you talked about resilience and I know, you know I'm kind of skipping a little bit with you here, ali, I know I'll edit that out.

Speaker 1: 11:03

But you know you talked about there being some factors related to resilience, so I would love to hear more about some of those things that you know from the research that we can do to be more resilient as it relates to our subjective experience of aging.

Speaker 2: 11:18

Yeah, yeah. So I think one of the things is just kind of understanding midlife as its own period of life that's full of kind of. These go back and forth between stability and transition. Stability, transition throughout midlife right, there's the the career or the family, or the partnerships, or the loss of partnerships, and the stability decline, right. Or you know transition.

Speaker 2: 11:44

And so just acknowledging that transitions are hard for you know from my two year old struggles with transitions and all the way up to transitioning into a long term care facility throughout our lives like a transition puberty, menopause, like transitions are never easy, and so I think, giving ourselves a little bit of grace when we're in those times and then also thinking about this period of development that a lot of people never really thought about before was kind of like, yeah, you develop until you're 18, you're an adult, and then you get old and you die, right, and so I think we really can take back this period of our lives.

Speaker 2: 12:16

I'm almost 42, you know I'm right here with your listenership and I think we can take back this period of our lives and kind of try to recreate what it is and find it as a time of opportunity and growth and you know kind of what I was saying earlier. When we're able to do that, that can act as a pretty strong protective factor. But yeah, coping, coping skills actually tend to get better as we get older anyway. So that's one thing that we can practice and try and find better ways of doing it right Ditching the alcohol, coping and finding the problem based and the social support and the emotional support and the finding of those things that work we can get.

Speaker 2: 12:56

the more practice we have, the better we can get at them, if we allow ourselves to them.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Hmm, I think it's so interesting your conceptualization of domains, because I'm guessing it's likely that people have some variance within those. You know, like some might be really a strength, some might really be a difficulty. You know, and I don't know where I'm going with this. I think I would imagine there's some wisdom in, if you have a strength, really building on it and capitalizing it, because it probably kind of balances out some of those negative areas or helps you strengthen those narrative areas. Do you see that at all?

Speaker 2: 13:37

I think so I think that's really important and I think, as we get to kind of just developmentally, as we get to midlife, one of the things that people say from that, we did all the focus groups and interviews and diary studies when we were creating this awareness of age related change scale, to say what are these items that really resonate with people? But people report feeling more themselves, so they know themselves better, they feel like they have permission to be themselves more and I think that's really important and can help Right. So it kind of this realization that I'm at a certain age I can just be who I am now and I don't know why I couldn't before but now I can and it's kind of a nice shift.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Yeah. Yeah, that really resonates with me and some of my discussions. It's kind of going from like a socially constructed person like you kind of have taken in the world, but now in midlife you kind of have that chance to determine your kind of internal compass in terms of what do I believe in, what do I value, how do I want to do things, not necessarily how do I think somebody else wants me to live my life, and so that's really, I think, could be really valuable in this in terms of like just that aging experience, like hey, it's okay, I'm not as worried about what society says or what other people are being. I have my own internal compass about the life I'm living.

Speaker 2: 14:57

I think you're spot on and I think that's one of those things. So if you would ask somebody off the street of what they think about aging, they're going to start with all the you know, the frailty and the declines and thinking a lot more in the physical realm. But I think if we can get people to really realize that there are people do report a lot of benefits to aging and if we can start to conceptualize them, that's where the subjective experiences of gains really come in, and the more we notice those, the more protective they seem to be. So that's one people also tend to report and we find from the research that emotional well-being tends to get better, even in the face of really severe losses the loss of a lifetime spouse, the loss of some major physical functioning. People report being happier and that is an ongoing finding in the research that this field is grappling with and coming to find out that it's real, it's not just kind of this strange finding, but it keeps being replicated and of course there's individual difference, individual variability across everything.

