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At the end of this year, Spotify added a new wrinkle to their popular Wrapped feature: your listening age. My Listening Age is 35, meaning that my listening habits aligned with those of people 20 years younger than me.
It’s a fun and playful feature, perfect for social media posting as well as a little roasting among friends and family. In my case, it also gave me a bit of a thrill, that still got it energy that makes me think I am still plugged into what the kids are into.
My knees and medication bottles tell a different story, however. My Joints-and-Prescription Wrapped is very much aligned with my chronological age. No amount of Sabrina Carpenter on repeat will let me hide from those aches and pains.
This is simply a new wrinkle in the age paradox many of us live in. It’s age-bait, with algorithms now piling onto the onslaught of messages from brands, advertisers, and influencers that goad us into pursuing youthfulness. When we give in and follow these marketing Ponce de Leons toward a Fountain of Youth, we’re often left wondering how we went from mosh pits to muscle soreness. (And I’m not singling out Spotify here or absolving myself of responsibility—I’ve had my own susceptibility to marketing and delusions about aging when it comes to sneaker purchases and pickup basketball in middle age.)
On top of it all, we’re heading into New Year’s Resolution territory, which often compounds our aging paradox as we look for ways to turn back the clock with unrealistic goals on habits, health, or general well-being. This sets us up for failure by February.
What we need instead is a year-end reality check that helps us age successfully, not superficially. Aging is about function, resilience, purpose, connection, and adaptability–five pillars that are grounded in real experience, real client patterns, and real outcomes. I have prompts in each section to help you get started, and doing this before you make a single resolution will help set you up for success in 2026.
1. Physical function: Rolling back the odometer vs. managing your real mileage
Real physiological aging involves physical function, recovery, and resilience of your body’s systems. It’s about maintaining and sustaining your physical self now and not chasing after youthful aesthetics or nostalgic goals about what you used to be able to do.
Case in point: When I went in for my last physical, my doctor was limping around. She is my age, and she confessed that she had spent this year chasing metrics like steps, heart-rate stats, and so on in the pursuit of “health.” But then she rolled her ankle wearing a pair of stilettos. She realized movement capacity mattered far more than quantified activity. She redesigned her routines around strength and stability, not streaks that popped on a wristwatch.
Her approach now aligns with research on successful aging that emphasizes physical function isn’t just the absence of disease—it’s sustained capability across daily life domains.
Reality check prompt:
If your physical markers are stuck at cosmetic or superficial goals (weight, steps) instead of measures of durability, set metrics that matter more for your sustained physical function. Can you do that gardening you love without pain, go for a long hike or bike ride, paint that room you have been meaning to get to forever?
2. Cognitive & emotional resilience: Feeling young but breaking quickly
Many of my clients say things like I can handle risk…I feel like I’m still 40 inside…My timeframe has plenty of future to recover. Then a major stress event hits, and they unravel like a sweater in a dryer.
Mark is one client who sticks out with this example, a sharp leader in his early 60s who makes quick decisions. When “Tariff Liberation Day” happened in April and the market tanked, Mark flipped out. He shouted in ALL CAPS for six months, and several times wanted to do things that were financially self-destructive because he was panicked. Thankfully he recovered, but he admitted later that he was not as psychologically resilient as he used to be and did not feel now like he had “plenty of time to recover.”
These are stressful times for nearly everyone, which is why it’s critical to remember resiliency is not being inherently positive or acting bulletproof. Research shows it’s recovery capacity—how quickly you bounce back from those stressors.
Reality check prompt:
Did stress feel like a lesson or a lingering echo this year? Are you dragging stressors into 2026? That’s insight into your resilience footprint and a hint for my next post on investing in your “reboundability.”
3. Purpose & meaning: What happens after you hit your goals?
My 20-something son’s Spotify Age was 72, which I found hilarious (and clearly a product of listening to Johnny Cash, Rush, and Steely Dan tunes that were background music from his childhood).
That number also resonates with me because 72 was an arbitrary age that I plugged into my financial planning software for my hypothetical retirement. But purpose and meaning in retirement are as important as financial planning. How will you fill those hours that work used to occupy?
