Life Skills at 50
These pearls of wisdom can manifest through any kind of life skill, from putting together a sustainable vegetable garden to hosting a successful family gathering. And although such life skills are best learned before you hit the big Five-O, it’s never too late to start mastering them for the next chapter of your life. That being said, here are some skills that would come in handy as you trek the exciting road ahead of your 50s:
1. Managing Your Home
If you had spent most of your younger years toiling, you probably didn’t have a lot of time to focus on maintaining a home by yourself. Now that you’re in your 50s, it’s time to realign the focus to your homemaking skills. These skills encompass a broad range of areas, including the following:
2. Making Home-Cooked Meals
All home-cooked meals are special, but you can take cooking to the next level by whipping up meals like a pro. If there’s a family recipe that you know like the back of your hand, you can cook it to perfection using some tips and tricks from culinary professionals. You can find an array of courses online that can teach you about things like picking the best ingredients, preparing appetizers, and lighting up a grill for cooking steak.
3. Handling Minor Repairs
Home inconveniences are inevitable, but there are times when your trusty handyman won’t be available to make the necessary repairs. However, you can save time and money by getting things done on your own. Be it a clogged sink or an unravelling wallpaper, minor home issues can be fixed in a jiffy with the right tools and knowledge.
If you don’t know how to do it yourself, you can enlist the help of friends or relatives to teach you basic repairs. Alternatively, you can go online for tutorials on simple fix-its.
4. Knowing What’s Best for Your Health
Admittedly, your 50s is a time when you should pay more attention to what’s going on in your body. By this time, you need to have a solid idea of what works best for your body and what doesn’t.
Aside from abiding by a healthy diet and exercise routines, you need to have a clear idea of any medical conditions you may have and how to best manage them. This also means knowing how to do your own research through the most trusted medical sources—and bringing up potential discrepancies with your doctor.
5. Knowing How to Use Simple, Everyday Tech
It’s natural to feel as though your kids and grandkids are speaking another language when it comes to technology. While you may be tech-savvy enough to use a smartphone, it would still be useful to have a good grasp of social media, messaging or chat services, GPS navigation, and banking apps to make everyday communications and errands easier.
By mastering the art of applying photo filters, making video edits on your phone, or something as simple as connecting devices to the TV and keeping your accounts safe online, you can stay in touch with the modern world—and foster better connections with younger family members as well.
6. Carrying Conversations and Social Gatherings
At this age, you’ve probably attended more social gatherings than you can count. Now that you’re in your 50s, it’s time to put your observational knowledge to good use and throw a great gathering.
Aside from making the necessary preparations for any occasion, you should also perfect the skill of handling a crowd. This means knowing how to converse with different types of people and how to make guests feel comfortable. You don’t have to be the life of the party—sometimes being a gracious and mindful host is enough.
7. Recognising the Value of New Hobbies and Skills
Some people at this stage of life are comfortable with being stagnant because they’ve achieved all that is left to achieve. While your 50s is a time to tone down the fast life, you don’t have to stop yourself from learning new things. For instance, you can choose to learn a new language to broaden your vocabulary. Aside from giving you a potentially useful skill, learning a language is also great for your cognitive health.
Ultimately, cultivating your hobbies and skills allows you to pursue enriching activities outside of your career. And as an added benefit, you can get good enough at your hobby that you can monetise it and start your own business. To make the most of your 50s, you could make a list of all that you plan to achieve and create a vision board for all your life—and retirement—goals.
8. Navigating Emergency Situations
At its core, ageing does not have to mean overly relying on others for any kind of situation. Emergencies are bound to happen anytime, so it’s best to stay prepared by having the skills to keep things under control. It may help to be knowledgeable about putting together an emergency kit and administering CPR. Additionally, it would be beneficial to know basic wilderness survival skills such as making fire, gathering food, dressing up wounds, and creating shelter to make emergency scenarios bearable.
9. Valuing Yourself
Lastly, one of the most important things to learn during your 50s is how to love yourself.
We all face trials and tribulations as we grow older, and sometimes, these may take a hit on how we value ourselves. Now that you’re older and wiser, you need to make sure that you get the kind of love that you deserve. This means knowing how to say “no” (even to friends and family!) and how to ask for help when you need it. You also need to know who your real friends are, recognise your mistakes, and forgive yourself in order to move forward.
10. Lead a Fulfilling Life through Your Golden Years
Beyond just a period of reflection, life from your 50s and beyond is about self-evaluation and completing all your life goals. To start, you can master the basic life skills mentioned in this list. Just remember that it’s never too late for you to try and live a more fulfilled life. However you intend your 50s to look like, the most important thing is that you live it in a way that suits you best.
