Living Longer is the New Normal!

My guest is Dr. Joe Casciani. He has a 30-year history in long-term care as a psychologist and mental health, and an expert in mental health practices. He is most interested in the aging part, how the psychology of aging is applied and how we can age better. His new business is called Living to One Hundred

Joe believes that successful aging is more about a mindset than we give that attention.

"My whole career focused on aging and looking at kind of the upside to aging, not just the decline" Dr. Joe

What does "Turn aging on its head", The Living to 100 Club's tagline rally mean? It means we should stop using number as any kind of gauge of what we should or should not be doing. To give up that those self-limiting beliefs that really hold us back and foster those negative stereotypes.

Joe says, "we should dig deep and finding some some new energy and new potential and new interest. He thinks this is our future as we age.

He and I agree that it's super important to stay connected with other people.

We talk about the importance of waking up each morning with a smile on our faces, (in theory anyway 😎) and saying, what's my purpose today? What's my objective? What's my goal today? And we really need to have that, whatever it is, whether it's solitary or whether it's social and interpersonal, we really have to have something to look forward to.

We all know the importance of exercise but Joe has a confession, "I don't find it fun. I just find it necessary. So I do it."

Mindset figured bigly into our conversation and how, as Epictetus would say, "We are disturbed not by events, but by the views we take of these events." Joe mentioned this in answer to my question about how to deal with sudden upsets, hurdles, like illness or loss.

"How we interpret events, how we explain events that colors how well we cope with them, how well we manage them" will make the difference in how we heal or get through things.

Fire and determination are always within us and as we age this is an important concept to carry with us. And, to have people in our lives who will remind us of that, help us remember it.

Speaking of remembering, looking back on other times in our lives where we've done hard things, survived when we weren't sure we would, are also important ideas to hold on to.

Listen to how Dr. Joe answered my question; "Do you think that goals for life play into how we recover?"

And how easy it is--despite what it may feel like in a moment--to completely change a belief about ourselves and others.

"The future is often written by the past which limits our possibility of what could be in the future."

In short, bad things happen and we get through them.

And, More power to the oldies!

Joe's book: Living Longer IS The New Normal, Lessons from a Geropsychologist on Living Longer, Staying Positive, and Making it Over the Hurdles

His website: Living to 100. Club

Books and people we mentioned during our conversation:

The Blue Zones

Successful Aging by Dr. Daniel Levitin

Dr. Joe Dispenza

Bruce Lipton