Take Nadine, a client who hit her financial milestones in the middle of the year and looked great on paper. However, the reality of her retirement was now sitting in a quiet house with an empty calendar. I see this over and over, where the financial dashboard is green, but the internal one is red.
Successful aging is multidimensional, with the social, cognitive, and psychological all playing huge roles. You must make the shift from future gratification of working toward your goals to the present meaning of what happens when you hit them. Otherwise, celebration will turn into deflation.
Reality check prompt:
Do your daily habits reflect goals that would still matter if nothing changed for five years?
4. Social connection: The real engagement metrics
I shared my Spotify Wrapped with my social media friends, but year-end activities like that, or a wrap-up Instagram post, or even the snail mail holiday card are facsimiles of connection. And we know that connection matters deeply in aging—shared meals, engaging conversations, laughter, even arguments. These are the real “metrics” that predict well-being.
One of my 2026 goals is to take all the people I text with or interact with online and have meaningful conversations with my top 50 people, preferably in person. I also plan to count how many meaningful conversations I have for the year. That sounds algorithmic and even hokey, but it will ensure that I do have those real engagements. Ultimately, it will help me achieve a good number of quality connections vs. a large quantity of those facsimile connections.
Reality check prompt:
How many people in your circle would say yes to spending 90 minutes catching up in person if you asked them? How many people would you do that for in turn? If those numbers are lower than you like, think about how to increase them to where you’d like them to be in 2026.
5. Autonomy & adaptability: Choose to know yourself, not the self you want yourself to be
I have saved the best for last because autonomy and adaptability are the most valuable pillars of successful aging—they directly relate to who you really are.
Autonomy in midlife isn’t about unlimited freedom. It’s about accurate self-knowledge. Adaptability gauges whether that self-knowledge is grounded in reality or propped up by an aspirational and unrealistic version of yourself.
Ironically, social media can help you assess both of these traits. Algorithms create models of you based on behavior and not necessarily your age, values, or who you intend to be. What you click on, scroll through, and return to is what will get served to you again and again. I wasn’t trying to look hip with my Spotify choices, I simply clicked on what I liked. The same goes for my son and his sounds-of-the-70s choices. The algorithm doesn’t care about your identity, it cares about your patterns.
That’s a good approach, because adaptability begins when you stop arguing with those patterns. Often our identities are performative bullshit for ourselves or others. Action, on the other hand, is predictive. Maybe you’re a retiree who also bobs your head to Bad Bunny because you dig the beat (and not because you want to look hip). That’s predictive action and simply liking what you like—and not caring whether it’s “age appropriate.”
Many Gen Xers and Boomers get stuck here, confusing consistency with integrity. We keep routines, commitments, and self-stories long after they stop fitting because they once worked—or because changing them feels like admitting something uncomfortable. Meanwhile, our behavior tells a different story: lower tolerance for friction, higher need for recovery, and shifting priorities around time, energy, and connection.
That’s not decline. That’s healthy change and what successful aging actually demands—not reinvention, but accurate adjustment.
Reality check prompt:
Open some of your social media / YouTube / Google / Apple News as a guest and open your own feeds in another window side by side. What do the platforms know about you based on what they are feeding you? What’s comfortable? Hopeful? Productive? Embarrassing? Shameful?
Settle with this: You are what you click when no one’s watching.
Reality check is the first of three “R’s” for the New Year
This is the first part of three things I’m going to discuss: Reality Checks, Resolutions, and Reviews.
Most of us are about to dive headfirst into the second part, Resolutions. I implore you not to do that before you do your Reality Checks, because most resolutions get broken within six weeks. Not because you are flawed, but because resolutions are fantasies of who we think we should be to be vs. becoming the best version of who we really are.
I’ll dive into Resolutions in the New Year, and then in April we’ll do a Review and see how we did (that includes me).
Until then, have a Happy New Year doing what you really love. And remember this: Change does not start with new intentions. It starts with an accurate assessment of your systems. Do your Reality Check so you can find your true groove, whether it’s to Taylor Swift or James Taylor.