The Power of Possibility

November 29, 2010 By marc Leave a Comment

Im declaring Growing Bolder a landmark study in social psychology. And Im declaring our slogan Its Not About Age, Its About Attitude the most powerful combination of words ever strung together. Sure, both are exaggerations but only partly. Weve been telling the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things for more than four years. We feature people who somehow seem immune to the subtle messages that our society bombards us with about aging. These are the people who have managed to ignore the stereotypes of the elderly as feeble, immobile, mindless, helpless and passionless. And as a result, they are none of the above. As interesting and inspirational as our large library of anecdotal evidence is, I wondered if there exists actual scientific evidence that its not about age, its about attitude? Can it actually be proven that your attitude can turn back the hands of time? It didnt take long to discover the research of Harvard professor Dr. Ellen Langer.

Dr. Langer is one of the worlds top social psychologists and has designed one fascinating research study after another that reaffirm what we have been saying for years believe and you will become. Or as she put it, Where the mind leads, the body will follow. In the early 80s, she took two groups of men in their 70s and 80s on a weeklong retreat in which she created a realistic living environment from the 1950s. The men were totally immersed in the culture of their youth. They watched 1950s shows and movies on black and white TVs and listened to music, prize fights, horse races and news reports from the era. The first group was told to pretend they had actually traveled back in time and were young men again living, acting and talking like they did in the 1950s. The second group was told to stay in the present but reminisce about the past. When the week was over, both groups had significantly improved their overall health but the change in the group who actually pretended to be younger was astonishing. Not only did they change psychologically they changed physically. Their gait, posture, hearing, vision, grip strength and manual dexterity improved. Their joints were more flexible, their shoulders wider and their fingers were not only more agile, but longer and less gnarled by arthritis. Impersonating younger men for only one week resulted in bodies that actually were younger. It is not our physical state that limits us, Langer explains, it is our mindset about our own limits. Men who changed their perspective changed their bodies. In 2007, Dr. Langer took 84 female hotel workers who didnt have the time or money to join a health club. One group was told that research had proven that the work they do (vacuuming, bending to pick up towels, pushing carts, scrubbing tubs, making beds and emptying trash) is legitimate exercise that duplicates many of the exercises performed in gyms. The control group was told nothing. Four weeks later, Langer returned to take measurements and discovered that the control group hadnt changed physically, but the test group had lost weight, lowered their blood pressure, reduced their body fat and decreased their waist-to-hip ratio. They reported feeling better and their loved ones thought they looked better. Nothing changed except their perception of what they were doing. What was mindless was now mindful. As soon as they began to view their daily routine as exercise beneficial to their health and fitness, it was. Where the mind led, the body followed. Langer has made a career out of proving the mind-body connection that scientists have suspected for years. She points to the use of placebos in medicine. A third of people with virtually all disorders self-heal using placebos, she said. But its not the placebo that affects recovery. Youre making yourself better. For that reason, she believes that doctors should rarely, if ever, deliver a terminal diagnosis. A terminal diagnosis becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Where the mind leads, the body follows. The same can said for the aging process. Our fixed ideas, internalized in childhood and reinforced throughout our life by the media, our families and friends, affect the way we age. We have literally been brainwashed into believing that when our hair turns gray or begins to fall out or when we begin to get wrinkles, that a rapid physical decline is inevitable. At Growing Bolder, weve documented one person after another who disproves that notion. Weve learned that when you hang out with younger people, you not only act younger you feel younger and you look younger. Weve learned that its never too late to turn back the clock. Weve observed repeatedly what Dr. Langer is proving that mindset determines outcome, that a change in self-perception is ultimately a change in reality. That its not about age. Its about attitude. Dr. Langers research demonstrates clearly that if your mind accepts the negative stereotypes of aging, so will your body. Opening our minds to whats possible instead of clinging to notions about whats not can dramatically improve our health at any age. Heres the take-away the aging process is not fixed. Its not based solely or even mostly on your genes. Its based largely upon your mind. Where your mind leads, your body will follow. Note: If youve not heard much about Dr. Langer, you will. Dreamworks Studios has optioned the film rights to Counterclockwise,her book about the men who turned back the clock by returning to the 1950s. Jennifer Anniston has signed on to produce the film and will play the 34-year-old Langer. In addition, the BBC has recreated the study in a reality show called The Young Ones. The show features six well-loved British celebrities in their 70s and 80s who move into a house to try to turn back the clock by returning to 1975. For one week, they live, work and eat in the 1970s to see if they can regain their youth.

New Year, New You

DECEMBER 13, 2010

As we are about to enter the second decade of the 21 century (where did the FIRST one go????), it is good to get a little perspective on things. For example, will radio DJs continue to exhort us to listen to the hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and now the 00s? How will they say it? The Zeroes? These are the kinds of things I wonder about.
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In the 70s, there was a famous Counterclockwise study done by social-psychologist Ellen Langer. In this study, Langer and her team created a historically accurate physical environment typical of the year 1959, and then got a group of elderly men to live exactly as if it was 1959. For a whole week, they cooked, ate, slept,

and lived in 1959, listening to the music and discussing the issues of the day. There was also a control group that spent a week together just reminiscing about 1959 but not acting as if it really was that time. The control group had a very lovely time together, but that was about it.

