Introduction
The best thing about mastering life after 50 is that there are steps you can follow. You don’t need to figure this out and in fact the steps are fairly straightforward. If you want to be successful you need only follow these steps. But what does “success” in “steps to success” mean? It means you can be the healthiest, happiest, most fulfilled person you can be. The thing is, even though the steps are there and laid out for you, nobody said it would be easy to follow them. Let “Steps to Success: Mastering Life After 50” be your guide.
Types of Success in Life
Success can mean different things to different people. Success to people in their 20s may involve moving out and getting your first job. For others, success in life may relate to financial success. For those who are older and wiser, success in life likely has a broader, more encompassing meaning that includes holding onto or regaining your edge. Your “edge” may be your physical speed and strength, your fitness level, mental acuity or relationships with those you love.
Winning Life After 50
Life after 50 brings significant changes in health, relationships, fitness, and overall well being. It seems as though these changes have snuck up on you when you weren’t noticing. If you think about it though, your current state is just a reflection of compounding inaction over time. Where time has brought these changes, time can also reverse some of them with a little bit of concerted, focused and continuous effort. Although it may seem like it, you didn’t quickly get to where you are and you aren’t going to quickly change.
Physical Health
1. Lose weight
The number one thing you can do, even if you are mildly overweight, is to lose weight. If you are looking for the greatest input to success, losing weight will make you look better, fit clothes better, increase your energy, and improve your self esteem. You stand a good chance of losing your double chin and your protruding gut, both of which may help you look younger,
How do you lose weight? Simply consume less calories and eat the right calories. Eat more protein and natural fat and eat less carbohydrates (bread, pasta, potatoes) and sugar. Changing your diet may not be easy but is made easier if you do it in small steps over time. For meals, don’t start by changing your diet drastically; eat less carbs with your meal and take a slightly bigger piece of meat. Stop adding sugar to your coffee and say no to dessert. Consider intermittent fasting – skip a meal or two on the weekends. Soon enough you’ll notice change.
2. Lift weights
The second best thing you can do other than losing weight is to lift weights. Beginning in their 30s men start to lose muscle mass. In a related way, testosterone levels in men also begin to decrease. The lack of muscle mass and testosterone leads to less energy and drive. Both of which can affect your health and relationships. While it isn’t as easy as when you were younger, men can combat both issues. Will you be able to regain the muscle mass you once had? Probably not.
Lifting weights will help you regain or maintain muscle mass. It will help to produce testosterone and human growth hormone. It will improve your posture and will improve your ability to move more naturally. Finally, it will help you lift things much easier than before..
By lifting weights it doesn’t mean that you need to hang out at the gym 5 days a week, although this may help you to get to know new people. It also doesn’t mean you need to buy $1,000s of dollars of home gym equipment either. Another term for weight lifting is resistance training. The more resistance, the more muscles you develop. Resistance training can be achieved through the use of resistance bands. These are long rubber bands of various thickness and therefore resistance that you can use to build muscle if done in a proper way and with increasing resistance over time.
3. Take your supplements
While generally, and especially when you are younger, you are able to consume sufficient levels of vitamins for your body to thrive, provided you eat a healthy diet.
Depending on how much time you spend outside and where you live in the world, you may not be able to produce enough vitamin D from direct sunlight. Vitamin D is vital to your immune and heart health. One of the biggest reasons the flu hits people so hard in the winter months is due to people’s lack of vitamin D due to low sun exposure.
Provided you eat a healthy diet, the level of calcium in you body should be sufficient. Eating leafy greens and dairy products are likely adequate. A problem arises from a lack of vitamin D, which helps you absorb Calcium. Without sufficient levels of vitamin D you may have difficulty absorbing Calcium.
There has been a concern for underprivileged children and their inability to eat a healthy balanced diet which would allow them to get all the essential vitamins and minerals they need. The solution was to fortify food they commonly eat such as cereal, orange juice and milk. As you you get older your living conditions and age prevent you from properly getting the vitamins you still need.
If you don’t think you are getting a balanced diet, make sure you discuss your diet with your doctor. If you don’t like eating vegetables and don’t feel you will get a sufficient variety to provide adequate vitamin and mineral coverage, consider taking green supplement drinks. You may consider them expensive but if you weigh the cost against purchasing, storing and preparing them, the cost of green supplement drinks is reasonable. I use A1 Greens for this reason. Check it out here.
Mental Sharpness
4. Cultivate a hobby
Your professional drive may not be what it once was, you not only don’t have the energy you once had, you don’t care as much about reaching the levels in the organization you once did. Many people who made their jobs their lives when they were younger are looking for something else to balance out their life and stimulate their brain.
