Mindful Aging: Embracing Your Life After 50 to Find Fulfillment, Purpose, and Joy

by Andrea Brandt

Don't let the ominous perception of "aging" - a lack of purpose, feeling irrelevant and under-used, having nothing to do - take control of you and your life.

You have the power to change how you grow older. This book will show you how.

Renowned psychotherapist and aging expert Andrea Brandt, PhD, MFT, helps you throw out the old stereotypes about getting older and move toward the welcoming new evidence that your future is alive with possibility, providing steps to thrive today and into your golden years.

The acclaimed Mindful Aging is full of exercises and tools to help you embrace a new mindset and blaze a new trail in your life fueled by passion, purpose, and creativity. Through research, inspiring stories of real people, and Dr. Brandt's psychological insight, you'll be able to claim the immense joy and love that are yours to have, the deep wisdom that is yours to share, and the exciting self-discoveries and contributions that are uniquely yours to make.

Join the millions who are becoming mindful about aging, and discover the secrets to creating a life that doesn't wane as the years go by. Mindful Aging will forever change how you view - and embrace - your life as you age.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help

217 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Dr. Andrea Brandt is a marriage and family therapist located in Santa Monica California. Andrea brings over 35 years of clinical experience to the role of individual family therapist, couples counseling, group therapy and anger management classes.

Dr. Brandt is a recognized expert in treating a full range of emotional issues, including anger & aggression, anxiety & trauma, aging issues, relationships, work-life balance, workplace, and women's issues.

In her workshops, patient sessions and presentations, Dr. Brandt reveals positive paths to emotional health that teach you how to reinvent and empower yourself. She emphasizes the mind-body-heart connection as a key to mental, physical and emotional wellness.

Upon pioneering a new approach to emotional healing, Dr. Brandt directed her attention to the study of anger management and conflict resolution. In her book 8 Keys to Eliminating Passive-Aggressiveness, Dr. Brandt examines strategies for overcoming a common yet debilitating response mechanism. In her second book, Mindful Anger: a pathway to emotional freedom, Dr. Brandt explores methods to better understand and manage the powerful emotion of anger.

In her third book, Mindful Aging: Embracing Your Life After 50 to Find Fulfillment, Purpose, and Joy, Dr. Brandt challenges you to throw out the old stereotypes about aging, to look at the powerful and inspiring new evidence, and to open yourself to the very real possibilities that exist for you right now. Release Date: October 10, 2017

Reviews

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aimed at the 50+ age group, this is a guide to ensuring that those years are more focused on “Mindful Aging,” than just going through the routines of living as our usual day-to-day lifestyles have been for the years preceding this milestone. I’d say that even though this is aimed at those in the 50+ bracket, there is much that could speak to any age.

”I’d like to approach the self-exploration we’re doing here in much the same way. As you go through the day or mindfully recall other times in your life, what creates joy should jump out at you. Joy’s message is, ‘Choose this! This is true for you!’ When you’re considering who and what to keep in your life as you grow older (and we are all growing older) a key criterion must be what sparks your joy.
“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’ And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’” --Iain Thomas, “The Grand Distraction”

I wish “Mindfulness” was something they had taught throughout school at every age, but it seems even more important these days when everything is so easily available at a push of a button on your phone, which is always by your side, and distractions abound.

Living fully in the moment. Without distractions, without worrying about the past or what lies ahead in your day, or plans for the day, week, year. Of course, we need to focus some of our time on the future minutes, days and years, but in the process of life, rushing around, we rarely take the time to sit and think, or as my grandfather would say, sit a spell and ponder. More’s the pity. In those moments we can gain a lot. Insight, perhaps. Perhaps just a peaceful moment to hedge the tide against the battering rams of our other moments.

There was a fair amount of this that I received more on the surface level than taking it in, but there was also quite a lot of this in the later half that I could really appreciate. Developing a “Higher-Self” Quality reminded me of my recent audio-read of “The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World” with Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama XIV and the author, gatherer of these souls, Douglas Carlton Adams.

”This sentiment was famously expressed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama: ‘My religion is very simple. My true religion is kindness.’ When we think this way, full of intention for engaging with other from the highest part of ourselves living itself becomes a spiritual practice, one that both cataputs our personal growth and increases the meaninfulness we experience in life.”

