Aging is supposed to come with a kind of ease, an arrangement that allows one to finally relax in one’s own skin. For some people, this is enough. For others, it is not, and the difference is usually not a matter of luck.
The fact is that those who feel at peace have given up some habits along the way. Those who are still stressed at sixty often carry the same burdens that they took up at twenty-five, and have not even thought to shed them. Most of these are habits, not fixed traits, and habits can be set aside.
Here are the ones worth releasing.
1. Playback of old conversations
The habit of lying awake and rewriting what you said years ago keeps the past alive long after it should be gone.
You know the cycle. The argument from ten years ago, the thing you wish you’d said, that awkward moment at a party no one remembers. The mind pulls it back and starts again. Calm people have mostly stopped feeding it. They agreed that the version of them that felt the moment was doing the best they could with what they knew at the time.
Letting old frames be a thing of the past instead of going through them every night is one of the most underrated reliefs of aging.
2. Keeping a mental tally of who owes what
The habit of keeping track of who called last, who reached out, who didn’t gradually poisons the ease you might have felt in communicating with people.
It is exhausting to keep a book of accounts in every way. Did they thank me properly? Have I done more for them than they have done for me? People who find it easy to be friends have mostly given up on bookkeeping. They give what they want and let the rest go. A friendship measured to the penny isn’t really a friendship, it’s a deal, and deals never feel warm.
By putting the ledger, you return the heat.
3. Trying to fix everyone’s impression of you
Some people spend enormous amounts of energy trying to control what other people think, and it never ends because it can’t.
There is always someone with the wrong idea about you. A relative who misunderstood you years ago. A former colleague who tells an unflattering version of the story.
The instinct is to keep setting records. But you can’t control the picture of yourself that lives in someone’s head, and calm people have come to terms with that. They recognized that being misunderstood by some was simply the price of being an individual. They leave wrong impressions and move on.
4. When the comparison begins
Comparing your life to the lives of other people is a habit that only gets more painful with age, not less.
A classmate who did more. A brother who seems to have it easier. A peer who retired earlier either looks better or travels more. At thirty, the comparison was pretty bad. In your sixties, it can turn into a regret if you let it. Those who feel relaxed have learned to run their own race and test their progress against their past, not against the flashy reels of people on a completely different course. Their life is the only one they can live.
5. Say yes when everything in you means no.
A lifelong habit of agreeing to things you don’t want to do is constantly building a life that doesn’t fit.
The invitation you dread. A weasel that swallows the weekend. The role no one wanted, the one you took on because it was rude to say no. Each individual seems so small. But a few decades of them add to a person’s life, shaped by other people’s expectations.
People who feel at ease have learned that a good, clear “no” conserves energy for the things they really care about. They stopped treating their own preferences as something to apologize for.
6. Waiting to feel good about your body
Delaying your ease until your body looks a certain way is a delay that tends to last forever.
There was always a reason to wait. A few pounds, a sign of aging, the way things used to look. The trouble is, the goalposts keep moving and the body keeps changing, and the day you finally feel good never comes. People calmly concluded a kind of truce. They’ve decided that the body that carries them through the day deserves some appreciation now as it is, not a lifetime of waiting for a version that may never arrive.
The truce itself is a relief.
7. Keep grudges beyond their usefulness
The transfer of an old grudge costs the bearer much more than the person at whom it is directed.
Everyone collects for several years. A friend who let you down. A family member who said something unforgivable. Some grievances are earned.
But there comes a point when holding one stops protecting you and just weighs you down, and the other person often has no idea they’re still being carried. People who feel at ease tend to arrange old people not for the sake of others, but for their own sake. Writing it off doesn’t excuse what happened. It just frees the hand that was squeezing him.
8. Treat every change as a loss
The habit of meeting each new stage of life with fear forces a person to prepare for his own future.
It’s easy to frame aging as a long subtraction, something you can no longer do, the way the world has moved on. Hope for it, and every birthday will be a matter of mourning. People who feel most at ease have found a different framework. They notice what each stage offers as well as what it requires, the freedom that has come with leaving children, the perspectives that have come with the years. They relied on the old idea that everything passes, including the hard parts, and found that it was more empowering than boring.
These habits do not disappear overnight, and no one gives up all eight. Most people work slowly over a year or two.
