These are some of the conclusions derived from George Valliant’s Harvard Study on Aging. The study followed a group of individual’s over fifty years. Their mental and physical health was assessed over the course of time. There are valuable lessons to be learned from this groundbreaking study.

6 CHARACTERISTICS OF GROWING OLD WITH GRACE:

1) Caring about others, is open to new ideas, and within the limits of physical health, maintains social utility and helps others.

2) Showing cheerful tolerance of the indignities of old age. Acknowledging and gracefully accepting dependency needs. When ill, being a patient for whom a doctor enjoys caring. Remembering to be grateful and whenever possible turning life’s lemons into lemonade.

3) Maintaining hope in life, insisting on sensible autonomy (doing for oneself what one is able), and cherishing initiative. Remembering that all life is a journey and that development goes on for all our lives.

4) Retaining a sense of humor and capacity for play. Willingness to sacrifice surface happiness for basic joy.

5) The ability to spend time in the past and take sustenance from past accomplishments while making peace with past disappointments. Remaining curious and continuing to learn form the next generation.

6) Trying to maintain contact and intimacy with old friends while fostering new friendships.

GOOD MENTAL HEALTH REFLECTED LATE
MIDLIFE SUCCESS IN:

1) work, 2) love, 3) play, and 4) not needing psychiatric care.

MAJOR FACTORS IN NEGATIVE AGING:

1) bad habits, 2) bad marriage, 3) maladaptive defenses, and 4) disease.

KEY TO PREVENTION:
COUNT POSITIVE FACTORS VS. RISK FACTORS:
QUALITIES TO FUTURE ORIENTATION:

Ability to anticipate, to plan and to hope.
A capacity for gratitude and forgiveness. The capacity to see the glass of life as half full and not half empty. Thanksgiving is not just another day and paranoia and injustice collecting can destroy old age.
Being able to imagine the world as it seems to the other person, the capacity to love and to hold the other empathically—but loosely.
The desire to do things with people, not to do things to people or ruminate that they do things to us.