This includes some helpful insights into the things we tend to dwell too long, or too often, on – pain, illness, loss, anger, and ways to cope and move on from there to positivity. It seems hard to expect someone in pain, or dealing with loss or life-altering illness to embrace positivity, but even focusing some part of the day on what brings you joy can help – keeping in mind, of course, there is a time and a season for all.

I don’t typically read a lot of self-help books, and there was part of this, maybe in tone, that reminded me a bit too much of Marie Kondō’s one-size-fits-all approach, but I still found this to be a worthwhile read.



Published: 10 Oct 2017


Many thanks for the ARC provided by PESI Publishing & Media

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been a year of change for me (healthy eating plan, starting meditation, seriously contemplating a move to another state) so I jumped at the chance to read an arc of this new self-help book written expressly for people over the age of 50 when I found it was available for request on NetGalley. It sounded like it might have something important to add to the changes I have been making in my own life.

The word 'mindful' in the title especially caught my eye as I have been working on mindfulness in my daily meditation practice with the Headspace app (which I highly recommend.) Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment--living fully in that moment and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Andrea Brandt has developed her strategies for mindful aging around a mindset she calls 'realistic positivity.'

Some hard topics she tackles: negative thinking, regrets, breaking bad habits, letting go of what no longer serves you, coping with loss, illness and pain, and embracing your mortality.

And on the positive side: empowering self-talk, creating a vision, living your dreams, having gratitude, being inspired by amazing role models, making essential connections with others, having great sex at any age, enhancing your body, engaging your mind, expressing your creativity, stepping into the unknown, and developing your spiritual side.

Brandt uses the personal life stories of inspiring people she has known to fully illustrate each topic and then she ends the chapter with strategies and worksheet exercises to help the reader delve deeply into their own life situation, hopefully enabling some positive changes.

This is a book I believe I will come back to again and again for inspiration, taking more time with the exercises and being reminded to live in the present moment: "that the real purpose of life is to really live."

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for allowing me access to an arc of this inspiring new book.

[Mark Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there is probably nothing dramatically new in Mindful Aging, it is a well-constructed and insightful guide on how to have a better life for the post-50 set. Brandt's credentials are impressive and she gets to the very heart of the matter quickly—are you happy and what to do if you aren't.

Much of what Brandt focuses on has to do with rebooting your mindset, which strikes me as being useful at any age. The focus is on examining your thought processes, which can often be negative without realizing it, and cultivating and "attitude of gratitude" and more positive attitude. As I said, not the most original ideas, but powerful and generally effective.

The book has a gentle tone, that of a professional listener, and provides numerous examples of people in the later period of their lives who have faced challenges, but who took stock of their needs, wants and expectations and realigned themselves to recreate themselves and their lives. It also offers how-to guides for different aspects, which may be useful for some readers, but likely ignored by the more pragmatic-minded (or skeptics).

Overall, a well-developed and welcome addition to the self-help bookshelves.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mindful Aging is a book full of positive thoughts, idea, and plans of action to make the latter part of one's life just as enjoyable as younger days.

I really enjoyed Brandt's ideas and writing style. It was intimate and was like talking to a friend. She takes obvious things such as taking care of your physical health and combines them with additional actions. This book paints aging in a positive light in a world that wants older people to disappear.

[Moirelyn Jewula · Rating 5 out of 5]

This self-help book is packed with good advice and nuggets of wisdom that teach us in later life how to reinvent ourselves, face challenges, explore new territory and live life like we mean it! Dr Andrea Brandt has solid credentials and is renowned in the field of psychology in which she has worked for many years. The extensive references and additional bibliography cited at the end of the book are testimony to her thorough research.

The main theme coursing through Mindful Aging is that what happens in our body is not separate from our mind. It follows on that our thoughts have a profound impact on our psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing. In which case in order to remain our healthiest and most vibrant, we must enhance our physical health, stimulate our minds and explore latent creative talents. Dr Brandt reveals the building blocks to loving life - diet and exercise, continuous learning, creative exploration, meaningful social engagement, being of service to others and spiritual connection.