Speaker 2: 16:00

That's what makes us humans. But in general, there's a lot of benefits that people are reporting and the funny thing about studying aging is you haven't been there yet, right? It takes a lot of talking to people and listening and understanding many, many different types of experiences.

Speaker 1: 16:18

I love hearing that because I really do think that's not the narrative. The narrative is oh, it's decline. You're getting grazed, you have this midlife crisis, but it's not that it does not have to be that. Like you said, midlife is challenging and there are lots of different individual experiences, but we've grown an experience. We've grown in Skills, we've grown in our emotional well-being, hopefully, and we can be more intentional about what we know brings us joy and in meaning. So I just really love hearing that. So could you tell us a little bit more? If you haven't? I know you've given us something, but are there more practical steps that you could tell us about how to cultivate a positive, subjective aging experience?

Speaker 2: 17:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most important things is checking our biases. So you know, a lot of these are implicit and we don't even notice. I love, I love. I'm still uncovering kind of messages about older people that I haven't thought of yet, and so you know some just little things right, like, like you know, older people are supposed to be less physically active. There's the recliner chair, the rocking chair or Not. You're supposed to be setting your ways, or you're supposed to not want to try new foods, or yeah you know, supposed to be resistant and certainly again, that individual variability thing.

Speaker 2: 17:33

but I think if you can check that assumption and say, well, maybe some older people are that way, that are people that I knew, but maybe I don't want to be that way, I hope I'm still trying new foods and Listening, giving new music a chance and not writing it off when I'm like 92, you know. I hope that I can keep this message of openness as I navigate my life and and check those biases and not let them determine who I'm going to be.

Speaker 1: 17:58

so I think that's.

Speaker 2: 18:00

One thing and and you know those the birthday cards and the even. I mean, I think one of the most important things you can do If you're out there and you've heard somebody recently talk about a senior moment like squash, that let's get rid of this.

Speaker 1: 18:14

Hmm.

Speaker 2: 18:15

I think he's since I was like 18, I don't know. It wasn't due to age then it's probably not now.

Speaker 1: 18:21

That's right. That's right. I heard somebody else say you know like we have, you know, kind of difficult times across our lifespan, but when it's a midlife, we almost are socialized like, oh, it's a midlife crisis. You know like these things happen across and to give us great ourselves grace and I think that's a big part of what I'm learning from this podcast is to really question the things that I'm hearing about myself and my generation and and you know, and decide what for myself, what I want to be, how I want this to be, and not accept like that's how it has to be, even though I haven't been there. Well, I get a forge, my own path, right.

Speaker 2: 18:55

I think so and I think it's worth questioning and maybe maybe there's something that happened that it is due to age. But I think a lot of times is not going to be and there is good research that show. That show is that it's kind of an age attribution bias happens. You know, you could be like oh well, I, you know, went for my hike and my my right knee is just an excruciating pain. It's just because I'm getting old. Well, your left knee is the same age. It's not. Maybe not because of age. There's maybe something wrong and having making these age attributions can actually get people to delay treatment or skip it all together and then it can get worse.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, yeah, exactly One thing I wanted to give you the chance to talk about are kind of the societal implications of subjective aging. You've mentioned some of that, but do you have more that you want to say about? About that?

Speaker 2: 19:40

I mean, I think, health on a pretty wide range. So we can't have this conversation and not talk about Becca Levy, who's a one of the leading researchers in this field, who has shown so many Outcomes linked to negative attitudes towards aging and negative beliefs, but one of the most cited ones that she found and reported was seven and a half year longevity difference, so people who report more positive use of aging may live seven and a half years longer.

