- Your body is now “out of warranty”. When it breaks in a significant way, it may never get fully better. Don’t do stupid stuff that will break it in those ways.
- If you haven’t figured out yet that you can’t drink, party, or skip sleep like you did earlier in life, learn it quick. Each of these will have a much larger impact on you.
- If you don’t have your retirement savings on track now, you have a VERY VERY short window to correct that. Its going to be much harder now to put the money aside than it would have earlier in life, but you’re in the prime earning years of your life. I would think you will earn more now in the next 10-12 years or so than you will/would have in any 10-12 years of your life.
- Hopefully you’ve learned by now to be comfortable with yourself in your own skin. This means not doing things/buying things to impress other people. You are who you are. This doesn’t mean stop learning or improving yourself, but nobody is going to be impressed with a 40+ year old driving an amazing car. It doesn’t matter how amazing the car is.
- Support younger people. You didn’t get where you are on your own. You had help, advice, and your mistakes were forgiven by those older than you because of your youth. Now its your turn to do that for the younger people. You grew up seeing heroes around you. You are now the hero in a younger person’s eyes. Hold that duty sacred. Be their hero in how you act.
- Embrace change! No, things aren’t like they used to be. No, they shouldn’t necessarily go back to those things just to make you comfortable. Its not our world anymore, it belongs to the younger generations. Understand your ways could be out-of-date or backwards. Your old ways worked for you in that old world. That old world is gone. Be part of the new. You’ll have to do this two or three more times before you die if you live into your 80s or 90s.
- Stay fit. That doesn’t mean body builder or supermodel. It means be moderately active so that picking something up doesn’t cause a strain injury that will take you 6 months to a year to recover from. You shouldn’t be out of breath walking up stairs. If you are, make changes. You’re likely already seeing the difference in your peers with those that stayed fit vs those that didn’t. Be part of the first group, not the second. If you are in the second group, you can change to the first by taking care of your body and eating properly.
- Make a will. You will die and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Dying without having a will makes some of your assets evaporate in probate and may mean your money/assets go to people you may not want.
- Go to the goddamn doctor for wellness checkups! You’re entering the time of life where conditions found early are treatable. Don’t dying/become disabled because you were too lazy or afraid to go. Yes, some of the things are going to be uncomfortable, but I can tell you its much more comfortable than debilitating pain or death.
You might look at the list above and think it negative for you now. Its not at all. This is the prize for living to this age. You likely have some friend or family that died before 40. You are here to see this part of your life. Make sure you’re still here to see 50, 60, 70, with as much of your body and mind as you can.
Good luck!
I tell myself every day that I’m not working out for my beach body, I’m working out for my old lady body. I just want to be able to tie my own shoes when I’m 70.
I’m only 31, but I’m going to do all of these things anyway.
Geez. This thread is making me feel like I should be in pain 24/7.
I just turned 47. It was around 41 when I realized my body was changing, less testosterone, less muscle mass. The new routine in 2020 of working from home was a major physical hurdle for me to deal with. All sorts of pains I never had before. Stretching, walking, sleeping, hydrating, eating better all helped with weight gain and stiffness. Pretty much what everyone else is saying here. For me though, it was (slightly) more about the work life transition than the getting older part.
What I would add to the conversation is to appreciate your memories.
As we get older and the people around us start fading away, I’ve found I’m spending a lot of time gathering photos and videos and collecting things that have special memories associated with them. I’ve been frustrated recently that we (my friends and family) do the same things year over year or even week after week and all those memories start to blur together as we get older. The exception to this is if there’s kids involved because you get to see them grow up so fast.
Make fresh memories. Embrace the ones you’ve made. Preferably all ‘good’ ones.
And I really want to promote the idea of printing photos, hanging them on your walls, and getting photobooks made. My uncle (who didn’t have a partner or kids) recently passed and he had all these photos hidden on his phone. He also had a bunch of printed pictures from the '70s through the '90s that I’m in the process of scanning. We have this great technology to capture awesome images at any moment but they often get forgotten immediately after they’re taken. Print your pics and have photobooks made that can be physically passed around and handed down. Sure, we can share digital stuff easily today but tech changes and people loose touch. As cool as image galleries are on our phones and how the AI curates them for us, there’s still something very special about holding a few dozen printed photos to look through. Like, Spotify playlists are great for what they are but holding a few CDs or records in your hands is a great thing too.
Stretch every day, holy shit that makes all the difference for mobility. It takes about 5 minutes when you wake up in the morning.
Warm up and stretch. This is the decade where you start to lose your flexibility.
