It's Never too Late for Successful Living!
Posted on July 20, 2018 in Health and Wellness
Dr. Roger Landry is the award-winning author of Live Long, Die Short: A Guide to Authentic Health and Successful Aging, and he has a message he wants to share with people everywhere. It’s a simple message, and one that people from all walks of life and of all ages need to hear.
There are too many stereotypes about aging that people allow themselves to become boxed into. Dr. Landry believes that it’s important to continuously seek growth, knowledge, and improvement – and to blow those stereotypes out of the water.
Successful Living in Action
Of course there’s a little more involved in the process, but the concept is sound. Dr. Landry believes that it’s important to maintain social, intellectual, and physical abilities as part of a successful living philosophy designed to last well into our eighth, ninth, and tenth decades of life. Rather than reaching a certain age and then simply living in a state of decline, we should strive for constant growth and improvement to the best of our ability. Period.
Purposeful programming is a means of empowering adults to achieve a successful living lifestyle. This programming involves surrounding older adults with a strong network that will nurture their ongoing physical, intellectual, spiritual, and social health. Communities do this by offering a wide range of activities and adventures to engage the body and the mind. They offer life coaching to identify each person’s unique goals and to help identify routes individuals can take to accomplish them. They create support systems through social groups and organizations filled with people approaching similar goals.
Research Supporting Successful Living
The MacArthur Foundation conducted a ten-year study that revealed that 50 percent of mental aging and a whopping 70 percent of physical aging was the result of lifestyle choices that people participating in the study made daily. The report on successful aging reasoned that adults who avoid diseases and disabilities, maintain high levels of physical and cognitive function and are actively engaged in the process of living; these are the adults that will enjoy enhanced quality of life later.
This stresses the importance of physical and mental activities and social interaction at all stages of life. It also encourages routine health checks and maintenance to defend against cancer and other diseases, as well as smoking cessation programs. It also requires a healthy focus on nutrition, vaccinations, and mental and physical exercises.
Remaining engaged in life and living involves finding your passions and people to share them with. When you do these things, age becomes nothing more than a number and something no one should ever act. After all, this is what living is all about.