S10 E209 - Mindset Is Everything

Does age really dictate what we can and cannot do? In this episode of Next Steps for Seniors: Conversations on Aging, host Wendy Jones sits down with Chris Moore—certified Aging in Place specialist, owner of Senior Remodeling Experts, and author of Age Out Loud. Together, they explore the profound impact that mindset has on the aging process and why "old" is truly just a state of mind.

Chris shares incredible, real-life stories that will change the way you view your later years, from an 82-year-old setting records on the Appalachian Trail to a 100-year-old who still plays tennis every day. He also opens up about his own journey through personal tragedy, offering a powerful testament to choosing joy, gratitude, and purpose even in the darkest of times.

Whether you are navigating the aging process yourself or caring for an elderly loved one, this episode will inspire you to redefine retirement, break free from self-limiting beliefs, and start "aging out loud."

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The Power of Mindset: Why society's "anti-aging" movement misses the mark and how our beliefs shape our physical reality.
• Inspiring Stories of Vitality: Meet Dale "Gray Beard" Sanders and other seniors who are defying the odds and breaking records.
• The "Two Wolves" Metaphor: How to consciously choose between the positive and negative cultural perceptions of getting older.
• Choosing Joy Through Grief: Chris shares a deeply personal story about the loss of his wife and how he found the strength to focus on gratitude.
• Debunking Retirement Myths: Why we are inherently designed to be creative, and how to find purpose, volunteer, and pay it forward in your later years.

Resources & Links:

• Chris Moore’s Book: Get your copy of Age Out Loud on Amazon or visit ageoutloudbook.com
• Chris Moore’s Podcast: Listen to Aging in Place is a Team Sport on your favorite podcast platform.
• Learn More About Next Steps for Seniors: Visit nextsteps4seniors.com
• Have questions or topic suggestions? Call us at 248-651-5010.

Podcast Schedule: Tune in to Next Steps for Seniors with new episodes dropping twice a week at 7:00 AM!

• Every Tuesday: Educational and insightful content to help you navigate the practical steps of aging.
• Every Friday: Spiritual and emotional support to encourage your heart and mind.

Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, IHeart Podcasts so you never miss an episode, and if you enjoyed today's show, please leave us a rating and review!

