Every morning, millions of people wake up hoping to look, think and feel younger than they did yesterday.

The anti-ageing industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, promising everything from “miracle” supplements to gene therapies. Few people embody this pursuit more visibly than entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, whose quest to slow ageing and achieve “immortality” has gained global fascination.

Johnson has meticulously documented countless treatments in his biohacking regimen, including cosmetic enhancements, stem cell therapies, a total plasma replacement and, most recently, even cloning his own cells.

The message is clear: Ageing is something to defeat.

But science tells a more complicated story.

While some aspects of functioning become less efficient with age, others remain remarkably resilient. Some even improve. Far from being a period of inevitable decline, research shows later life can bring a variety of unexpected strengths.

Ageing is not a linear process

Much of what we hear about ageing focuses on what becomes harder.

Older adults often experience reductions in processing speed, working memory capacity, episodic memory retrieval and aspects of learning.

These changes are real and important, particularly when they affect everyday independence or signal neurodegenerative disease, such as dementia.

However, ageing research increasingly shows that cognitive ageing is not a one-size-fits-all. Different abilities change at different rates, while some remain stable or improve well into later life.

The emotional advantages of ageing

One of the clearest examples of beneficial change is the positivity effect. Research shows that older adults often pay more attention to, and remember, positive information compared to negative information.

This is not because they have poorer memory of negative events. Rather, this pattern of remembering seems to be linked to changes in motivation and priorities. As some psychologists suggest, older people become more focused on emotionally meaningful experiences because they perceive time as more limited.

This shift can have benefits.

Healthy older adults often report greater emotional stability, improved ability to self-regulate, stronger focus on meaningful relationships, and even increased life satisfaction.

In other words, ageing can bring a greater ability to prioritise what matters.

Experience creates cognitive strengths

Although some aspects of cognition do decline with age, others remain stable. These aspects of cognition can become relative strengths as we accumulate knowledge, learn new strategies and gain experience over our lifetime.

Research shows ageing is associated with changes in emotional strategy use. This includes a greater ability to accept events and to take perspective, such as when dealing with something sad or stressful.

Ageing is also associated with changes in metacognition – our ability to monitor, evaluate and regulate our own thinking.

Decades of experience can help people improve awareness of their strengths and limitations on certain tasks. As a result, we get more efficient at selecting the right strategy, compensating for what we find challenging, and adapting our approach when circumstances change.

In everyday life, this ability to “know how we think” may be just as important as speed or accuracy on a test measured in a lab. A younger brain may be faster, but an older brain can be wiser.

Ageing and self-regulation

Another often overlooked aspect of ageing is the potential for improvements in how we self-regulate.

Healthy older people show relative strengths in managing emotions, socially and emotionally meaningful decision-making and adaptive goal prioritisation.

This means that as we age, goals start to change. Rather than having expansive, future-oriented goals, older people optimise available resources to prioritise wellbeing, independence and core relationships.

My own doctoral research examined whether lifelong experiences, such as multilingualism, contribute to these adaptive changes. Across adulthood, multilingual experience was not associated with a universal advantage.

However, the findings suggested more specific patterns. We found that multilingual experience had certain benefits for working memory, executive function and self-regulating behaviour and emotions, particularly later in life.

Rethinking ‘successful ageing’

There’s a growing view in research of ageing as a process of selective adaptation. The idea is that some of our cognitive abilities decline while others are maintained or even get stronger.

The goal of healthy ageing should not be to restore youth.

The longevity movement often frames ageing as a biological enemy – something to slow or reverse. But a more realistic goal is supporting “healthspan”: maintaining physical health, independence, cognition and quality of life through later adulthood.

There are evidence-based approaches to support healthy ageing, and they won’t surprise you:

• regular physical activity
• lifelong learning, such as languages or new skills
• social connection
• good sleep
• healthy diet
• cardiovascular health
• managing sensory health such as hearing and vision.

These strategies don’t stop ageing, but they help people age better.

Ageing certainly changes the brain. But many of the qualities we value most – perspective, emotional stability, resilience and wisdom – often emerge precisely because we’ve lived for more years.

The question isn’t how we can live longer. What we really should be asking is: how do we age well?

Olivia Maurice, cognitive neuroscientist, Western Sydney University; University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.