Happy aging is healthy aging. It takes away the stress and anxiety of “getting older” and instead shifts the focus on the joy and fulfillment your can get from the natural aging process.
The following sections will show you how wonderful your life can be, and how to be as healthy and happy as possible now and in the years to come.
The Importance of Having a Daily Routine
Daily routines and habits are more popular than ever before, not because they are a new concept, but because of the benefits to your emotional health and overall wellbeing.
As you age, no matter what age you are now, it becomes even more important to have a daily routine with habits that are going to keep you healthy and happy.
Here are some benefits of having a good daily routine:
It Helps You Live a Healthy Lifestyle
When you have a regular routine with habits you participate in daily, it can help balance out your life and ensure you are living a healthy lifestyle. Many people choose to add certain activities that let them improve their health,
such as cooking breakfast, doing yoga in the morning, writing in their journal, or having a nighttime routine that allow them to get better sleep.
To be a healthy older adult, you need to start right now, no matter what age you currently are.
Routines Encourage Better Mental Health
You can also have a daily routine that allows you to improve your mental health. For example, you might include a session of meditation or adding mindfulness to your morning or nighttime routine. This helps you reduce stress and can help with mental health disorders like anxiety or depression.
Remember that your mental health can decline rapidly if you aren’t careful; in addition to adding activities that improve upon your emotional wellness, consider seeing a therapist on a routine basis.
A Balanced Life is a Happy One
With a daily routine, you are able to focus more on balance in your life. It helps you to schedule certain events and activities along with your personal responsibilities. You can decide what are priorities, have time for reading and creative activities, get enough exercise and eat right, and do everything you need to do to improve your health and wellness.
Daily Routines Improve Your Sleep
Sleep is essential for everyone, but unfortunately, older adults find that they have more trouble sleeping. There is a joke that older adults often sleep only a few hours a night, or that they wake up early for the “Early bird special”, but this isn’t because as you age, you sleep less. It’s because you have a harder time sleeping soundly throughout the night.
But, if you have a daily routine that also includes a restful and relaxing nighttime routine, it can help a lot with improving your quality of sleep.
Part One – Habits for Your Physical Health
There are many daily habits and routines that help with happy and healthy aging. When it comes to your health, the two main areas are your physical health and your mental health. Here are some daily habits to introduce into your routine that will help improve your physical health as you age.
Staying Active no Matter Your Age
For your physical health, you also want to get regular exercise. Again, you don’t need to put too much pressure on yourself to spend hours at the gym or run a marathon. Regular exercise a few days a week is all that is required, unless you have more specific fitness goals.
Consider forms of movement that you enjoy and will make you happy. You should be excited about your exercise, not dread it. For you, this might mean a yoga class with your friends, going for a walk or riding a bicycle, or doing workouts at home on your treadmill or with a kettlebell.
Diet is All About Balance
I know, I know. You have to watch what you eat. But this isn’t a strict diet where you are cutting out entire food groups or trying to eat a diet of kale and salmon. While those are healthy options, eating a balanced diet is more about what you add in, not what you take away.
Start making small changes and adding in more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy, lean protein, and drinking lots of water. When you eat a nutritious diet, you stay healthy and can help reduce the risk of certain age-related diseases.
Getting Better Sleep
It is a common misconception that as you get older, your sleep needs change. But the fact is, people tend to start experiencing more insomnia as they get older. It isn’t that you don’t need as much sleep, but that it is harder for you to get it.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, older adults find it harder to stay asleep and have very interrupted sleep, with waking up multiple times a night. This can affect everything from your emotional health to your energy levels and stress levels.
Here are some things to focus on when you want to get better sleep.
Benefits of Getting Better Sleep
Why is sleep so important? It actually can affect nearly every facet of your life, even when you don’t realize it. Here are some reasons why it is essential that you focus on getting as much sleep as you can every night:
It improves memory and brain function. A common concern among people who are getting older is losing their memory or having lower brain function. If you want to improve your memories and hold onto to them, you need to get good sleep.
It can help you manage a healthy weight. While you don’t need to obsessively count calories or have a strict fitness regimen to be healthy, maintaining your weight is much easier to do when you are getting enough sleep. Insomnia can actually lead to a lower metabolism, which may cause you to gain weight more easily.
It reduces stress and anxiety. If you suffer from stress, that can also lead to a lot of issues in your life, affecting your physical and mental health, and worsening anxiety. You know what can make stress worse? Lack of proper sleep.
It gives you enough energy to get through the day. The more sleep you get, the more energy you will have during the day. This helps you to stay active and take care of yourself.
