Dedicated to smashing the negative, ageist stereotypes that many people have about seniors, the 2016 Growing Bolder Awards honored the power and possibility of aging.
That year’s winners included a 296-time triathlete (and cancer survivor), a playwright, a 71-year-old record-holding skydiver, an Air Force Chaplain, and a groundbreaking visionary who founded the nurse practitioner movement.
Growing Bolder founder and CEO Marc Middleton left the audience with four takeaways that, combined, form a pathway forward. Incorporating them into your daily life can help ensure that the rest of your life is the best of your life:
- Say “Yes.” This is the mantra of our friend and colleague Wendy Chioji. Life is about living. As we age, saying “no” leads to isolation. Saying “yes” leads to new adventures, new relationships and new experiences.
- Start Prehabbing. This is the mantra of our friend and Growing Bolder Medical Director, Dr. Robert Masson. It’s a given that we will all encounter physical setbacks as we age. Prehabbing is the path to a faster and more extreme recovery, to active longevity, and it positions us to be able to say “yes” when opportunity arises.
- Get A Posse. Friends keep friends alive. Numerous studies have proven that as we age, low social interaction is more harmful to our health than smoking, alcoholism or obesity.
- Be Optimistic. We have all won the mega life lotto. Of the 117 billion people who have been born since the beginning of time, less than 3 billion have lived with a life expectancy greater than 50 years and a daily income greater than $2.50. We are all in that group! This is the greatest time in the history of mankind to be over 50, or 60, or 80, or 100!
