Congratulations! You finally made it to retirement. But what do you do in your retired everyday life?
After doing some research in the self-care and self-development world, I came up with seven easy ways to make your everyday life in retirement more successful. These include learning to live with gratitude, experiencing nature, having a routine, exercising and eating healthfully, learning calmness, reading, cherishing old friends and making new ones.
After working for my local Council on Aging and being retired myself, I found that many people no matter how sophisticated or how well educated they are, don’t know how to spend their years being retired. Sure, you’re excited! No more alarm clocks. No demanding customers to deal with. Or no more boring meetings. No more office politics. But after watching your grandkids if you have them, traveling if you can afford it, playing golf whenever you want if you enjoy the sport, doing all your errands or just puttering around, now what do you do?
Here are seven tips for you taken from my soon to be published book, Soul Care for 60+: A Beginners Guide With 7 Easy Ways to Self-Care for the Soul for Older Adults. In the book, I strive to go further than self-care with soul care. After I did a bit of research into the self-care and self-development world, I’ve found that these helped me tremendously in dealing with retirement in our regular day to day lives.
For it is much more than taking a bubble bath! (Although I can’t deny, doing this can feel good in the moment too.) So, I hope these are useful tools for you too.
Learning to Live with Gratitude
Face it. We all know those people who are retired and miserable. Make yourself be grateful even if your experience that day is not that great. Get one of those ubiquitous gratitude journals that are very popular nowadays or if you hate them or writing in general, just develop a gratitude mindset.
Experiencing Nature
Enjoy walking? No, you don’t have to go on a long hike. A twenty-minute walk will do. Or gardening? No, you don’t have to have a large beautifully sculpted garden. A patch of dirt will do or even a pot on your balcony. Don’t have a balcony? Take care of indoor plants. Even if you’re a city dweller or can’t get out at all, surround yourself with green. Put up pictures of nature and look at them! That is good for your soul too.
Having a Routine
I learned this is so very important for retired people. Even just going to your Council on Aging every Tuesday to play cribbage. Put it in your calendar even if you think it’s silly…like taking a nap every day or on most days at two o’clock. Have something to look forward to as well each day. It doesn’t have to be fancy…just calling an old friend to catch up counts. Just don’t sit around watching TV!
Exercising/Eating Healthfully
This must be mentioned, and it is self-explanatory. It’s important that retired people since they’re older, feel their best. I’m not going to preach here…maybe your doctor has told you this for years. Your body changes as you get older. When you were younger, you may have gotten away with eating junk food and not exercising at all but that’s no longer the case.
Learning Calmness
This is especially important for retired people who have been used to being on the go all the time in their previous lives. If you’ve wanted to finally take up yoga or meditation, learn how. It’s good for your mind and soul too. Or just learn to sit in silence and be still. Now you have the time, might as well use it!
Reading Rather than Scrolling
Older adults may have learned their smartphones and feel under pressure to use them. After all, most young people have them and are always looking at their phones. And smartphones are something of a miracle! But I’ve found reading an old-fashioned book is good for the soul. And it’s good for our span of attention as well…you don’t want it to be getting shorter after all.
Cherishing Old Friends/Making New Ones
We all have old friends we need to call or even better see, to catch up. Do it! Most likely they will be happy to hear from you. And you can make new friends at your age. Think of it like dating again or going on a job interview but without the stress. Think what you might learn from them too!
Conclusion
So those are my seven easy and simple tips for someone who is retired. To sum up they are learning to live with gratitude, experiencing nature, having a routine, exercising, and eating healthfully, leaning calmness (with yoga, meditation or just being still), reading rather than scrolling, cherishing old friends or making new ones. Get on my email list when my book, Soul Care for 60+, is published and get updated monthly with more retirement articles. My book goes into more detail on how to answer the question, “Retired? Now What?”
And if you have any suggestions on how you live your best life in retirement, please leave a comment below. Thank you!