Sunday, 15 March 2015

If you think you're old, you are.

The Psychologist John Bargh and his team asked students at New York University in the age group 18-22 to make sentences with four words by choosing words from a set group of words. One group of students could choose from a group of words where half of the words could strongly be associated with old age and senior citizens. Words like "Florida", "bald", "wrinkle", "forgetful", "gray", not words like "grand-children", "time-off" or "retired" . When they were done with the task the students from both groups were asked to walk down a short hall to fill out a form in a different room. It was this short walk that was the actual experiment. The students that had worked with the words that could be associated to old age walked at a slower pace than the other students. Why do you think this happened? The students said that they could not see a common theme but had still been affected by the words. This is called the Florida effect and is one of the earliest examples of "priming". Priming means the use of background factors to put someone in a psychological state that affects their actions without their conscious knowledge.

I recently watched a BBC documentary on aging presented by Johnny Ball. One of the studies presented in the documentary was one performed by Dr Elen Langer in 1979 when she took a group of elderly volunteeers, all over the age of 75, back in time. They had to live like they were 20 years younger and they were taken to a timeless retreat were everything was exactly as it had been 20 years earlier. On arrival they had to take care of their own luggage and were fully expected to take care of themselves one hundred percent. After a week the group showed improved dexterity, increased joint flexibility, more energetic gait and were moving around at a noticably faster pace. Some of the men had put on weight and actually looked younger and some even had improved eye sight and hearing.

A winning strategy for longevity seems to be to feel and live like you are young, vibrant and healthy . Do you do this? Or are there factors in your environment that pulls you down? Factors that makes you feel old and slows down your walk?

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." - Jim Rohn

Who do you hang out with and what do you talk about? Do you feel uplifted, optimistic and excited about life when you spend time with your friends?  Do you leave the room with a youthful gait, feeling great about who you are, knowing that your friends have your back covered and you have theirs? If not, try to make room for change. Make room for positive change, positive people, positive experiences. To make room you have to let something go. Let go of negativity bit by bit. Negative environments, negative people, negative talk and find your community where you can thrive, live long and prosper.

A major factor for longevity is the sense of community, of belonging and having a purpose. Perhaps the test group of 1979 also felt a sense of community with like minded people during this week? If you have the right genes you can live long no matter what you eat, drink or smoke but if you're not that lucky (and that applies to most of us) you can try a low calorie diet and most importantly find a community if you're not already part of one. See my earlier post on Blue Villages.

No comments:

Post a Comment