Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Thank
Speaker 1: you everyone for joining us today. We're talking about aging
Speaker 1: with joy author doctor Carrie Burnit is here because apparently
Speaker 1: everything we've been told about aging is wrong. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Help? Do we need help? Yes? Oh, we need help,
Speaker 2: all of us. We all need help, and we're all
Speaker 2: going to get to the bottom of it today. Okay.
Speaker 1: I love this. Well, welcome to our new studio. We're
Speaker 1: you know, smoothing out some kinks. Thank you for very beautiful.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad you came.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you came. Your book joy Span, The
Speaker 1: Art and Science of Thriving, in Life's Second Act, introduces
Speaker 1: these concepts lifespan, health span, and joy span. So I
Speaker 1: think we all kind of know what lifespane is. That's
Speaker 1: the length of our life, how many years we're here.
Speaker 1: Health Span is about how healthy we are, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the nineteen eighties we added health span, so
Speaker 2: that is, you know, the number of years we enjoy
Speaker 2: relatively good physical and cognitive health. So we want, you know,
Speaker 2: to maximize our health span. Yes, great, great direction. Yes,
Speaker 2: And now joy Span, the problem was I was having
Speaker 2: a lot of people I worked with who lived a
Speaker 2: long time. They were quite old, they were in darn
Speaker 2: good physical and cognitive health, lucky them, but they were miserable.
Speaker 2: Oh so a long life that you don't like living
Speaker 2: is not the goal. So we realized that the conversation
Speaker 2: on quality of our lives has been absent or nearly absent,
Speaker 2: and so in line with what you have been teaching
Speaker 2: and living and writing about about the fact that we
Speaker 2: play a role in what our long lives look like.
Speaker 2: Isn't rock and science, and yet it's really changing lives?
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. I mean, I can just see how this
Speaker 1: would help my mom, even who's you know, in her
Speaker 1: mid eighties. And I see what you mean, like I
Speaker 1: see the different spans for sure, And I noticed that
Speaker 1: joy span is lacking.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and we think about what is joy? You know,
Speaker 2: we use it a lot, but the question is is
Speaker 2: it happy? Happy, smiley all the time?
Speaker 1: I hope not.
Speaker 2: Well, no, no, this grows. That's toxic positivity. Yes. So joy,
Speaker 2: as defined by the American Psychological Association is well being,
Speaker 2: life satisfaction, connection, and those things aren't too big of
Speaker 2: a goal to have in later years, and so the
Speaker 2: thought that some people are simply lucky, like you know,
Speaker 2: you see an older person who is you know, has
Speaker 2: a twinkle in her eye at age ninety five, and
Speaker 2: you think, oh, lucky, must be nice. Good genes, Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: but we found that genes is less than twenty five
Speaker 2: percent in predicting how we're going to age.
Speaker 1: Oh I love this.
Speaker 2: I'm so it's turning it to us to think, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: what is that other seventy five percent? And what should
Speaker 2: I at what age should I start doing this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff to create the long life that I would
Speaker 2: actually like to lively like to live.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you talk about all those things, that concept of
Speaker 1: emotional and emotional well being and personal wellbeing like being
Speaker 1: so important. Yes, as we get older, and I think
Speaker 1: that's I'm wondering. What was the moment you knew you
Speaker 1: had to write this book?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I love that question, author to author. So it is true,
Speaker 2: you get so you like this is it is in me?
Speaker 2: And it started actually with suffering. A book about joy
Speaker 2: started because of suffering, And that is I taught for
Speaker 2: almost twenty years in geriatric medicine at a university UCI
Speaker 2: in Irvine and All of my work was in elder abuse, neglect,
Speaker 2: and financial exploitation. So it was suffering day after day
Speaker 2: after day. And it wasn't it's an all socioeconomic status.
Speaker 2: It's in all kinds of it's like within families, it's
Speaker 2: within strangers. It was I was just thinking, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: the world is so dark, and here I'm crying every
Speaker 2: day on my way home to go pay got my
Speaker 2: kids at preschool, and then to get and it's really
Speaker 2: important work and billions are lost to this exploitation. And
Speaker 2: I probably would have done it forever because it was
Speaker 2: needed and important work. But the thing is, it was
Speaker 2: like imagine a skateboard ramp. So my colleagues and I
Speaker 2: were down at the bottom of the skateboard ramp after
Speaker 2: people would eat it on their skateboard of life, and
Speaker 2: they were awful, horrible situations, and we would try as
Speaker 2: best we could to put band aids on those situations.
