Ep. 327 Dr. Kerry Burnight - Joyspan

What if aging wasn’t something to fear, but something to embrace? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Kerry Burnight, a leading gerontologist and author of Joyspan, to explore how we can shift our mindset around aging. Instead of chasing anti-aging fads or resisting change, what if we cultivated joy, purpose, and connection across every season of life? Kerry unpacks the four practices at the heart of a long and meaningful “joy span”: growing, connecting, adapting, and giving and how these practices not only enrich our lives but can extend them. Whether you're in your 30s or your 80s, this conversation is a reminder: aging is human, and joy is possible all the way through.

Gerontologist, Dr. Kerry Burnight, is sparking a global revolution to make older better.

Fed up with the fear-driven, anti-aging hysteria, millions of people turn to “Dr. Kerry” for her proven approach to navigating longevity. This approach is based upon a profound truth: the key to good longevity isn’t the length of your life, it’s the quality of your life.

Efforts to maximize lifespan and even healthspan don’t address the whole picture. Longevity is meaningless if you don’t like your life. Burnight introduces the critical concept, “Joyspan” based on the science of well-being, contentment, connection, meaning, growth, choice, and purpose.

Dr. Burnight taught Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology for 18 years at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. She was a speaker to the U.S. White House at the Elder Justice Summit and at the U.S. Department of Justice. She has appeared on such T.V. programs as CBS News, NBC News, The Doctors, and Money Matters.

Kerry's Book:

Joyspan

Kerry's Recommendation:

Write a Must-Read

Subscribe to Our Substack: Shifting Culture

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTube

Consider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below

Subscribe today at shiftingculture.substack.com for early, ad-free episodes and more!

Transcript

Kerry Burnight: 0:00

I love you. To change your fear into hope. I'd love to change your shame about aging into acceptance and in doing so, I think we could really change the way that society see sees older people, and I think it has to start with ourselves,

Joshua Johnson: 0:34

hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, well, aging is inevitable, but what if it didn't have to mean decline, despair or disconnection? What if growing older could actually be a path toward purpose, joy and deeper human connection? In this episode, I talk with Dr Carrie burnite, a leading gerontologist, author of joy span, and someone who has spent her life walking with people in their later years. Together, we explore how to trade our fear of aging for hope, how to cultivate joy that lasts and how growing older can become a generative, beautiful journey, rather than something to avoid. We talk about the myths of anti aging culture, the power of human connection and what it means to live with purpose well into our 80s, 90s and beyond. Dr Barnett lays out a practical and inspiring framework the joy span matrix of growing, connecting, adapting and giving, and we dive into what happens when we stop idolizing independence and begin embracing interdependence. Whether you're 23 or 93 join us, because this conversation is for you, because if you're alive, you're aging, and maybe, just maybe, the best is still ahead. Here is my conversation with Dr Carrie burnite, Carrie, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm delighted to be here. What drew you to becoming a gerontologist? Like what? Why gerontology? For you,

Kerry Burnight: 2:13

it started the minute I was born, because my mom and dad had high school students and my brother and sister, and they thought they were done, and then my mom said she wasn't feeling well. Went to the doctor to talk about menopause, and it turned out she was pregnant with me, so when I was born, my dad had gray hair already, and when people would talk about older people in a derogatory way as people do, it always felt personal. So I feel so grateful, you know, that God led me on this path to to get to work with and learn from older people all these years.

Joshua Johnson: 2:53

I'm glad that you you felt a draw to that for me. You know, a few years ago, I went to a hotel with my wife and son, and the person checking me in was like, Are you traveling with your daughter and grandson? I was like, I'm not that old yet, but I do have a lot of gray hair. But thank you for recognizing that. You know, for me growing up, my mom was a home health aide. She was a physical therapist, so she went to, you know, people that were aging, having mobility issues, and helping them out. And so I have been drawn to what, what does actually life look like at an older age, where it looks like you could actually have some some purpose and love and life. You wrote this great book, Joy span and helping people get to a place in their latter years, to a place of joy. Why? Why do you talk about joy span and not lifespan, or just longevity of living longer, but actually the quality of life?

