Positive Psychology And 'Successful Ageing'
How, when and why things changed in the field of Ageing
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Positive Psychology And Successful Ageing
As a young woman I saw my mother and her nine sisters age over time. As each of them reached sixtyish, they seemed happily to become ‘old women’, adopting a style of dress, and way of being that initiated them into being ‘old’, because that’s what you did then. They accepted the decline that came with age as part of life. Six of them, including my mother, lived into their eighties. One of them almost reached 90. But in their later years, most of them had health issues related to ageing.
They had enjoyed a happy childhood in the country, their father, my grandad, being a farm worker. Their home was an old tied cottage with a large garden. I was born in that cottage. Grandad grew all the vegetables and soft fruit for the family in the large garden, and kept chickens or geese and sometimes a pig. Every night after his day’s work was done at the farm, he would bring home a billy can of fresh milk, a rabbit for the dinner table, a box of apples or usually something edible. So the girls grew up on a healthy diet.
However, my mother had not taken care of her health at all as an older woman. She was not a good cook, and the diet of my brother and me was lacking in so many ways. From the age of around 14 until she was 60, she smoked. Then gave up because she had a lung infection.
She had always walked a lot until her early seventies when, after a fall outside, she decided not to go out again unless absolutely necessary. So she stayed indoors for the rest of her life, only going out to visit the shop over the road or sometimes the doctor. Yet she lived to nearly 86.
As I grew older I vowed that I would not age in the same way. It seemed to me to be a negative way of life and made me determined to look after my healthspan - the length of life lived in good health. I was always health conscious, I played a lot of tennis in my thirties, and in my forties I took up yoga and a plant-based diet.
Now, at 77, I’m fit and well and on no medication. I am not alone in wanting to age differently from the previous generation. There are many people like me, taking care of their health, and aware that they can grow older still living life to the full if they take responsibility for their wellbeing.
A ‘New’ Model of Psychology And of Ageing
How, when and why things changed in the field of Ageing
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