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Article:
Better Aging by: Susan Dunn My friend who retired last year from years on Wall Street tells me, 'I have to watch very carefully how I spend my money. I don't know how to do anything.' One of the reasons people find retirement challenging, is also the solution to the problem of better aging: we identify with roles in our lives. Worse than that, we enjoy them. They're what our life is all about or we wouldn't have been doing them in the first place. Now my friend certainly knows how to do things. He can cook his breakfast, he's an attentive father, he knows how to mow the lawn. But to his way of thinking, now that he's no longer a broker, he 'doesn't know how to do anything.' Whether it's being a manager, a doctor, or a mother, a recent study confirms we do best when have control over roles we value, and that this is more important than a sense of control over life itself. ['Role-Specific Feelings of Control and Mortality,' Neal Krause, Ph.D., and Benjamin A. Shaw, Ph.D.; Psychology and Aging, Vol. '15
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