Alan Castel, Ph.D. on Successful Aging

self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good Wolfe Thanks

for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Alan Castel, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on how cognition changes with age and how people selectively remember important events. His work has been supported by the National Institute on aging and has been featured in The New York Times and Time magazine. Hi Allen, welcome to the show. It's

great to be here. You have a book called Better with Age, The Psychology of Successful Aging, which we are going to jump into in a minute. But let's start like we always do, with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of his that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like creed and hatred

and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says that the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's a great question, And as a cognitive psychologist, I think mindset really matters. So when we think about how we age or how we live, our focus on life

is very important. Do we focus on the good things? Do we focus on the bad? Things, and I think many people think about aging in negative ways, and there's certainly challenges as we get older, but in many ways, life can be very satisfying as we get older, especially when we reflect on our lives, what we've done, our

family connections. So the book focuses on successful aging because we can do this in many different ways, and so getting back of the parable, we might need role models to show us how good life can be after sixty, seventy or eighties. So in this book, I focus on the science of successful aging, but also interviewed many interesting older adults such as Jack Lane, Bob Newhart, My Angelou, and John Wooden, the u c l A basketball coach many years ago, and they all had really important insights

and mindsets about what it means to age well. Yeah. One of the things that I think is very interesting that you reference a couple of studies in the book that find that people who hold a negative belief about

aging earlier in life actually have poorer memory in old age. Yeah, exactly, And I think that shows that our perspective really does matter, and if we think aging is downhill, then we might not do healthy behaviors that can allow us to age well, so it's not all about our biology or our genes. It's about what we do with our time to give us.

It's We had a guest on not too long ago, Jonathan Rout, who wrote a book called The Happiness Curve, and it talks about how, you know, we we tend to be happier earlier in life, and then we have a little bit of a middle aged sort of you know, you shape curve, and then we get happier later in life. And what I really liked about that was it reverses this idea that you know, it's kind of all downhill, you know, you get turned fifty or over the hill,

and it's all bad from there. And I like that your book also sort of sheds light on the fact that that's not really the case. And then in a lot of ways, are older years can really be great years? I think it really depends on how you think about happiness. Life satisfaction can get better, and older age and older adults often report higher levels of day to day happiness compared to college age students, but it's likely a different kind of happiness and older age. Often older adults will

focus more on positive things in their lives. Whereas younger people may worry more and fret over important life decisions. And like you mentioned, it's surprising that it's middle aged, which seems to be a low point in terms of happiness, which could be for a number of reasons, but I think it's nice to know that it can get better. Yeah,

I agree. I think that's such a such an important thing, and particularly given what you said, which is our negative beliefs about aging can actually cause us to age in a less useful way. I want to talk about something that you call socio emotional selectivity theory, So talk to me about what that is and how that applies to aging. Yeah, this theory, socio emotional selectivity theory, it's a big term, was developed by Laura Carstenson at Stanford University, and her

focus is that as we age, our goals change. And so when we're younger, we're focused on kind of getting a job, information acquisition, learning new skills. But as we're all there, we turn more to emotionally meaningful goals and that can still involve, you know, learning, but it can also involve focusing on family, focusing on what's important. So it's an interesting theory because it's not related to decline necessarily.

It's related to how we change over time. And I think the mindset is important here because as we age, we've turned to different things. As we retire, we might focus on different things. It's not that simply as we get older we get slower or we can't remember as much,

right you. You say that in this theory, it says that basically, in early adulthood, we're focused on gathering information achieving future goals, you know, the sort of classic family and career, and that when we get older, we focus more on being present and and really realizing more emotionally relevant goals. And you say, as a result, older adults tend to focus on and later remember positive emotional information

more so than younger people. And then you go on to sort of point out that if an adult an older adult are distracted, their attention is divided, they act a lot more like younger adults and focus on the negative. Yeah, And that's the interesting finding is that it seems like it's a perspective or a goal that we have, and when we're distracted, we kind of lose that focus. So older adults might actually have a very healthy approach to

