What Makes A Successful Aging? Essay

Successful aging is a complicated and multifaceted concept that varies contextually among individuals, disciplines, and even time. Gerontologists have traditionally considered a person to have aged successfully upon having reached old age with their physical health, mental well-being and spirit still intact. Ultimately, successful aging is a matter of personal perspective, largely influenced by an individual 's values and experiences. Even those within America 's elderly population hold conflicting perspectives on what it means to have aged successfully. A qualitative study published by Reichstadt and Sengupta titled Older Adults ' Perspectives on Successful Aging, concluded that “older adults viewed successful aging as a balance between self-acceptance and self-contentedness on one hand and engagement with life and self-growth in later life on the other” (Reichstadt, "Older Adults ' Perspectives on Successful Aging: Qualitative Interviews", pp. 567-575.)

The main definition of “aging successful” is said to be, “successful gaining includes three main components: low probability of disease and disease-related disability, high cognitive and physical functional capacity, and active engagement with life” (Rowe & Kahn, 433). The first component of low probability of disease-related disability does not only refer to the physical disease itself being present in the persons body, but also the severity of the risk of the factors of such disease(s). High cognitive and physical functional capacity depicts what the individual can do and not just what they do. Finally active engagement with life deals with how the individual interacts with others (interpersonal relations) and creating societal value without any return (productive activity) (Rowe & Kahn, 433). We are going to look into the lives of Roger Gentilehomme and Earl Blassingame and analyze if they are considered to be “aging well” based on variety of articles as well as personal opinion.

Aging and being old was dominated by negative characteristics and conditions such as illness, depression, and isolation for a long time (Eibach, Mock, & Courtney, 2010). At first glance the terms “success” and “aging” seem to be in conflict to each other. When asking people about aging, their answers have many facets that are also found in psychological definitions: successful aging is seen as health, maturity and personal growth, self-acceptance, happiness, generativity, coping, and acceptance of age-related limitations. In the psychological sense successful aging is also often seen as the absence of age-associated characteristics (Strawbridge, Wallhagen, & Cohen, 2002). It seems that successful aging means is not aging.

Mrs. Maxine represents my archetypal view of the healthy "seasoned citizen." Maxine is a Caucasian female born in rural, Mullens, West Virginia in 1926. She is the only child of a Southern Baptist, "middle class" family. Joseph Hammond, her father, was a farmer. Her mother, Ruby, was a "full-time parent" and prided herself on "running the house." Maxine explained that farmers wife's were routinely responsible for the day-to-day operations of the household. Her Southern Baptist faith was complements of her parents and minister grandfather.

Happiness is subjective and may be influenced in various ways according to one's perception. However, there is a level of happiness that is agreeable as substantial to all. Happiness could be experienced differently in various phases in life, according to the conditions or circumstances in such stages (Coon and Mitterer 261). This has raised concerns about whether happiness comes with age, as many would prefer to age gracefully, due to negativities associated with old age such as ill health or loneliness. Hence, in a review of this matter, there are various factors that could determine whether an individual becomes happy in late adulthood. This paper will identify and discuss these factors in detail.

An active lifestyle, positive coping skills, good social relationships, and support are some of the factors that connect to successfully aging. Older adults are more prone to disease, depression, death of a spouse and difficulty adjusting to retirement. Older adults who make appropriate adjustments and preparation for a psychologically satisfying retirement are said to be aging successfully. Older adults who show a high level of emotion regulation and successfully aging demonstrates reduced responsive to regrets. Individuals that are involved with discussing past activities and experiences with another individual have great improvement in their mood. The use of group reminiscence therapy helps an older person to have increased self-esteem,

The article, Understanding and Theorizing the Role of Culture in the Conceptualizations of Successful Aging and Lifelong Learning by Maureen Tam (2014), seeks to explore how successful aging and lifelong learning is understood in different cultural contexts, within and between cultures. Tam (2014) articulates that “successful aging and lifelong learning are value-laden concepts that are culturally determined. To this effect, people with different value systems and cultural backgrounds may perceive and understand these two concepts differently, resulting in different definitions and conceptualizations by people in diverse cultural contexts” (p. 881). Tam’s article successfully addresses her thesis that the concepts of successful aging and lifelong learning are value laden and are culturally constructed, by providing qualitative research that supports her claims. Tam succeeds in her argument by introducing The Kluckhohnian Framework of Cultural Variation, which provides a better understanding of how diverse cultures conceptualize important concepts in different and similar ways.

