New Year Resolutions for Seniors

 

The New Year is around the corner and it is time for thinking of those resolutions again! Whether you resolve to be fitter and healthier, connect more socially or to tick off some points on your bucket list, this is a time to take stock of the year gone by and to think of the year ahead. Covid has taken more than it fair share of our time and energy and we have learned to understand the new normal.

Given below are some thoughts and you could consider adding to your list of New Year resolutions.

Eat better for your Health

Take your health into your hands. Change your eating pattern. Take baby steps toward eating right. After all, if you have been careless with your food habits, you cannot change these overnight.

Less fats, more fibre with a healthier mix of fruits, vegetables and nuts is always advisable for most people. As seniors, it becomes even more important and relevant for us to regulate our diet. As some wise people say, “stop eating just before you are full!” Others say that at least half of your plate should be fruits and vegetable. Remember that eating better is the only answer to reducing your weight.

Find a New, Healthy Activity

Build exercise or yoga into your daily routine. A round of tennis or golf, a brisk walk for at least 30 minutes every day (150 minutes per week of walking is the minimum recommended), yogic breathing exercises, swimming or cycling would be great to get into your daily schedule. I have met several seniors who have started running and competing with people of their own age. In the process of staying fit, they have also found a whole new community of like-minded and passionate friends.

Complete some points in your Bucket List

Give yourself a break. You have earned this. Over the years, all of us have been adding to our bucket list. This list has kept getting longer since we were not able to find the time during our work life. Now is the time to start ticking off some items.

Connect More with Friends and Family

Re-establish old connections that you lost while you were busy at work. Don’t wait for someone else to take the first step. It is interesting to see how many people are rediscovering their old school and college friends using Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Weekly lunches or coffee mornings with a group of friends, WhatsApp or Zoom calls with your family members spread across the World are great ways of re-connecting. Time spent talking and laughing with those that mean the most is time well spent.

Reduce your belongings

Resolve to clean out your closets and your home. Think of the difference between “want” and “need” before you start this exercise. Keep things you need and give away those you want. This may sound philosophical but try and give away whatever you have not used for the past one year. Your challenge will always be “what if” you suddenly need the item again. If you decide to give it away, keep this as an active resolution till the next year and then assess whether you felt the need for the items you gave away. Chances are that you will never miss these items.

Brush Up on New Technology

Technology, as you are well aware, is changing our World. You should have understood the many forms of communication and connection through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and so many others it is time to do so now. Now is the time to get a working understanding of the Metaverse and the Internet of Things, Crypto, Artificial Intelligence and more. To brush-up your own knowledge and skills, there are on-line tutorials for every possible question that you may have.

Tell Your Story

Now is the time to tell your story. Write your blog and publish it on a weekly or monthly basis. Think of all the anecdotes in your life, the milestones in your career and the time you spent as a child and your parents and your extended family and store these memories carefully in writing. Not only will this record your own memories and thoughts, but this could also become a record of your family history for the future generations.

Give your brain a workout

The more you exercise your brain, like your body, the stronger it will be. Read more and beyond your daily newspaper. Join or start discussion groups on subjects that interest you. Try Sudoku, Chess, Quiz Up or Scrabble. All these games are available free on your smart phone. Play online with people you do not know and compete with the best.

Remove negativity and anxiety from your life

Life is too short and at our stage in life, we are already on the “back nine” of a round of golf! Now is the time to remove all the negativity we have carried inside us about family, friends, and the World in general. All this negativity is only hurting ourselves.

Get enough sleep

Most people seem to believe in a myth that as you get older you need lesser sleep. Nothing is farther away from the truth. If you are sleeping late or getting up very early, stay in bed longer than you normally would have and soon you will be sleeping longer and waking up much more rested.

Get regular medical check-ups

Monitor, manage and record your blood pressure, your blood sugar, and your weight in a regular systematic manner. If you don’t have any of these challenges, consider yourself blessed. It is necessary for you to get annual medical check-ups done and if you did not get a checkup this year, resolve to undergo a comprehensive check up in the New Year.

Travel and discover new places

Throughout your working life you would have wanted to see new places but did not have the time either because of work commitments or family commitments. Covid permitting, now is the time for you to realise all those dreams. You and your partner can travel to new cities or new countries or even discover new parts of the city you live in.

Finally, as you celebrate during this festive season with your loved ones, raise a toast to the coming year, but with a smaller glass!

The runway is getting shorter with each passing year. This is a cause for celebration and not despair.