how to spend their remaining years. And it's another aspect of this theory is that although we're not consciously thinking about how old we are and how much time we have left, we realize that time is finite, and that's not something younger people think about. So we want to spend our time doing the things we enjoy, the things that are emotionally meaningful, spending time with the people who

are important to us. And that might mean, you know, focusing on things, but also you know, not spending time on the things that are negative or put us in a bad mood. Even though we're aware of those things and they exist in the world, we're better at using our time wisely. It's so interesting because there's such a stereotype of the grumpy old man, right or the grumpy old woman, you know, get off my lawn. But but what some of these studies are showing is that's really

not the case. I mean, obviously, there's huge variation within a population, so we're talking about a group. One person could be very much that way, but as as a general trend, that is certainly not what we think of. Absolutely. You know, That's why I wrote this book because there's a lot of negative stereotypes about aging, and there's also

a lot of myths about aging. And it's true there are grumpy older people, and there are people you know, you you, you might you know have these stereotypes of slower drivers or people who eat the early bread special of But there are also myths about aging, and these

stereotypes are not always true. So many older adults, like we talked about, report high levels of life satisfaction, feel busy, stay active, feel more confident about oneself, and have greater self esteem and are less self conscious than than younger adults. Older adults might also be better at regulating emotions um having a more balanced perspective in life, and are also curious to learn for the sake of learning or focusing

on the things that really interest them. While some habits may be more pronounced and predictable, like wanting to go to the same restaurants or you know, do the same things, often as we age, we're interested in learning new things or traveling. So I think lifelong learning is an important part of successful aging, and we never stop learning just because we aren't in school. Yeah, I agree, I think it's important at any age to learn for the love of learning, But as we get older and we aren't

driven by external goals as much. This being able to really learn what really interests this is such a gift absolutely, and a lot of older adults, you know, as you get older, you realize it's important to stay active. But that doesn't mean you need to learn Japanese or you know, learn how to crochet. You really need to focus on what is important to you. And I think the advice I was given by many older adults is stay busy. But you're not staying busy just for the state's sake

of staying busy. You're staying active, you're trying new things, you're having some variety. Yeah, And I think we're going to get to in a minute what helps prevent cognitive decline and what doesn't. But I wanted to touch on another bit of research that you mentioned the book that I thought really interesting, which is that older adults often have less regret than younger adults, which seems completely counterintuitive. You think you're older, you have a lot more time

to have build up regrets. Absolutely, and it's a little bit surprising, um if you talk to older adults, and I think that that's you know, I got interested in this by having several sets of grandparents around when I was younger and just seeing what their focus was on in life. And you know, I learned lots of things from them. And they also told me many stories that my parents didn't tell me about our family. They had

access to a lot of things that were important. You know, those connections with family can be very important as we get older. What do you think it is that is driving less regret in older people. I think when we look back on our life, we realized, you know, the regrets that older adults will have are kind of interesting. They'll say, you know, I wish I didn't work so much or spend so much time obsessing over decisions or details that didn't end up mattering as much as you

might think. And it's easy to say that in retrospect, but we spend a lot of our life worrying about things and wondering and trying to plan. And older adults will often and I think the reason there's not as much regret as they see the big picture a little

bit better. Sure, they might have wished they bought this car instead of that car that was a lemon, but in the grand scheme of things that it works out, So you know, as long as you have good health and you're surrounded by people that you know who love you. I think those are the things that older adults will say are kind of the important things, and the rest

are details. And so when you when you think about regret, certainly there can be things people might say, well, I wish I might have done this differently, or could give advice, But in the big picture, which older adults will often take when you ask that sort of question, they won't

report as much regret as you might think. What do we know about cognitive decline, Well, it's the first concerned people have when you talk about aging, or when you notice gray hairs, or is forgetfulness really and people are very concerned. Um. And the truth is that's just kind of a natural product of getting older. Is that, especially

for names, people have trouble remembering names. And there's a variety of theories, but one is that it's kind of an information overload, and as you age, you just have more information in the brain, so it's harder to access things, it takes a little bit longer. Um. And also things aren't as distinct. So if you meet someone named David, you've met you know hundreds of David's compared to you know, someone who's twenty who's met you know a handful of David's.