Speaker 2: But what we were learning from the literature is that
Speaker 2: we actually have the information that we need to get
Speaker 2: up to the top of the skateboard ramp and equip
Speaker 2: people so that they don't take these horrible tumbles. In
Speaker 2: terms of ending up alone or ending up because of
Speaker 2: increased vulnerability, taken advantage of by people you know or
Speaker 2: people you don't know. And so sort of at that moment,
Speaker 2: which happened to be on an airplane, that I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, what if I could learn about the positive
Speaker 2: side of all of this, so that maybe we could
Speaker 2: fortify people ourselves so that we can end up not
Speaker 2: in the suffering world that I lived in.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. It's like it's like the preemptive. It's a
Speaker 1: you know, being proactive. Yes, it is before you wipe
Speaker 1: out on that skateboard. Yes, you can do things, yes,
Speaker 1: to improve your joy span.
Speaker 2: And growing older is hard. So it's the reason that
Speaker 2: it's more important is because like, that's the one thing
Speaker 2: I can guarantee, is that every life will have really
Speaker 2: hard things. We have in our fifties already, and it
Speaker 2: continues more so in terms of like using loved ones.
Speaker 2: It keeps going, yes, sadly, yes, yes. And you know,
Speaker 2: my greatest gift I've been given is that I've had
Speaker 2: this front row seat to the aging journeys of thousands
Speaker 2: of people. So I've gotten to just keep watching and
Speaker 2: learning from people who are ahead of us. And you
Speaker 2: do you see gosh diagnoses that you never expected losing
Speaker 2: partners and best friends, even children and grandchildren. Life is
Speaker 2: a lot. So what I don't in any way promise
Speaker 2: is that you won't have hard stuff. In fact, not
Speaker 2: to be downer girl, but I kind of guarantee that
Speaker 2: you will have hard stuff. That we all will.
Speaker 1: That's realistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at the same time, I do know that
Speaker 2: joy anyway is possible when we think about joy as
Speaker 2: well being, and so an analogy that we're also talking
Speaker 2: about our bodies, which is good and fine, and we
Speaker 2: know physical strength. Are we lifting weights? Are we doing
Speaker 2: some cardiovascular things? Are we doing some balance training? Are
Speaker 2: we doing some flexibility? We know it, we do it,
Speaker 2: we don't do it, you know. But the same is
Speaker 2: true with internal strength. There are factors that contribute to
Speaker 2: enabling us to build our interior strength for the journey.
Speaker 2: And the great news is what helps you between the
Speaker 2: ages of twenty three and twenty four are also the
Speaker 2: things that help between ninety three and ninety four. So
Speaker 2: it's never too early to get started on your joy span.
Speaker 2: But it's also never too late.
Speaker 1: That is very promising. What do you mean, It's the
Speaker 1: same as twenties and then later in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the way that the research groups, it groups into
Speaker 2: different practices that we can be doing. And when I
Speaker 2: first got into the literature, there are tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of studies on psychological well being and longevity, and I
Speaker 2: felt so overwhelmed. It was like, oh, no, how can
Speaker 2: I do ten thousand things? There's generosity, there's a resilience,
Speaker 2: there's I'm host it's exhausting, exhausting, and so happily after
Speaker 2: spending a lot of time there. They do group into
Speaker 2: four areas and these are really practical. They are really
Speaker 2: proven approaches that if we in the same way that
Speaker 2: we think am I doing some strength training? In the
Speaker 2: same way we can think am I doing some of
Speaker 2: these four areas? And they're all verbs because they all
Speaker 2: take work. So each of them that we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about today, it's like, you know, you don't see
Speaker 2: a really fit person and just go, oh, you're just
Speaker 2: pure lucky. No, they've been doing little things every day
Speaker 2: to get there. Same thing with our internal strength for
Speaker 2: the journey. We're going to know what they are after this,
Speaker 2: and we're going to put in a little bit of
Speaker 2: time every day into these areas that are going to
Speaker 2: fortify us for this journey.
