Although we pay more and more attention to what we are most interested in, we still try to keep our interests as wide as they were in our twenties. We still have many different hobbies and dislikes as before. In fact, as far as life after the age of 40 is concerned, the most striking feature is that I have retained all kinds of interests that I have had for a long time, but my feelings are slightly less intense than before.
According to the research results of G·E· Ringer, H Soerensen and many professional psychologists, a person's agility will not obviously deteriorate after he is 40 years old. On the contrary, for those who are smarter and more skilled, the dexterity of their hands and fingers improves very obviously in middle age. Ling once compared the female workers of 18 1 with the female surnames of 152. Among these women, the youngest is 25 years old and the oldest is 50 years old. As a result, he found that in all the test items, the second group of smarter female surnames were much more agile than the first group of female employees, except for one item, which happened to be closely related to an activity that female employees were engaged in at work. All other tests show that the skills of female workers begin to decline slightly around the age of 30, while none of the intellectual women have such a phenomenon before the age of 35-after the age of 35, the speed of their skills decline is negligible.
Suellenson's experiment seems to be more important. He tested 100 people aged between 25 and 87. During this period, he used a set of simple but creative movements to test the hands, fingers, arms, legs and feet of these people. He found that14 of the elderly were faster and more accurate than the average age group. This result is quite surprising. Among his subjects, 12 is the oldest, with an average age of 79 years. Their speed and accuracy are only 20% and 30% slower than the average age group. I think this result is equally surprising! Because in my imagination, no matter how agile they are, they are 40% slower than the average age group.
Before the age of 40, the human brain developed at a very irregular sprint speed. However, as Frederick Thirny discussed in his important book "From Ape's Brain to Human's Brain", about this central organ, human beings have never developed more than half of the brain. To develop the human brain, it is necessary to use and stimulate and cultivate insulated nerve fibers. Therefore, this fact means that no matter how people under 40 use their brains, it is impossible to make them mature. Therefore, in the new biological sense, most of us over 40 years old are hiding like mental retardation. Under normal circumstances, people use their brains less than 1/5. Even if we die, our central nervous system is not half formed.
I very much doubt that the lack of continuous stimulation and utilization of the brain is one of the reasons for its premature atrophy. Around the age of 35, the human brain began to lose weight; At the age of 65, it usually loses100g. As far as I know, no one has ever studied whether the loss of brain weight is necessarily related to the decline of function. However, we know another certain fact, that is, if we don't use it actively, our brains will soon become dull. I believe that one day someone will strongly prove the truth that most healthy people live meaningless lives after 40, and they can only blame themselves for being lazy or stupid. Before the age of 40, they are often lazy, shirking their responsibilities, or frivolous, thus making themselves useless. In her twenties, if a woman's attitude towards life is as frivolous as a butterfly, then she is doomed to die as early as a butterfly. If a person imitates the life style of insects in his life, he will be as short-lived as insects. As any life insurance expert will tell you according to his own records, anyone with developed intelligence and active use of intelligence is a famous longevity. This is actually not an accident, but the brain often receives the effect of stimulation.
Let's look at a serious aging phenomenon when a person reaches the age of 40. This is the gradual decrease of vitality. It is unwise to belittle this phenomenon, because it is the gradual decrease of vitality that has changed our whole life pattern. Few people readjust their own affairs or opinions in order to adapt to this obvious change! Even if it doesn't need to cover all the important stages of this transformation, it is enough to write a thick book on this subject. Because life is activity, and activity is a series of energy changes-nothing more.
A person's energy can be accurately calculated according to the rate at which his body releases heat, because heat can represent the work done, whether it exists in the brain, abdomen or muscles. Physiologists usually measure this heat by the amount of heat emitted by the skin or the amount of oxygen inhaled by the lungs from the air. This kind of energy that has been converted to maintain the operation of the body is called basic metabolism, while the surplus energy used for special activities can be called marginal energy or free energy. The slower the basal metabolism is, the smaller the amount is, and the less energy needs to be converted to engage in special work or exercise in a fixed time.
