Ron SmithPublished on Steps Toward a More Meaningful and Enjoyable Life.
At some point after retirement, we may start questioning what we should do with all of our free time. We may have already accomplished some of our anticipated travel and hobby plans Maybe we’ve even crossed a few items off of our bucket lists. But now we sense a need to do something more with our lives. As that thought process begins to evolve, we may need to develop a new perspective on our world and how we fit into it. What’s our purpose? Pre-retirement experiences may help provide some focus, but they may be inadequate to incorporate new ideas and opportunities into our lives. We may need a new vision to guide us through this stage of our lives.
A good way to start this process is to reflect on what we are grateful for. Gratitude comes when we focus on what we have and should be thankful for as contrasted to those things that we don’t have. “Appreciating the world around us from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep is a skill to be learned and incorporated into daily living. It is the starting point of aging both masterfully and gracefully.” (Firman, Stiles)
Gratitude has been shown to have a strong correlation with good health and well-being, not only for us but for those around us. People with higher levels of gratitude are typically more socially connected and are better able to handle stress. Gratitude can help us develop better attitudes not only during good times but also when things aren’t necessarily going well. We can express our gratitude to friends and relatives directly through “thank you” comments and notes. We might want to journal our thoughts of gratitude. Either way, we acknowledge the positives in our lives rather than belaboring the negative events. We get to consider what our lives would be without them.
In addition to gratefulness, another dimension of our new aging well vision is mindfulness. Most of us are aware that we need to take care of our physical bodies, but we may not think so much about exercising our mind. We may tackle the daily crossword puzzles and other games to strengthen our memory, but being mindful is more than that. Like gratefulness, mindfulness can contribute many health benefits like a reduction in incidents of isolation, depression or pain.
The term “mindfulness” has become popular in our contemporary culture and vocabulary. I had previously attributed it to a new age of thinking and largely ignored it as a fad until I recently started a popular diet program. That program emphasized the power of being intentional and mindful in daily decision making. Research indicates that being mindful can have tangible benefits. So how can we achieve mindfulness?
For some, mindfulness can be achieved through meditation sessions. “Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you’re sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment.” (Mayo Clinic) People may also practice mindfulness as they get absorbed in a favorite activity and put all of their attention into that activity. Daily activities, such as cooking, working on a favorite hobby or just walking are opportunities to develop mindful behavior. That feeling of “being in the zone” when doing an activity that you enjoy is an example of being mindful.
There are many simple ways to practice mindfulness. Mayo Clinic suggests that you can practice mindfulness by paying attention, living in the moment, accepting yourself and even by just focusing on your breathing. Mindfulness techniques, once learned, can be easily repeated and can become automatic. Mayo Clinic offers suggested techniques on how to accomplish this state of mind. Billionaire Warren Buffett, a well-known American investor, has been very successful financially by making less impulsive financial decisions utilizing mindfulness techniques.
A mindfulness-style can also be very important in the improvement of your memory. Mindfulness and memory work in partnership because paying attention is critical for memory and for learning. One of the common attributes of aging is the difficulty that we often experience with memory loss. Aging well depends on our ability to master new ideas and activities in order to successfully navigate this phase of our lives. Mastering gratitude and mindfulness techniques position us to successfully build positive habits, reverse negative habits, improve our decision-making ability and gain more autonomy over our lives. These steps can start us on the path to better control the direction of our lives so that every day can be more meaningful and enjoyable.
Firman, J and Stiles, S (2018), Aging Mastery Playbook. National Council on Aging, Arlington, VA, pp 24-35
Mayo Clinic:
Ron Smith is a Maricopa resident and an aging-in-place advocate. He is a member of the Age-Friendly Maricopa Advisory Committee, a member of the Maricopa Senior Coalition and a certified Aging-in-Place specialist (CAPS).
This article appeared under a different title in the April 2021 issue of InMaricopa Magazine.
