When we think about marketing or its close cousin, advertising, we often think Madison Avenue in New York and the famous TV series, Mad Men, about the men and women who populated the early days of mass marketing and advertising.

That series had liberal doses of sexism in each episode along with heavy smoking and drinking, all of which was perfectly accepted and tolerated back then.

What it didn’t have was any reference or after thought to ageism. It was a time in America when the vast majority were still young and becoming upwardly mobile.

But, as populations began to age, marketers often failed to realize the golden opportunity in front of them.

And, in many ways, they still fail to realize it.

This week on The Art 2 Aging, I talk with veteran marketer and product innovator, Costas Papaikonomou to get his thoughts on where marketing is right now and where it could be heading in a world of older consumers.

Costas ran his own agency, Happen Group, which was acquired by Accenture in 2019, and his clients ranked among the biggest consumer goods companies in the world. That makes his insights noteworthy.

If you are enjoying the content here on The Art 2 Aging, we would love you to become a paid subscriber. It really helps us to continue to generate meaningful information for older adults. Thank you!

In the Gospel of Matthew, we find this statement: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

For many of us older adults, we have been carrying resentments big and small for a long time and the notion of loving those around us can be a tall order at times.

Wayne Lehrer, author of The Art of Conscious Aging, recommends what he calls a reconciliation - a balancing of the scales through which we first forgive ourselves before we can truly love ourselves, and only then do we have the capacity to fully love those around us.

This is the first of Wayne’s Fortune Cookies, as he calls them, for Body and Soul on The Art 2 Aging.

If you are an older adult over 55, there is a good chance you wake up on a Monday morning with aching knees after an active weekend.

Not unusual at all. Fully 25% of adults over 55 have chronic knee pain and if you’re over 75, that percentage rises to 50%.

More and more of us older adults want to remain fit so we might engage in strenuous sports with gusto.

Only to pay the price the following morning.

So do you grab the Tylenol and down a couple with your coffee?

Or do you reach for a new device called Knee Mo (thekneemo.com)?

Well, after you listen to this week’s interview on The Art 2 Aging with one of the creators of Knee Mo, Jenny Hledik, PhD, you might never need Tylenol again!

If you are enjoying the content here on The Art 2 Aging, we would love you to become a paid subscriber. It really helps us to continue to generate meaningful information for older adults. Thanks very much!

This is the first of a new content stream on The Art 2 Aging, called Body and Soul.

Why? Because it’s time we all paid far more attention to our physical and spiritual selves.

James Adams, an instructor in meditation and breathing, will be offering you simple, short meditations on a regular basis.

Janine Agoglia, a yoga instructor, will also be creating yoga content just for us so watch for her yoga content coming soon!

And Wayne Lehrer, author and speaker, will contribute inspiring messages designed to help us find our center in a chaotic world.

Enjoy and be enlightened…

There is one thing that we humans everywhere have in common.

We all dream.

We daydream; we let our thoughts wander off without attempting to control them.

We dream at night when we sleep. Often, we don’t remember our dreams. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we have even dreamt at all.

But, one way or the other, we all dream.

Our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging is Robert Waggoner, author of the best selling book, Lucid Dreaming – Gateway to the Inner Self and his follow-up book, Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple.

Robert explains what lucid dreaming is and offers advice on how to trigger lucid dreams when we sleep.

But the real magic of lucid dreaming is what those dreams can tell us about ourselves, especially as we age.

It’s a remarkable conversation.

Let’s say you have retired – willingly or unwillingly – and you now find yourself with a lot of time on your hands that you never had when you were working and raising a family.

After the initial feeling of “being on holiday” has passed, you feel like the days start dragging by, each day the same as the next, your life becoming unstructured and without direction.

This is not unusual for those older adults who stop what they have been doing for years.

The sense of self vanishes and you begin to struggle with who you now are.

But all the sudden extra time can have a silver lining if you are prepared to do what we might call inner work.

In other words, you can discover another side of yourself – or maybe discover your whole self for the first time – and begin to create something brand new in your life.

It all depends on what you think life is - what it appears to be through your eyes or what you want it to be in your mind’s eye.

Our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging is Dr. Paula Petry, PhD, a cognitive psychologist and trained shaman.

She has created a program called Divine Design Activation which is meant to reconnect an individual with their inner self and allow greater clarity of purpose to open up.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ageism shows up in gyms and fitness classes.

Why wouldn’t it?

Ageism is a prejudice carried in the minds of people. So, if a fitness instructor leans that way, then his or her classes will reflect that in the workout.

“You shouldn’t pick up that big dumbbell. Try the little one, dear.”

Our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging is Erin Eleu, a functional aging specialist, whose mission is to highlight ageism in the fitness world.

But more than that, Erin walks her talk; her own fitness classes for older adults are designed to intentionally challenge internalized ageism, as well.

If you are a regular listener to The Art 2 Aging, then you likely grew up in the 60s, an astonishing time to be young and alive.

First, there was the massive transition in music. Then came the drugs. Alongside the negative aspects of the drug culture, emerged something that we can call New Consciousness, for lack of a better term.

New Consciousness meant exploring the inner depths of one’s self. Transcendental meditation burst into the culture as one popular method and the exploration of the soul was underway.

It was the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” as sung by the Fifth Dimension in 1969.

Transcendental meditation (TM, for short) did not disappear like many of the musical acts from the 60s did; it is still with us along with several other types of meditation.

What this amounts to today is this: a revitalized, even stronger search for the connection between man and God, Source, All That Is – whatever you choose to call it.

TM established scientifically that meditation has profound positive effects on our bodies and minds. The same can be said of all types of meditation.

Our guest this week is James Adams. James is a former broadcast journalist, former Bill Clinton campaign worker and the former V.P. of Marketing for Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Today, James follows a different path and in an open, honest, and forthright way, he explains his past struggles with life and his newfound inner journey with meditation as his companion.