Everyone approaches aging a bit differently. Some just want to relax in their golden years, enjoying the fruits of their labor. Others stay active, right up until the day they die, because they know of no other way to be.
There is no wrong way to enjoy your senior years. However, if you want to make the most out of them, these six activities can help you to live well and stay capable for as long as possible. After all, no one wants to lose their independence, so if you’re not doing these six things, you may want to consider starting.
1. Staying curious about new things and continually learning.
Curiosity and learning are qualities that keep your brain healthy. There is so much to life, so much to explore and experience, yet so many people choose to close themselves off. They lose their curiosity, or they never had much of it to begin with. It’s easy to turn in on oneself, especially if you feel intimidated by learning new things, because it makes you feel vulnerable.
Not only is this a fantastic quality for your personal development, but curiosity and learning provide exercise for your brain. As Harvard Health shares, curiosity and learning help keep cognitive abilities sharper, stave off loss of gray matter, and can help slow the advance of diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia.
2. Maintaining independence by managing your life yourself.
Managing adult life is quite the challenge, even when you’re young. There’s so much to consider when it comes to managing bills, finances, goals, life plans, travel, or whatever else. Then you sprinkle on the added responsibility of maintaining relationships and how you stay involved in the lives of your loved ones.
Maybe you have your own hobbies that help keep you engaged with life. That might be getting outdoors into nature and quietly fishing, or doing something like a good friend of mine did. She’d head to the local donut shop five mornings a week to play Pinochle with the other seniors. Apparently, she was a terror at the game, but I never played it enough to get it!
As the National Institute of Aging informs us, all of these different things help combat some of the issues seniors will face, issues like loneliness and isolation. Not only that, but the planning and management keep you mentally engaged, providing some extra exercise for your brain.
3. Continuing to be physically active and watching your health.
It’s certainly no great secret that we lose physical capabilities as we get older. You are bound to experience health issues of some kind, sooner or later. As you get older, you may experience muscle and bone density loss, among other things.
People who want to slow that process continue to be physically active. They get up and move around, try to keep an eye on their weight, or regularly exercise in a way that fits their unique needs and situation. Exercise is so important because it helps to staunch the loss of muscle, encourages flexibility, and provides numerous mental health benefits by pumping endorphins through you.
Not only that, but when you maintain your physical health as well as you can, it also makes recovering from injuries easier, for example, should you have a fall or experience some other health issue.
4. Finding laughter and joy in the challenge of life.
I don’t think anyone can deny that life can be difficult at times, especially when you get older. Hell, I’m only middle-aged myself, and I’ve already lost a lot of people I cared about to accidents, circumstances, suicide, and health issues. As I make the march to 70, I find myself sometimes slipping into bitterness and despair about it all, and about how unfair it was for a lot of folks.
That’s why I admire my elders who can still smile after navigating the challenges of life, the losses, the pain, and suffering. Of course, we have to know these things to fully appreciate what joy and happiness offer us.
It’s sad to lose a friend, but wonderful to see a new life come into the world. It’s hard to keep your heart from hardening to survive the trauma, but vulnerability is the only way we can truly connect and be seen. It takes a lot of resilience to still smile, to still approach life with a joyful heart.
5. Adapting when life inevitably changes, because it always does.
The only consistent in life is that life will inevitably change. Circumstances change whether we like it or not. The people who suffer most fight against it; they try to keep things as they are instead of allowing themselves to adapt and move forward. They get stuck in their own time and headspace, trying to cling to past happiness or experiences, but it doesn’t work forever.
Sooner or later, life reminds us that everything is changing. The people who fare best are the ones who can embrace it, roll with the changes, and accept the way their life is evolving. Easier said than done, right? After all, how are you supposed to just accept death, sickness, and all of the other difficult parts of life? That is really the ultimate question, isn’t it?
6. Setting new goals to stay engaged with life.
Goals help you stay engaged in life because they give you something to look forward to and work toward. It’s easy to fall into a pit of despair when you don’t have anything to look forward to. Pointing back to my friend, she was always so happy to talk about Pinochle, her friends, and the seniors’ league they had going on.
It was a source of joy for her, and it gave her new things to look forward to when meeting new people or preparing for a tournament. That forward thinking kept her engaged, as opposed to the people who sit at home and just watch television by themselves.
A relative of mine also made it a habit to audit college classes as much as he could in his retirement. He would attend the lectures and just be there to learn, and it was a source of constant joy, contentment, and forward movement for him. Eventually, he got a job there, tutoring and mentoring students to help them along their way, to help them fulfill their goals, which provided him with a renewed sense of purpose at 76 years old.
Final thoughts…
It’s easy to fall into the habit of disengaging from life when you get older. You may feel discouraged because you’re not able to do all of the things that you used to do. It’s understandable, and it would be frustrating. But you want to avoid disengaging from your life. We all need to strive to actively live life so we can get the most out of it in our limited time.
If you’re already doing these things, then you’re on the right path. If you’re not, well, now you have a list of ideas on where you can start to re-engage with your life. There are so many opportunities out there for growth, connection, and happiness, so long as you’re willing to keep pursuing them.
