TRANSCRIPT
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#43 - Glowing Older: Embracing Aging, Wellness, and Purposeful Living with Nancy Griffin
Eric Blake:
What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase anti-aging? Our guest today has some pretty strong feelings about this phrase, and she's going to share some of those feelings with us today. Welcome to the Simply Retirement Podcast, where we want to make you living your retirement on your terms just a little easier. I'm your host, Eric Blake. Today we have a truly enlightening episode in store for you. Joining us is Nancy Griffin. She's the CEO of glowing, older, glowing, older. Provides education and inspiration to support people in their quest to age well. Nancy is also the host of the Glowing Older podcast. If you're looking for support and resources that can enhance your wellbeing and longevity, or if you are wondering how to support loved ones on their journey, this episode is for you. Now, before we dive in, don't forget to visit our website at www.thesimplyretirementpodcast.com for all the links and resources to this episode. Nancy, welcome to the Simply Retirement Podcast.
Nancy Griffin:
Thank you so much for having me, or I can't wait to get you on my show.
Eric Blake:
Greatly be honored by you, the opportunity, so I'm looking forward to it. So I know that I definitely excited about this. We have had a chance to exchange some emails and I've done some research before I reached out to you, and I definitely want to get your thoughts on the phrase anti-aging because I know you have them. But first, can you share just how you got started and what inspired you to launch glowing older?
Nancy Griffin:
Oh gosh. Well, I have 30 years in the spa and wellness industry, starting at Cornell Hotel School in the mid nineties. The spa industry had about 50 spas at the time, and the focus was nutrition, moving your body, getting out in nature, reducing stress, improving your sleep, all the things that we're talking about today in the aging services industry. So Covid March, 2020 lost a good deal of my business because I market in the spa industry and everything shut down. My grandfather was integral in founding A-C-C-R-C, continuing care retirement community outside of Baltimore where both my grandparents aged out. So we spent a lot of time there. It was supposedly one of the best in the country, but it still had a very institutional approach. So my focus on wellness, I saw spilling over into senior living. So I figured the best place for me to learn about the industry was to interview experts such as yourself on different topics to do with aging well. So the tagline of Glowing Older is powerful voices in Aging. Well, so we just finished our 200th episode. We're starting our 21st season, which you'll be on, and so I've just had the opportunity to learn from 200 experts in aging. Well,
Eric Blake:
That is awesome. Now, one of the things that really fascinated me when I first started researching your work and decided to reach out to you about the podcast was the focus on connecting generations. Now, we always hear these generational labels, whether it's Gen X or baby Boomers or Gen Z and so on. Sometimes it's even to the extent of being pitted against one another, which I find some of the funny videos on Gen X and what we went through. Pretty funny since that's where I fall. Yes,
Nancy Griffin:
Me too.
Eric Blake:
But how important is it to have these different generations with any family working together? Because this is actually part of the story behind going older, right? Was that connection between two different generations?
Nancy Griffin:
Absolutely. The World Health Organization has started a campaign against ageism, and they have determined that there's three ways that we can overcome it. The first way is our own perceptions going internally and looking at our own perceptions. The second is policy, which is of course a hard path, especially now, and we'll get into that. But the third one is focus on intergenerational connections. So when we bring different generations together, not only do we benefit from each generation's expertise, young people can help us with technology and we can help them have the focus on the bigger picture and that sort of thing. But it also, we gain understanding that tends to lessen ageism. I don't know if you're familiar, Eric, if you have kids, but if you're familiar with the hundred day dress up as old people that the young people do at the schools, I don't know if your school is progressive enough not to have it, but a lot of the schools still have it and they dress up in the gray wigs and they dot around on canes and all that. And that's a very early perception of what it's like to age. And this idea of age being inevitable, decline is just categorically false. I mean, some things don't get better with age, we know that, but a lot of things do and that focus on intergenerational connections. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Sky Bergman and her book and movie Lives Well Lived, but she's bringing generations together in a very unique way. And unfortunately it has to be purposeful these days because in centuries past, the generations naturally connected. We lived under the same roof.
Nancy Griffin:
We just had this philosophy that we take care of older adults, and that sort of has eroded over time, and that's why we have to be purposeful about bringing the generations together.
Eric Blake:
Well, and I find it interesting because I just turned 52 and my granddaughter first granddaughter just turned one. So that was my mission is if I'm going to be a grandfather, I don't want to look like a grandfather. So I appreciate that, but that's what I tell people. Number one, the first requirement is you get to show pictures anytime somebody says grandchild. And number two is you got to work out harder so you don't look like a grandparent. Exactly.
