Are you ready to live a long time, or do you dread it? Recent medical advances mean we could live longer, but doesn’t guarantee the quality of that life. In the words of one senior, "We’re not living longer, we’re dying longer."

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Getting older doesn’t have to mean living a limited life. Author Lyndsay Green has interviewed forty successful seniors to talk not just about the problems of old age but its strength and benefits.

These seniors were from all walks of life and from all over the country, living in Victoria, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Kingston and Halifax, aged 75 to 100. They have been identified as the self-reliant seniors we would like to be and they share their wisdom and strategies for independent and happy living. The book combines their advice with cutting edge research, to arrive at specific suggestions for what we should be doing now to prepare for old age, and includes resources to help us implement the advice, including:

• Money isn’t everything, and won’t cure ill-health or loneliness.
• Cultivate new friendships now.
• To keep your dignity, give up your pride.
• You need a work plan, instead of a retirement plan
• To keep a home, consider leaving your house.
• If you push too hard to stay young you’ll get old faster.

The unique message is that we should not try to avoid old age. Instead of trying to do the impossible to stay forever young, Green comes to the radical conclusion that in order to get as much as possible out of our old age we will need to embrace it.

LYNDSAY GREEN is a pioneering sociologist who spent her career helping people use communications technologies for learning, working with groups as diverse as the World Bank, the National Film Board and the Inuit of Canada. She has turned her research skills and knowledge of new technologies to finding out what boomers should be doing to ensure they have a successful old age. The American textbook Computers and Information Systems calls Ms. Green an “information agent of the future.” Peter Mansbridge interviewed Lyndsay for his CBC show One on One and had this to say about You Could Live a Long Time: “It’s full of advice, really good advice, that you’ll be grateful you took when you hit those golden-plus years.”

Lyndsay Green's profile page

We’re not just living longer, but we’re dying longer and that fact is the basis for Lyndsay Green’s important new book. If you’re betting you are going to be part of the live-longer and live-better crowd, and let’s be frank, we all want to be, then whether you’re twenty, sixty or anywhere in between you better read this. It’s full of advice, really good advice, that you’ll be grateful you took when you hit those golden plus years.

Peter Mansbridge, The National, CBC

The road to Crowd Invisible doesn’t have to be littered with loneliness and boredom, as you will learn in Lyndsay’s book. Discover how others have found the secret to fun and fulfillment. The surprise is that it is NOT all about money.

Vicki Gabereau

If you, like me, are finally becoming aware of your mortality and are beginning to wonder if the final third of your life will either be a living hell or a fascinating road to the hereafter, then you’ll love the insights this perceptive "pollster" has garnered form her 40 remarkably wise elders mixed in with solid social science and lots of her own common sense.

Author of Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values

Are you in denial about aging, mired in myths, dodging fears and regrets and still haven't cleaned out your basement? Lyndsay Green’s calm and generous voice will take you to a clear, sunny place where you can plan instead of panicking. The wisdom she has gathered from serene elders is rich with surprising insights and invigorating challenges to what you thought you knew. This is that rare self-help book that thinks and talks like a grown-up.

Michelle Landsberg, author of Women and Children First