Speaker 1: You're talking about internal fitness being just as important as
Speaker 1: physical fitness.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Love that that makes it so easy to understand. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's just taking care of our emotional wellbeing, Yes,
Speaker 1: our thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Okay. It's so powerful and it's at work
Speaker 2: that you and so many people are already doing. And
Speaker 2: so that's good news. I think for your listeners to think, oh, good,
Speaker 2: I'm doing that. So you know what I'm saying, I
Speaker 2: hope is not all new because we've been doing these things,
Speaker 2: but maybe it's a little bit of a vocabulary to think,
Speaker 2: am I doing all the things?
Speaker 1: I can't wait to jump into the things?
Speaker 2: Yes, the thing.
Speaker 1: But first I want to ask you about a lot
Speaker 1: of women my age talk about isolation. You know, when
Speaker 1: life is changing, the kids are out of the house,
Speaker 1: maybe they've lost a spouse or how to divorce, and
Speaker 1: the feeling of being needed has gone away. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, when when you're needed, it gives you a
Speaker 1: certain like zest for life, like you've got to keep
Speaker 1: keep this person healthy, You've got to take care of
Speaker 1: this person and provide for that person. But what I
Speaker 1: talk about in my book, and what everyone is really
Speaker 1: really the conversation is really starting to trickle everywhere is
Speaker 1: the importance of choosing oneself through all of it. And
Speaker 1: when I talk about that, when I first did that
Speaker 1: actually ill a little bit like am I being too
Speaker 1: self centered? Is this? Should I feel guilty about this feeling?
Speaker 1: And I don't think that that has happened for me,
Speaker 1: you know. I think that I've grown into knowing and
Speaker 1: understanding the importance of choosing yourself. And that is all
Speaker 1: that you talk about in this book. So so aligned,
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 2: So aligned, so aligned, so meant to be that we
Speaker 2: had this time.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think one of the best ways to stay
Speaker 1: young at heart in mind is to have community, you know,
Speaker 1: and have connection and have those opportunities. We just opened
Speaker 1: and I choose me hotline, so our listeners are going
Speaker 1: to be able to call in ask questions. And I'm
Speaker 1: so excited because I think we have a caller today
Speaker 1: that is going to be right up your alley.
Speaker 2: I would love to do that. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Let's listen to her question business Menda. I was calling
Speaker 3: with a question as I think about my next face
Speaker 3: of life about lifelong learning and what kind of options
Speaker 3: do you think are out there. Is it just a
Speaker 3: matter of signing up to college classes and maybe going
Speaker 3: to school with a bunch of kids who are fractioned
Speaker 3: my age, or are there programs that are designed especially
Speaker 3: for somebody who's trying to figure out maybe a second
Speaker 3: career or just wanting to find places to learn more
Speaker 3: about things that are interesting. So any tips on that
Speaker 3: would be really very helpful. Thank you.
Speaker 1: See Okay, what tips you have for Linda?
Speaker 2: What a great question, So thank you, Linda. It is
Speaker 2: a great time to be growing older because every single
Speaker 2: day in the United States, twelve thousand more of us
Speaker 2: are celebrating our sixty fifth birthday, so it's like thousand more,
Speaker 2: so every single day, more and more older people. And
Speaker 2: because of that, we are coming up with solutions about
Speaker 2: lifelong development, which is so critical. And it's so good
Speaker 2: Linda that you are recognizing that it is continued growth
Speaker 2: and continued learning, and so many universities now have programs
Speaker 2: geared at leaders in the second half of their lives,
Speaker 2: so that your classmates are people fifty and better, people
Speaker 2: who have enjoyed different paths and now are maybe wanting
Speaker 2: to either lean into that path in a different way
Speaker 2: or something completely different. So it is one of those
Speaker 2: that when you make the decision that you want to
Speaker 2: keep learning and growing, I would start out on the
Speaker 2: computer and your mind will be blown of all of
Speaker 2: that is out there. But sometimes we've been and understandably
Speaker 2: a little afraid to put ourselves out there. Is the
Speaker 2: old system had been just well, education is younger people,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to join a class and They're all
Speaker 2: going to be twenty one and I'm going to be
Speaker 2: sixty one. Yes, it is. It wants to be right,
Speaker 2: and so there are there solutions in person at universities,
Speaker 2: online at universities, and then through a lot of quite
Speaker 2: innovative organizations, some that are intergenerational which are pretty fun.
