Staying in the present can help boost your overall health as you get older, research suggests.
Researchers at Flinders University in Australia recruited 623 participants, between 18 and 86 years old, and asked them to complete questionnaires about goals, overall wellbeing, and mindful characteristics—such as paying attention to and accepting the present moment in a non-judgmental way. They also asked about “interoception,” which is a sense of feeling what’s going on in your body, such as being cold or hungry.
They found that there’s a link between present-moment attention and wellbeing that gets stronger with age, which is likely because when people get older, they become more aware of having increasingly limited time. That can create a sense of wanting to appreciate the present, and in turn, boosts“This causes us to be less concerned with the future, and more concerned with the here-and-now,” study coauthor Leeann Mahlo, Ph.D.
One finding that surprised researchers, she added, is that there is a possible turning point in midlife where this happens, as opposed to occurring only later in life. People in midlife tend to move away from judging experiences as good or bad the way people in young adulthood do, she said. This adds to previous research that indicates there are significant benefits to starting a mindfulness practice, or even to simply gravitate more often to the present moment, study coauthorFor older people, though, this takeaway from this research is that you’re more likely to have this happen naturally instead of intentionally—and that’s a big plus.
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