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Is aging really necessary? What if we unlocked the secrets of well-being and practiced those secrets from age 40 to 100? What is well-being anyway? It’s not as simple as happiness. Happiness flips in and out of our lives during the day or week. It’s about as dependable as sunshine in Minneapolis.
Well-being, on the other hand, is a sustained background tone of living. It depends on our physical, emotional, and social health – all three. How do we cultivate well-being? One of the surest ways is to expand social connections.
As we grow older, best friends often grow away or move away. We don’t see the same moms and dads when we drop off kids at school. The nest empties, and eventually, some of us may become widowed. But with the proliferation of social media, none of us really has to be alone and lonely as we age. And being alone and lonely is the surest way to accelerate aging and illness.
I like to take a look at social dating sites because these are the kind of matches people are making in later years. Here’s a quote from Foxy Lady: “sexy, fashion-conscious blue-haired beauty, 80s, slim, 5-foot 4 (used to be 5-8), searching for sharp-dressing companion, matching white shoes and belt a plus.”
And there’s Mint Condition: “male; 1932; high mileage; some hair; many new parts including hip, knee, cornea, valves; isn’t in running condition but walks well.
And then, my favorite, Memories: “I can usually remember Monday through Thursday. If you can remember Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, let’s put our heads together.”
For the past couple of months, I’ve been working with a research company that has been taking the daily measure of Americans’ well-being for the last 3 years. I’ve been writing a series of columns for USA Today – this week, about what contributes to high well-being for the largest demographic in America today, that is, women age 45 to 55, the younger half of the Baby Boom.
If accomplishment, and meaning, and engagement are what high well-being women find in their work and in being involved in their communities, that is true for men too because it gives you a sense of purpose.
Younger Boomer women of highest well-being, those who are 45 to 55 today, it turns out are the most career oriented of any generation of women. They’re the ones that came out of the colleges and graduate schools, and the doors had already been kicked open for them – and law schools, and medical schools, and companies like Healthways. So they went to work early and they have been working right up through middle life. Most of the highest well-being women in that age group work full time and take great satisfaction and meaning from their work.
That’s different from younger and older generations of women who are of high well-being. Most of them don’t work. So it’s a very singular generation. These Super Boomers enjoy a family income of $120,000 and up. Money is important but it’s not the key thing, and it’s not the key element in well-being.
They made good marriages, seldom divorce. Mid-life offers them a chance to rekindle romance because, this is the secret: They don’t have any young children still at home.
Well, how is that true? And they’re also blessedly free of caregiving responsibilities for any adult or any aging or infirm family member. And that is also key – that combination. There is a huge impact on the intersection of the stage of life and the age of your children and the health of your parents.
And that’s a key finding. We know from many studies that young children in the home have a dampening effect on couples’ well-being. But for women in their early 30s, straight through their 30s and early 40s, children in the home are very much associated with high well-being.
It’s after 45 and 50 that there is a negative impact. To reach the ideal of a woman in mid-life, between 45 and 54, you need to launch your last child by the time you are 50.
So what does this say about family planning? Well, it suggests that the ideal time for a woman to have children is between the ages of 27 and 36. That flies in the face of the trend towards waiting, waiting, waiting, and having late babies and taking advantage of the reproductive revolution.
Because her children will be old enough to look after themselves when she arrives at the brink of mid-life and be on their own at 18, when she reaches the peak of the mountain at 50. Then a woman and her husband are free to invent a whole second adulthood, which I think is the secret to living a long enough life of well-being.
It gives you a chance to change the work you do. Most people want to in mid-life, if they can, change the priorities they set – to find more meaning and purpose, to explore a new passion, or to pull up old passions that they put aside when they were raising a family.
Another key factor in achieving high well-being is having a strong support network. Being close to those family members who are positive and having at least 4 devoted friends, although many of the high well-being women have up to 10 or 12 friends that they could call on at any time if they needed them.
More than others women of high well-being are more likely to be spiritual or religious, but more important than that even is that they approach life with a highly positive outlook. The glass is half full rather than empty. They don’t think, oh, just another setback, the lights are never going to turn green for me. They think the opposite. Tomorrow will be another day.
It’s no surprise that they aren’t bogged down by something that is afflicting many women in mid-life today. As a generation, women in mid-life today have lowest well-being of women at any other stage of life. And that is a completely new phenomenon because women have always enjoyed highest well-being in their late 40s and 50s. It’s still true that after 50, women’s well-being begins to move up, up, up and well through the 60s into the 70s, so there’s a great deal to look forward to.
Worry, sadness, and depression – these emotional health problems are reported by more than 20% of women in mid-life today. And we heard from a recent study that one-quarter of women 45 to 55 are taking anti-depressants.