So I think our memory becomes more selective as we get older, and we're capable of focusing on the things that are most important. And that's kind of a focus of my research is to examine how as we get older we're better at focusing on what's important. And sometimes that will be names. But sometimes you realize, well, if I can't remember that person's name, as long as I remember I met them at the bank, or I had a good conversation with them, they liked, you know, playing cards,

these sorts of things, those things are more relevant. So having that focus can actually be useful and can compensate for not remembering as much. But in terms of the best ways to stay sharp, I think older all too often say staying active, trying new things. But the research really supports walking or getting physical exercise, and sometimes people

are surprised by that. But the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is really involved in memory, tends to decline in volume by about one percent every year after the age of fifty. But research has shown that if you randomly assign people to walk for forty minutes three times a week or stretch for the same amount of time, and follow up with these people six months and a year later, the walking group has better memory, performs better

on a variety of memory tests. And also when they did some brain imaging, they found that the hippocampus actually increased in volume by two percent after one year. So literally, your brain is growing and you're performing better on these memory tests. For the group that walked compared to the group that stretched. Is still doing some exercise, but it's that cardiovascular component. It's getting blood flow to the brain because the brain really needs oxygen, it needs to clean

out things, and that can improve memory. And so when I tell people, you know, that's the best thing to do, people are sometimes surprised because they think, well, you know, it's you know, that's for the body, but how you know, my mind, my brain, all these they're intimately connected. And I think people are also surprised because people are waiting for the next drug or pill or kind of quick fix. And physical exercise can be great for your entire body,

for your brain. UM, great to do with someone else. Maybe you can walk with someone, um, it's really good for balance as well. Falls are often things that can hospitalize people after the age of fifty, and so balance training is also incredibly important to keep your brain sharp and to keep you on your feet. Um, you don't need to go to a yoga class to do balance training. I actually practice it every morning when I'm brushing my teeth. I stand on one leg for one minute and then

switched and the other leg for one minute. And I probably shouldn't multitask, but it's a routine and I've started, and I noticed that my balance has improved. And most people don't notice poor balance until they've they've suffered a bad fall. So I think, you know, physical exercise and balance training are probably the two things that can really keep you your brain sharp and keep you on your feet. Yeah, I'm in the middle of dealing with my mother fell. I don't know, it's been a week and a half

ago or so, maybe two weeks. She's been in you know, she's in the hospital now, she's in a in a longer term rehab. So I'm familiar with the the dangers of falling and people who are older, and it's really concerning because you see it in other people, but you don't think of yourself as prone to falling because you haven't experienced to fall yet. But testing your balance can be really illuminating because you know, I thought, of course I had good balance, but it's very hard to balance.

And then the falls typically will happen when you're getting out of bed at night because you're going in the bathroom and it's dark and you trip over a carpet or a pet um and so you know, those are really challenging things. Um and if you fall, like you said, you know, you fracture something, you're in the hospital. You're now you're not walking, so your memory might start to decline, and it's it's this kind of pathway that can really lead to a loss of independent dents and declines that

are really quite serious. Exercise is one of those things that just seems to come up over and over and over as being so helpful. Obviously physically, we all know that, and then you know, I'm very aware of all the studies that talk about how useful exercises for our emotional health dealing with things like depression and anxiety. I wish there was a different answer, but boy, is it a good answer. Yeah, I think, you know, you don't want to think that modern medicine is going to create a pill.

But walking is both good for your brain and your body. And so despite the belief that crossword puzzles or eating blueberries can help your brain stay healthy, exercise I think has the biggest effect and it's free. So um. I think that's why it's interesting to be a psychologist because then the question is how do you motivate people to exercise? And it doesn't have to be you know, strenuous exercises.