Tips for Improved Sleep as an Older Adult
Looking to improve your sleep? Here are some helpful tips that will encourage better sleep at night.
- Have a good nighttime routine. When working on your daily habits, add in some to your nighttime routine that will help you get better sleep. This might include not drinking caffeine in the afternoon, using relaxing essential oils in the evening during your bath, or simply preparing for bed an hour early where you start shutting off lights and electronics, meditate or practice mindfulness, or write in your journal before bed.
- Get enough activity during the day. If you want to be tired enough for sleep, you need to get a good amount of activity during the day. Consider adding regular exercise to your normal routine, and see what a difference it makes in your sleep.
- Improve your sleep environment. People often have the same mattress and bedding for a long time, without realizing it isn’t as comfortable as it could be. If you don’t remember when you bought your mattress, it has probably been long enough to need a new one.
Find New Activities You Love
You can enjoy your life at any age, so don’t let the fact that you are middle-aged or an older adult, keep you from the activities you want to pursue. In fact, finding things you love to do can keep you active and bring a lot of happiness into your life.
Solo or Social Activities
The first thing to decide when choosing new activities is to consider whether you are looking for solo or social activities. Both are important in your life to bring you joy and help you live a happy life, but you are likely miss out on one or the other.
You may be someone who is with other people a lot and what you are looking for is more time to yourself. On the other hand, if you are alone a lot, these activities might be ones you can do with others, like going to a nearby park or attending a local craft class.
Your Favorite Past Times
What are some activities you used to love doing, but haven’t done in a while? Think about what you used to find a lot of joy in, such as crafts, watching certain types of movies, a form of exercise, going to a certain fun place in your area, or spending time with people you haven’t seen in a while. Even if you can’t do the exact same activity, it might lead you in the right direction.
For example, if you used to knit a lot, but have stopped because of arthritis, it at least tells you that your soul might be missing a creative activity or a type of craft. Think of some other similar activities that won’t hurt your hands as much, but still bring you a similar emotion.
What You Have Never Done Before
Another way to find new activities for your mental and physical health as you age is to consider what you have never done before, but always wanted to try. You of course want to consider any limitations you currently have, but I bet there are many activities you can get involved in that you will fall in love with, and are brand new to you.
This might be going on a hike with a friend, trying indoor mountain climbing, or learning a new craft or hobby. Maybe you have always loved macramé and want to learn how to make your own, or you would love to take a pottery class. There is no better time than now!
Part Two – Habits for Your Mental Health
When you are improving on your daily routine in order to be happy and fulfilled as you age, it is important that you consider your mental health, in addition to your physical health. Mental health, from reducing stress and changing your mindset, should be given just as much care as introducing diet and exercise for your physical health.
Here are some daily habits to consider adding to your routine when it comes to improving your mental health.
Find Healthy Ways to Relieve Stress
Stress affects everyone at any age, but it can take an even bigger toll on you as you age. Stress affects your mental health just as much as your physical health, so it is essential that you get a handle on it right now.
While you are busy working on improving your mental health through daily habits, you can add some stress-relieving activities to your normal routine. Some ideas include:
- Yoga or another form of exercise in the morning
- Writing in a journal
- Reading your favorite kind of book
- Finding a relaxing hobby that takes your mind off your stress
- Spending time with loved ones
Avoid Isolation
It can be easy to stay indoors and keep to yourself as much as possible, especially if your mental health is struggling, but this makes it even more important that you socialize. Even if that means inviting people over to your house where you feel comfortable, or having coffee once a week with a friend.
You need to avoid isolation and get out of your normal surroundings. This can help with anxiety, stress, and depression. It helps you to build a solid foundation, and gives you a healthy thing to add to your regular routine.
Keep Yourself Active and Engaged
While exercise and staying active is great for your physical health, including maintaining good cardiovascular health and even preventing certain diseases, it is also amazing for your mental health. With just simple exercises like yoga or walking, you can boost your endorphins to put you in a better mood, give you more energy, and help relieve anxiety.
Being more active and engaged on a daily basis will ensure you are doing everything you can for both your body and your mind. This is going to help a lot with both happy aging and healthy aging.
Have a Good Support System
Lastly, you really want to have a good support system in your life for your mental and emotional health. This can be different for different people, but it might include having a counselor or therapist, a close group of friends you can spend time with any time you need to, or a relative who understands your mental health issues and is always available to help.
How to Improve Your Mindset While You Age
When people get older, they are often so consumed with how their bodies change physically, that they don’t pay enough attention to their minds. You may notice that your mental health isn’t what it once was, that your memory is lacking, or that you tend to be more negative and pessimistic.
