Let's be honest — getting older is hard, and — a lot of the time — we're just winging it as we go along. There are just so many things nobody warns you about until you experience them yourself! Well, I asked the older women of the BuzzFeed Community to share the advice, life hacks, and lessons they've learned along the way that they really wish they'd known when they were younger. Here are 15 tips and tricks they shared that just might change your life:
1. "Do movement and exercise that feel good to you! No matter what it is. If you enjoy it, you are more likely to stick with it."
2. "Stop putting in the effort to be polite to pushy people who bulldoze and take advantage of you."
"If they aren't considering your feelings, you're under no obligation to be caretaker of theirs."
3. "For skincare: basically moisturize, hydrate, use sunscreen that's SPF 50 or higher. You really don’t need all that other fancy stuff."
"Always do your face and neck as a minimum."
4. "Take good care of your teeth. I know routine exams/cleanings can be expensive, but root canals and extractions are even worse and very time-consuming."
5. "Be strong, but not stupid. Strong is finishing your shift when you're in pain because you are 100% sure you can take it easy tomorrow and recover just fine. Stupid is when you can't walk right from the moment you wake up and go to work anyway."
6. "Embrace aging out of being seen as a sex object. It's so freeing to not worry about your attractiveness as perceived by others anymore. I've realized what a drain of my time and energy that was and how insecure it made me. Trying to fight aging will just make you miserable. Now that I've fully accepted my cronehood, I'm so much happier with myself and more at peace. Older bodies are beautiful just as they are."
7. "Keep making friends. My former boss (retired now, in her 60s) has a group of girlfriends. They vacation together, go golfing, shopping, dining, etc."
"I commended her on this, and she explained that her husband is a lot older than her, and she was aware that he would likely pass away before her. She didn't want to be alone. Most of her friends are married, but they have prioritized their friendships for decades."
9. "Read up on and familiarize yourself with employment law. This is something I was NEVER taught in school, and just started doing in the past 10 years."
"Know the names of policies designed to protect you and the varied aspects of your identity. Don't be afraid to use 'serious' language in order to have your boundaries respected. In my career, most major violations and acts of discrimination start as slip-ups from colleagues who — having never researched themselves — make decisions based on their own limited worldview. HR banks on all of us being uninformed to avoid conducting official investigations and bad culture. Now I have the knowledge/language to nip problems in the bud before they develop into something bigger!"
10. "If you get tired or irritable in the late afternoon, and have the time to do it, TAKE A NAP! I fought this for so long, using artificial stimulants and being cranky with everyone around me. But once I learned that it was OK to listen to my body and take a nap, it made a HUGE difference."
11. "Don't be afraid to edit your life. A couple years ago, after being upset when two different friends posted yet another unsettling untrue thing on Facebook regarding vaccines, and social justice, I realized I just don’t want to be a fact checker for my friends."
12. "Make sure your car, mortgage, content insurance coverage, etc. is really good. For the few extra dollars it costs, it's worth it."
"I was in a bad car accident and broke my back, and my husband broke his legs and some ribs. He just happened to have upped our coverage for care costs to a million dollars from $45,000 a bit before the accident happened. We blew through the $45,000 in the first few months, between the hospital, rehab, mobility devices, and so many other things you never think of.
The one thing we didn't see on our policy was a little box we could have ticked to cover house keeping expenses. Read your policies and make sure you're covered well! Our mortgage insurance only covered 50% of the mortgage rate per month when we were off work. It was the same thing — we made a slight over sight on that when instating our policy."
13. "Talk about your perimenopause symptoms with friends your own age and younger women. I was completely blind-sided when they started in my early 40's and NO ONE was talking about them. Forewarned is forearmed, I say."
14. "YOU matter. YOU. Your needs, your dreams, your aspirations. You can't be the best you unless you put yourself first. This applies to all aspects of your life, including your family life. If you don't take care of yourself first, you lose a part of yourself. You lose your focus, you lose your personal happiness, you can't take care of others. All relationships involve compromise to a certain degree, but sometimes the other person doesn't realize how much you've compromised. Be your own advocate."
15. And finally, an addition from Selling Sunset's very own Chrishell Stause:
Older women of the BuzzFeed Community, do you have any life hacks like these that we missed? If so, tell us about them in the comments below.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.