You know, walking can be something you incorporate into your daily routines, like walking to the grocery store, or walking to the library, or you know, walking to the park even though you could drive there. Um. So those are things that you know, if we're if we're more aware of how we can set up a lifestyle that allows us to to walk, we might see brain benefits, right. I am also very interested in how you motivate people to to do something and how to get people to

stick with things. I do behavioral coaching work with people, so that's something you know, I'm kind of always focused on how do we get people to create positive habits and to and to stick with them. Yeah, it's a it's always a challenge, but I think being around people who have similar habits, um who can motivate us, can be a good way to ensure that we're doing things

that are positive. You know. Social connections, meeting friends professional colleagues can lead to cognitive stimulation that can be very important. Many people say they feel retirement allows them time to do what they really want to do without the stress of a packed schedule or things that they don't really do. But it's also a time where you need to build in these habits, otherwise you could end up, you know, laying on the couch or you know, drinking more alcohol.

So I think those are the you know, those are the motivational challenges that present themselves as we get older. I think retirement is another version of a phenomenon that I see in people I work with a lot, which is that if you all of a sudden have all the time in the world, it can be really hard sometimes to do anything. Is it just that that complete

lack of structure it can be so difficult to deal with. Yeah, And I think many people don't realize that when they retire or move, they leave behind a large social network, and even just occasional small talk at our workplace can be an important part of being socially connected. And there's certainly some stigma associated with saying you're lonely, so people might not talk about it, and it really makes it a silent issue. So having family, friends, even pets can help.

But often people need to have regular social interactions that make them feel valued or understood. So sometimes just being a regular at a coffee shop, at a library, a volunteer group, or an exercise class can be a great way to stay connected and connected, not just to Facebook, you know, not just to the Internet, because we know, face to face contact, getting outside, um, you know, getting some exercise, walking, those are things that are really importan

and especially as we get older. Yeah, yeah, social connection is so critical. And I I left um the full time job to do what I'm doing now full time. I don't know, it's been about nine months ago, and um, I've got a reasonable social life and I work with a lot of people, uh through my my coaching work. But I've been a little bit struck by how much I missed the sort of social aspect of going into

an office every day. It just provides this sort of people kind of all around all the time, which there are times it's like, oh, I could use a little space, But I have noticed that's something I've had to actively work to overcome missing that and to find other ways to fill that. Yeah, I think the key when I've

talked to many middle aged older adults is finding balance. Right, Like, you can't retire and just be at home all the time, and so a lot of older adults will go back to working part time or volunteering or doing something that gives them that sort of structure, but it also gives them some flexibility as well, and having more time to do what you really want and less of the things that you don't like when you're in an office or

you know, filling out paperwork and forms. So I think achieving balance is probably the most important thing, and I think that's why in middle age people struggle. Because you have a family, Let's say you have a job, you have a lot going on, and you you're focused on these things. You don't have as much time for yourself, and so you're not doing the things that you might enjoy as much because you know time, there's never enough time.

And then if and when you finally retire, you think, well, now I can travel and do all these things I wanted to do, But you need that structure. So I think it's very important to set specific goals when you retire of this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to travel to Italy with my friend next year. And those things are important to have, especially as we as we enter a retirement. Yeah, you talk about that in the book or amount about really thinking, you know,

getting more specific about retirement. Now a lot of us get specific about how much money will need to retire, but but that you also recommend, like like you just said, sort of planning all right, what am I really going to do? And I think what are you going to do?

And when are you going to do it? And realize you're not going to be traveling all the time, and you know, you maybe you're gonna help with grandchildren, but maybe you don't want to be around your grandchildren or children all the time, and maybe they don't want that either. So you need to kind of navigate these things even

before you retire or make decisions. Some of them have financial implications, but again I think balance is really important to you know, one study I've found very interesting shows that people who spend about five hours a week with their grandchildren have better memory than people who are not spending time with their grandchildren. But it it's it's important to also show that people who spend more than ten or fifteen or a week with their grandchildren show worse memory.

