To Maintain Mental Sharpness as You Age, Eliminate These 5 Habits

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Do you ever feel like you're mentally all over the place? Like your moods ping-pong around erratically and unpredictably? If so, you probably wish you could feel a little less at the mercy of external events — able to stay cool and keep your calm no matter what was happening.

Certainly, experiencing a range of emotions is completely natural. It's common for our feelings to change over time. Nevertheless, some individuals are more adept at managing their emotional responses and maintaining mental clarity than others.

There are numerous factors contributing to this, including genetics, upbringing, and even last night's sleep. However, the key takeaway is this: maintaining strength and mental clarity as you age primarily hinges on cultivating healthier habits.

To maintain mental acuity as you age, it’s important to let go of certain habits:

1. Fixating on each and every thought

Metacognition means thinking about your thinking. More specifically, it’s the ability to be aware of and assess what’s going on in your mind — thoughts, emotions, beliefs, moods, expectations, self-talk, etc.

Often, our thoughts operate on autopilot — events occur and we respond automatically:

• Your spouse gives you a nasty look, so you fire back with a nasty comment.
• Your boss sends a passive-aggressive email that you don’t know how to respond to, so you distract yourself on Facebook.
• A painful old memory pops into your mind and you end up lost in ruminations and regret.

The more you neglect your thoughts, the more your actions turn into automatic responses instead of deliberate decisions. This can result in significant emotional instability and heightened stress levels.

• If your default self-talk is to catastrophize negative events and go straight to the worst-case scenario, you’re going to feel pretty anxious all the time.
• If your default response to criticism is to criticize back, you’re going to find yourself pretty frustrated and angry all the time.
• If your default interpretation of negative events is to criticize yourself and internalize things, you’re going to end up with a lot of shame and fake guilt.

Conversely, when you practice pausing and reflecting on your thoughts, you empower yourself to respond with intention and purpose. Instead of attempting to manage your emotions, cultivate a sense of curiosity towards them.   

2. Destructive scrolling 

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Many individuals find themselves preoccupied with whatever captures their focus. Whether it's endlessly scrolling through social media or daydreaming about a new vehicle, our thoughts can quickly shift from one topic to another, frequently without much conscious thought involved.

Here's the issue with that: The nature of your thoughts shapes the nature of your emotions. Consider this:

• If you’re always worried about the future, you’re going to feel pretty anxious.
• If you’re always dwelling on past mistakes, you’re going to feel pretty ashamed.
• If you’re always ruminating on how you’ve been wronged, you’re going to feel pretty angry.

To alter your emotional state, it's essential to shift your focus towards different thoughts. However, this can be quite challenging:

• When you’re caught in a worry spiral, it can be difficult to refocus your mind on your work.
• When you’re stuck ruminating on some slight against you, it’s hard to be present with the person sitting next to you.
• When you’re trapped in obsessing about how you feel, it’s hard to take action on the things you know will make you feel better.

In order to liberate yourself from detrimental thought patterns and the distress they cause, it's essential to master the art of focusing your attention. The key point is that your attention control functions like a muscle; without regular exercise, it will stay underdeveloped. Consequently, your emotions and overall mood will be vulnerable to the whims of your thoughts.

Frequent attention shifting can lead to several disadvantages, including decreased task performance, reduced accuracy, impaired working memory, and potential negative impacts on learning and decision-making, particularly when switching between complex tasks or when dealing with distractions. A 2022 review concluded that shifting focus can consume cognitive resources, hindering the ability to fully engage with the current task at hand.

3. Criticizing yourself harshly

Self-compassion may sound like a complex concept, but it boils down to a straightforward principle: When you're facing difficulties, extend the same kindness and understanding to yourself that you would offer to a close friend.

Many of us tend to engage in the peculiar practice of harshly criticizing ourselves whenever we err. It's quite ironic, considering that we often show immense compassion and empathy towards others when they stumble!

Regrettably, many of us were taught during our upbringing that the key to achieving success and finding happiness lies in self-criticism. Much like a stern drill sergeant shouting at his trainees, we often believe that being harsh on ourselves will shield us from failure. However, this notion is fundamentally flawed.

