141. Aging Has Its Perks! How to Embrace Life Year After Year with Carl Honoré

This week we take a deep dive into our expanding potential in every single decade of the aging process. Our guest, Carl Honoré, is raising eyebrows with his novel insights about aging, with special emphasis on how it improves collaboration in diverse groups, the advantages we are gaining with age, and the things to look forward to that we can’t get to any other way. 00:00 Preview  00:47 Aging as An Adventure Society bombards us with the idea that aging is a form of surrender or a disease, or a curse. We should embrace aging as it’s natural. We can embrace aging as a process of opening doors rather than closing them. We have a cult around “youth”’ We are all grappling with the passage of time. We can approach aging with a spirit of optimism. We should embrace milestone birthdays instead of mourning them. “Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you  always should have been.” - David Bowie Research has shown that buying into ageism and the cult of youth can increase your chances of: Buying into ageism and the cult of youth is the ultimate act of harm. 04:26 Ageism: A Problem We Can Solve  Debbie Shore appeared on Episode 136 of the Conspiracy of Goodness Podcast and spoke about the importance of solving the problems that we can solve. Ageism is a problem we can solve. Ageism affects all of us and therefore fixing it can help us all. In today's world, we’re living better lives for longer. While we might lose physical ability gradually there’s still a lot we can do. Carl recently got chosen to play for The Great Britain masters national ball hockey team. Ages can be seen the same way as levels in a video game. In Carl’s book, Bolder, he speaks to the value of the experience we gain as we get older. 04:26 Creativity  People can be creative at all stages of their lives. Some forms of creativity can only be attained with time and experience. Young people do not have a monopoly on creativity. History is full of examples of people doing creative work later on in their lives e.g Beethoven, Bach, Michaelangelo, etc. In the UK, where Carl lives, there’s a Turner Prize for visual artists that had an age cap of 50 years old. The age cap on the Turner Prize was removed in 2017 because the Chair of the organization stated that a creative breakthrough can be made at any age. 16:11 Break 21:38 The U-Shaped Happiness Curve Human beings follow a U-shaped happiness curve. The adults around the world who report the highest levels of life satisfaction are the over 55’s. Scientists have found a similar U shaped happiness curve in chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans which suggests that a happiness boost later on in life is within our primate genes. One theory about happiness later in life suggests that happy grandparents lead to longevity  in tribes. 28:28 An Upbeat Perspective  Whatever you’re grappling with, you get back what you put into the world. If you default to doom and gloom you won’t get a whole lot of joy back. So much of what is good with the world starts with us as individuals. 30:24 The Talent Shortage There is currently a talent shortage and a high number of underemployed people. We need to structurally change the way people finance their retirement and the way savings plans are set up. Older workers have been frozen out or pushed off the off ramp of the working world. Older people are still willing and able to work.  Companies are changing their approach to older staff. Companies are introducing initiatives to make older staff feel more welcomed and to welcome back older staff that have retired. Programs geared toward older staff include: Keeping people with institutional knowledge is critical. Dr. Jill Tarter retired as the director of the SETI institute at 80 years old and had a wealth of institutional knowledge that would have been lost if she retired at 65. Hear her story on Episode 128 of theConspiracy of Goodness Podcast. We pay the price when we put experienced people to pasture...