Kerry Burnight: 3:56

I love that question. So the reason I wrote the book is that for 18 years, I was a professor in geriatric medicine, and I was working with older adults, and we created an elder abuse forensic center of people who had endured financial exploitation and physical abuse, psychological abuse. So basically, I was surrounded with suffering. And what I saw really burned my eyes, and you get to thinking, rather than just sort of remediating these situations, how could we prevent this suffering? How could we prevent and people ending up alone, hunched over in wheelchairs, being taken advantage of. And so it really took my career the opposite direction, and so I just dug into the research to find out, what is it that enables some people to absolutely thrive in old age, and how can we all be the. Doing this and starting early, and in terms of in the popular culture, it's longevity, longevity, and that lifespan, and lifespan is how many years you live. And that's great. We want to live long lives. And then, more recently, our field has moved toward health span, how many years you can live in good health, and that is definitely in the right direction. And yet I would see people who lived a long time, people who even were in good physical health, who are miserable. And so what joy span is, is joy span is the quality of your long life. So basically, we want all three a long lifespan, a long health span and a long Joy span. And it isn't just luck, and it is certainly not just genes. People are always so quick to blame genes, but it's, in fact, less than 25% of the variability. So what is it that enables us to have a long quality of life.

Joshua Johnson: 6:02

So Joy span. How does Joy span? And cultivating Joy purpose through you know the things that you have studied and you write about in your book, how does that help in longevity? How does it help with a even the other things with health and long life?

Kerry Burnight: 6:20

Yes. So I love your question, because joy span increases your lifespan and your health span. So happily, all those three go together. So it's not like, Oh, do the you know, the things that you do that are good and these practices improve your life between ages, say, 23 and 24 in the same way they improve your life between 93 and 94 so what people wonder, like, Who is this book for? Is this book for older people? No, it's for anybody who's aging and who is aging, everyone who's alive. And the reason we call it joy, joy is not the same as happiness. So happiness is often dependent on external circumstances. Joy isn't because joy is something that comes from within us. And so joy is much more like contentment than it is ecstasy. And so what we're not talking about is toxic positivity, or it's more of this feeling of, huh, well, being, life satisfaction, contentment. And it really is possible to increase and put yourself on a different path to be one of those person who loves their life all the way to the end.

Joshua Johnson: 7:41

We have a bunch of billionaires right now that are talking about transhumanism. They're talking about becoming more than human so that I could extend my life and maybe we could be better. How does contentment happen as as humans? How do we stay human and content? Because I don't want to be more than human. I want to be human. This is how I was created. This is who I am. Where does contentment happen as a human? What does it really mean to be human?

Kerry Burnight: 8:08

Yes, oh, I love that. So there is a significant movement and billions of dollars dedicated to anti aging, and so that we're somehow, if we have enough money, going to be able to not age, not die. There's even a don't die summit where people from all over are heading to San Francisco and other places to follow. Brian Johnson don't die movement. He's a person who's spending millions and millions of dollars in all these supplements and things to try to not die. And what I, as a gerontologist would say to that is that I find it sad because everyone that I have ever known, that you have ever known, if you're lucky, you grow old, and we die in the same way that we are born. And so to somehow have the opposite of humility, to think that there's something that we can pay for or do to make that not the case, and I think that is actually misery and suffering, to be on a quest for something that is not possible. And even if it was possible, would we want that like the world can only sustain so many people, and to be living these ultra to be striving to live two or 300 years like what I sometimes think I don't have you thought this through. So I think to be human is to recognize, I've we come into the world, it's a pretty messy way, by ourselves, without anything, and we are supposed to leave this physical world in a way that sometimes is messy and often by ourselves. And there's great. Duty in that in that acceptance.

Joshua Johnson: 10:02

So then what does contentment look like? What one of the things you just said there is people are striving towards anti aging or not dying. They're striving for something so they're never going to be content with what they have, because they're always looking for something they don't have. How do we cultivate and become content with who we are and where we're going.