We consume energy the fastest in childhood and adolescence. According to the heat radiated from the skin surface, as early as 12 years old, our energy consumption began to drop sharply: from 50 calories per square meter at 12 years old to 40 calories at 17 years old. Then, we kept the latter ratio until we were 35 years old. However, between the ages of 38 and 40, our bodies experienced the first major recession. We should accept this fact calmly, otherwise it would be foolish. The slowdown of basal metabolism is not obvious in 15 years or even longer. However, as we approach 50, the process of slowing down accelerates. By the age of 60, it has dropped to only 28 calories per square meter of skin per hour. So at this time, the heat emitted by the human body is only a little more than half that of 12 years old.
The decrease of endocrine activity is a part of the gradual aging of the body. This decline is very slow, almost in sync with the heat emitted by the human body, even though sexual activity usually seems to decline slightly faster than other activities. Although basal metabolism began to decline before the age of 40, the decline of human endocrine did not begin until around the age of 45. Hearing acuity decays earlier, generally beginning to appear at the earliest age of 30. People's taste and smell organs will also age rapidly. So, let's talk about living debts after the age of 40. We don't need to call these debts assets! What can we do with them? Can we declare bankruptcy?
Don't do this! I always believe that even if we don't have the free energy needed for strenuous exercise, it doesn't mean that our lifestyle will be limited. On the contrary, people who are good at thinking can always turn this unfavorable factor into a favorable factor. Because, almost all one's life, as long as one insists on using his brain, his brain can be improved. Moreover, he can control all kinds of activities of limbs with his brain, so as to finally achieve the goal of being healthier and happier. Most importantly, the brain is an economic master; It can achieve the best possible results with the least energy, so the human brain works best after 40 years old, that is, when energy begins to decrease.
In order to make full use of this state, we must pay attention to some amazing latest achievements in human biology research.
If a stupid person is asked to think about this sentence, he may come to the conclusion that all those who die young are stupid people. However, smart readers understand this sentence more accurately. It is true that many smart people have died as early as childhood and youth, but on the whole, we find that too many old people are very stupid. This is really surprising. Idiots, fools, idiots, and advanced idiots always have little chance of success. In all kinds of accidents, during the epidemic of diseases, during the war, in the face of danger, stupid people are often not as quick and accurate as smart people. When informed of the danger in time, stupid people often laugh at informers, or don't start to avoid the danger until very late.
Experts found through research that this fact is almost obvious and highly credible. Various statistics show that people with mental disabilities and mental illness often die much earlier than normal people, even though they are protected by various social systems. And normal people die earlier than abnormal people. Why is this happening? I am very interested in this question. So, in order to explain this truth to you, I will use some space here to introduce some amazing discoveries of biologists and talk about my own conclusions from these findings. Although what I'm going to introduce is difficult to read, I suggest you concentrate on it. I believe you will get rich rewards from this kind of hard work.
For stupid people, life doesn't start at 40, but ends at 40, or even earlier. The reason is simple, just because stupid people are stupid people after all. The human brain controls the speed and pattern of energy consumption. The better the state of the brain, the more work can be done with the same physiological energy. Generally speaking, we can measure the quality of the brain in this respect according to the proportion of the human brain in the overall weight of the human body. This fact is very important, so in order to help you avoid danger, I must say a few more words about this fact here. If you are temporarily lost in the physical and biological problems, don't lose heart, please wait patiently. If you can finally understand a truth, a good brain usually helps to shape a good physique and improve people's quality of life, thus helping people to prolong their life after 40 and succeed in their careers, and you can get huge returns in life.
Max Rubner published his research results in 1908 after carefully studying the relationship between animal's body size and its natural age. He was comparing species at that time, so you must not apply his conclusion too strictly to some biological individuals. The following is an amazing discovery made by Rubner: When the weight factor is taken into account, the energy production and consumption ratio of all animals are exactly the same. The energy produced and consumed by an animal per kilogram of body weight is 19 1600 calories. Therefore, Rubner came to the conclusion that biology is a machine with some fixed power. The disappearance of this motive force can automatically lead to the death of the creature.