More of the women in the highest well-being category live in California. They live in walkable communities that are outside of major urban areas. And they have on average no more than a 10-minute commute. Isn’t that enviable? That helps them maintain an enviable exercise schedule, which is 30 to 45 minutes a day up to 6 days a week. They have time to make healthy meal choices, lots of fruits and veggies, and they keep their body mass index well below 30, which is the threshold for obesity.
What we can learn about health and energy from the happiest women. I found one of the happiest women. She lives in Manhattan Beach, south of Los Angeles, and she said, “When I turned 40, I swear, it struck midnight, and I gained 5 pounds. Mary Claire Orenic is her name. She’s in the USA Today today. When she complained to her gynecologist about that, he gave her the straight skinny. He said, “From now on, if you do everything the same as you did the year before, you’ll gain 3 pounds every year.”
Well, that’s when our model woman of highest well-being determined to keep moving every day for her next 10 years, and she did. So she has her hands on a ball every day – whether it’s shooting hoops in the basketball rim in her driveway after work with her son. As she says, “It’s when we talk.” Or playing a furious game of volleyball on the sand on the weekends. She only lives a quarter mile from the ocean. She’s five-foot six and weighs 115 pounds at the age of 50. Couldn’t you kill her?
The family belongs to a gym where they work out together on weekends. But she also worked at reframing her lifestyle and many of her habits over the last 10 years before she reached 50. So now, she really doesn’t have to watch what she eats. She can get away with a breakfast of eggs, toast, OJ, and cafe mocha plus a bagel for a mid-morning snack, and still have chips and a cookie with a turkey sandwich for lunch without gaining an ounce.
And dinner – this is another secret – her husband does the cooking. Her husband does the shopping and the cooking so she can also work through lunch. He does the cooking, and they eat vegetables and grilled fish or skinned chicken or potatoes topped off with mini-brownies. So she says, “I eat all day but I don’t eat much.” And that’s another secret: mini-meals, 5 mini-meals throughout the day and never eating late at night.
If you don’t hate Mary Claire already, listen to this. Despite working 40 to 60 hours a week as a high-powered executive in the health care business, she doesn’t grumble when her next-door neighbor waves from upstairs to signal it’s time for them to take their early morning walk. They walk fast and then slow, deep breathing, and then vent as only girlfriends can do. That’s another key to high well-being is having those 4 friends, those key friends, that you can confide in.
Studies show that only 10 minutes of fast walking can boost the energy for the next 2 hours. And, confiding in a friend is a surefire way to put your problems in perspective. So, in taking the pulse of well-being for the last few years, it’s found that emotional health is lowest in the 45 to 55 age group compared to all other ages because it can’t be separated – physical health cannot be separated – from emotional health.
So the average number of chronic physical problems rises as emotional problems continue. We see that so many women have these emotional problems in this age group. They peak in worry and sadness during this mid-life passage. They’re complaining now they don’t have enough energy to get through the day. This is the generation that was going to do it all and have it all, and they do and they have, but it’s exhausting them.
As stress, worry and sadness and clinical depression increase, so does the proportion of women in this age range who report having diabetes, hypertension and admit to being obese. They’re also smoking more, and many have asthma and high blood pressure.
No previous generation of women since 1976 when I wrote Passages has recorded this high level of disease this early in life. We know that women already have more demands at this age than men, particularly today since they’re working and so often working full time. But when disease or pain is added to their workload while they’re caring for aging and infirm parents, they neglect caring for themselves, and that’s the downward spiral. So it’s the caring for themselves piece that they’re really missing.
Now we see in TV series, women who need drugs to get through their day like Nurse Jackie, a married woman in mid-life with children still at home and a career with great stress. She has a husband, she has a lover, and she relies on cocaine to take her out of her daily routine.
But the positive news is that stress decreases gradually through the 50s and drops off quickly after that in the 60s. It’s not too late to turn things around at 50 or 55. Sleeping is one of the most important things you can do. We really need – we always have and we probably always will – 7 ½ to 8 hours sleep to be fully rested and fully functional in all the ways that we can. Sleep recharges and nourishes us.
The other very important thing is besides cultivating stronger relationships not so many more relationships not hundreds of people that you twitter with or facebook with but actually people that you see or talk to on the phone or in person. Much more important to have stronger relationships than multiple relationships.
Finally, when you want to cultivate well-being in your parents so they don’t get sick and provide you with caregiving responsibilities or with your children, don’t lecture. It’s not words that matter – it’s action. Well-being is contagious, so I hope you’ll all work for it.
