Retirement and ageless beauty go hand-in-hand in my opinion. Time to look for and develop ageless beauty in your body and mind. A common practice that seems to pervade recent folks that have entered the retirement phase of their lives is to look to loom and doom. They worry about their financial well-being, they worry about their 401K monies running out, they worry about their insurance policies not being sufficient, they worry about their health deteriorating, their potential future lives in nursing homes, their doctor visits and pills and medications. The recent retirees fill up their time with all these gloomy thoughts and finally they die. Is this what they worked all their lives for – this level of misery? If this is what retirement is about then they should never have retired from their active lives. In fact, there have been some studies that say that if you decide to postpone your retirement by staying in your current occupation for five more years then you might potentially live ten percent longer! I believe that a lot of this has to do with your mental frame of mind, what you choose to put into it and the company you keep. Once you retire, the company you keep has a lot to do with your general health and well-being. Do not hang around with other retirees that talk all day along about their trips to the doctor and what medications they are taking. Stay in the company of younger more active adults and children. If you have grandchildren, visit them more often. Studies have also shown that grandchildren can extend your own life and improve your health. Go where younger people go to; given a choice between Virginia Beach and Florida, I would choose the former. Given a choice between Varanasi and Bombay, I would choose Bombay. Given a choice between London and Warwickshire, I would choose London. You get the drift of what I am saying, I presume.
Do what younger people do. If you like to take some classes, do not take classes on “medication management”; instead spend your money on taking classes on “fitness and yoga” – notice that they are both health related topics but the latter is more vibrant than the former. I had come across a seventy year old retired engineer that was sitting side by side next to me as I was taking some classes on “Finite Element Methods in Stress Analysis” which is a graduate level course for mechanical engineers! I couldn’t believe it ! Same thing when it comes to what you read; read what younger audiences read. The amazing company that books provide cannot be underestimated. If you keep in the company of old age books and senility magazines, you are liable to feel old and senile yourself. Retirement is about ageless beauty. If you are a lady, then frequent beauty salons and beauty parlors once you have retired – more often than when you were young and did not have the time to fix those beauty appointments. Remember, your financial well-being IS important; but so is your ageless beauty !