It is really important that you try to improve your mindset as you get older, so that you can focus on the things that bring you happiness and joy. Here are some mindset tips that can help.
Start Letting Go
This can actually be one of the most difficult parts of changing your mindset, but also a very important one. You need to let go. If you have a lot of demands in your life that create a lot of stress and negative thoughts, it’s time to decide if it’s worth keeping them in your life or not.
This might mean too many career demands where you change
careers or delegate certain tasks, or starting to say no to people who ask too much of you. Or maybe letting go for you means taking less pressure on yourself and giving yourself more time to practice self-care.
Get More Clarity
When you first start improving your mindset and being a more positive, happy person, it sometimes takes a while to figure out what that means for you. If you are still confused about what needs to change in the way you think and perceive things in your life, it’s time to find some clarity.
We like to recommend journaling for this, since you can write with honesty about anything you are thinking about, and over time, you start noticing patterns in your own thoughts. You figure out what your goals are, what you feel like you are missing in, and what situations tend to cause your mindset to shift.
Express More Gratitude
Being grateful for the blessings in your life is a really simple way to start shifting your mindset. It instantly helps you to think more positively about things and people in your life, and temporarily puts aside your negative thoughts. You can’t think negatively when you are being grateful and thinking about the people in your life who bring blessings and wonderful things.
Your gratitude can be for your job or your home, your pets, people you love, or very simple things like how comfy your bed is or that delicious morning cup of coffee.
Positive Affirmations
One last tip we want to give for improving your mindset as you age is to use positive affirmations. These might seem silly, but when used on a regular basis, they hold a lot of power. A positive affirmation is a thought or phrase that is positive, uplifting, and hopeful. It can help you maintain a good mindset throughout the day.
Positive affirmations might be “I will have a great day” or “I can achieve anything”, but they can also be more specific with something you are dealing with, such as “I am strong enough to accomplish __________”.
How Journaling can Help with Healthy Aging
Healthy aging is simply a way to embrace your age and improve your overall health and wellness. A big part of that is finding more clarity into your life, understanding who you are, and knowing what you want to leave behind. Journaling can be a wonderful tool for people of any age, but there are some unique benefits for older adults.
It Keeps Your Memory Sharp
One of the most common concerns older adults have is losing their memory. If you are afraid of not having as vivid of a memory, or struggling with diseases like Alzheimer’s or Dementia, the journal can help tremendously.
You will be able to record your life, both what is happening now, and writing about past memories you have. It helps you keep it fresh in your mind as you recollect on all your favorite moments. The more you do this, the sharper your mind will begin to be.
You Can Improve Your Mindset
Your mindset and attitude can have a drastic effect on how you feel as you get older. If you want to be happy and healthy as an older adult, you need to have a positive mindset. It’s not always easy to do, and sometimes it just takes a little mental shift.
This can be accomplished by writing in your journal, finding more clarity into your life, and writing down everything you are grateful for.
It Allows You to Focus on Your New Goals
If you find that you have a lot of goals for this phase of your life, but you don’t focus much on them, or you fail to really plan out what needs to be done to achieve them, journaling can help tremendously with this.
A lot of people not only are able to narrow down the focus of their goals, but come up with lists of tasks to be done, set priorities, and achieve their goals.
It is never too late to work on yourself, improve your life, and accomplish what you really want to accomplish the most.
You Have Something to Leave Behind
This depends on the style of journaling you want to do. There are many different forms of journaling, from stream of consciousness style where you do more of a brain dump on the page, to writing about your day and trying to find clarity into certain aspects of your life.
If you want something to leave behind for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, start a journal specifically for that purpose. Fill it with memories of your childhood, your family life, your favorite moments from your life, your favorite movies and TV shows, what you do for fun, and anything else you can think to write about.
Start Working on Your Bucket List
This is probably not the first time you have heard of a bucket list, but if you have never had one, or not focused much on the one you already have, there has never been a better time to revisit the idea. A bucket list is simply a list of things you want to accomplish in your life. They can be places you want to visit, friends you want to catch up with, activities you want to learn, or things you want to get done in your life.
Everyone has a different bucket list and a different reason for having one. As you age and into your later years, it is a great idea to work on your bucket list. It helps you to focus on your goals, find fulfillment in your life, and really enjoy life for what it s.
Follow Your Passions
To start working on your bucket list, think about what your passions are. What activities bring you the most joy? What do you turn to when you have a day off to do what you want? What is your favorite form of self-care?
The answers to these types of questions usually leads to your biggest passions in life. Maybe when you have a weekend off, you enjoy going on a road trip because you love to travel.
