--- title: How Outlook and Social Ties Affect the Way You Age description: Life was easier when it wasn't so long: learn when you're young, work while you're able, then resign yourself to a slow period of repose--and... canonical: https://time.com/4494779/how-outlook-and-social-ties-affect-the-way-you-age/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-15T10:28:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T00:36:57.104Z article:section: Health og:title: How Outlook and Social Ties Affect the Way You Age og:description: Life was easier when it wasn't so long: learn when you're young, work while you're able, then resign yourself to a slow period of repose--and... og:url: https://time.com/4494779/how-outlook-and-social-ties-affect-the-way-you-age/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Outlook and Social Ties Affect the Way You Age twitter:description: Life was easier when it wasn't so long: learn when you're young, work while you're able, then resign yourself to a slow period of repose--and... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # How Outlook and Social Ties Affect the Way You Age > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 15, 2016 10:28 AM UTC  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 15, 2016 10:28 AM UTC Life was easier when it wasn’t so long: learn when you’re young, work while you’re able, then resign yourself to a slow period of repose–and decline. But in the past century, scientific advancements have added decades to the average human life span, leaving a person’s timeline with a long, often aimless tail. Finding rewarding ways to fill these extra years–particularly in ways that emphasize social ties–is the best way to prolong them, research is finding. “The things that we understand now to be important for healthy longevity”–things like connecting with others, a positive outlook, making peace with getting older–“have been trivialized over the years by some scientists. We now know that shouldn’t be the case,” says Paul Irving, chairman of the Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute, a think tank that studies older age. “One of the great opportunities we all have is to continue that search \[for meaning\], that aspiration to do our most enjoyable and important work later in our lives.” Here are other strategies that may help you make the most of your extra years. EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY It’s hard to beat face time, but FaceTime (and the like) can also help older adults feel less alone, research shows. “I think a lot of work can be done to make the existing social networks more accommodating to older adults,” Irving says. LEAN ON FAMILY You can’t choose them, but now you’ll be glad to have them: when people were asked to list up to five of their closest confidants, those who named more family members had a lower chance of dying in the next five years than those who didn’t report such strong family bonds. Unconditional love may play a part, since the same protective effect wasn’t seen for friendships. WELCOME AGING Your feelings about getting older might determine how well you age–and even how well your brain holds up against Alzheimer’s. A team of researchers at Yale University found that when people who thought negatively about aging were simply primed to view it in a better light, they said they felt more positively about aging and even showed improvements in physical strength. LIGHTEN UP What helps a person live to 100–and stay healthy in the process? New findings reveal that the long-lived have a lot in common: being outgoing, open to new experiences, good at sticking to goals and not overly neurotic. Laughing, too, is a key to staying young in old age, research has found. SET GOALS, TAKE RISKS Plenty of research links a sense of purpose to longevity. But how do people search for a purpose if they don’t have one? Take an online course, volunteer, do anything new that challenges you. “The assumption that you should only do one thing in your life, to me, makes no sense,” says Irving. EXPECT THE BEST People with a positive outlook recover better after having a heart attack than those who are more pessimistic, a recent study shows. That’s partly because a hopeful attitude is linked to other healthy behaviors, like quitting smoking and maintaining a healthy diet. 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