Speaker 2: 20:07

On that, and that is a pretty significant chunk of time. So I mean, of course we want to make sure we have those years, as it's healthy, but that's a pretty, pretty long chunk of time. But so I think, societally, the reduction of negative age stereotypes and negative focus on experiences of personal aging I mean the research has tied to health, is a lot of this name of you right. So cardiac event, hospitalization, depressive symptoms, cognitive decline, even neural neuropathology associated with Alzheimer's disease and this one's interesting linked to health behaviors. So people who have more positive views on aging engage in more positive health behaviors, right, they go to the doctor, they wear their seatbelts, they may quit smoking, that kind of a thing. So so it's kind of like taking an active part in feeling like you have some control over the aging process. So I think if we can kind of ship this on a societal level, I think maybe we can see better health across the board, which would be pretty huge.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 21:08

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1: 21:09

I mean, we can do it I joke about this, I say it too often. My fault on this podcast is I kind of get overly optimistic, but I want to do it, we can to change that narrative. You are speaking from a science based perspective that you know. Subjective aging makes a difference, both at a societal level and an individual level, and we don't need to accept those stereotypes and difficulties that we've had in the past. You know, I heard you say some of the the negative associations, and earlier you mentioned that there are a lot of positive things to aging to. Would you just, off the top of your head, name some of those, just to kind of balance it out, because I think those would be kind of the types of things to have in our minds and in our conversations about. Yeah, aging can be difficult, all ages of life are difficult, but here are some of the positive things about this as well. What would you say about that?

Speaker 2: 22:01

yes, the positive changes that come with aging that we know people report, yeah. So I think the improvement in relationship quality, social relationships kind of get better social skills as we have more practice, a sense of knowing ourselves better and maybe being able to be a bit more true to ourselves than when we were younger.

Speaker 1: 22:24

For sure.

Speaker 2: 22:25

Better emotional regulation, better coping skills, more engagement in health behaviors. In general, people do tend to take better care of themselves as they get older.

Speaker 1: 22:36

That's right. That's right, that's right. And we are kind of that sandwich generation, you know. So sometimes we're taking more caregivers for our parents and or caregivers for our children. But our children are becoming more independent too. So I think sometimes we might have more independence at this age as well for those developing the kind of those resilience behaviors and putting those in our routine.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yes, right. So what you mentioned is definitely one of the known stressors of midlife is just that the competing roles and responsibilities, that there's more people need you than ever before. You may be at the peak of managing things at work and home and family and young ones and older family members, and neighborhoods and councils and boards and all of it. You know there's, there's and that can be, that can be a stressor.

Speaker 1: 23:24

There's so much great knowledge about this topic from you, ali. I know it's an emerging area and you've been writing about this a lot, but you know how would you advise us to use this knowledge to live healthier, more fulfilling lives?

Speaker 2: 23:37

Yeah, thanks for asking. I mean, I think one of the things that we can do is find and be mentors with people of all ages. So I've heard the advice one time that you should have people, friends like actual friends, who are older than you and younger than you, right, so that you can always be learning from somebody and always be teaching somebody what you've learned, right.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 2: 24:01

In our society we kind of tend to be age segregated 55 plus communities. Maybe it's age segregated by choice, right, but I'm all a fan of more integrated age communities. So, you can learn from each other, rely on each other, teach each other what we know, share strengths and you know, watch my kid for an hour. I can grab your groceries while I'm at the store. You know those kinds of intertwined neighborhoods and communities that I think we've moved away from.

Speaker 1: 24:29

I love that You're so right. It seems that's the type of advice that, like once you hear it, you're like, yeah, that makes so much sense?

Speaker 2: 24:37

Yeah, I don't do it.

Speaker 1: 24:38

You know that's such a great recipe because we can learn from those who have been ahead of us that we may maybe doing the things that we're going to be encountering. And yet it is a really satisfying time in midlife to be mentoring people because we have been through some things and it helps us realize I know for me it helps me realize that I have learned a few tricks that I have some skills to share, you know, and it's just really a fulfilling thing. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2: 25:04

I think it's important to be present and visible in those roles too that you know our older neighbors should be mentoring us and we should have. You know there's a lot it's. Social media is hard. It can go either way, right, there can be. There's some tendency to focus on the super-agers and the bodybuilders and the you know people who probably the general public is not going to that level of functioning. But I think we need more realistic examples and mentors of what it looks like to grow old in a way that I don't know. It's just well and taking care of each other and taking care of ourselves and not limiting what we're doing based on what we expect aging to be Allie.