Smoke weed erry day
In fact, smoke 2 joints before you smoke 2 joints
Didn’t see anyone suggest it, but I can’t recommend it enough, spend time with your parents, and, if they’re still alive, your grandparents!
This really put it into perspective for me.
If you were a late baby like me, your parents are likely getting into their 70s now. You may have 20 years with them. You may have 5. I’m lucky if get to see mine once a month because of work. That’s around 60-240 times left to see them. If I spend an hour with them each time(which is a stretch), that’s 10 days tops. Enjoy the time you have with them and pray you’re lucky.
Also, if you have any loved ones, tell them you love them every chance you get. My wife and I have traded "I love you"s nearly every day for the past 23 years. You never know when it’ll be the last time, so say it as much as you can to anyone you care about! It doesn’t cost anything, and tell me it’s not great to hear when someone says it to you. Spread that shit around!
Lastly, if you can afford it, travel. You don’t have to travel the whole world, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune. I know people hate on them, but my wife and I book at least 1 AirBnB a year. We find a cheap place that’s only a day’s drive away and book it for a week. Just get outside of the safety net that is the streets and places you know.
For that matter, take any opportunity you can to make new memories. We are creatures of habit, and our brains don’t like to waste. It’s believed that one of the reasons our days feel like they fly by is because we’re following a routine that our brain meshes with the memory of similar experiences and routines to save energy. Being in new places, experiencing new things, and making new memories may help with breaking up those moments where the day, week, month, or year are gone in a flash.
I’m well old enough to be your daddy. Here are some things you should pay attention to.
Have a reason to get up every day you can breathe. Because if you have no reason to, you will wither and die. I’ve seen it happen and it ain’t pretty.
Time will seem to accelerate. You will slowly start to notice that the “past” gets farther behind you quicker and the “now” flies by to become that “past” and the “future” gets here far too soon.
Like it or not, you are getting closer every day to dying rather than living no matter what you do. Make your peace with that concept because no one gets out alive.
Buy a nice suit. You will probably be going to the weddings of the children of your friends or your own children. And far more sadly, the funerals of family and friends. And at some point in time, the funerals will out number the weddings.
Start doing things for society. Get involved in your community. Help build a park or two or three, teach kids something - I spent 4 years tutoring/teaching math to kids in a small rural school during COVID. It did cost me some health, (Thanks! long COVID), but it was worth everything it cost and I would do it all over again. Those kids did more for me than I could do for them.
Physical exercise is great but don’t forget to exercise the mind also. Because if you don’t, you will lose cognition and the ability to think perhaps faster than your physical health - and this is my greatest fear. Cultivate hobbies that stimulate mental challenges. And a diet of video games ain’t it. Go fishing, bird watching, gardening, do art. Something, anything, that challenges the mind to solve problems and be creative. I design and build metal model steam engines and 3D printed items to try and keep my mind sharp. I try to learn new skills every chance I get.
As much as it might be fun to travel the world and see new places and people, there is a whole world to explore right outside your door. Go explore it and really learn the details of it. It will surprise you with it’s beauty and complexity. You don’t need to be rich to explore the world.
Teach something to someone. You know things - pass it on to others. Do not let the knowledge die with you.
Learn to laugh at yourself - do not fear looking silly. It can help make people feel more comfortable with you and with themselves.
And finally, live a good life. Be kind and be there for the world when it needs you. Leave a legacy for others to remember you by - even if it was only a kind word at the right time. The memory of you is all the world will have - leave your mark on it.
Good Luck! We all need it!
Pretty good advice, except the bit about eschewing video games. Bird watching is more mentally stimulating than piloting a T28 in extreme battle conditions? You’re out of your fucking element, Donny.
Idk, video games are absolutely mentally stimulating, but it’s less fulfilling than a variety of activities.
Enjoy your newly calm emotional state.
If he’s American that might not happen. Doctor bills start to eat into your savings fast.
Ok right. I’m talking about how the nervous system calms down. The anxiety and mood swings of life just go down.
They do not
The warranty is gone. It’s run out. Don’t be surprised by ANYTHING that starts to act up, and if you have decent medical support, address them with your doc. Knees grinding? reading small text / focusing on street signs? get your optical script updated. And sometime in the next decade, get mentally ready to get a colonoscopy.
The warranty is gone, now it’s time for you to keep an eye on all the systems and plan for the long road ahead and the hard times to come. Good luck.
I find exercise and meditation is really valuable. So much of life distracts now and this computer in my hand doesn’t help.
Pay attention to ear and nose hairs. They get out of control. If you already wear glasses don’t forget to put them on in the bathroom and pluck away the crazy ones. I once found a 1" long ear hair that was hiding. Still makes me shiver.