As we age, our goals shift away from material success towards aspirations of achieving a meaningful and satisfying life, but how do we do that? Dr Brandt advocates a mindset of realistic positivity, “where we acknowledge the situation we find ourselves in, including its real cause”, then focus on bringing about the change we desire, the vision we have for our lives. She employs various tools and strategies throughout, such as emotional mindfulness, empowering self talk, adopting gratitude as your foremost attitude and letting go of what is no longer serving us - regrets, resentments and faulty thinking patterns, which hold us back from living our best life today. In essence this entails giving forgiveness of ourselves and others, which as everyone knows is much harder than it sounds, but Dr Brandt’s comprehensive exercises talk us through the process. These have to be practised in order to make and consolidate the necessary neural connections to change our behaviour. As Dr Brandt so wisely says, “We’re all on a hero’s journey, but our starting points, our destinations and the dragons we encounter along the way are unique to each of us”.

After we have shed limiting beliefs, we are free to reconnect with our authentic self and can begin to craft a new vision of what is possible for our life, redefining older age for ourselves. Neuroscience has established that our brains remain ‘plastic’, ever changing and able to make new connections throughout life. This means that we can continue to learn and grow until our dying day. Dr Brandt illustrates her points with real life examples of how it’s never too late to realise new dreams.

One topic that she doesn’t shy away from is the role that spirituality can play in our lives. Bearing in mind that research backs up the notion that spirituality can promote wellbeing, linking it with good health and longevity, it is a topic that can resonate with so many different meanings as we grow older. Dr Brandt defines spirituality as subjective, something that is personal to each of us. A spiritual dimension can have different connotations based on a person’s experiences, emotional reactions and judgments, not only via the channel of prayer and main line religion, but some people achieve it through meditation, mindfulness and yoga. Others find spirituality comes from intuition or spending time with nature, but in order to grow spiritually we need to embrace and practice the higher human values and qualities, such as love, kindness, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, joy, generosity, courage and integrity.

For me this is an inspirational book that offers a conduit to pursuing new dreams, a message that we are as capable now as we’ve ever been at enriching our lives with meaning and that we can defy stereotypes of older age by gearing up instead of winding down.

Many thanks to Netgalley, PESI Publishing & Media and to Dr Andrea Brandt for an advance e-copy of the book in return for an honest review.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been thinking a lot about topics related to what I’d call “Healthy Living for Seniors,” which includes nutrition, exercise, positive attitude, and mindfulness. Frankly, I was spinning in circles, so I was particularly pleased to receive a copy of the new book Mindful Aging from PESI Publishing & Media and NetGalley in return for my honest review. The author, Andrea Brandt, a therapist in the Los Angeles area, says she has “… discovered that body-oriented therapy is the most effective treatment available today for people who seek to bring their inner world and external world into harmony…” I expected the book to expand on her thoughts about how a mindset she calls ‘realistic positivity can help the reader interested in incorporating mindfulness to their aging process.

The blurb for the book promised to help me “throw out the old stereotypes about getting older and move toward the welcoming new evidence that your future is alive with possibility, providing steps to thrive today and into your golden years…” with “…tools to help …embrace a new mindset and blaze a new trail …fueled by passion, purpose, and creativity.” Since it also said it was full of tools and exercises, I was hooked, but wary with high expectations.

Some of the chapter headings were particularly intriguing, including topics such as “letting go” (of things that aren’t working), “finding joy,” “expressing your creativity,” and “developing your spiritual side.” Each of the chapters includes the personal life stories of real people to expand on the topic, and then (best of all!) she provides strategies and worksheet exercises to help guide the reader toward a more mindful aging process.

Included along the way are ways to cope with loss, embrace our mortality, deal with anger and/or negative thinking (all of which resonated with me), and become more positive in general.

I found that including the stories and the exercises in each chapter was especially helpful. I’ve read a fair amount on the various topics covered in Mindful Aging, and some of the people wrote in a very “woo-woo” way (too much even for someone from Santa Cruz). This isn’t the case with Dr. Brandt – her style is accessible and the readability is excellent. Five stars.

