What does 'feeling younger' really mean?

"In my head, I feel like I’m in my twenties”

Frequently in my interviews with people in midlife, I've heard this kind of statement. I, too, “Feel young" in heart and mind - and I've heard it countless times from friends. Without further explanation, we intuitively ‘get’ what it means.

Doing my research in The Midlife Project, I’ve started wondering what, exactly, it does mean. If so many people in midlife say they feel twenty or thirty years younger in their minds, is the phrase even valid? It seems to be used part-proudly, part-guiltily: Perhaps we’re not ‘supposed to’ feel this way, but it appears to us that we’re different to how people of our parents’ generation were at the same age.

Trying to explain it, my interviewees told me they don’t plan to start ‘dressing old’, that they see younger years as a ‘good time’ in their lives and - perhaps most importantly - that they still feel alive, curious, with a lot of life left to live. Those in midlife seem to have fully adopted a social construct of what a certain age represents, while at the same time not agreeing with it when it comes to themselves. Ironically, it seems to apply to enough people to make the attitude mainstream, suggesting a rather flawed construct.

Science suggests we should keep ‘feeling younger’: A recently published 3-year longitudinal German study[1] of people aged 40 and over found that having a younger subjective age acts as a buffer against stress and can improve health while we age. The study didn’t examine what the individuals felt that their subjective age meant, however.

But if “not feeling your age” means living life more fully, feeling open, curious and wanting to have new experiences – and perhaps still feeling that you don’t know it all despite your years: why do we label that ‘young’? In my interviews with people in midlife, they also note that because they have life experience, they don’t care as much about what others think about them. At the very least, they're more aware of and better able to navigate any worry about social judgement. This gives them a greater sense of freedom than before and it's something they relish.

These ‘young minds’ are perhaps more able to feel ‘young’ because of their years of experience and the ability to leave some of the anxieties of youth behind. They are, perhaps, in reality not really “younger” at all, but instead exciting, confident and free midlife minds.

[1] American Psychological Association. (2021, May 6). Feeling younger buffers older adults from stress, protects against health decline. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 17, 2021 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210506163628.htm