Kerry Burnight: 10:23

The reason that the pull of anti aging is so strong is because people are proactively feeding us the message that getting older is bad and ugly and less than and undesirable. And the reason that they're using fear is because it sells, and they're making so much money off of our fear and are feeling badly about ourselves. And so the way that you, you know, get out of the crux of this is understanding what does the research say about growing older? And what you'll find is that many things get better as you get older, but they're not publicized because it's not lucrative to tell people what gets better as you get older. So one example is as we grow older, we don't care as much what other people think about us, and it enables us to become more authentically who we are and who we are intended to be. It's really liberating. And you know, I'm only 55 and I'm starting to enjoy that now, and it makes me excited to be 7585 95 and other things that get better as you get older. There's greater humility, there's greater access to or appreciation of spirituality. There's really profound problem solving that's based on wisdom based experience. There's appreciation for friendship and connection, and these are wonderful things, and research shows that our well being and satisfaction often gets there's a U shaped curve of happiness where we where we do enjoy this time of life, but you don't hear much about it. So I think contentment is seeing the lies that we've been told about older, about stepping into older and don't ever if you ever catch yourself saying, Well, I'm having a senior moment, or, Oh, I'm looking old, or, oh gosh, these wrinkles on my neck don't contribute to it. I mean, let's each stand up for our own beautiful, radiant, old and so if somebody says, like, wow, you're old. Yes, I am. Or if they say, like, for example, my mom is 96 and she's just thriving. And when people say, you don't look 96 what we've discussed for that, she says is, this is what 96 looks like. You know, it looks different for for everybody. And I, I don't want to be young. I've already been every other age. So for contentment, it is accepting ourselves and stepping into this new, older version of ourselves.

Joshua Johnson: 13:13

So if you said that we could start some of this process of cultivating joy and having joy span and like when we're 23 when we're younger, so that as we age, we are going to continue this and continue to grow and adapt and connect and all those things. What are the steps that you have found in your research that help us cultivate that joy in life, that provide a longer Joy span.

Kerry Burnight: 13:40

Okay, so it takes work. So that's number one. It doesn't just happen. So sometimes you'll see a physically fit person, and then we who have not worked out would say, Oh, you're just so lucky. Well, that person has likely put in the time and the work. So if we use the physical analogy first, so physically, in order to have our physical fitness, there are four things that we do. And so we do aerobic activity for our heart, we do strength training for our muscles. We do flexibility training so we can continue to walk and move without discomfort, and we do agility training, move your feet quickly and work on balance. Great. We kind of know that we get into inundated by it. Of all information, it's great, but how it's the inside work. So the inside work also is four things, also action verbs, also daily practice. And so those four things that I call the joy span matrix are four verbs. And so the first is grow. You gotta continue to keep growing. And that means doing hard things, getting. Out of your comfort zone, deciding what is it that I would like to pursue or be interested in, or do something about really exploring our curiosity and making it active. If we're not growing there's a problem, so we need to put the work into it. So that's number one, grow. Number two is connect. We know there's just an overwhelming literature in the importance of human connection, even for us introverts, everyone needs to connect. And if you put your friendships on autopilot, you're putting yourself in a bad place, because if we live long enough, we often outlive our friends, or friends move, or friends get cognitive impairment. So we need to be actively what I call cultivating our social portfolio. So you know, with your financial portfolio, you don't put money all in one place, same thing, socially. Socially, we need to have friends of different ages, friends with different outlooks, friends who are neighbors, friends that we have known 30 years, friends that we've known 30 minutes, so actively connecting and you need to be the one to make the call, to reach out, to send the text, to remember birthdays. Whenever I encounter patients who are lonely, they complain that nobody is reaching out to them, and we know right away what the problem is. If you're going to have friends, you've got to be that friend, that friend that drives you to a chemo appointment, that friend who is sitting by the bed when you're crying. You know you got to be that friend. So we got first you grow. Second, you connect, ready for number three, you adapt. The one thing I know for sure that as we get older, we are all going to have challenges. I've never met anyone who has made it through life who hasn't had some rough stuff, and it gets more rough as you get older, right? We live long enough we are very likely to outlive our spouse, if, unless we're the ones who pass away first. So we are very likely to get a diagnosis that we never expected. We are very likely to have, for example, my retina detached, and I lost vision entirely in one eye, and then it started detaching on the other and as I was going through all these surgeries, at first I thought, Oh, this isn't right. And then I thought, no, it is right. You're a human. All humans have things. This is your thing. How are you going to adapt and say, like, Yeah, I can't see. Yeah, I wear eye patch. You know, that's okay. And it isn't, it isn't denial. It is saying, Yeah, this is hard, and I can choose to sit in it and suffer, or I can choose to do the hard work of adapting and finding a way through these challenges. So we got grow, connect, adapt. And the final one, and perhaps my favorite, is give. So we need to make sure that all lifelong, we are able to keep giving of ourselves, so that low hanging fruit is, you think of monetary contribution, of like, what can I give? Money wise, yes, very few of people are in a situation to do that, and if you can lovely, but many of us, what we have is time. What we have is experience. What we have is we can listen, we can laugh. We can pick lemons from our yard and bring them to our next door neighbor. We can go to the other neighbor who seems overwhelmed as a single mother and say, Is there something that I can do around dinner time so that you can cook dinner and I could keep an eye on these babies, right? So like moving of yourself and the research is staggering, people who give are not only making the world a better place, but incredibly enriched and live longer with lower inflammation, with less chronic disease. And it's i What a win win, and isn't it what the world leads, right like? Can you imagine if we would all step into our ability as older people to give change the world?