Or, you are someone who enjoys having family over whenever you get the chance. Or, maybe your favorite activities are creative ones, like drawing, writing, or creating something at home.
Think about your passions, then think of what aligns with them, that you have always wanted to do, but haven’t had the opportunity yet.
What Have You Always Wanted to Do?
This is the easiest way to start working on your bucket list. Think of things big and small that have been on your “life bucket list” that you haven’t yet done. Maybe there is a place you want to travel to, an activity like skydiving or scuba diving you always wanted to try, or a local event you seem to miss every time, that you want to make a point to go to.
Your bucket list is personal to you and may include a wide range of things as small as books you want to read, to big things like owning your first house or buying a new car.
Start Crossing Items Off
Once you have compiled a list of things you want to do, start figuring out what you can do soon, and what takes a little more planning. This might include saving money for a trip, or finding a friend to do a certain activity with you. Pin it up on your wall, put it in your planner, and really focus on crossing items off your list.
Keep Up with Friends and Family
As you get older, you might feel inclined to isolate yourself, especially if you deal with anxiety or depression, are not sleeping well, or you have physical ailments that make it harder to do what you were once able to do. But this is even more reason why you should get out there and live your life, focusing on the social aspect of your daily routine.
Here are some ways to do that and keep enjoying your life in a safe, but fulfilling way.
Catch Up with Friends
The first way to add some social aspects into your daily routine as an older adult is to catch up with friends. It can be hard to do this in the beginning, especially if you haven’t spoken to some of your friends in a long time.
Just start with one person who you would love to catch up on, and give them a call or reach out on social media. Just ask how they have been doing, and invite them out for something simple, like coffee or a lunch date.
Get into the habit of seeing friends on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be daily, which isn’t very practical anyway. But consider once or twice a week where you spend time with your closest friends.
Making New Friends as an Older Adult
It isn’t easy to make new friends at any age, but as an older adult, you might feel like it’s too late. But that isn’t true at all! You just need to think about where other like-minded people around your age might spend their time. This might be a local college that has crafting classes, walking by the harbor or lake near your house, sitting at the park while reading or sketching, or going to a nearby café for lunch.
Strike up conversation with someone who seems to enjoy the same things you do, or join a community club or organization with other people with a similar lifestyle as you. Have neighbors you haven’t met? Go introduce yourself!
More Family Time
The other social part of your daily routine and new habits has to do with family. This will depend on your family dynamic, but the more effort you put into making plans and reaching out to your close relatives, the more you will start to build a foundation for spending more time together.
It is really easy to lose touch even with family that lives close by. Sometimes, it just takes one person to reach out more and invite them to spend time together, plan parties, or just ask to meet for dinner once a week. There is no reason that person can’t be you!
Avoid These Common Daily Habit Mistakes
You already know that incorporating healthy habits into your daily routine can help you age gracefully and fully embrace this phase of your life, but there are also some mistakes people tend to make when they first switch up their routine.
Changing Too Much, Too Fast
This is probably the most common mistake people make when they’re working on daily habits and trying to switch up their routine. It’s great that you want to make a lot of changes in your life in order to age gracefully and enjoy your life, but if you try to change 10 things at once, none of them are going to stick.
It is best to change 1-2 things at a time, turn them into daily habits, and then don’t add in anything new until you get so accustomed to those habits and you don’t even have to think about it anymore.
Being Strict on Yourself
Do you find that when you set a habit or change part of your routine, and if you miss it one day, you are really hard on yourself? This guilt isn’t going to help you to be a healthier or happier person. It is good to create a daily routine, but it should always have some flexibility.
Understand that things happen, schedules change, and sometimes you’re too tired to wake up early or just don’t feel like doing yoga. There is nothing wrong with that! Just make sure you know why you have missed out on a part of your routine.
Forcing Habits that Don’t Benefit You
It is also important to consider the type of habits you are trying to add to your daily routine, and the reason why you chose them. In some cases, habits you can’t stick to aren’t necessarily not good for people in general, but not good for you.
If you want to exercise every day, but you hate the gym, then trying to force yourself to go to the gym every morning isn’t going to last long, and certainly won’t make you happy.
Instead, pick an exercise you enjoy, and add that to your routine. You don’t have to follow what you see online or what your friends are doing. Customize your routine to fit your own needs.
Not Allowing Flexibility in Your Routine
As mentioned, you want to have flexibility in your daily routine. If your healthy aging habits are too strict, or keep you from enjoying certain aspects of your life, it isn’t going to last long. This is a very common mistake people make when they are too rigid and turn an innocent daily routine into a punishment.