Speaker 2: And basically when you think how to get started, it
Speaker 2: really just starts with curiosity, like asking yourself what am
Speaker 2: I a little bit curious about? And a lot of
Speaker 2: times you go I don't know nothing, and then you go, okay, Carrie,
Speaker 2: what no, really, what did you always want to do?
Speaker 1: Exactly accomplished or even try.
Speaker 2: And there's things that like you can try it and
Speaker 2: you don't you have to be with it forever. But
Speaker 2: I have friends recently in their seventies, eighties, nineties and
Speaker 2: one hundreds, improv and bitcoin and programming and gardening and
Speaker 2: every possible thing that you can think of. There are
Speaker 2: things out there online and in person, and the benefit
Speaker 2: is not only good for your brain, not only good
Speaker 2: to lean into something that's a little uncomfortable, which is huge,
Speaker 2: but also you're going to find other people who are
Speaker 2: a little bit curious about that as well. And then
Speaker 2: it's social connection. So it's a great question that Linda asked,
Speaker 2: and it is something that we will be pleasantly surprised
Speaker 2: by what is there, even in small towns. So I
Speaker 2: have a patient who is living in quite a small town,
Speaker 2: and she was wanting to make sure that she is
Speaker 2: continuing to grow and lean into her eighty year old
Speaker 2: curious self. And what she found was that she was
Speaker 2: the one to kind of put it out there in
Speaker 2: her church group. I am interested actually in interior decorated
Speaker 2: I haven't ever put any time into it because I've
Speaker 2: been so busy, but she found she then started a
Speaker 2: group of other humans interested in that same kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And what they're doing, I mean, is absolutely mind blowing.
Speaker 2: I've oh, you sat on this hidden talent for eighty years.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, imagine what if when I'm eighty I
Speaker 1: start to play the piano. That would be a dream
Speaker 1: all my life I've said.
Speaker 2: I want to learn how to play the I would
Speaker 2: not be surprised. And you're likely to have twenty years
Speaker 2: to do it, because more and more of us are
Speaker 2: living to age one hundred. Really, and so when you
Speaker 2: kind of program it like that, like twenty years, I
Speaker 2: think I could get pretty okay at it. And this
Speaker 2: beginner like being a beginner and something is one of
Speaker 2: the very best things you can do for your brain,
Speaker 2: not for your ego, but for your brain. Being a
Speaker 2: little bit bad at things is terrific.
Speaker 1: Yes, because you have nowhere to go but up. Exactly
Speaker 1: you said, we're living to one hundred. I just need
Speaker 1: to go back to that for a second, because I've heard,
Speaker 1: you know, even my husband, even he says I don't
Speaker 1: want to live to be one hundred. Yes, And I
Speaker 1: think that he has the connotation in his mind that
Speaker 1: living to be a hundred is painful and full of suffering,
Speaker 1: and why would he want that?
Speaker 2: Yes, I hear it a lot, a lot my own
Speaker 2: husband too. The thing about how long we live. None
Speaker 2: of us know it, like today could easily be our
Speaker 2: last day, or it could be one hundred. And I
Speaker 2: have a patient now who's one hundred and fourteen. What
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 1: Wait what you flew my mind?
Speaker 2: I know after age one hundred, she had fourteen more years.
Speaker 2: I mean continuing, how is she? She is really really lovely.
Speaker 2: She is an absolutely lovely woman and she I was
Speaker 2: with her three days ago. She had her hair pulled
Speaker 2: back with a beautiful like red flower in it, and
Speaker 2: she's really had gotten into scrapbooking and was showing me
Speaker 2: staggeringly cool pictures that she's gathered over the years. And
Speaker 2: she's great.
Speaker 3: She is.
Speaker 2: You know, are there challenges? Yes, her vision is a challenge,
Speaker 2: hearing is a challenge. A lot of things hurt. And
Speaker 2: also she is a role model of what we can
Speaker 2: look forward to. Because we're creating this new longevity, we
Speaker 2: don't have role models, and so we have to sort
Speaker 2: of become the role models. And I think that's really
Speaker 2: the first step is recognizing that what we have been
Speaker 2: consuming since the minute we were born is a narrative
Speaker 2: that aging is all decline, and it's a really lucrative messaging.