Joshua Johnson: 19:20

A lot of what you just said seems to be counter to a lot of American culture, of individualism, of like doing something by yourself, of not wanting to be dependent on other people. It just seems to be like we have to do this work of counter, countering some of this culture that's ingrained within us. As we grow and we age where we are like we're productive machines, we have to figure out what it looks like to like, be content, be human and connect with each other, one of the connections that you're talking about. So I just jump into connect and adapt. Yeah, and both of those things, I think, can go hand in hand, especially when you're dealing with loss. So the adaptation of loss when you're going through grief, and then the connection that's really important. How do we help people move through those transition times? And how can we move through those transition times to be healthy on the other side that actually cultivates joy and not bitterness. When you say, you know, all my friends are gone like people are dying around me, like my husband, my wife is has has died. I don't have my spouse anymore. What does that look like to help people through transition moments

Kerry Burnight: 20:38

like that? I think the first step is a little pre planning, right? I think the recognition that these things will happen, I think denying or acting like I'm not going to think about that because it's a downer to think that way is a little dangerous and also very common. So a lot of times I'll talk to people and think, like, I never thought that my spouse would die, and I think it's a little bit of a shame, because 100% we are going to die, and 100% our spouse is going to die, so it it's going to either be one or the other, like it is going to happen. And so I'm not saying that it's easy, but I just think step one would be, this is this is real. This is going to happen. And there will be a diagnosis sometime that I'll go, Whoa, huh, like, Parkinson's are like, wow, I huh. I did know that was going to be my path, that I was going to be blind. So that's step one. Is the recognition that it is normal to have these things happen to you. It is expected. So sometimes I call it the unexpected, no, the expected surprise, or it is habit. But then when it does happen, right? It hurts, and grief is very real, and it's something that we embrace, and is something that we give people time and space and know that tears are good, and everybody there's no right way to do it, and feeling what you feel, and giving people time to feel what they feel. And you know, not getting rid of phrases like, well, at least blah, blah, blah, right? If I never hear anyone say, at least whatever, I'll give an example of our daughter, who's in medical school, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And, you know, it was not I, I had not taken my own advice to understand that things also will happen to our children and to our grandchildren, right? That's part of the human experience as well. So I had to add that to my thought of like, of course, anything can happen to anyone. But when people, and it was a tumor, that ultimately, if it grows, you know, could be fatal, and so, people would say, well, at least, I mean, oh, it's not cancer. It's like, you know, yeah, I mean, kind of, but not really so. So I think giving people space for grief and know that we can succumb to it and embrace grief as part of the human experience. And I think, you know, people of faith, then also can turn to God and go, I am going to feel this and I'm going to cry and do things that I need to do to go through, but there is a through. So over time, grief transforms. It doesn't go away, but we carry it a little bit differently over time, right? So the person that you are missing so much, often, I hear people saying that they become a part of you, right? And you carry them differently, where, whereas it used to hurt so much, it's a sort of a change, and knowing that with with Time doesn't heal all things, but time does change the way that we carry great

Joshua Johnson: 24:16

so as you deal with patients, and you're you're walking with with older people, how do you like deal with mindset issues and mindset shifts that so I know that, I mean, a lot of people deal with physical shifts, and like, this is how we can move our bodies and continue to have mobility as we grow older. But what does it look like to deal with mindset shifts?

