Forget limiting beliefs about aging and memory
Our mass beliefs—the beliefs of our culture—assume that aging brings inevitable losses of physical and mental function. Unless you make an effort to recognize these limiting beliefs and choose to believe differently, they will afflict you with exactly the declines that you expect. Consider an interesting study showing the effects, positive and negative, on how age-related beliefs affect functioning.
In their book, The Longevity Strategy: How to Live to be 100 Using the Brain-Body Connection, David Mahoney and Richard Restak, M.D. report,
"Becca Levy, Ph.D., of Harvard University has found that older people show dramatic memory improvement when the negative stereotypes of aging that dominate our culture are modified. Levy discovered that if she could change these negative stereotypes into more positive ideas about aging, the memory performance of older people would improve along with their sense of control."
To do this, she countered common limiting beliefs about aging and memory by communicating to the study participants the mental benefits of aging, such as increased experience, greater wisdom, and the advantages of a storehouse of accumulated information and knowledge. Not surprisingly, participants getting this treatment also tested as feeling better about aging.
But when she emphasized limiting beliefs about aging and memory by suggesting that forgetfulness, slower thinking, and confusion are natural aspects of age, "memory performance fell off and, along with it, the older person's sense of control and general attitude toward aging." There have been other studies that suggest that cultural beliefs about aging play a role in determining the degree of memory loss people experience in old age.
You program your body and mind to perform in certain ways according to what you expect. These expectations act the lens through which you view the world. They focus your perception selectively on the events that fit your beliefs and lead you to selectively ignore events that counter your beliefs.
The fact is, you have been forgetting things since you were hatched, but until you decided it was a factor of age, you didn’t pay much attention to your momentary lapses in memory. Reaching some chronological milestone triggered you to brand yourself as "older" and, therefore, "forgetful." Your increased attention to your everyday memory lapses increases your conviction that age and poor memory are inevitably linked. You reinforce these assumptions every time you say something that reinforces these beliefs, such as, "I just can’t remember anything anymore."
Hormone fluctuations related to menopause—aging, by the cultural definition—are also supposed to affect memory, leading women of a certain age to turn a spotlight on the commonplace and transient memory gaps that have been a normal part of their days since childhood. "Have you noticed how you can’t remember stuff anymore?" women ask each other. "It must be hormones."
But the studies indicate that it must be beliefs -- about aging, about menopause, about the inevitable diminishment of vital faculties as time goes by.
Older couples can find themselves reinforcing this belief-related memory loss. Often one member of the couple will be designated as the one whose "mind is going," while the other is the monitor of decline. The anxious husband of such a "forgetful" wife may start collecting incidents that prove she is declining mentally. Because he believes she is "going downhill," he is alert to her every memory lapse, collecting them as signs of her deterioration. He reminds her of all that she’s forgetting and discusses it with others, citing instance after instance where she stumbled in her mental functioning.
By doing this the worried husband increases the very problem he
fears. Both he and his wife become fixated on the belief that she is on
the slippery slope of aging, and ignore, dismiss, or belittle all signs that she is
doing fine. Just as in the studies, the one suspected of having
age-related memory problems obediently declines in function as
expectation shuts out all other evidence.
Youngering Exercises
Starting today, choose to align with different beliefs about mental functioning and aging. There is plenty of research to support the idea that memory problems are a function of how stressed you feel -- and this can affect anyone at any age. The fact is, mental decline is not an inevitable fact of aging -- period.
Make a quick list of all the mental benefits that accrue to those who live longer. Here are some suggestions:
- You have more experiences to draw on
- You’ve learned things you didn’t know earlier in life.
- You can integrate foreign concepts more easily than you did when you were younger.
- You know more efficient ways of handling challenges.
- You’ve developed more useful ways of solving problems.
- You may have become more accepting, patient, or persistent than you were when you were younger.
- You’ve learned to regain your mental equilibrium more quickly when you feel upset.
Spend the next week noticing all the things you do remember—there will be too many to notice. Any time you don’t recall something dismiss it with a comment like, "Well, that isn’t coming to mind right now. I’ll remember it in a minute." Basically ignore your memory lapses as you did when you were younger. Decide that they mean nothing; they come and go.
Notice negative messages about aging that reinforce limiting beliefs about memory and mental prowess in age. Remind yourself that these are beliefs about aging, not the truth about it. Don’t forget that studies show memory problems don’t simply happen to you as you age, but instead you get what you believe you’ll get.
Reflect on older individuals who personify mental strength, intelligence, and good mental functioning. Can’t think of many? That’s because we’re all allowing ourselves to be brainwashed out of having full use of the age-enhanced mental abilities that are our birthright.
Make sure you remember that.