That's been my philosophy. So I know one of the things that the organization, your organization takes a holistic approach to aging and one of the areas of focus and something I don't know that I've really heard a whole lot of outside of our area in the financial services world, and of course as a financial advisor, even when we talk about this, we always put it in the same financial perspective, but that's the concept of life planning. Can you talk about life planning and more importantly, how you define it and where it fits into this whole process? Taking life planning, going beyond just the basics of financial planning?
Nancy Griffin:
What a great question, and that's why I'm such a huge fan of your podcast and what you do at Lake Wealth Management because you really take a holistic approach, which is we're birds of a feather that way, and we really take a values-based approach at glowing older. So it's really about focusing on what matters most to you, and that might not be what is most important to your spouse or your family or whatever. So we like to back it up. Firstly with life planning. We like to start early, plan early, and people don't want to do that. We plan for a vacation, we plan for college, we plan for things we're excited about, but if you've adopted this internalized ageism that aging is nothing but inevitable decline, then you're not going to want to plan. So that's why I think what you bring up is, hey, if you want to get the best out of your later years planning early, both financially and all the other aspects, what they call social determinants of health, where you live, how you live, all those kind of things, the more you think about those things, the more likely you are to get them.
So there's actually an organization called the Life Planning Network that's been around for 20 years. They've written a lot of books on it. I got mine for $5 at Walmart. Unfortunately, they didn't get a lot of traction because of this internalized ageism. It's like, well, why would I want to plan for something where I know it's going to be all downhill anyway? So what you're doing with your podcast and what we're trying to do at glowing older is educate people on the benefits, what gets better with aging and get people to plan about what matters most to them. And it's different for every individual.
Eric Blake:
Well, that's what I've found is especially with our focus on working with women, and if you listen to our podcast and you've kind of heard my story about being raised by a single mother, by a grandmother that was widowed at the age of 62, when you think about retirement these days, retirement is being completely redefined. And what that should look like is more dependent on what you want it to look like than anything else, but you have to be prepared. If you retire in your early to mid sixties these days, you might live another 30 years and you don't want to go into it with that concept of, well, it's just downhill from here. You don't want to live a third of your life on the downhill. So in your mind, how can those, in the aging population, how can they implement life planning? What does that actually look like?
Nancy Griffin:
They talk about the experts in aging, talk about the liminal zone, which is really that time after retirement before you decide what you want to do. So I'd highly recommend to your listeners take some time, carve out some time, maybe take a trip, a vision quest, something where you're living in that, I don't know what the heck is going on zone. And you can really figure out what's important to you because I think a lot of times there's a lot of fear around retirement, and so you kind of jump into something else, whether it's, oh my God, I don't want to not work anymore, so I'm just going to take anything, take a job at Home Depot or whatever. I mean, no offense to Home Depot, but maybe that's not the right path. So we as human beings are not comfortable living in the liminal zone in general.
We're just not. We don't like the unknown. I mean, which is why we've been so stressed with the election because it was like, what's going to happen? We don't know what's going to happen and that causes stress. So I think one of the things about life planning that's so important is that it lowers stress. And stress is the precursor to all disease causes. Inflammation causes our brain to shrink, causes our organs to deteriorate. All that stress is really bad. So one of the things about planning and working with a company like Blake Wealth Management and really taking a holistic approach to how you're going to spend your dollars in later years is it brings you joy, it lowers your stress levels, and it contributes to all the things that we know help people age better.
Eric Blake:
I think that's one of the things that we talk about is again, as you said, starting earlier is always better, but we talk about in those last handful of years, those last five years or so, start practicing retirement. Do the things that you think you want to start. If it's something new, it's a new hobby. It's you want to take a class and start doing some of those things before you get to retirement. And more importantly, I don't want to say more importantly, at least as important, think about how you're going to spend your money. Can you live on what your plan says? So if you said, Hey, I'm going to spend $5,000 a month and that's what I want to live on, can you actually do it? And if you've been living on 7,000 a month while you're working and now you're telling me you can live on five when you're retired, I want to see it. I would like to see some proof that you can really do that. So I think that aspect of retirement planning does get overlooked where it's just, okay, I put my resignation in the letter in two weeks. I'm thrown in the middle of it and I don't know what to do from here.