Aging has become a worldwide social problem because it could be looked at from both a beneficial and detrimental perspective (Phillipson, 2006). Many people in society tend to focus on the negative aspects of aging, but there are many positive

Troutman's midrange theory of successful aging, founded on Roy's adaptation model provided the theoretical framework for Kozar-Westman, Troutman-Jordan (2013) study. The researcher used a cross sectional descriptive quantitative research design. Successful Aging Inventory (SAI), Purpose of life test (PIL), Life Satisfaction Inventory (LSI-A) Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD) were the instruments used in this study. To examine the relationship of SAI with PIL, LSI-A, CESD Kozar-Westman, Troutman-Jordan (2013) used Pearsons correlation were calculated. Reliability was tested using the Cronbach’s alpha. Two weeks after the initial testing there was a test retest of the SAI to determine reliability. Kozar-Westman, Troutman-Jordan (2013) used the SPSS17 for data entry and statistical analysis. Researchers documented participant’s inability to complete the SAI to determine feasibility of the tool. Field notes reflected limitations and

Growing older is a chain of strategies that start with lifestyles and maintain in the course of the existence cycle. It represents the ultimate period within the lifespan, a time whilst the man or woman looks returned on existence, lives on beyond accomplishments and starts off evolved to finish off his life path. Adjusting to the adjustments that accompany vintage age requires that a person is flexible and develops new coping abilities to evolve to the modifications which might be common to this time of their lives (Warnick, 1995).

My belief is that happiness in the latter stages of life, or successful ageing, is a multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be attributed to any one factor. Moreover, there are bound to be numerous elements that affect an individual's perceptions and beliefs about what constitutes happiness in late adulthood, including personality, biology, upbringing, and so on. Evidently, there exists an expansive body of knowledge that explores factors that determine happiness in the late adulthood developmental stage. Some of them include socioeconomic status, gender, siblings, brains development, attachment style during infancy, the historical period in which one lives (times of war, or economic downturns have been linked to reduced quality of life in old age), level of education, health, career, work values and healthcare access. All these factors can subsequently be categorized into nurture or nature related factors, biological, social, psychological, cognitive, and so on.

To me, Successful aging depends on what the norm of the society is. I define success in three different categories, where we stand in our society financially, physically, how satisfied we are with our lives so far. Society is a major cause of how to measure our satisfaction in our lives, such as, we cannot compare the lives of the people who live within developing nation to the ones that live in the developed nation. We have to compare people depending on their class, as different classes have different standard of satisfaction in life. Obviously in a developed nation people tend to live longer because they are well educated, while they get older, they know what is good and bad for their body. Similarly, the people who live within the developed

I believe that there are many ways that families and individuals can contribute to successful aging the life of an individual. According to Kathryn B. Adams (2012) successful aging was a term created by researchers Rowe and Kahn that stated successful aging includes; “avoidance of illness and disability, maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and continuing engagement in social and productive activities” (para. 5). Theses things are important to focus on when trying to contribute to successful aging because problems will arise no matter what, but it will all depend on the choices we make later on it we can solve the problem or ignore it (Adams, 2012, para. 11). There are many ways to improve the success of aging like: physical

I agree on Western culture on the definition of successful aging. In China, there has some different for successful aging. I ask my mother what kind of successful aging for her. My mother told me that I have the stable work and the income. Also, I have a lovely home and a lovely family. You may not know people have their own house and their own car is very important in China. If you don't have a house that means may be nobody gets married to you. Definitely, peephole must have the house and car in their successful aging, it seems like a standard configuration. In order this, young people need work hard in the city to make a fortune to earn a successful aging in the

As we mentioned in class, there is a stigmatized view of aging. This article reflected what we mentioned in class about cognitive aging. Deterioration of the brain is not always seen in normal aging. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that older adults enjoyed great levels of affective well-being and emotional stability. Through this article, I confirmed a positive view of life events can help us to maintain a healthy brain. Moreover, avoiding negative thoughts or replacing it with positive ones can lead us to develop a healthy well-being. It is sad to learn that is always with age that we gain the wisdom to focus more on positive events rather than to focus on the negative ones. Because we become more aware of the time remaining we try to avoid negative emotions and enhance positive events that can improve our well-being. It is much better to focus in a beautiful and peaceful moment than focus in a conflicted or ugly moment. We also mentioned in class that agreeableness increased with age. As we get older, we learned how to accept others opinions.