I’ve had to recently start checking for the hair growing from my ears when I trim my beard. Definitely a change in mentality. I not only check that but random hair paths growing on my arms or other random parts of my body.
overnight growth of eyebrow hairs of strange and seemingly impossible lengths? why not!
There’s a lot of great advice in here, so here’s something a little more obscure - Get. The. Shingles. Vaccine.
Most insurance won’t cover it until you’re 50. Pay for it out of pocket.
I had the shingles at 40. It’s a close 2nd for the most pain I’ve ever been in. (For comparison, 1st place goes to the time I took a training sword to the eye. It squished my eye down and smacked into the back of the socket. Nearly lost that eye.)
It’s the same virus as chickenpox. A herpes variant like cold sores, once you’ve caught it, it’s with you forever.
You’ll get huge, burning blisters all along the pathway of whichever nerve the virus has taken residence on. And some nerves go to quite sensitive places indeed. The pain is akin to a hot iron pressed unceasingly to your skin. For weeks.
For me, it was the right side of my face and neck. I developed Bell’s Palsy and couldn’t move the right side of my face at all. Though my facial control eventually came back, I’ve lost some hearing in my right ear.
It’s cheap at any price - Get vaccinated.
So if you’ve had chickenpox your predisposed, not immune?
Exactly. It’s in you and just a matter of luck whether it flares up or not
If you are in the US, cram every penny you can in an IRA or 401k if your employer offers it. You’re gonna want to retire some day.
Investing as a whole is better started earlier than later.
immediate asprin for heart attack. immediate amphetamine for serious head trauma.
immediate amphetamine for serious head trauma.
Always have a little bit of emergency meth on hand!
seems to be low risk from a legal perspective!
https://old.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/vm2qzs/what_happens_if_you_go_to_the_hospital_for/
if u know someone who knows someone…it may be alot faster and cheaper than navigating the american healthcare system in a time sensitive situation.
Be nice to your knees
Stretching. As someone who had sore knees a lot, stretching all the things from lower back to knees help. Im no muscle-ologist so I can’t tell you the names of these muscle groups.
And anecdotally for me, zero drop shoes along with stretching. The cheapo ones from Amazon have held together better and longer than any other ‘name brand’ and for only $20.
Do you have a stretching regimen you recommend
Look up stretches for glutes, hip flexors, quads, hamstrings, ITB (I think that’s what it is) and low back.
There are many, some a bit easier if you’re not quite flexible at the moment. Sorry I can’t be more precise- I’ve got a mental catalog of stretches that I’ve accumulated since high school track 20 years ago… and I’ve heard them called different things, or done slightly differently over the years. I’m not the best example, I tend to do them every once in a while when things get stiff and or tight /sore. …
Analyze your limitations. We all think we’re Superman sometimes. We’re not.
Taking care of yourself will pay off, literally if you are in the U.S. and subject to our horrible healthcare.
It’s easy to lapse into a sedentary lifestyle – don’t do it. The couch is not your friend.
Our healthcare isn’t horrible, it’s actually quite good, if you can afford it. The problem with our system is that it fucks poor people, not that the health care itself is bad.
The point would have been better served without the the unnecessary and inaccurate slamming of America.
invest in health life-process practices, like find YOUR healing yogas, YOUR healing practices, etc:
habits, once formed, take little effort, but form those now.
Frawley’s “Ayurvedic Healing” is the ONLY book whose ingredients-lists ( for the 3 fundamental metabolisms/doshas ) tests out, correct all the way through, & Frawley & Kozak’s “Yoga For Your TYPE” book should be read by anybody considering any yoga practice, before going to consider an instructor, or buying any DVDs on it.
As for the Western Medicing gaslighting that the existence of charlatains in Ayurveda “proves that Ayurveda, itself, is charlatainism/quackery”, well, they don’t tolerate that same logic being applied to Western Medicine, do they?
Do the existence of Western Medicine charlatains “prove that Western Medicine, itself, is charlatainism/quackery”??
Of course they don’t:
The existence of charlatains doesn’t prove that the system they are faking is either fake or valid.
it’s 1-sided only, and that ISN’T evidence-based medicine, that is prejudice.
Dad was a medical-researcher & doctor: I grew-up with scientism as his/my religion, & later graduated to seeing its systematic prejudices, & choosing objectivity, rejecting the scientism of medicine.
Authority-based-medicine ISN’T evidence-based-medicine.
Here is an article that got turned into a chapter of a book, on exactly that:
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25433
Always use the same logic for & against, & see the prejudices for what they are: ideology-addictions/prejudice-addictions, and don’t fall for them.
Ha!
So, you get health-advice & objectivity-advice, too!
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