When asked by a pupil at the age of 91 why he kept on practicing, cellist Pablo Casals replied: ‘Because I am making progress.’

 

I am too. I’m currently having the time of my life: traveling, learning, working and socializing.  I’m in the thick of it, living a richer, freer, happier life than I would have imagined possible in my younger years.

• My attitude is that every stage of life provides NEW discoveries and experiences. I am embracing my age as I would any other new discovery. In the process I’m finding new versions of myself.
• It’s kind of a privilege to experience how different decades of life play out. Chronological age is losing its power to define me. Hopefully, as I get much older, I will also accept frailty and vulnerability as part of life and embrace it through this same prism of discovery.

The key to feeling empowered and modern is staying active and engaged with life.

• I am fortunate to be doing something daily that I really love.
• That something is writing, specifically about cultural shifts – why and how they’re happening and how they will impact our lives. It’s a fantastic and wide-ranging topic.
• This getting older thing is just one more cultural shift to explore as a writer.

 

Read on below for my tips on staying happily and healthily engaged in life (no matter your age).

 

5 tips to stay actively, and happily, engaged with life:

 

#1: Stay physically active

• Going to the gym daily and working out with a trainer has been amazing for my health.
• Even with a touch of osteoarthritis, I’m extremely fit, active and healthy. I often walk 5-10 miles daily.

#2: Maintain a network of young and old friends

• Research shows that people with friends from different generations feel younger than those whose friends are all the same age.
• Younger friends help you try new things and challenge your thinking.

#3: Stay curious and keep learning

• What choices are you making when it comes to books, movies, music and art?
• What was the last new restaurant you checked out?
• Where are you traveling?
• Learn new things, don’t get into a rut. Old dogs can learn new tricks.
• It’s also fun to dabble – I’ve taken classes in coding, public speaking, storytelling – and if I end up not liking it, no harm done at least I’ve tried something new.

#4: Stay positive

• A study of nearly 100,000 women over 50 found that optimists had a 14% lower risk of death and were 30% less likely to die from coronary heart disease than their pessimistic peers.
• Studies also show that those with a more upbeat image of growing older tend to perform better in memory and motor control tests. They can walk faster and stand a better chance of recovering from disability. They also live an average of seven and a half years longer.

#5: Watch your weight and strictly monitor what you eat and drink

• Obesity is a killer. Maintaining a healthy weight is critical.
• I’ve also found that not drinking (as in Dry January), has been extremely positive for my health. I’m sleeping better, my blood pressure is down and most astonishingly, symptoms of my osteoarthritis have declined. There is indeed something to alcohol causing inflammation in the body. More on that later.

If you’ve gotten this far, READ THIS:

Carl Honore just wrote a book based on his own need to understand what ageing means. The result is B(older): Making the Most of Our Longer Lives – a call for individuals to stop worrying about the process of ageing and get on with the revolution in ageing.

His 12-steps to help you be happy in later life are:

1. If you think of yourself as old, you will be old. The media will bang on about dementia and loneliness, but ignore them. Concentrate on the upside. (And note, 17% of over-80’s will get dementia but 83% will not! Same thing with loneliness – it’s a top issue for 80 year olds but the second largest age group suffering from loneliness are millennials.)
2. Take yourself out of your comfort zone. Resist being pigeonholed; keep experimenting; challenge yourself and society’s stereotyping of you.
3. Try to stay healthy. Eat well and get lots of exercise – it’s good for brain and body. Exercise doesn’t have to mean playing competitive ice hockey; brisk walks will keep you in shape.
4. Look for positive role models. Helen Mirren, David Attenborough and, best of all, Michelangelo, who lived until the ripe old age (in 16th-century terms) of 88 and spent the final 20 years of his life designing and overseeing the construction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
5. Seek to become the person you always wanted to be. One reason many people are at their happiest in their 60s is that they feel freer and less beholden to others. They contain all their previous selves and can start to make sense of them.
6. Don’t just maintain social connections with your own age group: mix across the generations as much as you can. Inter-generational contact has become increasingly difficult, but if we can do it we benefit.
7. Be willing to let stuff go. If that friendship isn’t working, drop it. Streamline your life. There is less time left, so make it count.
8. Ageing should be a process of opening rather than closing doors. “We will lose some things – speed, stamina, a bit of mental agility – but in many other respects we gain,” says Honoré. We learn new skills, have greater social awareness, are likely to be more altruistic, are “lighter” in our approach to life – because we are less hung up on creating a good impression – and can see the bigger picture. It may be that we are in a position to make a greater contribution to society in our 60s and 70s than in our so-called prime.
9. Honesty is the best policy. Don’t try to pretend you are not 75 or 85 or whatever age you are. “As soon as we start lying about our age, we’re giving the number a terrible power – a power it doesn’t deserve,” says Honoré. People do it because there are so many ageist assumptions attached to age, but the way to fight back is to subvert those assumptions.
10. Society tells us that sex, love and romance belong to the young, but it’s not true. Plenty of older people continue to experience the joy of sex. But there are no rules: have as much – or as little – as you want. Some older people see it as a blessed release to escape the shackles of falling in love (and lust), but others can’t imagine life without it. Whatever turns you on.
11. Ignore people who say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You can. Despite the common perception that creativity is the preserve of the young, we can get more creative as we get older. Our neural networks loosen up and we have the confidence and freedom to challenge groupthink. Honoré was encouraged last year when the Turner prize abolished its age limit for artists. Michelangelo could have been a contender.
12. Don’t pretend death isn’t coming. Embrace it – just not yet. “It’s useful to know our lives are bookended,” says Honoré. “When time is running out, it becomes more precious. It gives life shape and, in some ways, meaning.” Don’t dwell morbidly on it, but don’t shy away from it either. The closer you get to it, the less you are likely to fear it and the greater your focus will be on the things that really matter.