Are We There Yet? vol. 251
Happy New Year. While we don’t know what the new year will bring to us, we do know one thing for sure. In 2025, each of us will get a year older. In Holly Burns 2023 New York Times article—"How to Change Your Mind-Set About Aging”—she notes, “People who think positively about getting older often live longer, healthier lives.” In fact, a decades-long study of 660 people published in 2002 “showed that those with positive beliefs around getting older lived seven and a half years longer than those who felt negatively about it.”
Thinking positively about aging doesn’t mean that we ignore the obvious. Aging impacts us in many ways. “Instead, try to look at the honest reality with optimism.” Focus on what you can do rather than what you can’t do or can’t do as well as you did 20 or 30 years ago.
If you want to try to look at aging more positively, Ms. Burns offered a few suggestions. Try to understand where any negative age beliefs come from and try to avoid those stereotypes. Try to find positive role models and look for those friends, family, or acquaintances who are aging well. Challenge any fears about aging and stop blaming every ache and pain on your advancing age.
Finally, remember the benefits of aging. “Research has shown, for example, that emotional well-being increases with age . . .” While we may not have the stamina we once had, we likely also have experience, patience, and wisdom that our younger selves lacked.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West by David Sanger
For years, the United States was confident that the newly democratic Russia and increasingly wealthy China could be lured into a Western-led order that promised prosperity and relative peace—so long as they agreed to Washington’s terms. By the time America emerged from the age of terrorism, it was clear that this had been a fantasy. Now the three powers are engaged in a high-stakes struggle for military, economic, political, and technological supremacy, with nations around the world pressured to take sides. Yet all three are discovering that they are maneuvering for influence in a far more turbulent world than they imagined. Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials from five presidential administrations, U.S. intelligence agencies, foreign governments, and tech companies, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical questions: Will the mistakes Putin made in his invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal—or will the West’s famously short attention span signal Kyiv’s doom? Will Xi invade Taiwan? Will both men deepen their partnership to undercut America’s dominance? And can a politically dysfunctional America still lead the world? Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are interwoven—to the Taiwan headquarters where the world’s most advanced computer chips are produced and on to tense debates in the White House Situation Room, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first-draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.
Learn more about Bob Len here.
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