7 Ways to Stay Involved in Your Community as You Age
Withdrawing from your community is an unfortunate but inevitable part of aging. As you become less mobile and more prone to illness it’s only natural that you might not be as sociable as you once were, but that doesn’t mean you have to completely separate yourself from the community that you live and have grown up around. In this article, we show you those 7 activities or ways you can stay involved in the community as you age. Read on.
Maintaining social connections is linked with happiness levels, overall well-being and even physical strength, so keeping those community ties as long as possible will literally keep you healthier and feeling better.
Getting involved is, however, not easy. You need to get an activity to connect you with the community to boost your social skills and expand your circle of friends.
- Stay Involved with Knitting
As you age, you’ll begin to feel a little difficulty with your hand to eye coordination skills. Knitting will not only help you suppress this complication but also keep you involved in the community. It will challenge your brain and help you slash off the chances of getting mild cognitive impairment. Knitting will also keep you busy and calm, presenting you with a clever way of meditating. To be more important and involved in the community, you can offer to knit hats and blankets for babies under community hospital programs which help underserved mothers and babies with such essential items.
Jane Byrne, community lead at FirstCare knows a little about why community is so important for the older generation. She says that “when studies have measured well-being of different elderly populations, the results have been clear. Those who stay more involved with their community have a more positive outlook on life and feel like they have more to live for even when they have severe illness in their lives”.
- Provide family assistance
By providing family assistance, you also keep your social connections active even into your senior years. It will help you stave off any symptoms of depression, and keep you even more active. Running around with kids will also keep you happy, fill your time, and keep you physically fit. Studies show that playing with kids can help you suppress risks of mental and physical struggles due to feelings of being less important, and loneliness, etc.
- Get into gardening
When you get into gardening activities like planting flowers and pruning trees, you enhance your physical activity, which will boost your cardiovascular health, flexible coordination, and entire physical wellness. It will also keep your mind keep off troubles and physical pain so you can live a relaxed stress-free life. In keeping you involved in your community, gardening will also connect you with the people who love nature’s beauty. By connecting with other people who tend the flowers, you also get opportunities for more social connections with new people.
- Stay involved by Volunteering at your Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC)
THE CCRC usually has numerous open spots for volunteers to help them create useful programs and activities for senior living in the homes. By volunteering with the CCRC, you will gain a lot of new knowledge as you engage with other seniors.
You’ll also play a part in helping the community members who have their seniors enrolled in the homes and make new friends. It’s always a joy to know or get acknowledged by your people to improve another person’s life.
- Connecting with children in the community library
Children are ever active and curious, giving you the slimmest chances of getting bored when you’re around them. You can offer to read stories for them, among other activities. Reading stories for these children will not only help enhance their attention skills but also improve their behavior. Be sure to check with your community library to see if they need volunteers to help them lead such programs.
- Playing ‘brain’ games
Brain games, like board games and cards, will help you challenge the brain. They are also known to bring a lot of people together to spend time as they play. It will keep you connected with your family, and friends to ensure that you’re involved in the community. The brain games will also stimulate your brain to prevent you from symptoms of diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, among others.
- Volunteering in the community church
Volunteering in the local church will help you connect with the younger generation. This will help you share with them important life lessons as they also teach you how to view life in varied perspectives. This makes you feel that you still have plenty of time with a lot to give back to the community. You’ll also feel important to the society and ward off any feelings of isolation and depression etc.
The church will also help you find activities which fascinate and fill you so you can help them serve even more people.
Life is like an unending road. With each stage, we get fresh challenges which we need to overcome to keep stronger and going. Your community will be with you all the time, therefore getting involved in most community projects will also help you strengthen your social bonds.