Nancy Griffin:
Yeah, I mean, it's a big hit on self-esteem. Just that jump off of the workplace, and I think we're addressing a lot of ageism in the workplace has become a very big topic because frankly, we're going to need older workers. I mean, as you know, by 20 50, 20 5% of the American population will be over 65. So you look at those numbers and we're going to need us. And whether it looks like just not working at all or doing volunteer work, which we all know contributes to overall health and wellbeing, even a couple hours a week really helps. So the worst thing you can do is just sit at home in front of the tv. The average older adult watches nine hours of TV a week,
Eric Blake:
A week that doesn't, a day,
Nancy Griffin:
A day. So I mean, that's what you want to do is have people just feel positive about it. And that's another thing about feeling secure about how you're spending your dollars, which is what you seem to focus on a lot.
Eric Blake:
Now, I know you've already touched on ageism a little bit here, but there's a really interesting quote that I took from your website, and you said that after hundreds of podcast interviews and blog posts, Nancy realized that ageism is the biggest hurdle to aging well, can you talk a little bit more about that? I guess the main thing is how can that get in the way of people aging well, or what can we do to eliminate back to this, go to the end aging question. You're on a mission to get rid of that phrase altogether. What does that look like? What are you doing to help people?
Nancy Griffin:
Well, unfortunately the phrase Angie, aging is a big marketing term. We all love it. Unfortunately, we do. Who doesn't want the fountain of youth? But anti-aging is really anti living. I mean, we're all lucky enough to live. And so as we get older, I think there's, with the beauty companies, they're starting to take a look at not using the phrase anti-aging in their marketing on their packaging yet. It's a huge keyword phrase for the search engine, social media, all that. I mean, huge. So it's really hard to get rid of it. But in general, the reason why a focus on anti-aging and a focus on getting the fountain of youth youth, a lot of it is not living in the present. We talk a lot at going older about mindfulness and how mindfulness is good for our overall health. So if you're living in the past, I've got a quote here on my whiteboard, when we put our lives behind us, there's no point in looking forward.
I love that. That's awesome. If you're busy mourning what you were, oh my gosh, here I have this line, the 11 line here. I've got wrinkles and crow's feet here, I've got gray hair. Obviously this is pandemic hair, a long time to grow out. But if we focus on those things, then we're going to miss the good things about aging. Well, and there's a famous geriatrician named Dr. Bill Thomas. I'm not sure if you've ever heard his name, but he's quoted a lot and he is really an expert on not focusing on the metrics that are really obvious and visual. So I can't run the quarter mile as fast as I used to. I have gray hair. I'm not as strong as I used to be, weight around the middle, all those kinds of things. If those are the metrics that you base aging on, we're not going to stand up.
But a lot of the things about aging well and the things that get better with age are invisible. The ability to look at the big picture, the ability to balance both sides of our brain to be able to decipher information in unique ways and bring what you call wisdom to the table. One caveat there, I just had Ron Pevney, who is the specialist in Conscious Aging, and he talks about the fact that we either get better or worse as we get old. So this categorical, everyone gets wiser and everyone gets better. Not necessarily true. I think that you need to do the work, you need to do the internal work, you need to do the planning, all that kind of thing to live best in your older days. Because if you're going through unconscious and fearful, you're probably going to not bring your best self to the table. I really do, and I've witnessed this both with my experts on going older and in my own life, that you really do get better or worse as you get older.
Eric Blake:
I think that what's interesting, and I would love to get your thoughts on this, is very, when we first started talking, you talked about the idea of planning early, but we also know that there's always a reason why you can't When you're in your, you've got young children, you're in your thirties, you've got teenagers, so there's always a reason why, and you're trying to get your career started. So you are continuing to have these different challenges in front of you that prevents you from planning. But then there's also that point where, okay, maybe it's when the kids are out of the house now. Well, now I'm on the downhill now. Now I've transitioned from, well, I can't plan because I got all these other things in my life going on to, well, I'm on the downhill now. What's the purpose of planning? You never have that stage of this is it living the life I want to live, and there's nothing standing in my way. It's one end of the spectrum to the other without really any in-between.
