Do you want to learn the secret of how to feel great and age joyfully? While some think aging means getting old, others celebrate joyfully. These tips may help.
“The real joy in life comes from finding your true purpose and aligning it with what you do every single day.” – Tony Robbins.
You Can Feel Great and Age Joyfully with These Simple Tips
Do you want to feel great, age joyfully? The process may sometimes challenge you, but you can create your joy in life and feel great as you age by trying these simple tips.
Embrace Awe in Daily Life
Your first visit to Arizona’s Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu in Peru will create awe because of their breathtaking, history-rich locations. But how can you find and enjoy awe in daily life? While such experiences may be few and far between, you can cultivate your sense and appreciation of awe so that you see it everywhere. Furthermore, you can learn to embrace awe, a crucial part of healthy aging.
- Daily sunrise and sunset are excellent times to witness awe. These often spectacular vistas, although brief, prompt a positive emotional response. This allows you to pause and reflect on the beauty of life. It’s also a joyful experience.
- Enjoy a walk in nature to boost your well-being. While you wander through the forest, garden, trek a mountain trail, or let your mind go blank as you sit by a lake or river, bask in the splendor that transcends humanity. The calming effect of awe brings a natural, peaceful Zen that soothes and rejuvenates.
- Relax with your favorite music. This sensory experience helps you get outside your head and connect with others. It’s a remarkable way to broaden your sense of place and time.
Engage in Sensory Stimulation to Feel Great and Age Joyfully
While some may believe that your senses dull as you age, this can be overcome. It takes some discipline and creativity, yet learning to stimulate your senses can occur at any age. This is particularly essential for older adults, since increased physical activity and sensory stimulation can help mitigate some symptoms of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
- Brighten your home environment with art, living plants, and lots of color. If painting the walls is too much, add colorful pillows, throw blankets, or accent pieces.
Reframe Your Mindset About This Stage of Life
Instead of thinking about your life as an empty nest once the children are grown, consider this an exciting, new adventure stage. This is a time you can regenerate, embark on a new hobby, transition to a new career, or do something because you love it, not because you must.
“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” – Frank Lloyd Wright.
Besides, when someone reaches their 50s and beyond, their transformation can be a source of endless possibility. Think about what delights you and boosts your creativity, and go for it. What a tremendous opportunity to feel great and age joyfully.
Exercise Daily
What better way to maintain a healthy body and mind than exercise? Do something physical daily and you’ll reap countless rewards.
- For one thing, when you exercise, such as taking a walk each day, you are helping to increase the size of the part of your brain (the hippocampus) essential in memory and learning. Unfortunately, the hippocampus shrinks with age. So, to stave off problems with memory, add more daily movement.
- Besides, if you love to dance, hike, fish, swim, play golf, or engage in other sporting activities, exercise improves range of motion and helps diminish later injuries from repetitive stress.
- Another incredibly valuable exercise is yoga, which offers powerful mind-body gifts.
Recreate a Mini Time-Warp
As detailed in an article in Ideas.Ted.com, a few years ago, a Harvard researcher investigated whether the deliberate choice to live in the past for five days would affect aging. Some 70-year-old individuals lived in a monastery, and everything was as it was 31 years ago. There were no mirrors in this mini time-warp, while the books and black-and-white TVs were like those of that time. They talked about news from 1959, acted, and participated in the experiment as if they had lived back then.
“Aging is the great thing. It’s the best thing that ever happened to you. You can’t help it. It’s going to happen, so you might as well enjoy it.” – Bob Hope.
Surprisingly, they stood taller, were more energetic and dexterous, and could see better at the end of the five-day experiment. A BBS show recreated the time warp using celebrities in 2010, with similar results.
Bottom line: While it may be impossible to do this alone, you can achieve much of the same effect with planning. What a great way to feel great and age gracefully.
- Return to your favorite old-time vacation spot.
- Enjoy a social date with friends where no present-day talk is permitted.
- Try losing yourself in old photo albums.
- Also, you can listen to cassettes or CDs of music from past decades.
Stay Social to Feel Great and Age Joyfully
Finally, it’s vital to maintain social connections as you get older. Also, age is a state of mind for many, so the chronological age of your friends is not as important as what you both get from the relationship. Here are some tips on how to find friendships and prize true friends.
If you practice these simple tips, you’ll likely begin to feel great and age joyfully.