Butand this is truly amazingthe group of guys who put themselves into a 1959 state of mind experienced profound changes. Their memory, physical flexibility, dexterity, vision, hearing, and general well-being all improved dramatically. Most important, after just one week of living as if they were

younger, Langers old fellas showed improvements in finger length! Yes!!! Shriveled arthritic fingers got LONGERas they released and embraced a younger, 1959 perspective. (Michael Gelb)

By the way, this story about LANGERS LONGER FINGERS is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jennifer Aniston. (This is not a joke). And if arthritis can be un-bent, this living as-if technique holds tremendousalbeit complicatedpromise for wrinkles in 2011. Most everyone (in the Western world, at least) has surely heard by now that to live our best life, we should BE HERE NOW, be in the POWER OF NOW, try to LIVE IN THE NOW, and not worry about the past or the future. It just makes sense, if you think about it. The thing is, there really is no NOW. I can prove it. Right now, take a moment to try to measure

the RIGHTNOW-THIS-VERYSECOND moment you are currently experiencing. The instant you try to capture itlets say by looking at your watch that moment has already vanished into the past. No matter how hard you try to catch the Nowbreaking it down into smaller and smaller increments all the way down to

nanosecondsit has already passed by the time you try to grab it. So I think we might need to have a serious conversation with Eckhart Tolle.

Because there really is no present, only the past and the future merging. There is only trying to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellowor worrying about whether I will see you in September or lose you to a summer love. Just smaller and smaller moments of future-then-past, future-then-past, futurethen-past. And even those dont really exist. Even though it seems like time is moving, what were really experiencing is one thing vanishing and another appearing. Our genius brains effortlessly connect these vanishing and appearing acts together, giving us the illusion of time passing. But its just a trick. Most of us have experienced the distinct feeling that time has passed either too quickly or too slowly. When I sit down to write, I struggle for awhile, but once the words begin to flow, I

lose all sense of time. Hours can go by, and it can seem like minutes. On the other hand, time goes waaaaayyyy too slowly when Im at the Dentists Office. Human language is the main source of our feeling that time is moving forward in a linear way. Youve probably heard that in this modern world, we are mostly Human Doings instead of Human Beings. We say, Yesterday I did this, tomorrow Ill do that. With our language, weve created the dreaded 40- (or 80-) hour work week, the stingy 2-week vacation, the rambunctious 5-minute speed date, the 60-second microwave Pop-Tart, and the When Im 64 Pop-Song. As weve evolved, we have abandoned our own inner sense of time, and replaced it with clock and calendar time. The indigenous Aborigines in Australia, on the other hand, still experience time based on the natural rhythms of the seasons and the lunar and solar cycles. Their time is not linear but more circular. Their days are marked in sleeps. One hour might be measured by how long it takes to roast

Witchety Grub in the hot sanda big,

plump, yummy morsel that I happen to have personally sampled. (I call it the Witchetying Hour. Of course, most of the time they dont roast the Witchety Grub, but just pop it still wigglinginto their mouths. At that point, its a witchety swallow in a Witchety Second.) In other words, the Aborigines have retained their essential sense of how time feels. But linear clock time doesnt really exist any more than subjective feeling time does. Because actually, we live in Eternity.

We live in a river of time in which the source of the river (our past) and its final destination ahead of us (our future) exist simultaneously. Events that have already passed must still be around. And events in the future must exist like new scenes just around the river bend. Physicist Fred Alan Wolf puts it beautifully: When we say time passes, we mean that we pass. Time is an experience in itself that is, paradoxically, timeless. Or another way of putting it: Diamonds are forever. Everybody knows what that means. The river of eternity can flow both ways. Most of us assume that everything we can remember has already happened. And if asked why we dont remember scenes from our future, wed probably answer: Duh, because they havent happened yet. But what if memory, like the river, goes both waysand

you can remember the future just as well as you can recall the

past? Animals, by the way, probably have no experience of time passing. They dont have language, and think exclusively with images. They just Are. They are Animals Being. In her study, Langers Finger-Growers were Time Travelers. And they didnt really have to GO anywhere to get somewhere else. Probably the biggest thing that limits all of us in our own time-

travelin g access to the future and the past is our illusion that we are each a separate, singular entity, an ego, or an I, living in a world of time and space. A Human Doing. Our Doing-ness pins our mind in time rather than timelessness.

By the way, I think the Beatles were on to something timeless and quantum-y (and maybe something drug-y) when they

wrote on e of my favorite songs from childhood: Eight days a week, I lo-o-o-o-ove you (ba-dup), Eight days a week, its not enough to show I care. (Human Being) Then of course there was Prince, who famously sang, Act your age, not your shoe size, mama. (Human Doing. Definitely). So, Mr. Dee-Jay and the rest of us, as we enter the 10s or the Teens(?), heres my suggestion: Dont put Time in a Bottle.

Instead, pull a Long-Finger. Ask yourself, What if we didnt know how old we are? Keep reminding yourself that youre not a Doing but a Being, and that youre connected with everything, living in timelessness.

And try acting the age you feel, not the age you are. Since you really, truly arent that age anyway.

It will probably do more to keep the spring in your step, the song in your heart, and the length in your toes than any other single thing you ever do. Young is the new old! Get Ignited!
Tagged as: aging, arthritis, brain, consciousness, Ellen Langer, Fred Alan Wolf, genius, humor, power of now, quantum physics, time travel