Nancy Griffin:
Yeah, I mean, they call that the sandwich generation, which is I think where you and I would both like to intervene, right? I mean, because what happens is, I know there's a huge caregiver crisis globally,
But if you end up being a caregiver in your forties or fifties, our message is wear your own oxygen mask first. And people don't go into caregiving consciously. They go into it full force without any forethought. And a lot of times you think, okay, well I'm going to be a caregiver for six months, and then six years comes and you're financially depleted, you're physically depleted because you didn't wear your own oxygen mask first. So as women, we are not very good at wearing our own oxygen masks first. We tend to always think of other people first, which is at our better with age events, solo aging is a big thing that we talk about. And I have these couples all huddle together, drinking their wine, and I say, the chances that the two of you're going to die at exactly the same time on the same day, not very likely. So a lot of married couples don't ever want to think that they'll be solo ages. And even if you are in a couple, you should maybe be thinking about what's important to you and not us, because it might be different, and that's okay. Maybe you want to take a girl's trip or a solo trip and your husband doesn't. So you should plan to do those things. And I'm sure that if you have couples that you work with, when you work with the woman, you say, Hey, what do you want to do?
Eric Blake:
Well, yeah, and absolutely. So that's one of the things. If you actually look at our website, it says Retirement planning for women over 55, but I do have down below that, not too far. It says, please note, yes, we do work with couples, but it is critical that both spouses participate in the planning process. Because what I don't want to do, I don't want to be one of those horror stories of, well, only the husband came in and I only dealt with them, and the wife didn't really like to talk about all that stuff. All of a sudden, of course, he's the first one that passes away and now she's just thrust in the middle of all these emotional decisions and financial decisions and everything else that goes into that without any real background for understanding how to make those decisions.
Nancy Griffin:
Another reason why what you do is so important because women of a certain age, I think it's getting, the narrative is changing, but oftentimes in couples, the woman abated responsibility for the money and where the money was going and how the money was being spent and all that. And it's critical no matter whether you're a solo agent or you're in a couple to take responsibility for your own financial health.
Eric Blake:
But I think it's, again, not keep coming back to our practice, but there's a great example, prospective new client. We just went through our process together, went through, presented my recommendations, and we're kind of in this take your time process. I always say, I don't want you to make any feel like you're being pushed into any big decisions. I want you to feel very confident about this. But as we went through the process, one of the things that she talked about was she wanted to get back to dancing. So in her past, she was a professional dancer and for various reasons up until her recent divorce, she hadn't really been in position to do that. And so it's thinking about those things that I kind of got almost like a do-over what do I want my life to look like? I am going to be doing this on my own. Now what do I want it to look like?
Nancy Griffin:
Yes. So critical dancing is super good for you. It's been documented to be so good for aging well and so many for good for brain health, good for the body, good for the mind, all those things. So dance, dance and dance,
Eric Blake:
That's what I told you. This is all about you. Whatever I can do to put you in a position to do the things that you enjoy and that you want to do, let's go for it. So can you talk a little bit about some of the trends in aging? Well, do you feel like there's progress that is being made or are things regressing? Which direction do you think things are really going right now?
Nancy Griffin:
Gosh. Well, I personally think that we're making some strides in just starting the conversation. Ashton Applewhite, who wrote the book on ageism, one of the first books really talks about how it's important to view ageism as the last acceptable, if you will. Now, she will say, now, it's not acceptable, but it's still prolific, the ageism piece. But with the World Health Organization and the Surgeon General, and I think we're starting to have conversations like we are with L-B-G-T-Q conversations about rights for older adults. We're certainly talking about the workforce, and ageism is coming up more and more in conversations. And employers I think are beginning to realize that older workers are going to be critical for the given demographics that we're looking at going forward. So I do think that it is changing, but as Ashton said to me, when I founded Exposed Ageism and really didn't get very much of a good response from the skincare companies and the spas, she said, changing culture is slow.
It's like moving the Titanic. And I do think that it will be a while before ageism is something that is really something we address. And I think one of it is that the's so much fear around it that really people would rather continue to dye their hair and get the Botox and take ozempic or whatever it is that they're going to do to try to look younger because of the fear of being them. So it's an us and them thing. So, oh, I'm young, they're old. And that happens a lot actually, within senior living communities. I'm not sure if you've ever heard that from any of your clients that are older, but based on mobility issues, cognitive issues and all that, you can be like, well, they're over there. We don't interact with them, which is ageism and ableism, which is the other side of it, which is the accessibility and mobility issues, which are crucial.
And I just got back from the consumer electronic show, CES, and a lot of technologies including hearing aid technologies, glasses, technologies to help people with different things, different mobility devices, all those kinds of things I think are going to make it easier for people with any kind of disability to be able to live their lives better. And I think that just the sheer number of age tech companies that are starting to come out and the conversations on LinkedIn and other social media about ageism and brain health and sleep health and all those kinds of things, we're moving in the right direction, but it's going to be slow.