Speaker 1: 25:47

I'm just doing a quick cut to just say well, this is amazing stuff, I think, for me on our outline, I'm getting to the conclusion.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Is that?

Speaker 1: 25:57

kind of what have you been through some of the stuff on your 1-3-3 so far? Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2: 26:00

I got through everything I wanted to.

Speaker 1: 26:02

Okay, I wanted to, just can I? I want to just ask if for a few minutes I just want to ask you like kind of my own clarifications, perhaps you know, and it may be something that we don't keep or anything like that, and then go into those conclusion questions. So this is kind of me just being curious, and so I'm curious as I kind of conceptualize this about those domains cognitive, what were they?

Speaker 2: 26:30

again, cognitive Physical functioning and health, cognitive, interpersonal, social cognitive and social emotional, so kind of how we relate socially and emotionally with others. And then leisure and lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 26:47

Okay, so those are the main domains that you've been measuring as far as it relates to aging and life satisfaction. Is that accurate?

Speaker 2: 26:56

Yes. Okay so yeah, so we didn't have a on our measure, we didn't have a workplace, one, ah, as far as I know, there's a stereotype measure that colleagues in Germany created does.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Yeah, so why? I kind of ask that is, I'm interested in you know how that's useful or how that gets selected? Because as I'm hearing those and thinking about those, those seem to be like if we were going to try to be clear about what's important in lives and well-being, like those would be five domains to focus on, developing and be aware of those. Like I think it's one thing to say I'm going to be happy and helpful and whatever today, but really what's important to me, what's important for my long-term well-being, Does those domains relate to that?

Speaker 2: 27:46

So somewhat, they sure do. There's probably a more helpful scale of what you're what you might be looking for. Dr Carol Riff had created the psychological well-being scales SPWE scales for psychological well-being, and there's six facets to that and they are more on the. So if there's not a physical one, they're more kind of individual personality or psychological characteristics. So, purpose growth.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So this is really just kind of for me. How did you select those, you know? How did you select the five?

Speaker 2: 28:27

that you got. How did?

Speaker 1: 28:28

those make the list, or what stands out about those?

Speaker 2: 28:30

Where do these come from? Yeah, so, dr Riff, it's kind of like her whole career of research that these, so you know kind ofa combination of qualitative and quantitative work of you know, looking at what the interviews and the transcripts say and then doing some data analyses as well and some factor analysis to establish the six distinct scales from one.

Speaker 1: 28:55

Okay, so, yeah, she okay Cool. So she took all that data and determined that those are the five primary domains to measure and there's a.

Speaker 2: 29:04

I don't know if it's in the public domain or not. You'd be able to find it as an academic for sure. But yeah you can take it and see how you can kind of see your profile and how you were on the different scales and so the idea there, and we use her measure as an outcome in a lot of our research where we're predicting predicting well-being based- on perceptions of aging and we make a distinction. You know her scales focus a lot more on eudaimonic well-being versus hedonistic right.

Speaker 2: 29:33

So, it's not the like you know, bubble bath, chocolate, great glass of wine, kind of feeling good stuff, happiness maybe but it's more like deep sadness. You might not be smiling all the time, you might not feel happy, but you feel fulfilled and satisfied.

Speaker 1: 29:46

Yes, very cool. All right, that satisfies my curiosity. Personally, that's part of the benefits of this job.

Speaker 2: 29:52

I need your time wisely, but very cool.

Speaker 1: 29:57

All right, so we'll move to the last section here. Oh, this is such great, great information, allie. This is a fascinating topic and a useful practical one as well too. So I'm curious to somebody who's really studied this, you know, what are some of your final thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with about subjective aging and midlife.

