Booming On-Part 2
Last Updated on Sunday, 13 December 2009 11:15 Written by David Solie Saturday, 19 April 2008 05:27
This is the second installment from our new book Booming On. Next week we will post part three…
Both couples had satisfactory lives in their mid-50s. They had success and hope for the future. But their future was actually in the midst of a profound transition, one in which there would be little room for error, few if any second chances. It is hard to believe in our mid-50s that such an intense and unforgiving storm is just around the bend. But it is. Linda and Ted saw it one way. Heather and Jack saw it another. Both couples made choices and set out to live their choices. 20 years later those choices point out two crucial elements about quality of life beyond 50-something:
1. The individual has immense power to reinvent their future.
2. Modern medicine is has limited power to reinvent a poorly structured future.
Quality of life is not based on cosmetic surgery, new drugs or the latest medical procedures. The clinic cannot save us from bad choices or poor game plans. It all starts with us, but we need a plan. That is where many of us get stuck. When we look for a plan, the choices are overwhelming. Do I eat organic food and meditate? Should I sign up for a marathon? What are the good “carbs?” Should I take St. John’s Wort to handle stress? Did I need a body scan? Just finding a plan proves more complicated than just doing what we have always done. Surely not all of the thing we have been told to do for our health, our quality of life, can be right? How do we know what is right? What’s the plan?
We have asked ourselves this question for many years, both for ourselves, for family members, for friends and for patients. What plan is simple, easy to work with, offers realistic baby steps and, most importantly, actually works? By works, we mean a plan that has been around long enough to validate its effectiveness, meaning real people have used it with great success. For a long time we used a variety of approaches, a mix and match approach to our own health and the advice we gave others. And then by chance we discovered a plan by the most successful group of people we had ever encountered. We discovered the centenarians.
The centenarians are people who have lived to 100 and beyond. Who better than those who have actually lived the journey with good health and great engagement to provide us with insights and strategies to obtain both quality of life and the potential for longevity? We were intrigued, but we wanted to know more. Here is what we found.
Currently in the US, we have 58,000 individuals who are at least 100 years old, a number that will increase to 1,000,000 by 2050. Some of the centenarians are fortunate enough to have longevity genes (evidenced by a family history of “long lives”), but up to one third have achieved long and high quality lives by a healthy lifestyle, even in the face of major medical problems. How did they do this?
The how is what this book is about. Not about the “how” to live to 100, but rather the “how” of their game plan that took them through the passage from their mid-50s through their 70s and 80s. This is the most likely passage for the majority of baby boomers. Some of us will get to 100, but most will get to between 70 and 90. This is our focus. How we can get to 70-something with the best quality of life.
Our research on the centenarians demonstrated that as a group they share common traits that impact the quality and length of their lives. Despite their diverse backgrounds and experiences, their lifestyles follow a common path, a common set of habits that offer a plan, a road map that is both profound and yet surprising simple in design. We call their common traits the “centenarian markers,” the unique building blocks that account for their impressive quality of life. Taken as a group the centenarian markers offer up a game plan that is both an assessment tool and a coaching tool. It can tell you what’s working and what can benefit from an upgrade. It offers the global view we need to see the big picture as well as the practical coaching tips we need to make changes. It addresses life, as we know it.
It is easy to forget with the avalanche of health messages we get from the popular media that we are more than blood pressure readings or cholesterol levels. Our lives are embedded into a complex landscape that has children, grandchildren, older parents, challenging jobs, marriages, and uneven health. Any road map that does not give us the tools to manage the whole process, life as we really live it, can’t help us. We don’t need a diet as much as we need a clear view of how the physical and psychological issues of our lives either work for us or against us. This is the value of what the centenarians have to teach us.