Eric Blake:
Well, so for those tuning in today who want to start glowing older today, what do you think are maybe some simple actionable steps they could take tomorrow?
Nancy Griffin:
Gosh, the first one I have to say is move your body, whatever that looks like. I cognitive health, the one thing that we do know is that moving your body, it has been proven to stave off any kind of cognitive impairment. And the reasons for that are pretty obvious in terms of circulation. So you move your body, your gut brain to your flow, to your brain, it's going to be healthier. Sleep. I just got back from, again, CES sleep is a huge trend right now. All kinds of different wearables and mattresses and all that to help us sleep better as we get older. It's a normal thing that we have trouble sleeping. It's not abnormal, it's not a disease, it's just a fact. We don't sleep as well. So prioritizing sleep I think is a huge one. And then the third piece I'll mention is social health.
We have our physical health, our mental health and social health. And one of the reasons why I'm sure your clients love working with you is just that personal attention and meeting someone where they are in their life, not just their pocketbook. So it's like being seen, feeling that sense of belonging is what we all crave as humans. We all want love and we all want connection. And so I think that oftentimes you can have somebody that eats super clean and moving their body and getting eight hours of sleep, but if you don't have purposeful, meaningful connection with other humans, and again, that spans to the intergenerational connection, which is I think why grandparents and grandkids have such a special bond. I have a step grandson, so I get what you're talking about, but that's the critical piece. And not just fighting loneliness, but adding more opportunities to enrich your life with social connection.
Eric Blake:
That's awesome. Are there any, and you've already listed several. You've talked about several different resources and tools, but are there any you'd recommend for the listeners looking to explore this further? Maybe two to three that you say, Hey, here's start here. Maybe that would be a way to approach it.
Nancy Griffin:
Well, glowing older podcast.
Eric Blake:
There you go.
Nancy Griffin:
This podcast that you're already listening to, I would dig in a little bit into the ageism stuff. Google ageism, look at Ashton Applewhite. She's got a website called Old School that has all kinds of resources on combating ageism. And then the third piece is talking about starting to have these conversations around life planning and what that looks like. And one of the things that we really like people to do is start with your values. And your values may be conflicting. And I'll give you just a little example. I have been a lifelong horseback rider, and I got in a serious horseback riding accident and hit my head really badly last year, and my family and friends said, no more riding for you. And my first thought was, screw you. I'm going to do whatever I want because perseverance is one of my core values. But when I looked at my other values, which is my brain, and knowing that brain injuries cause cognitive impairment and I can't afford anymore, and also my love of family and friends that were begging me not to ride anymore, I switched. I kept my horses and I moved towards doing some equine assisted learning work with a company called Connected Horse that has care partners and people with cognitive impairment and does equine assisted learning. So I was able to keep my love of horses, which is a value of mine and my persistence, and then balance that with my other values. So doing an exercise on your core values is a great place to start.
Eric Blake:
That's awesome. So before we wrap up, is there anything else you want to share? Anything else that you think our listeners should know about the future of aging or glowing olders vision?
Nancy Griffin:
Well, our vision is for people to plan, plan, and plan for what matters most to them, and to start to have conversations early and money is super important because it is the thing that allows you to reach what you want to do with your life. So that's why I love what you guys are doing, and I would suggest to everyone that they reach out to you if they haven't already and start planning for what matters most to them. And it starts with taking a look at what you might be able to afford and not afford.
Eric Blake:
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the kind words. I love this conversation. Just for our listeners, how can they get in touch with you? How can they find glowing older, your podcast, any social media, anything like that you want to share?
Nancy Griffin:
Sure. Yeah, I'm glowing older.com is a great place to start. If you want to take a look at the ageism campaign, that's expose ageism.com. If you're a beauty company for some strange reason you're happen to want to participate in expose ages and reach out and also LinkedIn, you can look me up, Nancy Griffin, and reach out to me through that platform.
Eric Blake:
That's what I did. Right.
Nancy Griffin:
And we're excited to have you on the show later this month.
Eric Blake:
Awesome. Well, thank you for tuning into this episode of these Simply Retirement Podcast. We'll definitely share these resources and links in the podcast summary. If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to subscribe and share it with family and friends. For more resources and episodes, visit us at www.thesimplyretirementpodcast.com.
Until next time, please remember, retirement is not the end of the road. It is the start of a new journey.
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