Wish you a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

 

Anti-Ageing

 

If your aim is to be lively and robust in your old age, you will need to learn some anti-ageing secrets that focus on the mind, body and spirit. Your body is an integrated whole. There are many aspects of a healthy life that rely on each other. Crush the spirit and the body will follow. Stimulate the mind and your mood will lighten. Exercise the body and your mind will be sharper. In many ways, these anti-ageing tips are interdependent.

It is widely acknowledged that your genes play a major role in your health but then you cannot choose your parents. But you must understand that you don’t need to be a slave to your family’s past. It is my belief that every human being must accept the ageing process and gracefully accept your age. We have all come across so many people whose body shows their age but they try to conceal it with ill-fitting clothes and mask their faces with heavy make-up!

Anti-ageing should be for your mind, body and spirit. There is no point in having a youthful body with an old person’s mind living in the past and a flagging spirit!

I am giving below some well accepted ways to handle the ageing process in your body:

Stimulate your brain – It is one thing to live a long life, but if you want to live a long and vibrant life, you are going to need a vibrant and sharp mind. The brain, like the rest of the body, needs exercise to avoid becoming sluggish and even disease-ridden.

The brain needs to be challenged to keep the neurological pathways open. Learn a new language, read, keep yourself busy, admire nature, relish smells and sounds of your surroundings. The younger you keep your mind, the younger your body and your whole being will become.

The old adage "use it or you'll lose it" has relevance when it comes to your mind.

Eat Well - More has been written about eating well than can be absorbed by anyone. Foods that are good today don’t seem to find favour a few years later and vice versa leaving readers confused and confounded. When I was a young adult, I was told that eggs were bad for cholesterol. Today I am told that eggs are good for you. As I discussed with people, I was told that red meat was better than chicken now and that pooris were better than parathas. Is all this cyclical and based entirely on food lobbies in the world?

Based on all the reading that most retirees would have done over the years, we would know that oily foods are not good, too much sweet should be avoided, food with roughage or high fibre is good and one should not eat carbohydrates after 7 pm. Our bodies also give us a clear signal when we don’t eat right.

The best way to plan to get a well-balanced diet is to go to a nutritionist or a dietician.

Exercise – I have stated in several places in this book that exercise is critical for managing our body, especially as we get older. Hundreds of studies show that exercise combats the loss of stamina, muscle strength, balance and bone density that increases with age.

In addition to working out, walking or swimming for 35 – 40 minutes at least 3 times a week, it is good to do some light weights to tone up your muscles.

Exercise must be blend to handle a cardio vascular work out combined with some muscle strengthening.

Maximise your intake of antioxidants - Free radicals contribute to the onset of age-related diseases, and antioxidants neutralize free. Everyone should take a combination of antioxidants through diet and supplementation.

Antioxidants can be increased in your diet by increasing the intake of dark-coloured vegetables like tomatoes, carrots and spinach. Alternately, take a food supplement because we don’t always eat what is good for us and often the soil in which our food grows has been denuded of the resources our food should normally have.

“I always tell people that taking antioxidants is like driving with a seatbelt” says Blumberg, an authority on the subject “They can protect your life, but they are not a license to drive recklessly.”

Sleep - Research shows that if you sleep less than six hours a night, you are at far greater risk of having a heart attack or experiencing a stroke. What's more, your mind seems to deteriorate at a faster pace.

On an emotional level, a lack of sleep makes you less peaceful and more prone to anger. Sicknesses related to viral infections are also more prevalent among people lacking proper rest.

I have met many people who have trouble sleeping. They take the easy way out and ask their doctors to prescribe sleeping aids and what is surprising is that doctors have no hesitation in prescribing these. All such aids are addictive and getting back to a natural sleep will prove to be a huge challenge once your body gets “addicted” to an external sleeping stimulus. It is best to try and meditate to sleep rather than rely on external aids.

If you have specific concerns about ageing, ask your doctor about proven ways to improve your health. Remember, healthy lifestyle choices such as eating a healthy diet and including physical activity in your daily routine can help you feel your best as you get older. 

And finally, while these are all tools to slow down your ageing process, remember that nature is the biggest doctor for your age. If your body is fit, well exercised and free of any major disease, accept the process of ageing gracefully. There is much more to look forward to in life as you move towards retirement than simply a body that looks twenty years younger but feels much older!

As Mark Twain has said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter!”