The goal is to upgrade the quality of our lives. Knowing the whole plan makes upgrading the parts so much easier. Why? Because we see how they are connected together in ways that makes sense to us. Because we see how even a small step in one area yields huge results in the other areas. Because we see that one part of the plan does not replace or overshadow the other. Because we finally see that no doctor, no diet book, no fitness program can provide us with the invaluable perspective from the end of the journey, the advantage of looking back at what worked and why. This is the centenarian’s gift to us, the plan they lived and now pass on to us to help us invent our future.
We wrote this book to provide you with a clear understanding why the centenarian markers are so crucial to quality of life and how they provide a clear road map that anyone can adopt at any age to upgrade the quality of their life. Knowing the centenarian markers is one thing; putting them into practice is another. The value of the book lies in its common sense approach to incorporating, most of the time in baby steps, this wisdom into our lives. It is not the big decisions that influence our lives so much as it is the small, determined decisions that yield profound influence over what we become. We are big on baby steps.
So as millions of baby boomers turn 50, they are entering a critical period of time that will determine their future, the last major 20-year segment they have to invent a different outcome to their health story. For a larger portion of baby boomer population, this is a wake up call, like it or not. Which brings us to another important aspect of this book. It offers a plan that allows anyone to upgrade the quality of their life, on their own time schedule, in the order that suits them best, and in the manner that reflects who they are. Like we said, we are big on baby steps. Just choosing one new habit, one new goal from the nine markers we outline in the book can have a dramatic impact on the individual and those around him or her. This is what happened to Alan.
Alan heard us give a presentation on the centenarian markers. He can up afterwards to discuss a number of issues. Alan was looking for an upgrade in many areas of his life. Where to begin? What is the one step you can take in the next 90 days we asked him? Maybe a health check up he suggested. He was 55 and was long overdue for a physical. He decided to take that baby step and get a check up, colonoscopy and all. To his relief, everything was normal. He was relived and inspired. He opted for another small step. He began to test ways to get better connected in his community. Baby steps, piece by piece, building an upgraded future, on his own terms, piggy backing off of one goal after another, using the centenarian road map for keeping on course, remembering how the whole game was meant to be played.
While this book incorporates the wisdom of those who have lived to a 100 and beyond, it is not about longevity. Life is not a contest to see who last the longest. This book is about quality, about a balanced life that is more meaningful and satisfying. We won’t promise you that following the wisdom of centenarian markers will get you to 100, but wouldn’t it be wonderful as you approach 80 years of age and beyond to be like Jack and Heather? That is the purpose of this book, to provide you with a set of tools and strategies to minimize the development of future disease and to preserve good health, to upgrade your life to the highest quality you can have, for yourself and for those who are connected to you.
Tags: aging, aging parents, baby boomers, Boomers, caregiver, Communication, coping, David Solie, depression, disability, How To Say It To Seniors
This sounds like a great book. Is it a book that’s printed or an e-book?
I agree that how boomers handle health and social interactions will have an impact on their longevity.
I write a blog for boomer consumers called The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide at http://boomersurvive-thriveguide.typepad.com.
Rita
The book is due for release at the end of 2008…
Really good stuff to think about. The small changes we make now can have a huge impact later. Every day choices — second helping of dinner or not? walk today or not? — can make a lot of difference when added up over the course of 30 years.
David:
The book sounds like another winner. The plan is so important. If you dont have a plan,then you dont have a program; whether its personal improvement or family caregiving. I am sure that when one studies the “Centarian Marker” retrospective, they all had a few things in common. Whether by design, accident or divine intervention, they all were not overweight, kept reasonable active and continued to do so as long as possible and didnt smoke or quit early in life.
I am sure that there are some 100+ year old citizen’s who attribute their longevity to: eating anything; having 6 cigars a day; a good dose of whiskey; and laying around on the couch. They are the a rare exception where genes outweighed lifestyle.
Looking forward to the book. Your comment about peoples actions regarding quality-of-life, “They portray the uncomfortable and painful truth about quality of life: you either define it or it defines you.”
Great line; great truth!