However, the speed of using this ability varies from species to individuals. Some animals will soon run out of this power, so they die early, while others will use this power slowly, so they will stay in the world for a long time until most animals of the same age die. Therefore, according to the size and energy consumption rate of an animal, you can estimate the life span of a fly, a mouse, an elephant or a person quite accurately.
A few years later, H. Friedenthal discovered another important relationship between brain weight, weight and life span. He called the relationship between brain weight and body weight "head-to-head concentration coefficient". In calculating this weight, he subtracted the weight of bones and tendons from the total weight of his body. From this, we can easily understand that the weight here refers to the number of active protoplasm. Usually, the weight of bones and tendons accounts for about 1/3 of the whole body weight. Accordingly, H. Friedenthal established the following calculation formula:
Upwind concentration coefficient = mass weight/2/3 of body weight
If the head concentration coefficient becomes larger, the natural life span of organisms will also become longer. In other words, the bigger an animal's brain is relative to the protoplasm group it controls, the longer its life span. For example, the index of mice is 0.045, and its survival time in the world is only 2 3 years. Rabbits have an index of 0.066 and can live for 8 years. The deer's index is commendable, being 0.35, so it can live 15 years. People's index is 2.7, so they can live for about a century at most.
However, seven years ago, I suddenly realized that I could draw some new conclusions based on the equally authoritative research results of Rubner and Friedenthal. So, I put their data and conclusions together, and then I got a surprising result. As we can see from above, all animals can produce the same amount of energy if the weight of animals is taken into account. The only difference between them is the speed at which this energy is consumed. And I found that this speed is surprisingly consistent with the head-to-head concentration coefficient.
The length of life depends not only on the speed of available energy consumption, but also on the size of the brain relative to the weight of active protoplasm that it must control. Can't this prove that the brain controls energy consumption?
At this point, biologists will say that they have known this fact for many years. I'm sure they'll say that. In fact, this fact itself has long been known. However, I insist that its relationship with longevity and intelligence is novel and not exaggerated. In my opinion, it can lead us into the sacred palace of mental health, practical philosophy and moral kingdom. It reveals the relationship between thought and behavior, which will be discussed in a book later, which is refreshing.
The brain controls energy in two ways. First of all, the brain itself may include the function of producing energy. Secondly, it may make the best use of everything and prevent waste by the way. The cortex of the human brain clearly shows these two functions.
Through the contact with endocrine glands, the brain provides great help for living things to produce energy. It relates the stimulus to be generated with all kinds of hobbies and dislikes, so a new internal stimulus is produced. Compared with the energy needed to complete a given action, human beings produce more energy than any other animal.
Secondly, the combined fiber bundles of the brain can bring great savings to living things. Here, whenever reflexes and habitual reactions produce unsatisfactory results, they will be suppressed. Compared with the number and types of irritants flowing in the body, human beings use less energy than any other animal. Animals that are not smart enough by nature may have to resort to "trial and error" when dealing with a certain situation, while humans tend to avoid a lot of activities and design a pattern in their minds. They call this model "idea", "plan" or "theory". This behavior consumes very little energy. Once this "idea" seems feasible, humans will realize it through a series of "step-up transformers" (injecting energy into the body).
Please get to the point of the question! What we call "thinking", "reflection" or "meditation" on a problem is only a way to reduce labor intensity and greatly improve work efficiency from a biological point of view. When a mouse tries to escape from a pre-designed cage, it often panics. For a monkey, just use110 of the energy wasted by the mouse to understand how to escape from the same cage. For a person, to achieve this goal, only the monkey's110 efforts are needed. The human brain is equivalent to a complex system, which integrates control, amplifier, transformer, switch, decompressor and fuse. These components work together to extend the natural energy of human beings to the longest time and use this energy to accomplish the most things.
Although we are talking about all kinds of species, under some conditions, the same principle may apply to all individuals. Don't expect people with big heads to live for a century, while people with small heads will die earlier. Many secondary factors will also intervene, thus weakening this contrast. However, the facts clearly show that people with more developed intelligence tend to live longer than those with lower intelligence.