People need other activities outside of work. An activity that will allow them to excel, to meet others and keep their interest. Watching TV for hours after work is boring and doesn’t allow for personal growth. Hobbies reduce stress and improve mental health.
Some people fly drones in their free time. Others build models with 3 D printers and paint their models. My friends and I love going to the pool hall, much as we did when we were younger. Find your hobby and dig in. Check out these hobbies for men
5. Get involved
Giving back to the community or simply being involved in charities for the camaraderie are both valid reasons for volunteering. You may find you have time to make a difference and help your community or church. Volunteering allows you to get involved as little or as much as you want.
You may want to use some of the skills you gained through your professional life by serving on the board of a charity, or may want to contribute to the development of a young person as a Big Brother. Being involved in the community allows you to meet other people, be involved in something bigger than yourself, fight depression and loneliness, and improve your overall well being. Working with others toward accomplishing a goal may be exactly what you need.
6. Play challenging games
A major step to success in master life after 50 includes keeping your brain sharp. The only way you can do this is by challenging yourself.
Sharpening your mind and keeping it sharp takes effort. Similar to working out your body you should strive to do things that offer mental resistance – things that are difficult. Some play chess with others in competition. Some do sudoku puzzles every morning. What is important is that you try to do something regularly and try to mix it up. Take up regular reading and do puzzles, for example. Or read the news daily and perhaps play strategy board games (or video games). Keeping your brain engaged with difficult varied tasks helps improve your memory, concentration, and other cognitive skills.
Staying mentally active is not just about preventing cognitive decline; it’s about enriching your life with new knowledge and experiences.
Emotional Well-being: Cultivating Positive Relationships
7. Build or rebuild relationships
One common regret for those who are on death’s bed is the wish that they had spent more time with the ones they love. Another is the regret of not reaching out to old friends or making amends. Family and friends are important but are often taken for granted. You never have enough time for your children, as Harry Chapin’s, “Cat and the Cradle” song describes. Or your wife, as Elvis sang in “Always on my mind”. Regret means you know you should have done something else with your time but didn’t. If this is you, straighten the course now.
Especially when you are getting older, family and friends are valuable. They provide emotional support and give you connectedness with the world around you. Emotional support brings psychological well-being and may increase your lifespan.
For family members, practice forgiveness and patience. For friends, reach out to them and ask to get together. It is never too late until it is too late.
8. Meditate
Meditation is invaluable in keeping you calm, stress free, aware and focused. These benefits will help you in any endeavour but are particularly valuable in helping you deal with situations that aren’t calm, that are chaotic and stressful. We all face these situations at various times throughout life. How you deal with them greatly influences your health and whether you can weather a stress free life.
Meditation is the simple act of quite mindfulness where you strive to clear your mind of all external stimuli. It allows you to focus on specific things, such as your breathing, your health, or even how you will recover from an illness. It also may involve focusing on nothing at all.
Meditation reduces stress, increases memory, improves physical or mental performance, and provides for laser focus. Meditation allows you to put your mind towards improving yourself to envision a different future or outcome. Athletes practice a form of meditation called mental visualization where they focus on every aspect of an upcoming competition, clearing their mind of everything else.
9. Sleep well
Getting a good night’s sleep, although the last step on your roadmap to success, is one of the most important. Having a bad night’s sleep can make the difference in whether you do poorly during that important presentation or whether you can focus on your spouse at the end of the day. Chronically poor sleep can have a huge impact on your ability to deal with stress and even your physical health. Depression, anxiety and paranoia are the extremes of continually poor sleep.
While some can get by on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, it isn’t necessarily the quantity of sleep you get but the quality. As you get older you may find you don’t need the 8 hours of sleep you needed when you were younger but may only need 6 hours to function well. The key is to get the full 6 hours.
You can improve your chances of getting uninterrupted sleep by avoiding alcohol, refraining from coffee after 10 am, and by practicing meditation and active breathing before bedtime. Keeping regular sleep hours also increases your chances of better sleep.
Conclusion
The steps to success in Mastering life after 50 are straightforward and if done with small incremental changes consistently overtime give you the best chances of a happy, healthy and fruitful life. Will it be easy at first? Perhaps not as you strive to battle the habits and behavior you have formed in the past. Will it get easier? It should, provided you don’t push yourself too hard, too fast. But do push yourself so that you too can master life after 50.
For tracking your steps to success check out Fitness Tracking for Men Over 50.
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The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the support and guidance of your physician when you are unsure about any health issues.