Speaker 2: So the anti aging community makes billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: And doesn't the society seem to be just like I
Speaker 1: would think that living longer or having purpose later in
Speaker 1: life is a hard cell because everyone is just obsessed
Speaker 1: with youth.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, and that's what so lucky is that enough
Speaker 2: of us, it's going to be a critical mass of
Speaker 2: us saying wait a second, I am saying that this
Speaker 2: decline aging mindset, which spells out damn, which is so great,
Speaker 2: the damn mindset, that damn mind, that damn mindset that
Speaker 2: is that like we each have, like I'm convinced that
Speaker 2: we all carry what I call internalized agism. And of
Speaker 2: course it makes sense because of all the messaging and
Speaker 2: since we were little. In fact, you think about witches
Speaker 2: like when you were little, there said Hanseling. Gretel went
Speaker 2: out and then the old woman was going to eat them,
Speaker 2: right like we start real super young, saying it's all downhill.
Speaker 2: And that's part of my mission is letting people know
Speaker 2: that in addition to things that do decline, there are
Speaker 2: things that get better as you get older, but they've
Speaker 2: got no airtime because they're not lucrative. And they are
Speaker 2: things that you've pointed out in your book, like not
Speaker 2: caring as much what other people think of us really
Speaker 2: so liberating.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And then one that is so great that sometimes people
Speaker 2: don't realize is that we have the potential for greater
Speaker 2: problem solving. And the reason for this is one the
Speaker 2: neurological integration of our left and right hemisphere in our brain,
Speaker 2: in our brain, coupled with how many problems that we
Speaker 2: have solved in our life or watched other people solve.
Speaker 2: And so the example that I love to give is
Speaker 2: a story, and is this friend of mine who has
Speaker 2: passed away, Gene Cohen, but he taught at Harvard and
Speaker 2: every Wednesday he would go and pick his pain parents
Speaker 2: up at the train station and then he would put
Speaker 2: they would get in his car, drive to his place,
Speaker 2: they'd eat dinner together, and he would drive them home.
Speaker 2: So it's one day, just dumping snow. His ninety year
Speaker 2: old parents get up on the platform and they have walkers,
Speaker 2: they didn't have cell phones, and they're just waiting for
Speaker 2: their dumb Harvard son to come pick them up, and
Speaker 2: he was late, so they're just standing there out there,
Speaker 2: they with the problem solving look over and they see
Speaker 2: a pizza place, So they carefully walk to the pizza
Speaker 2: place and they say, you know, we'd like to order
Speaker 2: a couple of pizzas to be delivered to our son's house.
Speaker 2: And when you deliver those pizzas, we'd like to ride
Speaker 2: along in the car with them. So he gets home,
Speaker 2: his parents in their nineties are there safely at his
Speaker 2: place with dinner. And that's the kind of problem solving.
Speaker 2: It's not technology based. It is the fact that we've
Speaker 2: been on this earth. And if you recognize, like I
Speaker 2: have good problem solving skills and I'm gonna they're even
Speaker 2: gonna get better, We're going to lean into that. And
Speaker 2: a society that leans into what gets better as you
Speaker 2: get older is going to be a society that can
Speaker 2: overcome all of these challenges that we have right now.
Speaker 2: So we need what older you has to offer.
Speaker 1: Yes, I fully agree, like I feel, you know, wiser
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older. I've learned so many things, you know,
Speaker 1: and I know everybody feels that way. And it's such
Speaker 1: a beautiful feeling when you can actually accept that about yourself,
Speaker 1: because I think so often we say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just me, and I don't I don't have any
Speaker 1: wisdom to share, but that's not true exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know other things that can get better is
Speaker 2: our humility, and a lot can get done when people
Speaker 2: aren't so you know, thinking that it's all about them,
Speaker 2: Also our humor, also our spirituality, our appreciation of music
Speaker 2: and art and nature, also our ability to recognize who
Speaker 2: our people are. You know how sweet these connections can be.
Speaker 2: So by leaning into those things that get better when
Speaker 2: you get older is what helps you let go of
Speaker 2: the inaccurate, lucrative narrative that it's all downhill.
Speaker 1: There is so much more to learn about doctor Burnight's book,
Speaker 1: joy Span. Our conversation will continue later this week, so
Speaker 1: please join us