Kerry Burnight: 24:38

The mind is so powerful, as you know. And so the aging mindset that we currently have as a default is the decline aging mindset, which has a great acronym of damn so we, you know. And it started when we were first born, so when we were little. Our parents would read us stories and say there was Hansel and Gretel and they were walking and then an old woman called them into her house, and she had a horrible warty nose, and then she was going to eat them. I mean, that's what we teach people what aging is. And so I think recognizing, huh, my default is probably a decline aging mindset, and we know that what we expect, you know, the whole manifesting literature, what you expect, you generally, that comes to pass. So that's bad. So by recognizing like, I'm going to consciously reject the decline aging mindset, and I am going to embrace and create, on purpose, a growth aging mindset, and you'd have to add an E on the end, but it could be from damn to game. And a growth aging mindset is saying there are things that I'm going to get better at as I get older. I am going to work on things that I would care about people saying at my funeral, right? Because nobody ever said, Wow, that Joshua really drives a nice car. He never said, oh my goodness, I'm so impressed by his clean garage. But people will remember forever the listening that you provided, or the insight or the kindness or the little things that you did. So we all have so much opportunity to grow in the stuff that matters, and I am so rewarded by watching my patients in their 80s, 90s and one hundreds, grow beyond anything they were when they were younger, and they just inspire me so much.

Joshua Johnson: 27:25

Can you give me an example? What's, what's the story of somebody growing in a place of saying, I'm not gonna I'm gonna resist this, this mindset, I'm gonna get into my game mindset, not my damn mindset. What's a good story to help us know what does it look like to grow. And I know it's different for every individual, but

Kerry Burnight: 27:45

I love concrete examples. So I can tell you about an example of an 84 year old woman who I know well and love, and when she lost her husband, had been a person who had never considered the possibility of walking through life without her love, her partner, her best friend of 60 years, and she, in the beginning, said, what's left for me Now I don't he paid all the bills, he planned all the trips. He's who I talked to in the morning and who I said my prayers with at night. What's left for me? I don't, I don't really even want to keep living, because, no, this isn't life. I that's a decline aging mindset, right? Of just saying, like, let me just hang it up here, she with time. Thought, I can I'm going to have this extra time, this bonus time, and it can be filled with all suffering and lamenting at what I lost. Or, what if? What if? I thought, well, what the heck I'm going to use this bonus time? So what she did, she was a retired school teacher, and so she contacted the school that she had worked at and asked if there were any paid or unpaid positions that she could do on a part time basis, and the school was elated, because she was a reading specialist, and there were so many students that could use the one on one time. Well, she became the most beloved person at that school, and as she all the way through when she's continuing on now, still in her 90s, she is so important to the students, so important to the other teachers, so important to the families of the students, that she said, I've never thought that this could be one of the best times of my life. And if my husband could see me now, he would be so proud, and my kids are proud, and I'm grateful. And I thought, wow, if you can go from not wanting to live to the best time of your life by making a choice of what older could look like like, Sign me up.