Life expectancy at birth is 55 years, and the current average life expectancy is 63 years. However, the average life expectancy of the president of the United States is 76 years old, and quite a few outstanding types of people, such as writers, scientists and university professors, live far beyond the average life expectancy, that is, 63 years old. On the other hand, Raymond Pearl investigated 32 professional organizations in Britain/KLOC-0 and wrote a very enlightening analysis report. In his report, he pointed out that after the age of 40, rather than before the age of 40, the successive deaths of workers are directly related to their work intensity. Unskilled workers engaged in hard manual labor die first, while those workers with high technical level who need more brain power than physical strength live the longest. In order to fully understand the meaning of this truth, you must further understand the fact that our society has been making natural selection for workers. As a result of this natural selection, people with better intelligence engage in jobs that require workers to have good intelligence, while people with simpler minds engage in jobs that require little thinking but a lot of physical strength. No matter where, unskilled workers always score lower than moderately skilled workers in intelligence tests; No matter where, the scores of medium-skilled workers are always lower than those of skilled workers; No matter where, the scores of skilled workers are always lower than those of excellent industrialists, and the scores of excellent industrialists are always lower than those of professionals. Stupid people die young. People with the best intelligence may not become rich in money, but they live the longest and can get the most from life with the least effort. If this is not success, then what can be called success?
In a new sense, life begins at 40. Because a person's brain requires him to spend most of his time honing the art of body management before the age of 40. The better your brain is, the sooner you can master all the tricks related to saving and success. However, whether the state of the brain is good or bad, it needs enough time, especially in today's unpredictable times. Before the age of 25, people seldom make full use of their energy. In my opinion, it is quite possible that our actual intelligence usually reaches the highest level in the year when our physical fitness drops obviously for the first time-that is, at the age of 37 or 38. As the age of 40 approaches, a person can manage himself most effectively through thinking. Therefore, he has made progress in health, wealth and happiness while his physical fitness has gradually declined. At the age of 20, he was still wasting his energy on some stupid plans. By the age of 40, he can make full and reasonable use of his energy in order to finish more work. Therefore, although the truth that "life begins at the age of 40" has not been paid attention to in a sense, I still want to emphasize its importance. The most important reason is that from the age of 40, normal people can get what they desire to the maximum with the least effort.
There is another aspect to this strange story about youth and old age. Many people who become Jie Jun after 40 years old look very stupid, ambitious or even worse when they are 10 or 20 years old. Sometimes this is caused by their improper use of their energy in their early days. But under normal circumstances, this phenomenon is a slow growth process. Looking back, you can easily find that Wordsworth left a very ordinary impression on his classmates in college. After finishing his studies, he wasted several years, but later he obviously accomplished nothing, while his family complained that the young man had no ambition, poor understanding and lack of interest. In his early poem "Overture", he described himself like this:
Spend too much energy on unimportant issues;
Don't indulge yourself,
Whether it's color or proportion,
Because of the change of time and season,
Or moral strength, emotion,
And the spirit that exists in unpredictable places.
Legendary stories of late bloomers can be found everywhere in the life records of outstanding people.
Ibsen's diploma in Kristiania (formerly known as the Norwegian capital) showed the lowest score and he could only graduate. Even his achievements in Norwegian show that his ability is average. We can expect that a young man who is destined to complete many excellent plays in the future must have deep language attainments. However, we made mistakes in this respect. This is the same reason that we can't expect too much from the little girl Harriet martino. During his study, martino failed to write decent works and put forward original opinions on any academic issues.
Linnai's middle school teacher wants him to be a shoemaker. He told Linnai's father that his son was not suitable for academic work. Charles Darwin "unexpectedly didn't master any language", so he was regarded as a very ordinary child by all his teachers and his father, and he couldn't reach the ordinary level intellectually. Pierre curie discovered radium with his wife. He was so stupid when he was a student that his parents asked him to leave school and hired a private teacher for him.