Planning for Retirement

 

Retirement has nothing to do with you or your competence. It is an event which is the result of the policies of your employer and this is an inevitable stage in all our lives. It is estimated that the population of 60 year olds in the World will cross 1 billion by the end this decade. India will have over 100 million seniors

Each one of us is unique and will have our own suite of needs, experiences, personal and family circumstances, financial needs and personal health. So why don’t we want to plan for this next important phase of our life carefully and well in advance of the date of superannuation? It is important for each one of us to consider the following thoughts as we plan our retirement. These are merely pointers and by no means a comprehensive solution to the challenges we are likely to face in our retired life.

Acceptance of the New Normal and No Self-pity

The single biggest challenge I have seen that retirees face is internal acceptance that they have reached the age of retirement. Till you accept this stage of life happily, you will always be unhappy and possibly angry for not having been given the time to achieve all that you may have set out to achieve. You could be angry because you started work later than others and therefore got your due later than others or had a shorter working life. You could also slip into a very convenient mode of acceptance of self-pity.

I have met so many retirees who preface their venting with the words “If only” and I tell them “Why blame the World and everyone else for a retirement event that you have no control over? The quicker you accept that you have retired or are about to retire, the faster you will adjust to your new life”.

Social Networks and Technology 

There is a whole new world waiting for us in the world of social media and technology. According to the Pew Research Centre, Internet use among those 60 and older grew 150 percent between 2009 and 2011, the largest growth in a demographic group. Furthermore, their study showed that of those that go online, 71 percent do so daily and 34 percent use social media. Their numbers have increased very significantly since this research. The seniors use these tools to bridge the geographic gap between them and their loved ones far away and as a way to re-connect with friends. Studies show that the internet has become an important portal for reducing isolation and loneliness.

The “seniors” are taking to social media like a fish to water discovering school and college friends like never before. Well beyond our normal Facebook page and our posting of the occasional photograph and sometimes hitting the “like” button. Skype and WhatsApp groups are overflowing with forwarded and re-forwarded messages. More savvy seniors are on Instagram and discovering a whole new world.

For many of us who believed that we had no time to learn social media because of work related time pressures, retirement is an excellent time to make this transition. Remember that when we started work three decades ago, computers were new and we had to learn this new tool as well! My 87 year old father stayed in regular touch with his grandchildren using various social media platforms.

Start a social group with like-minded people in areas that you like and you will soon discover many new friends.

Management of Expectations

We have to recognize one blunt truth. Our lives will change once we retire. There is no point in hanging on to memories. Even these will change over time. How we manage this change is entirely dependent on us. We need to understand our own reality and we need to deal with this reality.

Management of our expectations post retirement goes well beyond managing our finances. While money is always a critical component, disappointments of retired life often go beyond financial security. I have met many retirees who are disappointed that they have not planned their time well or they have not cultivated any hobbies or have not built a circle of friends beyond their work colleagues or have lost contact with family members.

To these people I say that it is never too late to start. Remember that you are looking at the next three decades of your life ahead of you.

Establish a new Routine for yourself

Most of us have been used to a routine that has been developed in our working life. As most of us reach the age of superannuation our children will not demand much time since they would have started their own lives. Our spouses will have accepted our companionship rather than demanding our time. Our routine would have been evolved based on spending long hours at the office and spending more client facing hours. As we retire, we are not able to figure out how to manage all the surplus time that we have.

The change, therefore, when we retire is very significant. We will suddenly have most of our waking hours to account for and use gainfully. In order to achieve this new normal sensibly, we need to work out a routine and follow it assiduously. Some people I know have actually got their routine logged into their Outlook calendar and follow it carefully. Too much of any one activity is not sustainable and therefore we will have to develop of blend of routines covering a multitude of activities.

Leisure

Most of us are so used to working long hours at work that we almost feel guilty when we think of leisure. Therefore, when we look at retirement as a time for leisure, we miscalculate or underestimate that this can be a time of fulfilment.

Take out your “bucket list” and start working on it. If you have not prepared one, now is the time to start listing out everything you have always wanted to do but did not have the time to do.

Watch all those movies and television serials that you did not have time for. Try out all those new restaurants and cuisines. Develop new skills. There are hundreds of options available and if this involves you taking some educational courses, so be it.

Travelling today is easier and much more affordable than when we started working in the seventies or eighties. If you can afford it, travel to places within your country or the World. Plan to travel to places that you have always dreamt of but were not able to go to.

In your retirement, your leisure is real and well-earned after three decades of working. Retirement needs effort and the earlier you start making this effort the happier you will be. For you, moving forward in your new life as a retiree, the World must know no boundaries.

Planned well, you may suddenly realise that your retirement will become a busiest phase of your life, much more than you had imagined.