Overcoming Major Setbacks Later In Life

Baby Boomer Going Like Sixty Posted on by

AnimatedGifPunchingTimeClock

The nature of life is that setbacks will always occur. Just when you think things are sailing along nicely, life likes to throw you a curveball. And those can be minor, although challenging to cope with – like losing a business contract – or they can be major, like serious ill health, natural disaster or a significant accident. Learning to cope with life’s more trying moments is something that we all have to face from time to time. However, these challenges can be harder to face for older people. They tend to be a little more set in their ways, and acceptance and recovery – physically and mentally – can be a much slower process. Things which are hard to cope with can get magnified into a catastrophe as you get older. So, if your elders are suddenly faced with something severe, how do you best support them and help them to cope with the crisis? 

Help Them Start To Accept What’s Happened

The first reaction for a lot of people in the face of unexpected bad news is denial – they simply can’t process the reality of the situation. Gently explain to them that no one is immune to setbacks and reassure them that you’ll get through this one together. Accepting the situation is the first step in a long process of recovery and healing. The journey they will go in may change who they are as a person and how they see the world. If your loved one is trying to bury their head in the sand, try to help them start this process. If they can acknowledge a tough situation, they’ll be on the way to coming out of the other side and perhaps experiencing real personal growth as they do so. Steer them to acknowledge to themselves that something bad has happened that they couldn’t control, but then ask them what they can control in the situation, what positive steps they can take. This will help them to feel much more action-centred and give them a direction to head in when everything around has been turned upside down. 

Locate Some Professional Support 

When something overwhelming happens, sometimes you find yourself on sensory overload and you simply don’t know where to begin. In older people, this can be especially true, so a good way to support them is to signpost them to appropriate support services, be they medical, legal, practical or emotional. Assess the situation and involve them in asking what they might need. It could be professional counselling or a support group, someone to repair their damaged roof, Personal Injury Lawyers, or a good physiotherapist. Older people can find it harder to seek out this information, so support them to find it and you’ll be helping the situation a lot. If they don’t feel ready for it though, especially counselling or a support group, then don’t push them into it – leave them the information and let them come to it in their own time. 

Give Them Time To Heal

Sometimes, recovery from a major setback is just one of those things which takes time. Just as physical injuries need time in order for the body to heal, so time is needed for emotional upheaval to settle and begin to reconcile. Make sure that you – or indeed, they – aren’t being impatient in your attitude to recovery from a significant event. Impatience will only make everything harder in the long run. Sometimes we can definitely be in too much of a hurry to try to fix our problems, or those of our loved ones, when actually we need to accept that healing is a process, not a quick fix. Try to guide their focus onto other matters – things they can enjoy in the here and now – it could be a trip out, or a new book, or a family dinner. Something simple that will take their attention away from the situation for a while. 

Help Them Fix Their Sleep

Sleeping can often be a challenge for older people anyway – our quality of sleep tends to decrease when we get older – and when anxiety and sadness are also factors at play in the wake of a setback it can be even harder. Great sleep hygiene is what is often referred to as a keystone habit – a practice that acts as the foundation for lots of other things in our lives – and especially the physical or emotional healing needed after a major adverse event. The effects of not getting good quality sleep can range from loss of appetite to poor concentration and general low mood. It can affect our work, our relationships and most definitely our physical health. So support your loved one to get better sleep – make sure their sleeping environment is dark enough with a slightly cooler temperature. Buy them some high quality sheets and pillows. And if they are really struggling, look into options like an aromatherapy diffuser or lavender pillow spray. If they are still struggling, point them to a healthcare practitioner who may be able to prescribe a sleeping aid.

Caring For Your Parents After You Retire

Baby Boomer Going Like Sixty Posted on by

No matter how old you get, your parents will always be older, and this means that the tables will often turn at some point in your life. As you grew up and even into your adult life, your mom and dad will have always worked hard to give you all of the support you need. Of course, though, age doesn’t come alone, bringing with it all sorts of maladies and ailments, especially once someone gets into their 80’s. To give you the opportunity to provide them with the life they deserve, this post will be exploring some of the best ways to care for them after you’ve retired.

Giving Them Company

It’s easy to get lonely as someone gets older, with the likelihood of their partner surviving being limited, and the difficulty they find moving around on their own. This makes spending time with your elderly loved ones the most crucial part of their care. I don’t matter if they’re sick or injured, seeing you a few times a week will bring a smile to their face and give them the chance to be themselves. You can also use this opportunity to take them to places or people they don’t get to see very often, adding some variety to a life which may largely consist of sitting in a chair.

Giving Them Independence

While it will feel natural to smother your parents when they need help, being to hands-on can end up making their lives harder. People often find that they only lose the ability to do certain jobs when they don’t do them for a long time. If you don’t walk for weeks on end, for example, it will be hard for you to go out for a hike. It’s better to look for ways to help them to be independent, whether this is a car which they can drive or simply a grabber which can be used for their chair. A lot of companies are turning their focus to this sort of care, and this means that there are loads of products on the market to help.