[Gaby F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great resource for living a fulfilled and meaningful life. I believe no matter how old we are, it is always a good time to work on personal relationships, health, and meaningful activities by contemplating our goals and aspirations. In her book Mindful Aging Dr. Brandt offers a lot of exercises to do just that. Her exercises help us to gain a positive perspective of life, to explore what is important in our lives and makes us happy, and to let go of psychological obstacles that hold us back from fulfilling our dreams. The questions Dr. Brandt asks in her exercises, especially the questions I have never thought of myself, make me slow down and think about what is important to me in my own life. I now want to start a journal to find answers to those questions.
The only chapter I do not fully agree with in this book is the chapter about spirituality. Not every person relies on spirituality to face his or her own mortality. Trying to remedy a lack of spirituality or working on spirituality in the face of death might put unnecessary stress and suffering on some people who are dying, whether they believe in life after death or not. I also think that when we die, we should be allowed to live through all the emotions of anger, pain, loss, and grieve that might overcome us instead of holding these emotions back and staying calm and graceful just for the sake of the people around us. How to prepare for or work through those emotions and finally let go was not addressed in this book.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book is directed to those over 50, it contains practical information that would be helpful to anyone of any age. Andrea Brandt leads the reader in down-to-earth ways of how to examine many facets of your life, and how to make your life more as you would like it to be.

Topics include positivity, dealing with loss, faulty thinking, how to let go of what is no longer serving you and much, much more. One of the things I liked most about this book is that after each section, she gives the reader extremely helpful, insightful exercises to do that will fully bring home the concepts she just discussed. These exercises will definitely help you clarify where you are now, where you want to be, and, best of all, how to get there! The exercises are followed by a section on mindfulness, being fully aware of the moment, and taking in what you have learned from the exercises.

This is a very readable, incredibly helpful, practical book. Kudos to Andrea Brandt, PhD. This book gets 4.5 stars from me!

Many thanks to NetGalley and PESI Publishing for giving me an e-copy of this book to review.

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

It helps that the author of Mindful Aging, therapist Andrea Brandt, is in the same demographic as her audience. Even were that not the case, however, Brandt provides thoughtful advice on how to travel through our later years. Baby-boomers now in their 60s and 70s have a different notion of aging from that of their parents. For many, this "Third Stage" of life is a time of renewal rather than rest. Brandt understands this, and offers a conceptual framework for what's possible, followed by a road map on how to move toward what her readers are passionate about and what sustains us in our later years. Mindful Aging is both thought-provoking and useful, and inspirational and practical.

[Mahesh Kumar Malik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very comprehensive book on ageing and all associated aspects. Very nicely written script. Being interested in the subject, I could relate most of the aspects covered in the book to my life. I am myself in the process of writing a blog for the benefit of 50 plus category of people on how to live quality life in their ageing years. The book had given me some more ideas.

[Patricia Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and full of new ideas this has inspired me to try harder to live a fuller, richer life. Ageing is enriching, not boring, this is challenging but fabulous and the book encourages the reader to think of of the box. To embrace new attitudes, worry less, feel more.

I totally loved it.

[Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

read like one of those sunday afternoon PBS shows....there are much better books on the subject

[Mary-ann Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved certain pointers in it...helps in being positive about aging. A deep and excellent resource.

[Sarah]

This has a fair amount of vague filler language, but if you skip forward some you can get to more useful parts. She had several useful exercises and suggestions, so it was worth it in the end.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be extraordinarily helpful in dealing with my own thoughts and beliefs about aging as I head into my 60's. While some of what she suggests/recommends was already familiar to me, I did find some new ways of looking at things! I especially found helpful the section on letting go of what no longer serves you, and coping with loss. Also, the section on empowering self-talk was important for me. Although I have worked with this concept before, the author presented it in a new and unique way that I am incorporating into my daily life. The section on creativity was helpful as well, as I am a writer and an artist. I hadn't thought before of how these gifts can assist me with the aging process.

[Maryann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindful Aging is a novel that must be read several times in order to make sure that you have taken all the wisdom in this novel and used it to improve yourself and set plans for your future. Be spiritual, have passion and purpose, forgive yourself for anything you might have done wrong in the past, shed self limiting beliefs and never forget that you can always have new dreams for your life. It is never too late. The baby boomer generation would learn so much from this book. I am in my fifties and this novel has been so important to me. It does not show aging as retiring and doing nothing. It shows aging just as the natural progression of our lives that is filled with hope and promise.