Our Newest Radically Reframing Aging Summit Starts Tomorrow!
When you think about getting older, what comes to mind? Do you silently mutter the age-old trope, “It’s all downhill from here”? Do you roll your eyes when you see “90 is the New 40” in news headlines?
Despite the fact that we are living longer lives than any other generation, our attitudes about aging are wildly antiquated. Yet it’s critical that we reframe—and reclaim—aging for our health, happiness, and future generations.
I’m on a mission to shatter these outdated myths about aging and give people the tools they need to get older with their fullest capacity for joy, optimism, grace, and guts. That’s why I interviewed more than two dozen visionaries for my summit, Radically Reframing Aging. What I took away from these interviews is that each of us deserve to believe our best days are in front of us—and each of us can take part in re-writing that old narrative that aging is something we should dread.
Here's a sneak peek at some of the biggest gems of wisdom I’ve learned from these visionaries about how to age well. Will you join me for this free, seven-day online event October 24-30? You can register here!
“You need to reject the idea that youth is everything and start living according to who you are.”
— Arthur Brooks
“One of the great lies the world tells us is that youth is everything—that our greatest strength happens during our youth. The truth is we do have strengths in our youth, and they’re different than the ones we have later in life. But when we recognize that different strengths happen at different times, we can go from strength to strength.
We can also be happier at 75 than we were at 25. I've interviewed people all over the world who have figured this out, and they say, “Why aren't we talking about this more?” I mean, we should be happier at the end of our lives than we were at the beginning. We can get happier all along the way.
But here’s the key: You can’t leave it up to chance. You have to have a practice, and you have to be committed to finding your new strengths.
The world tells us youth is a virtue—that youth is when people are most beautiful, most energetic, when we can do the most. And the biggest problem is that older people buy into those beliefs and try to hide their own aging. You really need to reject these ideas and live according to who you are.”
“Try to learn something new every day.”
— Martha Stewart
“I think it’s terribly important that we learn something new every day. Not everybody thinks that way, not everybody really wants to keep learning. They think, “Oh I got out of college, I've learned enough, I can just now live a life. But it isn’t about that; it really is about constantly enlarging your body of knowledge so that you can have interesting conversations.
I wake up rather early and the first thing I do is read a newspaper. Every morning, I try to bring myself up to date on what happened yesterday or late last night and what happened during the night.
I read The New York Times, and then I also read news blasts, listen to The Daily, read other articles I find interesting.”
“Dare to show up, stomp your feet, and say, ‘You know what? I’m not OK with being invisible.’”
— Paulina Porizkova
“Once you start looking a little bit older, you start turning invisible to everybody. At first, it gave me this feeling like after a certain age, you’re just supposed to retire into the ether somewhere and bake cookies or take care of your grandchildren if you are lucky to have some. And if you dare to still show up as a woman—if you dare to stomp your feet and say, ‘You know what? I’m not OK with being invisible,’ then you get shamed.
Yet it’s possible to look forward to getting older. I do not have small children anymore. I don't have to offer my body to my children all the time; I have reclaimed me. I'm wiser. I'm more patient. Everything about me is better, but I have wrinkles. And because of that, I now should disappear? I'm not willing to either turn myself younger, or just shut up and go away.”
Read more: Norma Kamali’s 8 Truths for Loving Yourself, Staying Relevant, and “Aging with Power”
“Follow what brings you joy.”
—Deepak Chopra
“This society is so focused on work that at the end of life, all we’ve done is work. There’s no joy. But if you start with joy—if you choose joyful experiences—you end up with a joyful, energetic body, a loving, compassionate heart, a clear mind, and a lightness of being.
I have only one mantra in my life now, and that mantra is ‘love in action.’ Love without action is irrelevant—it’s just a sentiment. Action without love is meaningless. Love and action, in my tradition, is called karma yoga. It’s the yoga that takes you beyond karma into the state of freedom. So, what I ask myself: Is this activity joyful? Am I hanging out with joyful people? And am I alleviating suffering with love and action?
If the answer is, yes, go for it. If the answer is no, don’t waste your time. The only measure of success is joy, otherwise you wasted your life.”
“Remember, your inside person doesn’t actually age.”
—Anne Lamott
“My advice for younger people terrified of aging is this: What is true is that the inside part of you really doesn’t age. I had a friend who at age 85 or 86 said, ‘I feel like a young man with something slightly wrong with me.’ That’s how I feel. The inside part of you doesn’t age.
It’s like when your kids are growing and you’re heartbroken that they won’t be a newborn forever. And then you’re heartbroken they won’t be a 1-year-old or forever, and then a 3-year-old, and then a kindergartener. And the fact is that your kid or your nieces and your nephews are every age they ever were. It’s not linear. The way that our inside person stays along for the ride is outside of the space-time continuum. It’s soul and spirit time.
Whatever age you admit to or lie about or dread—it’s just bullshit. Your inside person doesn’t age.”
“Schedule just 10 minutes a day where you do something that lights you up.”
—Martha Beck
“If you spend 10 additional minutes a day doing something creative and joyful, you are going to see a lot of benefits. And then you can find 10 more minutes and 10 more minutes.
And you start to realize that a lot of that crankiness that comes with age is having spent so much of your life doing things you didn’t want to. And you didn’t have to. When it came right down to it, you didn’t have to.
The pandemic taught us how much we don’t have to do to keep going. It freed up time for more sleep, for more play, for more creativity, for more social engagement. And I know it was horrible, horrible, horrible for many people. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater because that social connection, the creative play, these are the things that keep our brains young. And that keeps our body young because the body follows where the brain leads.”
WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT GETTING OLDER? WILL YOU JOIN THIS WEEK’S SUMMIT TO HEAR FROM SOME OF THE TRULY INSPIRING PEOPLE MARIA INTERVIEWED ON THE TOPIC? DROP A NOTE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW TO LET US KNOW!
To learn more about how Maria Shriver is changing the way we talk about aging, join her free, online event called Radically Reframing Aging: Today’s Groundbreakers on Age, Health, Purpose & Joy. Think of it like a free master class in aging well! Hosted by Maria Shriver in partnership with Shriver Media and Sounds True, this free 7-day summit features insightful and transformational interviews with world-renowned experts and public figures, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Deepak Chopra, Arthur Brooks, Vanessa Williams, Dr. Frank Lipman, Rob Lowe, Paulina Porizkova, and many more. The summit will be available for free viewing October 24-30. Click here to register today!
