Plan now to make the most of your precious golden years

While well aware of its perils, author Guy Robertson says we must make sure the pandemic does not get in the way of our plans for a rich and fruitful later life.

Picture: Stock image

GUY ROBERTSON believes in making plans, and the onslaught of Covid-19 on our lives has made the 66-year-old even more determined to embrace the future. The author of The 10 Steps of Positive Ageing says that the pandemic makes the message of his book even more relevant.

“Life is much more uncertain than it has ever been, but that makes it even more important that we continue to work on our sense of purpose and general direction in life,” he says. 

To just abandon the next five to 10 years because of the Covid-19 threat would be such a waste. Things are changing, but that just means that we need to be more flexible and creative about planning the sort of later life we want to have.

Guy believes that planning is a key part of how we navigate our lives. Many people do it when they are younger, and he says that there’s no reason we shouldn’t do it as we age.

“I would argue it becomes more important as you get older to be quite deliberate about setting some plans in place because there’s not a lot of structure in a lot of older people’s lives as they move away from paid work.” 

The Ten Steps of Positive Ageing. 

He believes that passively giving up on future planning because of Covid-19 would only add to our woes. “We need to think of other things that interest us. Indeed, generating new interests can be a very helpful silver lining in these difficult times.” 

Guy is quick to point out that he doesn’t have a rose-tinted view of life: He is well aware that old age has many challenges. But what he wants is for people not to inhabit an old mentality, where they don’t push themselves too much and they limit their opportunities. He feels this is an unnecessary limitation of our potential as human beings.

“We need to accept that we’re getting older, but not just take on very negative ideas about what that means, and false restrictions that are limitations we take on ourselves.

“Positive ageing is fundamentally about taking a more active role in influencing the unfolding of our future years. The virus doesn’t negate that — it just means that we need to work harder and more flexibly at the task.”

 He would like people not to fear getting older, but to see it as something we can take some control over, citing a US study which found that those who had a positive outlook on ageing lived on average seven and a half years longer than those who had a more negative attitude, “How we think about ageing, our beliefs and attitudes are really critical.” 

Author Guy Robertson. Picture: Jay Williams

The importance of understanding our mortality and thinking about it can spur us to make more of the precious life that we have, says Guy, adding that it’s about using this knowledge rather than being paralysed by fear. “Most of us who retire at 65 have a good 20 years left, and you can’t put your feet up for 20 years.”

The most essential step for Guy is to have a sense of purpose as we grow older. “It’s what gets us up in the morning and gives us that energy and motivation. And it changes. In my own experience, and the research that I’ve read, it’s something that we have to continuously refresh and look at anew.” 

The decade between 65 and 75 is an important stage in our lives, says Guy, pointing out that for most people, it’s still a relatively healthy stage of life. He suggests people consider where are they going to be, figuratively speaking, in 10 years across a range of areas — relationships, finance, activities including voluntary work.

For Guy, it has been helpful to look back on the three-year plans he has made previously. “It’s quite surprising how many have of the plans you had have come into being in some shape or other — not always exactly the way you planned them, but that’s not really the point, it’s more like setting an intention.”

In terms of his own plans, he’s very interested in voluntary work and he would also like to develop a life coaching initiative.

He has thought about friendships, and what sort of network of friends would he like. “Which people do I want to put more time and energy into? Which people do I feel I haven’t quite got to know as well as I want to?” 

Our connections with others are critical, he says, and evidence shows that we can really suffer without these lifelines. 

“We don’t all have to be the life and soul of the party. The critical thing is that we really need to try to have the number and the quality of relationships that we want. We all have different numbers of people we want to have in our lives. Some people like a few very intense relationships, others prefer to have a larger number of less intense relationships.” 

• The Ten Steps of Positive Ageing: A handbook for personal change in later lifeby Guy Robertson is published by Green Tree in paperback, €16.65. Available now