Why Being Old Is Good for Your Career?
Joe Biden has withdrawn from the US presidential candidacy. The reason?
Explicitly, he claims he wants to give the best for the Democrats. But many are aware that the main reason is: physical factors.
His physical condition has deteriorated, affecting his cognitive function and communication abilities. Like during the presidential debate that left him ‘f**ked up’.
Because if it were just about age, many leaders have proven that age is just a number.
Nikita Khrushchev led the Soviet Union at 67 years old. At that age, Macmillan led the UK. Franco was still a dictator at 69. De Gaulle was still respected at 71. Gronchi led Italy at 74. Even Konrad Adenauer led the German army at 86. Mao Zedong also swam in the Yangtze River in his old age.
And in fact, data shows that corporate and country leaders are generally older. The average age of Fortune 500 CEOs is 55 years. (source X thread ).
The average age of national leaders is also in their 50s and 60s.
Why do we seem to reach the peak of power and live our best lives in our 50s?
Gnarr Country
This question is explored by Steven Kotler. He is a writer, ski enthusiast, and an older person eager to learn new things. He postulates that humans enter their golden peak at the age of 50.
He writes:
“By age thirty, we need to have figured out who we are in this world, solving the crisis of identity. By age forty, we have to figure out how to make a living that is seriously aligned with our big five intrinsic motivators: curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery.
领英推荐
By fifty, we need to forget old grudges, forgive those who have done us wrong, and generally clear our emotional slate. Finally, somewhere along the way, we need to counteract the rising risk aversion and general fragility that accompany aging.”
He continues:
“As we enter our fifties, if we get ‘it’ right, we gain access to a suite of legitimate superpowers. Over the course of that decade, there are fundamental shifts in how the brain processes information. In simple terms, our ego starts to quiet and our perspective starts to widen. Whole new levels of intelligence, creativity, empathy, and wisdom open up. As a result, key downstream skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, communication, cooperation, and collaboration all have the potential — if properly cultivated — to skyrocket in our later years.”
The key? It’s in Gnarr Country.
The word “gnar” is an abbreviation of “gnarly,” which is slang for a dangerous sport. Meanwhile, “Country” is a regional area or “country.” Gnar Country means a dangerous area. Concepts that we need to immerse ourselves in if we want to be powerful in old age.
It means that the older we get, as long as we stay in Gnarr Country and keep learning, we will become greater.
This contradicts the mindset that the older we get, the weaker we become.
Most of us arrive in our fifties feeling that the cage has gotten smaller. What’s actually shrunk is our mindset. We’re in a prison of our own making. Once we discover we can keep on learning later in life, that mindset shifts. The cage vanishes. This changes everything.
The most famous example of that change comes from Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer’s “Counterclockwise Study,” wherein a group of eighty-year-old men pretended — for five days straight — to be twenty years younger. This shifted their mindset and boosted their mood. The bigger change was physical. Participants who pretended to be younger — got younger. Their vision, hearing, memory, gait, posture, grip strength, joint flexibility, and manual dexterity all improved. The wildest result? Arthritis symptoms decreased so much that height and finger length increased, as participants could once again straighten out their joints. Put differently: Aging is a fact of life. Old is a mindset.
Experts call this ‘crystallized intelligence’. We may slow down, but our knowledge deepens.
The point is that with the increasing knowledge and experience we accumulate, we become wiser.
For Your Career
The essence of this writing is actually simple:
As Cindy Joseph said:
“Aging is just another word for living.”
Happy aging!