Right in the middle of longtime TV host and reporter Leeza Gibbons’ home page are these words: “Older is the new brave.” Also: “Be fiercely optimistic. That’s where hope lives.” We wanted to find out more about what has motivated this Emmy-winner to become an advocate for embracing life in our 3rd Act. What follows is a Q&A via email with Gibbons, who is also the founder of Leeza’s Care Connection, a support program for caregivers.
“Older is the new brave.” I love the sound of this sentence. Tell us more about what you mean by that. Why does being older call upon us to be brave?
We are typically afraid of the unknown and getting older is a big one. If we don’t face aging with courage, it can threaten to take on too big a role in our lives and deprive us of the present moment. You have to be brave to keep moving forward, not knowing where the path is leading. And yet in many ways, that’s what we do as we get older—we walk into the unknown. Aging is not “lost youth.” We know exactly where those years went. We SPENT them, INVESTED in them, WASTED them or RELISHED them. Either way, they are in the rearview mirror, providing pretty good optics on how we arrived at where we are now. It’s never about what’s “lost” but always about what’s “left” and that is what we make of it.
Fierce Optimism, the title of your 2016 book, is another great phrase. Why do you believe so fiercely in optimism?
Simply put, optimism works. It is a strategic advantage in business and in our personal lives. Ask many of the Fortune 500 leaders and they will tell you that optimism is a key driver of success. It’s that force multiplier that leads to better outcomes without the drama. Optimism gives you a mental competence because optimistic brains are wired in such a way that they can be more adaptable and often come to solutions faster than their negative counterparts. One of my favorite quotes from legendary basketball coach John Wooden is, “Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out.” Optimism comes from the Latin optimus, which means “the best,” so optimism is simply looking for and expecting the best. What we focus on expands. I learned this from my dad, who at age 95 can still re-set and move forward more quickly than anyone I’ve ever known.
And kindness, too. You make a case for being nice, in an era when there’s not always a lot of niceness. Why (and how) is it important that we re-embrace kindness and niceness, especially in our 3rd act of life?
There are benefits to being nice and kind at every age, but in our 3rd act, we can more easily offer those things without expecting something in return. Kindness is not transactional and yet it almost always brings about wins for everyone involved. I think nice needs a rehab. I can usually cut out the crazy and drop the drama and that was my strategy to win Celebrity Apprentice. You can be kind and competitive. My goal was to succeed by allowing other members of the team to shine and be their best. We have almost come to associate niceness with weakness, but it is certainly not. It is a superpower strength and those who are nice are not pushovers. Instead, they provide the backbone for happiness and moving things forward. The things that tend to last—legacies that live on and memories worth recalling—are usually fueled by kindness.
Kindness and courage are at the heart of Leeza’s Care Connection. Tell us about your journey with your mom and why it became so important to you to support caregivers.
When my mother died with Alzheimer’s disease, I had already said goodbye to her mother, my dear granny who also disappeared memory by memory with Alzheimer’s. Everything I learned about caring came from watching my mom do it. Even when Granny was silent and could no longer find words, Mom sang to her, brushed her hair and rubbed lotion on her hands. She would sometimes sit in silence and just witness her transition. We never know how deeply intangibles like our love, our attitude and our kindness can affect a person’s journey.
When my mom started repeating herself and losing her way in the car, when she struggled for words and couldn’t cope with new places, my heart sank with the knowledge of where she was headed. I had to call on my own courage and summon my strength to be there for her and to sustain my own mental and psychological health. I saw our family struggle with feelings of sadness, anger and the frustration of just not feeling seen. We were each coping in our own way and basically going to our respective corners and licking our wounds. My sister got depressed. My brother went into denial, my dad was lost and forlorn, and I hid behind being over-busy. I ultimately created what I wish we’d had—a place where others “got it” because they had stood where we were standing. When I learned that family care-partners often die before their diagnosed loved ones, I knew that was my calling: to care for the caregivers and help them hang on to themselves, even while they are letting go of someone they love.
If you were speaking to an overwhelmed caregiver, what would be your number one suggestion?
Find your own “care crew” and it isn’t always your immediate family. Caring is not a solo sport. In fact, I think it’s impossible to journey alone. You can’t possibly know what you may be facing, but others who have walked the path have invaluable experience, coping techniques, wellness tips, and sanity breaks to help you through. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and you can’t wait until you’re ready to begin. Since I founded Leeza’s Care Connection, I’ve learned a lot about resilience and forgiveness from guests in our communities. I’ve seen family members (like my mom, then my dad) find strength they never knew they had by reaching out and accepting help. I always say caring brings you to a place in life where it makes sense to “stop achieving and start receiving.” There are no gold stars for going it alone. And connecting with others often helps us to find forgiveness for ourselves and others for the inevitable guilt that seems to be a caregiver’s constant companion.
It’s why I created HUGS, (Helping U Grow Strong), a peer-to-peer mentoring system that allows caregivers to self-select the right match to help them through. We designed a proprietary curriculum through virtual or in-person training to harness the innate ability caregivers have to understand. Basically, we validate the universal aspects of their journey that would help others most and instruct them on how to grow their ability to offer support. By learning more about their own personalities and vulnerabilities, our HUGS mentors can be matched with mentees through phone, text, e-mail or in person, or they can simply apply the training to their own families and relationships.
We all face plenty of challenges in our third act of life. But there’s also much to treasure. What do you cherish most about this chapter of your life? What are the joys and moments of meaning that keep you going?
This stage of my life has been characterized by some new discoveries and some fundamental truths. I’ve discovered that it’s true that stress decreases with age as our happiness curve leaps up. I’ve learned that at the height of my busy career, people (including myself) got it wrong. It turns out that I actually CAN slow down and not only has nothing bad happened as a result of it, but I’ve come to cherish the times I’m not working as much as I loved being in the eye of the work hurricane. Continuing to learn and to contribute are the things that matter now, as they did in my first two acts. I count my blessings instead of my stretchmarks and while there may be a time when I “act my age and wear sensible shoes,” I’m not there yet. Check back with me in another 20 years!