Learn more : https://omny.fm/shows/next-steps-4-seniors-with-wendy-jones

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is Next Steps for Seniors with your host, Wendy Jones. Each week, Wendy brings resources and information to help guide you through those next steps with elderly parents and loved ones. If you have questions or topic suggestions, you can call us at 248-651-5010.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hello and welcome to Next Steps for Seniors Conversations on Aging. I am your host, Wendy Jones, and so blessed to be here today with another podcast host and teacher. He is also an author. He is a certified aging in place specialist and owner of senior remodeling experts, Chris Moore.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Chris, I think you need a few more things for me to talk about before we're I've just got way too much free time on my hands, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yep. You sit on the couch and eat bonbons. I already know it. So our our topic today is mindset is everything. And going back, um, you know, doing what we do every day, next steps for seniors here, working with families, working with our aging population. I have truly learned over the course of time that age is irrelevant. It's really mindset. And I've talked to 50-year-olds that act like 90-year-olds, and I've talked to 90-year-olds that have passed me on the marathon, on the marathon run. So you just don't know. But I'll tell you, I love our topic today, Chris. And your podcast is called Aging in Place is a Team Sport. So you and I think very similar in the way we look at this aging process. And that's why we're having this program today for you. So, listeners, because mindset is everything. People, the difference in how people age begins with mindset. I'm a true believer, and I know you are too, Chris. Yeah. So inspire us a little bit because you've got some stories of people that have really affected your life that you've seen as far as amazing things that they've done at an older age.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Right. Well, let me start with when I when I came out with my book, my first thought for a title was old is not a four-letter word. And then I found out there are already half a dozen books with that title uh in the marketplace. So I uh decided to do something else. But the more that we recognize and start paying attention, we see often very subtly how age has been defined and has been shaped in the minds of many people and in our cultural narrative in such a way that it's viewed as a very negative thing. People don't want to think about getting older, they don't want to get older, they don't, you know, want any part of it. And there's this whole what's called anti-aging movement, which is very hilarious, really, because it's not anti-aging at all, it's anti-the appearance of aging. We're going to spend millions of dollars to make ourselves look younger and hardly pay attention at all to how we believe we are functioning at the age that we are. So I will now answer your question. So um one of the most inspiring people that I have personally met, and I have an interview with him at the back of my book, he's a man by the name of Dale Sanders. He goes by the trail name of Greybeard, and he is currently on a quest to uh reacquire the Guinness Book of World Records for the oldest person to have through hike the Appalachian Trail. And he had that record when he was 82. And this wow, you are serious. This young whippersnapper named Nimble Will Nomad came along and took it away from him at 84. And now he is um more than halfway done with getting it back, and he'll be 91 when he finishes. And I had the opportunity to meet him on McAfee Knob, which is very close to where I live. It's the most photographed spot on the AT, and met him there one morning and uh was able to get an interview with him and hike with him for about four and a half miles. And um at one point he said, You can you can go in front. And then a few minutes later, he said, We're going downhill. You can go a little faster.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I love it. I absolutely love it. This is inspiring because, yes, this man said, I'm gonna do this, and guess what? He is doing it.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yes, yes. Um, and then I've got um I've got some customers I was interviewed on the local TV station about my book, Age Out Loud. And the uh reporter asked me, Do you have do you know anybody that I could talk to that might be kind of a poster child for aging out loud? And so I thought of this couple. I had put a wheelchair ramp in for them a few years ago, and the man told me at the time, he said, you know, the only reason I need this ramp is because my kids gave me this really nifty four-wheel wagon, and I can, you know, bring the groceries into the house um, you know, with my wagon. And at the time he was 96 and he was still playing tennis and swimming every day. And he's now 100 years old. His wife is 97, and they interviewed uh both of them for the for the TV station. And uh his his wife said, When all of our children retired, it occurred to me the for the first time that maybe we might be getting old.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

I love this. This is exactly what we're here for. It right, because when you see, when you when you hear the word old, you're up the first thing you think is that's not me. Absolutely not me, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah. Well, and one of the things I do when I'm speaking to groups is I will take a flip chart and I'll you know write the word old at the top and I'll say, tell me, you know, tell me what comes to mind. And it's very interesting in different crowds and different groups what words end up on that on that paper. Because one perspective is the word old brings up feelings of weak, tired, sick, um, unable to you know fill in the blank, lonely, isolated, lonely, isolated, yes, um, all of that. The other side of the of the ledger, if you will, would be wise, would be experienced, would be knowledgeable, would be uh a source of great wisdom and understanding. Exactly. And we get to choose which one of those two perspectives we're going to hold on to. There's an old um Native American uh uh uh illustration that says inside of every person there are two wolves. There's one that is evil and there's one that is good. And the young man says to the elder, well, which one will prevail? And he says, Whichever one you choose to feed.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

It's the same way with mindset, it's which of those perspectives we choose to feed. When my wife Barbara died of lung cancer in July of 22, she was 55 years old, and I was devastated. And in the weeks and months that followed, and I was trying to find some solid ground under my feet, and one day I was walking by the river and I had a memory, and the memory was this that when we first got married in 1989, four months later, she went in the hospital with encephalitis. She was 22. She lost her vision. She lost her vision, she had seizures, she lost her speech, she didn't know who I was. She told me later, I knew I liked you, but I couldn't figure out who this man was. It kept coming to see me in my hospital room.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

And I didn't know anything about encephalitis at the time, but since then I've, you know, I learned that it is quite often fatal. And for those who do recover, they typically lose all their short-term memory. And so what came to me that day on the river was that if someone had told me at that time she's not going to die at 22, she's going to live for 33 more years.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Right. That would have been incredible to know ahead of time.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

