There’s a wonderful story about the renowned cellist, Pablo Casals.
Even as an elderly gentleman, he continued to practise every day and when asked why he bothered, he replied, ‘Because I think I’m making progress.’
He was 90 at the time. And he was right.
Even as we grow into old age, we can make improvements in many ways, and I think this is heartening.
I hope you do too. I’m sure that loads of you are already aware that, as you’ve aged, you have got better at some aspects of life.
A study I read a while back suggested that our decision-making improves with age because the experiences we’ve garnered over the past decades enable us to depend upon our own judgement.
We should remember this. How have you improved?
Perhaps you have more patience with your grandchildren than you did with your children.
Maybe you can speak up for yourself more, or you know you’re more tolerant of other people’s views.
I think it would be a great idea if you gave some thought to how you’ve changed for the better and took a moment to congratulate yourself.
Then, you can move on to ponder improvements you’d like to make in the future.
I imagine if you used to be good at sprinting, you’ve probably accepted that you’ll never again get near achieving 10 seconds over 100 metres.
But maybe you could set new goals like walking or running longer distances.
Recently, I took some French lessons in preparation for a holiday across the Channel.
And what I found was that I had a much better understanding of how to learn than I used to have when studying the same subject at school.
I wasn’t wasting time questioning why they have certain grammatical rules that we don’t.
I just accepted them. I suppose it was partly because I’ve learned other languages since.
But it was also that I was more curious, more focused and more enthusiastic.
Also, I loved the feeling that my brain was working in a different way.
In fact, the whole process of improving my French gave me enormous pleasure.
Maybe you abandoned skills and hobbies when your life was more hectic than it is today.
There’s a good chance you could enjoy returning to them now and making a real improvement.
On top of anything you might come up with, may I also encourage everyone to make two improvements which could have a significant impact on your health and life expectancy.
The first is balance. Poor posture and poor balance really give our age away.
And scientists tell us that the inability to stand on one leg for at least 10 seconds is likely to lead to an increased risk of death within seven years.
But the good news is that we can regain better balance if we work at it.
I know a woman who was in her 50s when she realised that she could no longer stand on one leg to put on her tights, trousers or knickers.
She was quite appalled. So, she practised standing on one leg – making sure she had something to hold onto if she wobbled – and before long she could stand on each leg for 10 seconds at a time.
Soon she progressed to 20 seconds. Then more.
She is now well into her 60s but moves like someone 20 years younger.
So why not see if you can improve your balance?
Start by standing on one leg when you brush your teeth so that you have the basin in front of you for support.
When you can do that, you might like to progress to the many YouTube videos on the subject.
And of course, taking up Pilates or yoga could also help.
Improving our balance and feeling more confident on our feet helps keep us healthy and feeling young.
The second improvement we should strive for concerns our ability to smell things.
Losing the sense of smell is horrid and seriously reduces our quality of life.
Furthermore, a recent article in New Scientist stated that the worse your sense of smell, the worse you’ll do in cognitive assessments.
It also said that smell loss has been linked to around 100 illnesses and conditions including MS, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
But the author, award-winning health writer David Robson, pointed out that we can improve our smell function because it’s a bit like a muscle in that if you exercise it, you’ll strengthen it.
As a result, he’s embarked on a period of training in which, twice daily, he smells from vials of lemon, cloves, eucalyptus and rose.
Given all the evidence in his piece, I’ve investigated smell training sets on the internet and found that these are available from various companies including Amazon. I think I’ll buy one.
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