Personal Care

Most parents don’t like the idea of their children providing their personal care. This part of life should be something which is kept strictly professional, but you don’t have to go to the extent of putting them in a home or hospital to achieve this goal. Home care providers can send a professional to just about any address. They will handle the personal aspects of your parent’s care, with options to have someone move in on a temporary basis if more extreme measures have to be taken. Building a good relationship with a company like this really early on can be a great way to ensure an easier future.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of caring for your parents after they retire. A lot of people struggle with work like this, finding it hard to know whether or not they should throw their lives into helping their loved ones. Of course, though, there are loads of places to look for help in this field.

Does Living Healthy Have To Be Such a Chore?

Baby Boomer Going Like Sixty Posted on by

When we think of an active and healthy lifestyle, particularly managing health after retirement, things can get a little boring to consider. We might picture someone only eating celery for lunch, giving up their long-beloved baking hobby, or having to walk ten miles a day simply for the pleasure of feeling alright in themselves. This can make us feel quite tired just thinking about it. 

But does healthy living have to be such a chore? Or is it possible for us to consider a better and more appropriate means of staying in shape, both physically, mentally and spiritually? Does healthy living actually require a cost? Or is that something we just assume to stop us from exploring the topic further?

It’s a complex question, and many will have their take on it. However, we would like to explore it further here, and potentially come to some of our own conclusions. You never know, this might be the insight we all need to look at health with a renewed mindset.

So let’s begin:

Find Dietary Helpers

To the uninitiated, dietary helpers might sound fairly unreliable. They sound as if they would require a dodgy underground connection in a dilapidated gym to even find. But that’s not the case, of course. Dietary supplements are a multi-million dollar industry, and completely above board. You just need to be careful when finding what might be effective and what might not be, as like in any industry, there can be a lot of snake oil out there.

We would recommend using dietary helpers that can help you detox, increase your energy, reduce food cravings and also help you with your nutritional needs. Add some fish oil for your joints and potentially a multivitamin, and you’re doing brilliantly already. We’d recommend doing research ahead of time, as you decide to shop the full range of items best suited for your needs.

Don’t Go It Alone

When we consider healthy living, we can often feel trapped within ourselves. We know that ultimately, our health affects us, is navigated by us, and generated by the decisions we make (at least for the most part.) But there’s no reason why these facts should mean you go it alone. You don’t have to, in fact. It’s fully possible to make healthy living a social experience. For example, one of the powerful elements of any weight watchers group is the ability to meet each week, to measure progress, to talk through your challenges and to hear the experiences of other people. Joining a class like this isn’t a bad idea.

You might also join a class dedicated to learning new healthy recipes, perhaps from an incredible array of world cuisine. We would also recommend getting involved in a social activity. A walking club can be a fantastic means of getting out and doing a little hiking from time to time, especially walking predefined routes. Perhaps inviting a friend to come and attend a swimming class with you could help, or a pool zumba class. Remember – fitness can be tremendous fun if you let it! It can help you be social, get your exercise in, and come hope feeling fully restored and nourished thanks to both experiences. If you do that, there’s every chance you’ll start to look forward to your fitness sessions, a sentence you might have laughed at years ago.

Do What You Can

The most important thing about living a healthy lifestyle is that you make it work for you, and not the other way around. This can sound counterintuitive to begin with. Of course, a healthy lifestyle is not something we get to ‘decide’ for ourselves.  A cream bun that we eat isn’t a better alternative than a salad just because we will it so. But if a healthy lifestyle is routinely burning you out, making you feel tired, or is simply not fun, think of another way you might tailor it to your advantage.

You don’t need to run to get your exercise if it hurts your joints, for example. Swimming can train even more muscle groups, be even more intense, yet is absolutely brilliant for your joints, because you are naturally suspended in the water and rarely experience hard impacts (unless you’re going to be diving, which we wouldn’t recommend as exercise, of course.)

Do what you can. Do what works for you. You might believe that following a ketogenic diet is the best way by far to get ahead and better your diet. This might be the case. But also, you might simply transition your normal cooking approach into something much more familiar, only with reducing the calories of snacks and eating more wholesome meals. Remember as well that slowly transitioning into good habits can be a great idea. Lessening your alcohol intake as much as possible can be a great start, for example. It all depends on your goals, and what you hope to do.

Give Yourself Time

Remember, there’s no need to become your fittest and most agile self by the end of next week. These things take time. Focus on small, sustainable changes. Even walking your dog for ten minutes longer can be a great option this week. Take care of small achievements and feel pride in them, and then continue forward to the next goal. If you can do this, you’ll be extremely surprised just what a fantastic positive effect you can have, and how the changes quickly stack up.

Give yourself one year with this mindset and new approach, and you’ll look back at the previous you with true surprise. Gradual changes might not be noticed immediately, but when looking back, seeing how far you’ve come can be motivation itself. There’s an eternal wisdom in the tortoise and the hare’s fable, and this is one of the places where it manifests most profoundly. So be sure to keep that in mind.

With this advice, we hope you’re much better able to feel comfortable following a life of fitness.

As you can see, sleep for seniors is a major factor of overall health.

Related Posts with Thumbnails