16 Things We All Tolerate Better As We Age
People can change, contrary to popular belief. It usually takes time and advanced maturity. As people age, their perspectives, beliefs, and tolerances often change or shift. Here are 16 things that become more tolerable or cherished as we hit our late 30s, middle age, and senior years.
1. Dating
Dating as you get older only becomes as hard as you make it. As young people, we are usually egotistical, insecure, and obsessed with shallowness when it comes to dating. Dating can be stressful. Dating becomes mroe tolerable as we age because we focus more on the personality of the other person and less on shallow attributes.
2. Confronting Mortality
Young people think they will live forever. Those crazy stunt videos on YouTube featuring people taking selfies on top of skyscrapers or bungee jumping are recorded by young people. As we age, we are much closer to our unknown death date than our birthday. While no one wants to die, the stressful prospect of confronting mortality becomes easier to handle in older age than in youth.
3. Rudeness
Some of the greatest regrets of life are born from reacting to rudeness and disrespect while young. The vitality of youth sometimes makes people immune to conflict resolution when conflict arises. Peace of mind becomes invaluable as we age. While everyone is different, older people are more likely to dismiss trivial rudeness and disrespect than younger people.
4. Becoming a Homebody
In youth, it’s seen as weird not to go out at night and go to sleep early. As we age, it’s seen as weird to go out all night and not go to sleep early. There is a lot of peer pressure to explore nightlife activities in youth. However, we tend to expel such activity traits from our personalities as we age and get more comfortable becoming homebodies.
5. Accepting That Your Body is Slowing Down
Shakespeare once said that youth is wasted on the young. This was a poetic reference to the fact that young people don’t have the life experience to appreciate their short span of youthful vitality. It isn’t easy to get winded earlier during exercise or realize you can’t jump as high as you used to. Still, our bodies slowly break down as we age. That undeniable fact makes slower reflexes and stamina easier to accept.
6. Grey Hair
Most people start turning grey in their 20s and 30s. Sometimes greying hair can start in childhood and teenage years. Having grey hair is an irreversible part of life and aging. While many people continue dyeing their hair as they age, many others accept it and embrace grey hair.
7. Sobriety
Over 221 million Americans occasionally or always drink alcohol. If you or anyone you know is an alcoholic, then seek help. However, for people who are social or stress drinkers, getting drunk for its own sake becomes less of a priority as we age. Young people usually believe they can’t have fun without drinking. Older people just don’t want to deal with hangovers and embrace natural sobriety more.
8. Running
If you have ever noticed that most joggers and marathon runners are middle-aged, then know it is not a coincidence. The largest age group of joggers and marathon runners are people in their 30s and 40s. No one knows for certain why, but people seem to tolerate high-impact exercise more as we age. This is especially true for people who never exercised much in youth.
9. Getting Motivated
“Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings!” Our elders said to us as kids to motivate us to do something, anything, except nothing. There excuse for laziness, but young people think they have all the time in the world anyway. Self-motivation can be stress and anxiety-inducing. Self-motivation becomes more tolerable as we age because older people appreciate their mortality and want to do more things. There is no more time to waste as we age.
10. Appreciating Solitude
The world has a loneliness epidemic, and it is not an issue that should be trivialized. However, there is a difference between loneliness and being comfortable in solitude. Young people stave off loneliness sometimes by hanging out with anyone, a behavior that can become toxic with age. As we age, it’s normal to become more comfortable with being alone than being alone with people.
11. Adjusting to Changing Times
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That saying epitomizes the struggles of new generations to adapt to the different versions of problems that afflicted the previous ones. One thing that can stress older people is watching their culture and society change into something unrecognizable as they age. Still, the best way to adapt to change is to adapt to change on your own terms. Over 41% of people in their 60s own a computer and use the internet often. Changing times can be tolerable as age as long as we adapt along with them.
12. New Slang
As we age, the English language can feel like a foreign language as young people coin new words, phrases, and slang. “Cap,” or “No cap,” means B.S. “Rizz,” refers to “charisma,” or the ability to impress someone with charm. New slang becomes tolerable as we age because new slang is just the wheel reinventing itself. These new terms are just reinventions of old, established terms. Old people don’t have to worry about using them, so why stress about it?
13. Cutting People Out of Your Life
Some people are codependent with relatives or partners without realizing it. We have all probably wasted too much time trying to forgive, relate, or communicate with a toxic person hell-bent on hurting themselves and others. Having peace of mind is more important than indulging in the mind games of people with malign intent.
As we age, it becomes easier to become estranged from certain relatives or friends voluntarily. Some people never change, don’t want to help themselves, and revel in chaos. Excise such people from your life as you age not out of spite, but to protect your peace.
14. Stress
As we age, we tend to tolerate stress better by preempting whatever may cause it as early as possible. Stress kills. Also, people confront their mortality as they age and understand they only have a decade or two of relative youthful vitality before they really get old. Everyone reacts to stimuli differently, but older people tend to have a more carefree attitude about stress than younger people.
15. Confidence
Anxiety and insecurity can afflict people of any age. Still, how many times have you seen older people at events listening to decades-old music and wearing decades-old fashion? How many times have you seen older people securely living their lives in a world that seemed to pass them by? We spend a lot of time being insecure in our youth, but we tend to tolerate confidence more as we age.
16. Wrinkles
It’s easy to find online stories of Millennials freaking out about developing their first facial wrinkles. Besides having gaudy and unrealistic-looking plastic surgery, there is nothing that can be done about reversing the aging process. That fact becomes more tolerable as we age.
We Mature Emotionally As We Age
Everyone’s experiences with aging and maturing are different. However, if you accept that you have a lot more life to live even if you’re middle-aged or older, then aging and everything that comes with it becomes more tolerable.
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Allen Francis was an academic advisor, librarian, and college adjunct for many years with no money, no financial literacy, and no responsibility when he had money. To him, the phrase “personal finance,” contains the power that anyone has to grow their own wealth. Allen is an advocate of best personal financial practices including focusing on your needs instead of your wants, asking for help when you need it, saving and investing in your own small business.