Work-Life Innovation |

We will all get old, but one comforting thought you might have is that by then you should be able to look back on a life’s worth of memories. Memories of all those crazy things you got up to, the adventures you had, the achievements you worked hard for, the failures you suffered, the people you knew, the loves you won as well as those you lost - a vast and lifelong panorama of drama and adventure just waiting to be re-lived in your winter years.

But is this true? It seems to me that taken from the perspective of an Old You, life is all about making memories. It also seems to me that memories, or memorable events, seldom just arrive; you have to go out and claim them! Think about yourself at 90 and imagine what, so far, would that person have to look back on… Are you storing up an amazing and incredible legacy that can be looked back on with delight? Will the Old You truly be able to say “Yes! I have lived! And my word! How fantastic it all was!”

Most of us, I suspect, don’t look at life in this way. Most of us spend our time thinking and fretting about the things in front of us, and rarely if ever take on a larger perspective to see what this life of ours will look like from the vantage point of twenty to thirty years or more in the future.

The things that will make you smile when your 90, won’t be the things you acquired, the money you have, the safety and cautiousness with which you made the journey. No, it will be the problems you overcame, the victories you claimed, and the failures you picked yourself up from. It will be the passion with which you lived your life that will glow in the embers of your old and faltering eyes, not the material benefits of those struggles - there may not be many after all. What you will care about and feel justly proud of will be the way you grabbed hold of life, and the manner in which you went and sought out experiences that one day would turn into the memories of an Old You. An Old you who, with those memories to reflect on, will know that of all the things that life has offered you over all those countless years, nothing has gone to waste.

If, looking back at your life right now, you don’t quite feel your doing your best by that old version of you - who, don’t forget, will want to relive the contents of your days in all their glorious detail - take a look at the list below and if you recognise any of them in your life, try to exchange them for more memorable ways to spend your time.

10 Things you won’t thank yourself for when you’re 90

1. All those countless nights laying on the sofa watching TV

2. The people you wanted to but didn’t speak to on the train

3. The mornings you laid in bed until noon

4. The cigarettes you smoked

5. The exercise you didn’t take

6. The invites you turned down

7. The pieces of work you refused because they seemed too hard/scary

8. The food you didn’t try

9. The daydreaming you did

10. The time you spent worrying and not acting

None of these are quality entries in a photo album or memoir, so why put them in your life!

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