Speaker 2: 30:18

Yeah, I think there's a lot. I mean, one of the cool things about attitudes is that they're under our control, they're free to change right, we don't have to pay any money, and just takes a little effort. And I think starting to check our biases and expectations of aging earlier on, like, I think, in midlife, we're doing ourselves a real favor to prevent those extra decades from just having internalized stereotypes over time that really get under our skin and really have a stronger effect. So I think that checking our biases and really just kind of thinking about is this aging, this is how I want aging to be, and realizing that there's lots of different possibilities there is important.

Speaker 2: 31:00

I think that you know I've been talking about positive views on aging and I always like to clarify here I'm not saying that aging is easy and perfect and happy all the time. There are some serious challenges, real, real difficult aspects, and for some people more than others, but I don't think it's ever easy, and so I think what I'm advocating here, for which I really want to make clear, is that even people who have been are devastating things are able to also find positive aspects of their life and positive aspects of growing older and new opportunities and and it can maybe help offset some of the negative, but it's not. Instead, it's not denying, it's not replacing.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Right, that makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, I know I could go on and on here. I'm sure you could. You know kind of along that vein. You know, like what are some resources? If people are wanting to find out more, what would you recommend if people want to kind of go more in depth on this?

Speaker 2: 32:03

Yeah, I've been laughing because you have been using this phrase changing the narrative. And that's actually an organization out of Denver, an hour down the road from me, and their entire purpose is to eradicate ageism. So, changing the narrative, you're already there, you shouldn't, oh awesome, check them out.

Speaker 2: 32:20

They have a fantastic website with lots of great newsletter, lots of great resources and events that are remote. You can tune into from anywhere, and they've had they've done some really creative things, like they've had a birthday card competition where local artists can submit positive, aging message birthday cards and, you know, actually win a cash award and then they sell them and everything.

Speaker 1: 32:43

So that is so cool. Yeah, that sounds like the perfect answer as you might guess I would say, after saying that over and over here I will definitely check that out. I might have to get a poster in my room or something. Oh, very cool.

Speaker 2: 33:01

That's a good resources there. I'll just put in a plug for our Center for Healthy Aging here at Colorado State University. There's some really great resources and tons of good research talks and things. If you want to just find out more about aging in general not necessarily attitudes towards aging, but like information and the science there's so much good research going on in lots of different fields Biomedical, actually veterinary. There's comparative medicine type stuff, psychology, sociology, design all kinds of fields can come to aging business, all kinds of things. So some really neat talks there. Bec Alevi I mentioned as a researcher who's published all of this great academic work, but she just came out with a book last year called Breaking the Age Code, where she's talking about this exact topic and has some nice strategies in there and some neat stories throughout her career.

Speaker 2: 33:57

Yeah, and then there's there. I mean, there's a lot of academic work too. So if you're interested in searching for things in development, developmental science, human development psychology we have a new meta analysis coming out, or that just came out this year, updating so I think it was talking earlier on about how this field is growing so fast. We did a meta analysis in 2014 and there were gosh less than 20 studies that we were able to include, and now there's over 100 in this update oh my gosh 10 years later.

Speaker 1: 34:28

So we're not really wow, really add it must. That really adds to the what we know about it, the effectiveness, the confidence we can have in this kind of construct, and wow, that's incredible. I'll make sure to get the some links from you too after this show and put them in the description so listeners can find those even easier. So so, yeah, allie, this is a really important topic to our listeners and to society in general, and so, again, I just want to say thank you for all that you've done on this, to being and to being too, and for being willing to come on this kind of you know out there podcast on midlifers. It's just really really appreciated and I think it's going to help a lot of people. So thank you so much for what you're doing and thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 2: 35:12

Thanks for giving it some space. I love talking about it and I'm glad you find it as interesting as I do.

Speaker 1: 35:17

So Cool, I'll stop there and just say awesome, allie, thank you, and just making sure, yeah, you got you.