The Attitude Factor: Extend Your Life by Changing the Way You Think

Happiness and good health can decline or improve with age depending upon important mental habits learned in childhood. We unconsciously mimic our parents attitudes towards aging. If they were vital and energetic in old age, then we will tend to be also. But if they were frail, we will probably adopt their cautious way of moving. This causes our muscles and bones to weaken, making us frail also. The "use it or lose it" principle definitely applies. Exercises at the end of each chapter help you to reexamine things you "used to" enjoy doing. Often the reason you stopped turns out to be no longer valid. Viewing the mind as a self-organizing system, Blakeslee shows how we can improve our attitudes by recognizing "critical moments" in your life, where a tiny effort can profoundly affect your future development. To help you identify your unhealthy attitudes, attitude tests given to three thousand elderly people in 1973 are included. Follow-ups 21 years later showed an amazing correlation between scores on these tests and good health. The 300 people with highest scores were 30 times more likely to be alive and well than the 200 lowest!