That would have I would have been ecstatic. Uh-huh. And so I had a choice. I got to choose whether I'm going to be ecstatic for the 33 years we had together, or I'm going to be broken and melt into a puddle on the floor and stay there because she died at 55.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Exactly. It has everything to do with how you're looking at that situation. And Henry Ford said, there's a quote if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. And this is exactly why you and I are here today to have this conversation. Because at the end of the day, if you think you can't get in your car, why in the world do you think you'll be able to do it? Because you've already set yourself up for not being able to do it. And there's a scripture verse in the Bible, just to, and I don't know the exact verse, but it's to the intent of your thoughts become your words and your words become your actions. So at the end of the day, how a man thinks is how he is. So I just want to encourage our listeners right now, this is an opportunity to really look at your situation and say, what am I struggling with and how am I thinking about it? Because 100%, according to Chris, myself and many other people have been through this before. Chris had a choice. He had a choice when his wife passed away how he was going to look at that situation. But you were blessed, you were thankful for the amazing number of years you did have with your wife. Instead, you turned, right, lemons into lemonade. And we all have that opportunity to do that as we age and embrace this time and not be fearful of it. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to hear some more stories and inspiration. Stay tuned. You're listening to Next Steps for Seniors Conversations on Aging. Welcome back to Next Steps for Seniors Conversations on Aging. We are blessed to have Chris Moore with us, and our topic is mindset is everything. And I'm loving this discussion because, you know, Chris was an owner of a remodeling company. I'm blessed to be an owner of a placement company. And we both work with seniors and families every single day. And there's times I pick up the phone and I could be talking to a very, very young person in their, I would say early 60s. Yes, I called early 60s young. And they could be telling me all the problems they're running into in their in their home and they need to move into an independent living. Five minutes later, I could be on the same phone with a different person who's 96 years old, having the exact same conversation. And you know what I've learned is we don't ask age anymore. We ask about their mental state. Where are they at? What can they do? What physically can they do? So these are the topics we're talking about today. And Chris, I wanted to start with this question to you. We can make all the right decisions in our lives and still things can happen. How would you encourage anyone who's gone through a situation that's been tough like that?

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah. Well, you know, my wife's cancer diagnosis is an is a great example. I mean, people get in car accidents every day. People's lives are snuffed out way too young, over and over and over and over, often through no fault of their own. And we are often left in the aftermath trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces. And the the fact, whatever the fact is, a cancer diagnosis, an automobile accident, a wonderful day at the beach. It doesn't matter what the fact is, it has two aspects. It has a positive and a negative. There's no such thing as a one-sided coin. There's no such thing as a one-sided piece of bread. There's no such thing as a one-sided life experience. No matter how devastating and how cruel and how crushing the experience is that you have been through, you can find a positive aspect. You can find lessons learned. You can find something to be grateful for in the midst of your trauma and your pain. And finding that thing to be grateful for is like a key that opens the door to start living again.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

It's life-changing. It is absolutely life-changing. And we have a decision to choose joy in situations. And that's the words that came to me as you were talking. Choose joy. I choose joy today in this turmoil, right? And there's no testimony without a test. So we many, many, many people are going through it in different scenarios. But, you know, in my personal journey in my life, what I found is just leaning on my prayer time and my meditation with God has been life-changing for me because I'm on this journey, but I can't do it alone. And like you said, other people coming around you and inspiring you is what is gives you hope, right, for the future. So I appreciate and love that. There was another saying that you and I had talked about offline about someone said to you once, you've only got 12 good years after retirement to travel. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_02 15:05

Yeah, that was actually that was actually a column, uh, a column on Substack that um uh made that point. And I made a comment on that um article and said that I respectfully disagree. And if that's your if that's your attitude, that's probably what you're going to get. But we all have the opportunity to live much longer and much fuller than maybe we think we do. There are there are five areas in the world called the blue zones where people routinely live to be over 100 years old. Actually, I have heard about this. Yeah. And so that being when you see that and you recognize that possibility, then it opens the door for you to believe and to change your mindset about what's possible. There's a story in my book about Roger Bannister. Roger Bannister was the first human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. Back in the early 50s, it was widely known in academic circles that this was an impossible feat. There were articles written, there were medical journals written that said it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. Their heart would explode and it just it just couldn't be done. But Roger Bannister must not have read those articles because one day he ran a mile and 359 in some hundredths of a second. And there you go. But what's interesting about that, how long do you think he held that world record?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