The majority of individuals achieve success in spite of their own self-criticism, rather than as a result of it. Many could enhance their effectiveness and overall happiness significantly if they ceased to berate themselves for every mistake or setback.

Because when you beat yourself up for making a mistake, you only add more painful emotion and stress onto the original frustration or sadness that goes along with making mistakes. If you want to avoid these spikes and spirals of painful emotion, learn to practice self-compassion instead of self-judgment.

4. Dwelling on aspects beyond your control

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Much of emotional strength involves learning better ways to respond to difficult emotions and moods so that they don’t explode out of control. But the initial difficult feelings are often inevitable:

• No matter how self-compassionate you are, making mistakes still stings and will likely lead to some amount of guilt or shame.
• No matter how self-aware you are of your painful emotions, they will still hurt when they show up unannounced.
• No matter how good you are at managing your attention, you will still get stuck in worry from time to time and that will lead to anxiety.

This implies that you must find a way to continue living your life even when you're experiencing negative feelings. Similar to how a runner must push through fatigue to complete the race, you too must learn to navigate through challenging emotions while still engaging with your daily life.

After all, what other option do you have? You can't just sit idly by, postponing significant actions in your life until you attain a sense of perfection. That mindset only leads to endless procrastination and a lifetime of regrets. 

However, engaging in even minor tasks when we're feeling emotionally down can be challenging, that's for sure. The key is to strengthen your emotional resilience.

Runners manage to push through fatigue and discomfort due to the endurance and strength they've developed over time. They began by running shorter distances, gradually increasing to a few miles as their bodies adapted. As they grew stronger, they progressed to 5 miles, then 10, and continued to extend their limits from there.

Insufficient emotional tolerance, commonly known as low distress tolerance, can result in a variety of adverse outcomes. These may include a heightened likelihood of substance use disorders, reliance on ineffective coping strategies such as avoidance or emotional suppression, challenges in handling stress, and an increased risk of mental health problems like anxiety and depression, especially when individuals struggle to cope with or completely avoid intense negative emotions. 

A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality recommended Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which often addresses this and focuses on improving distress tolerance skills.

Emotional resilience operates in a similar fashion. To improve your ability to cope with negative feelings, you need to engage with those emotions, allowing yourself to experience them fully while still moving forward with your life.

So, the next time a difficult emotion hits you, instead of asking How can I not feel so bad? ask yourself this: How can I use this as an opportunity to improve my emotional tolerance?

5. Steering Clear of Disputes

Most people hear the term assertive and they think rude or pushy. But in reality, assertive communication isn’t rude or pushy at all. Assertiveness is the healthy middle ground between passive communication and aggressive communication:

• Aggressive communication means not respecting the wants and needs of other people (manipulation, for example).
• Passive communication is when you don’t respect your wants and needs(being a “pushover.”)
• Assertive communication is when you honestly express your wants and needs, but you do it in a way that’s respectful of others as well.

Why is this important for emotional resilience and handling challenging emotions? Here’s the situation:

Consistently steering clear of external disputes can lead to the emergence of internal strife. This scenario frequently arises when individuals adopt an excessively passive communication style:

• You usually just “go with the flow” when there are group decisions to be made.
• You chronically hold back from voicing your opinions or ideas.
• You give in easily to avoid conflict.

The issue with being excessively passive and too eager to please others is that:

• When you constantly give in to other people’s wishes — and ignore your own — you start to feel bad about yourself and your self-esteem drops.
• Your frustration and anxiety levels also tend to go up because you’re never getting your needs met.
• Finally, you end up resenting other people because they always get what they want and you never get what you want.

Consider this: if your self-esteem is lacking and you're overwhelmed with frustration and anxiety, while also feeling resentment towards your closest relationships, how well do you think you'll handle even more challenging emotions on top of everything? The answer is probably not very well.

Conversely, developing assertiveness significantly enhances your capacity to remain strong and composed during challenging emotional situations, as it boosts your self-esteem and confidence levels considerably.