Discover Your Mental Age (You Might be Surprised!)

March 14, 2016

How old do you feel? Sometimes I hear that question and feel my age, or worse, I feel like I am one hundred. After spending a Saturday doing the routine chores around the house or working in the yard, I certainly feel it when I wake up on Sunday. This past week one of our team members celebrated a birthday; he turned 23 years old. I was talking to him and began to reflect not on actual age, but on our mental age. When we look in the mirror most of us do not think of ourselves as our actual age. We look through the wrinkles and bags under our eyes and see our inner self, our mental self. Looking at our children or aging parents we imagine them stuck at a point in time. Over the course of time those “stuck points in time” usually change. I do not think of my mother as 87 – I think of her as being 60. There was a time I thought of her as being 40.  Surely my kids cannot be 24 and 27 – I still view them as being younger. Then there is our view of ourselves. What age do we “think” we are as we stare into that mirror?

Turning to the source of all knowledge, the internet, I found I was not alone in the quest for information on this topic. In fact, simple tests have been created to help us determine our “Mental Age”. Web sites with short questionnaires are readily available to clarify where we currently stand on the mental age front. Taking the first test at mymentalage.com was pretty easy and within a couple of minutes I had my first age answer. Being a skeptic, I decided to take the test at three additional sites. The questions were vastly different, but, as is usually the case, you could start to see patterns. Answering each question quickly and honestly created similar age results; all within two years of each other. So now that I know my mental age, what do I do with this information?

I suspect there is much that can be explained by the difference between the opinion we have of our own mental age, and the views of friends and peers. Do you prefer to spend time with people who are more in keeping with your mental age bracket? Do two 45-year olds that have a 20-year difference in their mental age have commonality for conversation or work? Perhaps a 25-year old and a 75-year old have more in common than you think if you look at their mental age. And most of all the term “young at heart” (a beautiful expression) might be explained simply by knowing the person’s mental age. If you are curious, take the tests and see your “real” age.

Carl Gambrell