Positive Ageing: You’re Not Too Old, and It’s Not Too Late (Ilene Berns-Zare, PsyD)

Ilene Berns-Zare, Psy.D is the author of Positive Organisations: Mindful, Compassionate Leadership with a Coaching Mindset, a Positive Psychology Centre white paper published by the Positive Psychology Guild. She has recently published a book titled, You’re Not Too Old, and It’s Not Too Late: Weekly Inspirations for Meaning, Mindfulness, and New Possibilities at Mid-Life and Beyond.

What (or who) inspired or motivated you to write this book?

This is a book I’ve wanted to write for a long time. Inevitably, we’re all getting older every day, whether we pause to think about it or not. At the same time, the changing seasons of our lives are filled with abundant joys and challenges. The writing of this book became an opportunity to share some of this journey with others with an understanding that midlife into older adulthood offers ongoing opportunities to navigate our full potential for happiness, meaning, and new possibilities. 

As I write in the book, “Navigating midlife and beyond in the 21st century is not the same story as for our parents’ generations. New understandings in ways people live are inviting us to reimagine our ideas about getting older.” Our thoughts about possibilities and perceived limitations can influence whether we’re aging with greater well-being or not. Even subtle shifts in mindsets, in how we understand our wellbeing and performance can empower us toward greater flourishing, vibrancy, and fulfillment.

Navigating the second half of life can feel like walking through unknown territory without a map. My hope is that You’re Not Too Old, and It’s Not Too Late offers readers an empowering, research-inspired companion –- with easy-to-navigate stories, invigorating ideas, and practices — that can help us discover transformative new possibilities to make the most of our lives.

Why is resilience important to cultivate as we journey through life?

I’ve come to understand, via recent research, my own life’s journey, and what I’ve learned from others, that life’s path calls on us repeatedly to get back up when we fall. Life invites us to face our vulnerabilities and to learn from our mistakes and life’s vicissitudes as we go forward.

Ready or not, the many seasons of my own life have been filled with opportunities to notice my vulnerabilities. When I started writing, I knew I needed to include this tenuous part of my own journey in the book. And yet, I continue to learn with each year that, as I write in the book, we do not have to be superheroes to re-envision how we engage with the process of growing older. While not ignoring the challenges of life’s changing seasons, we can learn to embrace opportunities and possibilities to redefine the second half of life and how we engage with it, whatever life serves up.

And it’s important to note that resilience skills are learnable – any of us can develop and strengthen our resilience muscles. There’s an abundance of resources available to inspire people to learn about resilience and practice it, and my book offers some of these.

How can becoming more mindful and grateful help people to age well?

Our lives unfold moment by moment, whether or not we notice. Compelling research links mindfulness with positive emotions, compassion, and overall wellbeing. Obviously, these components of a life well-lived are important for young folks, mid-lifers and as we grow older into what I like to think of as wisdomhood.

Mindfulness and gratitude are discussed multiple times in my book. Cultivating mindfulness can help us navigate our day-to-day life with greater awareness, inner balance, calm, and effectiveness. And some of the good news is that mindfulness doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It’s like a muscle that we can exercise and, with practice, we can engage in brief mindful moments in our daily lives.  For example, pausing briefly to notice the breath or another anchor when we awaken in the morning, as we sit down for a meal, or step outside at the end of the workday.

And gratitude relates to mindfulness. A moment of gratitude can be as simple as pausing to notice and be thankful for even a tiny aspect of our lives – like gratitude for a great piece of chocolate or a gentle conversation with a friend.

On a personal note, writing the chapter in the book on gratitude was a mindful and beautiful experience for me, truly filling my heart with an abundance of positive emotions. I included a story about my high school music teacher, who was one of the most important people in my life from the time I met her as a striving high school student until well into my adulthood as she became a lifelong friend.

In part, some of the strengths I’ve been able to develop in my life were among the gifts of my relationship with her. She was a kind, supportive person that truly saw the heart of who I was and my potential. She helped me cultivate a sense of meaning in my life and encouraged me to explore my strengths, including perseverance and a deep love of learning. When I think of her, I continue to be filled with thankfulness and gratitude –- she believed in me and took the time and energies to inspire me to learn and believe in myself. 

What role might strengths and learning play in a mid-life awakening?

This is such an important question. I write in the book that each decade of our lives can offer us rich opportunities to not only take in new information, but also to invigorate our understandings, perceptions, and discernments about ourselves and the layers of communities in which we live. Our adventures with learning in midlife and beyond can broaden and deepen our potential, and our experiences, choices, and the lenses through which we see the world. 

And what about learning not only from our successes, but also from failures, difficulties and setbacks? For example, using the strength of curiosity to learn more about something we want or need to know, engaging in the strength of teamwork to learn or accomplish a task or goal. Another example is leveraging the strength of kindness to help others in need or to reach out when times are tough.

Is there anything else you want to add?

While there are no magic formulas, resilience, renewal and flourishing are nourished with inspiration, information, resources and action. In each season of our lives, we can be active participants in choosing how we respond to the joys and challenges we face. I hope readers of my book will gain some new insights and consider adding some new practices to their life skill toolboxes. I hope that they will feel invited to re-examine their assumptions about the process of growing older and to tap into their inner strengths, embrace greater meaning, and discover transformative “aha” moments that spark renewal and moments of happiness and new possibilities. I hope this book invites readers to consider the idea that some of the best chapters of their lives may still lie ahead. 

Each day is precious and each moment offers new possibilities. Ultimately, our lives are filled with choices, whether intentional or unintentional. This reader-friendly book offers transformational concepts to explore and experiment with in the process of shifting from a mindset of inevitable decline toward greater empowerment, meaning, mindful well-being, and a fuller life at any age.

About Ilene Berns-Zare

Ilene Berns-Zare, Psy.D. is a life and leadership coach, psychologist, educator, and author who helps people navigate their lives with resilience, meaning, mindfulness and well-being, including the adventures of adulthood and growing older. She is the author of You’re Not Too Old, and It’s Not Too Late: Weekly Inspirations for Meaning, Mindfulness, and New Possibilities at Midlife and Beyond (MSI, 2025).

Ilene writes the monthly blog Flourish and Thrive for Psychology Today. She is an adjunct faculty for Georgetown University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership and a facilitator for the Wise Aging program, a national initiative. Connect with Ilene on LinkedIn.