Experts Say If You Can Master These 8 Skills, You'll Remain Happy Into Your 80s
Practical skills to be a peppy, perky, happy octogenarian.
Fellipe Ditadi | Unsplash Longevity is great, but longevity in depression is not so great. So, if you plan to make it to your 80s happy and healthy, you will need to develop skills to ensure happiness, maintain the pep in your step, and facilitate life-long well-being.
Building the skills for a life of happiness well into old age can start at any time, it is never too early or too late to seek joy, create pleasure, and develop a content state of being.
If you can master these skills, you'll remain happy well into your 80s:
1. Focus on what serves you
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At every stage, life will bring you nuisances, financial challenges, relationship squabbles, and health issues, advises life coach Lisa Petsinis, but you can’t let them consume you. Instead of letting these preoccupy your mind or eat you up, focus on what serves you and supports your well-being.
While it’s not always easy, shifting your focus can free you from negativity and choosing peace over worry. Practice putting down the bags — you don’t have to carry them — and make space for joy and living lighter, no matter what life throws at you.
2. Let the small stuff silde
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Refusing to let it go is toxic and can cause physical illnesses (like ulcers), emotional anguish, and undue stress. Frequent high levels of anger can even cause heart disease.
Instead, learn to relax, show some gratitude, and extend your life, explains career coach Ellen Kamaras.
3. Meditate before looking at your phone in the morning
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Wellness coach LouLou Palmer knows from experience how meditation is a fantastic skill, which will serve you well from your first birthday, until your cake can't take any more candles and for so many fantastic reasons.
Meditation allows your brain to slow down and recalibrate. So often we are more busy in our daily lives than we'd like to be. Leaving our brains running super fast and stressed out. Just closing your eyes can encourage your brain to slow down. Then, add a bit of mindfulness and some slow steady breathing, and now you're talking! Your thinking slows down, your oxygen levels increase, and your red blood cells and other organs are happy.
Keep this up for 5 minutes or more and your body begins to relax, lowering blood pressure, and bringing about heart and brain coherence. Stress hormones like cortisol start to lower, boosting immune system function.
Meditation also relieves symptoms of depression and anxiety and helps promote good brain function, helping with brain fatigue and loss of concentration. This in turn helps with a better attention span and also gives a deeper regenerative quality of sleep.
4. Find your true voice, then listen to it
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The one skill to master for lifelong happiness into your 80s and beyond is listening within to hear your true voice of spirit or “higher self” or, as some recognize, their intuitive voice explains wellness coach Carolyn Hidalgo.
It’s the one that is loving, compassionate, and kind that you can trust fully even when you don’t like what it says! It’s the inner voice above the outer noise that keeps you on your right soul path where you’ll experience signs and synchronicities and find yourself living the dream you want with an inner calm and sense of purpose that can ride all the waves of life.
5. Appreciate and spend time in nature
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Psychologist T.J. Price suggests that by regularly practicing mindfulness and becoming aware of controlling your thoughts, you will not easily succumb to events in the external world.
By becoming in control of your internal world, you will not be as likely to be a victim of the outer world, while practicing mindfulness in nature enhances the benefits.
6. Manage your stress
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Learning how to manage stress is a critical skill for maintaining a steady course and staying happy into old age, says therapist Gloria Brame. Stress is a natural part of human life but how people respond to it varies hugely depending on a person's ability to handle stress.
Whether they turn to meditation, prayer, nature, or gaming, developing outlets to keep yourself on an even keel through even the worst of times is the best strategy for maintaining optimism when the world is not going your way.
7. Find joy in the little things
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Every day, you want to find or notice something that makes you smile, suggests intuitive coach Ronnie Ann Ryan. It's the little things that keep you happy like:
- Smiling at someone and having them smile back,
- Sunshine on your face,
- A good hug,
- Beautiful landscape or flowers,
- Laughing with a friend or family member.
There are so many little events in daily life that can keep you happy and smiling if you take the time to notice and appreciate them fully!
8. Maintain social connections
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Life coach Siddharth S Kumaar understands how loneliness is one of the major contributors to depression in old age, hence fostering adaptability and skills to make social connections will help you stay happy into your 80s.
Creating a happy life requires the skills for mental well-being since you never know what life will toss your way. Yet, we can keep focused on the good to get us through the bad, and a lot of the good we can focus on is being mindfully gentle with ourselves.
Combine that self-compassion with an awareness of the little joyful things in life, and we can become happy octogenarians.
Will Curtis is a creator, editor, and activist who has spent the last decade working remotely.