Joshua Johnson: 30:18

That's purpose there. That's giving back, that's connecting with with people, there's adapting to the change of loss, you know, giving of time and energy, like giving back, like all of these, these aspects, all, all of them together,

Kerry Burnight: 30:35

exactly. And I do notice that, like so often, when somebody starts on one. Area. It ends up all four of those. And I love you touched on purpose. And I think of purpose within the giving domain. And there's research out of UCLA by Steven Cole looking at the epigenetics of purpose. And epigenetics is how genes are expressed. So you can think of genes as a piano keyboard. Just because you have a gene for something, it's just having the piano key. It's only when the gene is expressed, where you press the piano key, and what he he looked at a whole bunch of different variables of what might predict certain genes being expressed, and he kind of threw purpose in there, as you know, like, well, maybe it ended up being one of the very top variables, and that is people who expressed that I have a purpose for my life had lower inflammation and higher antiviral response than those who didn't. Once you control for all other variables. So scientifically, if we could bottle purpose in a tablet, it would be the next ozembic. But instead, purpose is something that doesn't cost anything except your work and your decision that you are going to serve. So the first step is, how can I get outside of myself, and how can I serve others? And that mindset shift is the powerful change to sort of launch you toward your purpose.

Joshua Johnson: 32:10

Yeah, and I'm thinking of some people that I know that have retired and saying my purpose was my work, whatever I was doing, and how I'm retired, and they're trying to figure out what's next. What is my my purpose? Do you have any advice for people that are trying to discover what's next for them, knowing that it's not just your career, but there's something greater and bigger as a purpose? How do we start to discover that when

Kerry Burnight: 32:37

things say that? So in my book, Joy span, I created a lot of joy practices and a lot of inventories because like so that we can do the work. And one of the inventories I have that pertains to purpose starts with curiosity, and curiosity can be a little catalyst of huh, where, where might I dive in in in this new phase of life. And so you go through and you just, there's all these different things of, you know, photography or coding computers or interior design or children or people with disabilities or atmospheric pressure. I mean beer brewing. I mean there's just endless. So once you kind of let yourself without judging, without thinking, How will I implement this? Just what sparks my curiosity? So you go through the inventory, and then anything that you can think of, there are people and groups and organizations and all these wonderful ways to connect with other people who are interested. And so one, for example, online, is called meetup. It's just a group of people who meet up like, hey, let's meet up, and we'll talk about books from the 16th century. There's just so many meetup groups. And also, you know, there are things at our libraries and churches and community centers and hospitals, and if it doesn't exist, and you've identified a curiosity, you can be the one to start that. And I've seen so many people start things up, and you start with just one other person, and like before you know it, you started this whole you know thing where people all over the place are in the bird watching club, and then making friendships and then maybe donating money to do a, you know, bird sanctuary preserve like it's all tiny, tiny starter

Joshua Johnson: 34:28

steps as we're aging early on, I think hobbies are really important to to to start and to know where your cure curiosity leads you. What is going on. I know so many people that it's just work is 100% of their life, and then a little bit for their family, and then they're done. They don't even know who they are. And so how do we start early having this sense of curiosity.

Kerry Burnight: 34:56

I know I don't have what the word should be, but I have a dream that the word hobbies could be elevated to something else, because my sense is that hobbies feels like, Yeah, this is a hobby. Like it's not important or something, but it's actually like life projects or, you know, they matter so much, because that's what the spark of life and again, at your funeral, they're probably not going to say, Wow, Carrie was so great in insurance sales, but they're going to say, oh, man, she used to carve these things. Or she would get out and tap dance over in the in the back of her garage. Or she would have kids come into. Her thing, and she would read them stories, like, if they're the hobbies are your life, these life projects, and I think kind of like, we need to kiss a lot of frogs. So I have a dream of being able to play the guitar. And so I purchased a really crummy, inexpensive guitar, and I had a friend for free teach me some chords, and every time I would look back, my fingers would move, and I was just horrible at it. And so it's like, okay, don't, don't think you're not musical. You just okay. That was step one, okay, maybe your fingers have a little bit of an issue. Like, let's try a different musical instrument, or let's try something different. But at least, like, I hear that you want to do music, maybe you could keep Kissing Frogs until you get one that sticks. I love that.

Joshua Johnson: 36:34

So good, you know. Because I think a lot of people, they try something and go, Oh, this isn't for me, they give up entirely, and they don't kiss more frogs and be

Kerry Burnight: 36:43

bad at something like the only way I think being darn awful at something is a great, great thing for older us to be because we get in a job, you get kind of like, Oh, I know how to do this. La, la, la. And to get to that beginner's mindset again, sometimes doesn't feel that good, but I think it is really good for us to stink at things.