So there is a sweet spot, right, And you know, you want a little bit of things in your life, but maybe too much of anything can can be you know, too much family, too much travel. Things that we typically think are things that we really enjoy in large quantities, maybe that's not the way you know they're they're meant

to be. Yeah, I'm a I'm a big fan of the Buddhist teaching of the middle way, right, which speaks to this, Like, I just think too much of anything becomes a problem, or too little of certain things is a problem. There's there's a right amount, and I think that's part of our goal is to find out what that right amount is. How much time do we want, how much money, how much You know, we have friends and family, but it doesn't mean we want to be

near them or with them all the time. And so that was one theme from a lot of the people I interviewed was finding balance. But a lot of people couldn't retire. You know, they were very well known in their yield. It's kind of what kept them going. So it's hard to walk away from a job or a career where you feel very valued to then saying well, and now I'm just going to travel or play golf

or spend time with the grandkids. People usually realize quite quickly that, um, you know, they're going to have to find a balance or a schedule that they can work well with, and sometimes that does involve taking part time job, even if you call it a job. Some people drive for uber or you know, start a podcast or tinker on a website, do the things they want to do, realizing that you know, they're making some sort of impact,

but it's not a nine to five job. Yep. And you reference the famous U c. L A basketball coach John Wooden who said that the two most important things in life were love and balance. Yeah, he was an exceptional person both for his career, but he also did retire um at six five and then lived till the age of ninety nine, so he had a long period of time. Sadly, his wife passed away much earlier, where he you know, was giving back to the community, but

also wanted to stay connected. He had a large social network, people stopping by his house, you know, he'd go out to his regular restaurant for breakfast. And when I asked him kind of what are the keys to successful aging, he really said the two most important things in life were love and balance. Find who and what you love and have balance in your life, both mentally and physically.

And he did suffer a fall in his late eighties where he, you know, broke his hip and his collar bone and he lay on the floor for six or seven hours until help came, and he was lucky that he survived that fall. But I think, you know, those those words balance and love are are really some keys to lead a happy and healthy life and hopefully a long life. And again he lived till age. Yeah, let's

talk about Alzheimer's for a second. I'm in the middle of dealing with that with one of the older adults in my life, and we're living caregivers half the time. So it's something I'm very interested in. And it's interesting that twice in the last week I heard this statistic that Alzheimer's diagnosis is are actually going down a little bit in our culture, which struck me as strange because you know, when obviously, once you see it in your life,

it seems like it's everywhere. But so they're actually going down. Well, the number of people who have Alzheimer's disease is projected to rise, but that's simply because people are living longer, and then you know, those are the demographics as well. But as you say, some studies suggest there's actually a decline in the proportion of people who are getting the

disease now compared to a few decades ago. And this decline could be because people now have higher levels of education and do things in their lives that can help prevent or delay that the disease, such as walking, eating a more balanced diet, and being socially connected. So, since there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, what we do earlier in our lives and the habits that we develop

can potentially protect us from dimensia and older age. And so I think that's kind of interesting because and some of these habits can be things like there's some research showing that reading, especially reading fiction, can be kind of good brain training, and that people who read, you know, fiction, we're more likely than not only live longer, but are less likely to develop dementia. So you know, some sort

of cognitive stimulation is important. Being socially connected, walking, eating a balanced diet, those are the things that can prevent Alzheimer's disease, because there really is no cure right now, so prevention is the key, right And I saw an article earlier this week that I thought was very interesting, particularly you were talking about walking and why walking is

so helpful because vascularly it helps. There are more and more scientists who start are starting to believe, or at least a school of scientists who believe, that Alzheimer's is very much a vascular disease. And so you know, walking would line ups is a good prevention tool, absolutely, and I think anything that you know, and a lot of the older adults I talked to you just basically said the key to staying active is just to keep moving.

And whether it's walking, whether it's you know, taking breaks, standing and not sitting all the time, just move, uh, and that will give you good balance. And you know, the vascular component is incredibly important because the brain is kind of a big oxygen hog. It's constantly demanding your your you know, new blood and fresh blood, cleaning things out. So if you're not moving, then you're not going to sleep well. Um, and these things are very connected. Yep,

they certainly are. Well. Alan, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. We're kind of at the end of our time here, but I've found this conversation to be really helpful and useful, and I hope the listeners have to It was great talking with you. Thank you so much. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to

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