Leading a Healthy Life After Retirement

So you’ve finally made it to the promise land of retirement, woo hoo! You’re probably ready to relax the days away with an ice cold drink by the blue pool that even the deepest blue eyes would be jealous of.

But let’s just slow down a little bit, you still need your health to enjoy all the money you have saved, right?

Here are 3 ways to get healthy and active after retirement.

1. Make a Habit of Exercise – Don’t Break the Chain!

Habits are very powerful actions that can positively or negatively affect your life. When you perform an action enough times consistently, it becomes habit. If that action is beneficial, you’ve successfully added a habit that will improve your life. So how do you make a habit out of exercise? Simple! Create something you won’t want to break, a chain.

This method was Jerry Seinfeld’s secret to productivity. All you have to do is put a big calendar on your wall, refrigerator, or whatever part of the house you walk through often. On this calendar, make a “checkmark key.”

For example, a red checkmark means you completed your daily exercise. Now for every day you successfully complete that exercise, make a checkmark on that day. Soon enough, you’ll have a streak going, a chain, and you’re gonna do everything you can to keep from breaking that chain. Eventually, exercising will become habit.

If you are new to exercising, ease yourself into it by doing light work. Some examples would be walking, jogging, or swimming in the pool.

2. Find Fun Activities that Keep You Active

There’s no better way to stay active than to combine fun with it. Regularly participating in a fun activity will keep you healthy, and you won’t even feel like you’re exercising. Some examples include golfing, playing sports with kids or grandkids, or going to dance classes with your significant other.

Not only will these activities improve your physical health, but they will improve your mental health as well. You’ve heard the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Well, it’s true! Since humans naturally tend to think about negative aspects of their life when they are idle, these fun activities will have your mind positively stimulated.

Sitting at home on the couch all day will cause you to look back on what you’ve accomplished and will make you face the fact that you are wasting your days away, which will bring about stress.

The last thing you pictured having during retirement was stress, so let’s keep it that way!

3. Quality Slumber Achieves a High Number

High number of course, means age, a longer life. As people age, the quality of their sleep tends to go down. Sleep is when all the magic happens in our bodies. Everything is shut down and the body’s sole purpose is to repair us and get us ready for the next day. Any wrench in this process is going to show when you wake up to start your day.

It can be very easy to sleep in after retirement with no more work commitments, but one of the best things you can do for your sleep is to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Our bodies get used to a regular bedtime and wake up time. When you maintain a strict sleep cycle, your body knows exactly when to produce sleep and wake hormones, making for the best quality sleep.

If you are already having trouble sleeping, try maintaining a very strict sleep-wake schedule. If that doesn’t improve the quality of your sleep, it may be time to try some sleep aids following the recommendations of a doctor. But be careful, you’ll still want to regularly speak with your doctor as well as check online pharmacy reviews as time goes on.

It’s easy to overlook the power of sleep since you may be so accustomed to your current sleeping habits, but they can probably be improved. You spend about a third of your life in a bedroom sleeping those hours away, so why not make them really count?

Enjoy the Carefree Life You’ve Worked So Hard For!

Hopefully you have picked up some useful information and realized the importance of staying healthy and active after retirement. You deserve an enjoyable life for the hard work you’ve put in over these many years.

Here’s to a healthy, long, and happy retirement!

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Robert Cordray

Robert Cordray is a freelance writer with over 20 years of business experience
He does the occasional business consult to help increase employee morale
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter | Web

Image Sources: cpapracticeadvisor.com

L2L Contributing Author

1 Comment

  1. mariaitliong on August 29, 2014 at 1:56 am

    Reblogged this on mariaitliong.



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