I'm assuming a long time.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

Less than two months. Because everybody got inspired within a year, dozens, maybe not dozens, many world-class runners broke his record. Why? Because they saw that it could be done, and therefore they believed it was possible. As long as they believed it was impossible, agreed it was impossible for them, your body and your mind will never consistently act in opposition to your beliefs.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

That is that is so incredible, like critically important what you're saying right now. Our our mind and our brains is such a powerful tool. And and we have the ability, like you just said, to make a difference based upon those thoughts, right? We talked about earlier. Thoughts become your words, words become your actions, and now all of a sudden you think you can do it, and guess what? You're doing it. I love it. This is so inspiring for so many people.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

And we were created in the image and likeness of God. That's crazy. The first thing that God told us about Himself, the very first verse in the Bible, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. When you meet somebody for the first time, the first thing you tell them about yourself is what you think is most important in that situation. So God, the first thing he told us about himself was that he's creative. Amen. The first thing he didn't tell us wasn't that you know he's love and that he's mercy and that he's all the wonderful attributes. He told us that he's creative and that we're created in in his image. So we then are created to create stuff and made to make stuff. And if we're not doing that, then we're not going to feel fulfilled. And that is the problem with what we call retirement, is that we're taught you work 40 hours a week for 40 years so you can live on 40% of your income. And then you just kind of you're just you just rest. I mean, you you work, work, work, work, work so you can sit there and rest. And that feels really good for a couple of weeks. And then you start to feel like, wait a minute, this is a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

I've got more to offer. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Right. And so that that whole idea is really coming under the microscope by a lot of people. A lot of of commentators, a lot of influencers, a lot of people who are uh discussing ideas or are reimagining what the the later parts of life.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And I gotta tell you, this is a true story. I had a client that said they felt like a Ferrari in a garage with the garage door shut. I mean, that that's that feeling of I've got all this power and so much to offer the world, but the garage door is closed and I'm not leaving this garage. And that is exactly the problem, like you just said, with retirement, with aging. We are, we have the mindset, we have the capability. Go out, make a difference, do it. And and I just want to encourage people to pay it forward. Do something fulfilling in your life, a passion maybe that you always had, but were never able to fulfill because you didn't have the time when you were working full time. Whether it's, you know, cancer, whether it's children, whether it's seniors who need more help, this is an opportunity to really give back and imagine if everyone did a little bit of something, the difference we could make in the world today. It's significant.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Amen. Amen. One of the things I like to say is the difficult we do right away. The impossible takes a little longer.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

You've got a lot of wisdom there, Chris Moore. We've got we've got one minute left in our program. What anyone who might just be tuning in, what would you want to close with a takeaway from this program today? It's been very inspiring.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Yeah, I mean, a lot of what we've talked about is in my book. My book is entitled Age Out Loud. Um, it's available on Amazon. Uh, my website is ageoutloudbook.com. And for those that are um interested in aging in place and redefining what their later years look like, uh, you can check out my podcast, Aging in Place is a team sport.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Well, I appreciate you, Chris. I am definitely inspired and motivated. And I know listeners, anyone right now who has been struggling in a certain area or something has come along that you did not see. And I will just tell you 70% of people do need some kind of care as they age. But guess what? It's how we look at that situation. It's all about perspective and all about mindset. So I just want to encourage you, this is an opportunity. It happens to everybody. There's not one person in the world that was created not to age. This is what we all, our physical bodies, were designed to move through life and to one day pass. So I'm just encouraging, make the best of it. You're listening to Next Steps for Seniors, Conversations on Aging. Thank you for being with me, Chris.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Thank you for tuning in to Next Steps for Seniors. Our podcast drops twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays at 7 a.m. Find us on your favorite podcast platform and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To learn more about Next Steps for Seniors, visit us at Next Steps Number Four Seniors.com.