Take 10 years off to improve service

Robyn told us the story of her parents, Bob and Helen, who took 10 years off their birth dates – in their passports. Sooo bolshy!

Robyn didn’t know they were 10 years older until she was in her 20s. They were ‘outed’ when she met a friend’s father who insisted he’d been in the same year at school with Bob. He was 10 years older than Bob, so that seemed odd.

Bob confessed he’d taken 10 years off to get a job. Then Helen had decided she’d take 10 years off too, because she didn’t want to appear to be married to a man so much younger than she.

To move overseas, Bob and Helen ‘adjusted’ their passports. They were graphic artists and it was pre computers, so they just took 10 years off and went overseas.

So complete was their view they were 10 years younger, they didn’t think to tell their children.

Nobody ever questioned them. Nobody wondered if they were 10 years older than they said. Bob worked until he was 75 because his bosses assumed he could – they thought he was 65.

There’s lots of research that people 50+ are feeling at least 10 years younger and that’s a good thing.

People — particularly older people — usually say they feel younger than they are. People who report feeling younger actually tend to live longer and healthier lives — and they don’t tend to have as much of a pattern of decline.

So one way to recalibrate our attitudes, perceptions and language to older people, is simply take 10 years off. 

In other words, see the person you are talking with as 10 years younger than they are, because it helps to shift the way you behave and the older person could be healthier for it.