From this, we find that there are many influencing factors in our work, some of which are far from our current interests. Stupid, brainless parents often impose certain occupations and subjects on talented children against the wishes of young people. This result is obvious, of course, backward. On the other hand, children's environment will also inhibit their free growth: the college system controlled by academic figures is bound to be very old, which may not be conducive to young students showing their better abilities as soon as possible. Their ability will not be shown until they leave school for a long time. This is the case with Linnaeus and Darwin. However, the situation of Ibsen and Curie cannot be explained in this way. On the contrary, they revealed the ancient law of "easy come, easy go". Their situation shows that mushrooms will not grow into oak trees, and oak trees will not grow as fast as mushrooms.
Many talented people, like many talented people, are late bloomers. Every art and science can show us a lot of examples in this respect. Titian would never achieve anything important before he was 40, but his skills improved greatly at the age of 70, and he worked hard until he was 90. Joseph Conrad didn't write his first successful novel until he was 39. Our local writer overlord also became famous late, and so did many other writers. Slow-growing humans are regular and normal species. Broadly speaking, the slower a person matures, the longer it will take him to live a rich and happy life after 40.
At the age of 40, Al Smith was a loyal member of Tammuni Society and served as its spokesperson in Albany. He is mainly regarded as a smart and promising young man. However, there is no sign that he will become him in about 10 years. Al Smith didn't begin to live a happy life until very late after 40.
At the age of 40, herbert hoover was still the founder of an enterprise, hoping to find something to do in London. In his later years, he was a nobody. When World War I broke out, he was entrusted with the heavy responsibility of leading the disaster relief work in the United States, which was a unique opportunity. Then his life began to improve.
At the age of 40, Owen D. Young was only a diligent lawyer in charge of corporate legal affairs. There are as many as 25,000 people like him. If he leaves the team with an honest personality, no one will know, and no one will know after many years.
At the age of 40, nicholas murray butler was promoted to the president of Columbia University and became a diligent but little-known professor of philosophy and education. Then, his life began, and this life continued until after the age of 70.
At the age of 40, Mikhail Dovski Pupin was only an associate professor of mechanics. All its important achievements need to be completed later. He was just one of thousands of famous university professors at that time, not a person who made revolutionary contributions to long-distance communication.
At the age of 40, Walter Gifford, chief statistician of AT&T Company, was promoted to president of the company. So, his real life began.
At the age of 40, Thomas Ramon was still the vice president of the First National Bank. A year later, he became a member of Morgan Group. Then, life really began for him.
In short, by the age of 40, most people have not achieved success and have not fully realized themselves. People with the most outstanding ability have just begun to take power and know themselves. However, even for them, it still takes more than seven years to reach the peak of success. Then, before long, they will know themselves and understand what they can do. Only in this way will the world evaluate them and give them their due status. Only at this time, in a complete sense, can they really say that they know life.
Therefore, on the one hand, stupid people die young, on the other hand, people with outstanding abilities learn how to live long. For ordinary citizens, he keeps working, has no interest and is very passive. He feels neither happy nor a burden to others. Such people and stupid people can't read these contents, so we can safely tell the truth about these two kinds of people. Just as freedom is only enjoyed by free people and power is only owned by powerful people, so is life: for those who pursue and love life and have the means to live, life begins at the age of 40. For an empty person, life is illusory. Life is stupid for stupid people. For the weak, life is a sober death. However, for people full of vigor and vitality, life is like the end of overture and the beginning of more beautiful music.
We finally came to a pleasant conclusion. In the life after 40, one of the richest rewards that people can get is the large reduction of fools. It won't be long before the stupidest, dullest, most evil and most reckless people of your generation become smart. Most of the employees employed by your company are smart, full, enterprising, alert, healthy and generally rich, and they are increasing steadily. Therefore, if you are over 40 years old, you are lucky enough, because you can become a more likable colleague and get a special bonus from your years of investment.
Now, after a short digression, let's go back to the central issue. In other words, how to use assets after 40 years old? How can we best pay off our debts? What kind of work should we do? What kind of entertainment do you do? What kind of occupation is most suitable for men or women over 40? How do they make full use of their free time?