Joshua Johnson: 37:07

Some people their hobby into their life project. They want to hike, be in nature, be very active. When mobility issues start to hinder that and they're having something else. How do we cultivate joy without mobility. What does that look like?

Kerry Burnight: 37:24

What a good question, because so often we equate, we can't help but equate like, you know, I, for example, used to run marathons and talk about like, releasing some good mojo when you run that far and your face is caked with salt, you really feel great after you suffer. And so then, after my knees gave out, which one's knees give out? You do? You think, oh, I can't run. And actually, my running group was my social group. So I met with the girls every morning. We talk about everything. So I didn't have the feel good hormones. I didn't I was left out of the social group, and I didn't feel very accomplished. So the reality is to go again, make yourself say you did that. Lucky. You You got there was a time where your knees did not hurt all the time, and that time is past. So thank you that you had it. What's next? And so then you go the pool. There are pools all over the place, and there are people in pool that you can get to be friends with. And if there isn't a class, you could start one walking. Walking is terrific. My mom, who's 96 can no longer walk, and that's her big transition for her, because, you know, she started with running, couldn't run, then with walk, couldn't walk like so it's get used to it, right? There's going to be changes, and that's why your inside becomes even more important and you're outside because our inner richness of our depth and our humility and spirituality and humor and love of music like these, inside things become even more important because we are going to lose some of the outside stuff regardless of all that we Do and so like when it comes go, Yes, I can no longer play pickleball, and that is a shame. Now, what? What's next?

Joshua Johnson: 39:30

It's cultivation of adaptability and being adaptable. And I find you know, there are some people that really as one of their strengths, adaptability is very low on their strengths. They want consistency. They want the same. Yes, it is. They get that. And so for people that have low adaptability and that they get very frustrated when there's change, and because when we age, there's going to be lots of change, what are some of the practices that you have laid out to help people with that change?

Kerry Burnight: 40:05

Yes, one of them is cultivating humility. And sometimes that's a tough pill to swallow, because, again, like you said, our society, it preaches independence, which is actually a myth. In fact, we are interdependent, so we have always needed people, and we will always need people, and that makes us human. And there's a book that I love that I didn't write, called the dilemma of dependency, and the author talks about we as humans. We love to have that. Feeling of like I'm the one helping you, and it feels good to me to help you, which there's nothing wrong with it, but there's also something beautifully to be said for accepting help, because it makes that other it gives that other person that feeling of feeling good. So so often people will say, like, I don't want to be a burden on my kids. I don't want my kids to help me. I don't want whatever. If you really think about it, there is a gift that you're giving to your children and to others to say, thank you. Thank you very much for you know, maybe I'm not driving anymore and you're offering that you would drive me to the supermarket. What if, instead of saying, like, I'm so mad and rigid and I love to drive, and I should be able to drive, and I'm mad at you for taking, you know, thinking I can't drive, instead of, what if we just said, Thank you for driving me to the market, you know? And just like trying to think, are we actually being humble? Because Humility is a softener of people, and a softener to say, yeah, things have changed, and I'm not different than anybody else, and I shouldn't think I'm different than anybody else. I'm going to get sickness, I'm going to get mobility limitations, I'm going to lose my spouse. Yes,

Joshua Johnson: 42:03

one of the things I learned is I worked with with refugees, war refugees in the Middle East for a long time. Wow. And when I go in into a place, I want to help, I want to give. I want to help. I want to give hospital. I want to give hospitality to other people, but one of the things that I learned is that I need to receive their hospitality. I need to be dependent upon war refugees that don't have much at all, but they have such a greater purpose, and there was a bigger connection when I received hospitality, and it was a hard lesson for me, because I'm I'm an independent I want to help. I want to I want to do the work for other people. I don't want anybody to do it for me. And so receiving hospitality is a huge, huge thing that we don't think about, especially Americans. And so I just, I even want to redefine what hospitality looks like, which is receiving it from others and not just giving it and making everything you know perfect in your home, but actually being a good guest with people

