You Are Only as Young as You Feel

Although she knows the word old has negative connotations, Sklar doesn’t feel they apply to her. “I still feel 65 — 60, even. So why would I not do what I want to do, you know?”

An aging mindset predicts physical and mental health

Shevaun Neupert gets it. She’s a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University whose research has looked at “subjective age,” or how old we feel.

“There are so many things that our feelings about our age, or how old we feel, are important for predicting,” says Neupert. “It predicts our emotional well-being. At times it predicts our cognitive functioning. It predicts our physical health.”

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Neupert has studied day-to-day changes in people’s feelings about their age. She says the more stressful a day they have had, the older they are likely to feel. ​But many people, she says, feel about 20 percent younger than their chronological age. And those who feel younger tend to act in ways that benefit their overall well-being.

If someone is feeling young, Neupert says, “Maybe they’re more likely to try something new, or pick up a new hobby, or do a certain kind of physical activity that’s beneficial for their body.” People are more likely to make “those health-behavior kinds of decisions when they are feeling younger. And so those have important consequences for their health in the future.”

As for why feeling younger can boost our overall health, Neupert says more research is needed, but one possible explanation is that we absorb society’s messages about aging and, over time, apply those beliefs to ourselves.

Feeling younger than our chronological age may be one way of pushing back against those negative stereotypes. Starting around age 40, there is a fairly predictable gap of about 20 percent between people’s actual age and the age they say they feel. That gap, says Neupert, may reflect “psychologically distancing oneself from negative perceptions of aging.”

For example, if society sends the message that being 70 means being frail, forgetful or limited, a 70-year-old who feels 55 may think, consciously or not, That image of an old person isn’t me. Feeling younger creates some psychological distance between the person and those negative assumptions.

It’s possible to improve with age 

Whether or not you believe the stereotypes about aging can make a real difference to your health. Becca Levy, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, has studied this phenomenon. Her 2022 book, Breaking the Age Code, synthesized much of her research and showed that people with the most positive views of aging lived, on average, seven-and-a-half years longer than those with the most negative views.

The flip side is also true. “Age beliefs stole or added almost eight years to their lives,” Levy wrote, “conferring an even better survival advantage than low cholesterol or low blood pressure.”

Her latest study, published in Geriatrics in 2026, contains even more good news: Plenty of us improve with age. The study’s findings challenge what Levy calls “the belief ... that there’s a sort of continuous and inevitable decline in later life. And we see that in scientific definitions of aging. We see that in several surveys of aging, when people think about later life.... Most health care providers and most people in the community think of it as a time of inevitable development of dementia, for example, when that isn’t the case.”

Levy and her fellow researchers found that a significant number of older adults in the study — 45 percent — improved either cognitively or physically over time.

But she was particularly keen to learn whether positive beliefs about aging made that improvement more likely. So she and her colleagues examined the participants’ views on aging. The older adults had been asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with a series of statements, including “The older I get, the more useless I feel,” and “I am as happy now as I was when I was younger.”

The researchers’ theory was borne out: “The current study demonstrated for the first time that participants who had assimilated more-positive age beliefs were more likely to show improvement in both cognitive and physical function.”

They found that participants who had a more positive outlook about aging were more likely to improve in both areas, even after researchers accounted for chronic disease, age, sex, education and depression.

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Our attitudes about aging are powerful. A 2026 AARP survey found that a positive mindset was associated with fewer worries about brain health. The survey of adults age 35 and older found that those with a negative view of aging were more likely to fear cognitive decline. For instance, one-third of adults in the survey worried that their cognitive abilities had already declined. A full 46 percent of adults with negative views of aging felt this way, compared with 17 percent of those who felt positively about aging.

How to change beliefs about aging

Beliefs can change at any age. “Actions inform your feelings,” says Erlene Rosowsky, a clinical psychologist who specializes in aging and is in her 80s herself. For anyone who feels gloomy about getting older, she suggests an exercise to tweak your mindset. Write a short, six-line poem about some of the good things about being old. “It doesn’t have to rhyme,” Rosowsky says. “Force yourself to do that. And immediately your thoughts do change, because you’re forced to write the darn poem.”

Jan Holmquist doesn’t need to put pen to paper to remind herself that older age can be as rewarding as any other life stage. Holmquist, who is 82 and lives in Needham, Mass., began running in her late 30s. She didn’t come from a particularly sporty family and grew up long before Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education and sports programs that receive federal funding. But a fellow parent’s dare got her hooked. Years later, Holmquist started competing in races, and since then, she’s set numerous American and world records for women in her age group.

(From left) Jan Holmquist ran a 5K race with her teenage granddaughter, Story Bracker, and won her first world record in the 80-and-above age group.

Courtesy Story Bracker

The day after her 80th birthday, she ran a 5K race near her home with her teenage granddaughter. “That was my first 80-year-old world record,” says Holmquist, of her win in the 80-and-above age category. Her granddaughter stayed with her throughout the race and finished one second ahead. Other records have followed since.

Holmquist says she’s a better runner than she used to be, partly because she’s had more time to train since she retired. Before that, she says, “I got my run in before I got in the car to go to work, but I didn’t really train. And so once I had the time to go to the track and actually do some … speed work, if you will, I got better.”

She isn’t a superwoman, though. After trying “to do too much” last year, Holmquist tore her Achilles tendon, and it’s been a long recovery. She’s had plenty of injuries over the years but has worked hard to recover. Now she’s back on the track.

Holmquist doesn’t expect all older adults to follow in her (rapid) footsteps. But she does want to spread the word about aging as healthily as possible by continuing to move and socialize. She has friends of all ages and volunteers for several local organizations. “For an older person, it’s just so important” to spend time with other people, she says. “It just makes you feel better when you’ve talked to somebody.”

Both her kids are now in their 50s, and Holmquist hopes to set an example for them, her grandchildren and total strangers alike. “And I know I do, because people come up to me and say that.”

She sometimes tells those admirers how old she is, because she wants to let them know that they, too, can keep active “for a long, long time. And it doesn’t have to be running,” Holmquist says. “It just has to be something.”