Active Retirement Means More Living
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Active retirement, living life to the fullest, usually means more life.
It used to be believed that you had a choice between a full life and a long life. Now it is known that your body is designed to stop working when it thinks its job is done. If you never do anything new, or worse still, if you never do anything, how is your body to know that you still have a use for it.
Come to think of it, do you have a use for it?
You can be active physically, or active mentally, or better still active in mind and body. The more active your body is, the more your body will prepare itself to cope with new activity. The more active your mind is, the more your brain will grow and develop logical pathways that didn't exist before. It used to be believed that we only used about forty percent of our brain. Now some scientists believe that we only use about 5% of our brains.
So what are you waiting for. The more you use it, the more you will really live. Who calls it living to sit in front of a TV. Try new experiences. Here are some ideas. If you have tried them all, move on to something else.
Hiking. Work out ways round the problems of moving yourself and your luggage.
Sudoku puzzles: these can keep some people battling their way through for hour after hour. It helps your mathematical and analytical skills, and keeps your mind active. My wife has been doing them for more than a year now, but I lost interest after solving about a dozen of them.
Learn a few languages. Look up "accelerated learning" on Google, and choose a couple of languages to learn. Without accelerated learning you might take five years to speak a language with an atrocious accent. With accelerated learning you can learn several languages at the same time in a couple of months. Think how that will broaden your mind! Think how much deeper will be your enjoyment when you tour the countries that speak your new languages.
Is all that too tame? Do you have money to spare? Learn parachute diving. You'll have to pay through the nose for every single flight and for the instructors, but it will really get the adrenalin flowing. My daughter did it and really enjoyed herself. Perhaps you would prefer a different kind of diving? Join the fish in underwater fairylands when you try aqualung diving.
Have I run out of ideas? No. I could go on all day, and so can you if you want to. Brainstorm ideas. Visit the libraries. Surf the Internet. You'll get lots of good ideas for an active retirement.
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