Kerry Burnight: 43:15

that's so beautiful, absolutely, absolutely, and I work with a lot of adult children of aging parents, and that mindset shift that you just alluded to would make all the difference, because adult children want to rush in and they want to fix the situation, and they want to You can't, you can't do this, or you're doing that wrong. Let me help. Let me, you know, like, take the phone out of somebody's hand and say, I'm going to do it for you. And so what you talked about is humbling ourselves to say, like, well, let me, let you. Can Help Me too. So I have a patient who lives with Alzheimer's disease, and Alzheimer's disease takes a lot, and it doesn't take everything. And so our most rewarding interactions are when I bring her my authentic problems, and I'll say, you know, I'm having a challenge with, let's say, one of my adult children, who maybe is doing something in a way different than I think they should like. What would you do in this situation? And this friend, she recently this week, she said, You know, I think maybe what you need to do is you need to zip it up. And I thought, wow, amid living with a disease process, she gave me the exact advice that I needed, and I did need to zip it up, and she was right. And so like she felt great about giving me advice, but I felt great taking the advice that I really needed to do and and it worked. I just not your not, not your rodeo.

Joshua Johnson: 44:58

That's good. That's really good. Carrie, if you could talk to your readers that pick up Joy span, what hope do you have for the readers of joyspan?

Kerry Burnight: 45:06

Yes, so my hope for each of you as readers is that you could put yourself on a path to longevity that is one that will enable you to thrive all life long. I'd love you to change your fear into hope. I'd love to change your shame about aging into acceptance and in doing so, I think we could really change the way that society. Sees older people, and I think it has to start with ourselves. Like, you know, like othering is saying, Oh, those old people. We aging humans. We are all aging. And 100 year old is in the inside, the very same as a 20 year old, just with more experience. So my dream is to make older better, one person at a time.

Joshua Johnson: 46:06

Amen. That's a great dream. Let's make it happen. Carrie a couple really quick questions at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?

Kerry Burnight: 46:16

I would tell her to relax. Yay. You know, you got a lot of time, and there'll be a lot of ups and a lot of downs. You don't need to white knuckle it so much, you know, open your hands up and like, ah, that would have been, that would have been better for her.

Joshua Johnson: 46:39

That's good. That's good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.

Kerry Burnight: 46:43

That is a great question. When you are in a book launch period, you don't get to read or watch much of anything else, so you get really kind of insular. But what comes to mind is a book that I really, really, really love and recommend, which is called write a must read. And it is for anybody who has any interest in writing a book. I think that is a nice thing to do in our later years. And the book is primarily for people who are writing non fiction books like I did, but it really every step of the way. It helped me in like, how do you get started? How do you how do you do it? The author I've gotten to know a little bit because I took a writing class with her, and her name is AJ Harper, and she is such a kind and good and brilliant soul. So I love the book, right? Or must read,

Joshua Johnson: 47:43

excellent. Well, Joy span is available anywhere books are sold. It's a fantastic read, you know. And for me, working with, you know, aging people, or me as somebody that wants to cultivate joy in my life, so that when I I am aging, I could actually give and connect and adapt and grow and become a person that has a long Joy span in my life. This is a fantastic book, so people should go and read the book and get the book and buy a bunch of copies for your friends and your family and everybody. Carrie is there anywhere else that you would like to point people to?

Kerry Burnight: 48:23

Well, I want to tell you that I think you're really positioned for a long Joy span. Joshua, so you've got good news. And yeah, I would just point people to the recognition that there's a lot out there ahead, and that the older you is spectacular, and what you're doing today, at age 30, at age 40, at age 70 is what predicts what older you is going to be like. So So dive in.

Joshua Johnson: 48:55

Excellent Kerry, thank you for this conversation. I really enjoyed it. The joy that you have exudes from you, and I just, yeah, I pray that it actually gets into other people, that they can just dive into these practices to help them cultivate a better life as they age, as they grow, that all of this, This joy leads into longevity, leads into health, and we can actually have some interdependence and some intergenerational connection with people, to value people as they go through an aging process, because we're all in the aging process ourselves. So thank you, Carrie, it was fantastic.

Kerry Burnight: 49:37

Very much. Yeah, God wants that for us, and I really appreciate the work you're doing, and this shifting culture podcast means so much. Thank you. You.