Hobbies Increase Health and Happiness, Age and Prosper

Welcome to Age and Prosper, a new weekly newsletter about all things aging and longevity through Substack: https://ageandprosper.substack.com/

Remember the feel of Saturday morning soccer? Sitting on freshly cut grass, still damp with dew, lacing up musty leather sneakers before sneaking an orange slice from the team mom’s giant Tupperware. Friends waving, coaches shouting, parents cheering, rivals staring. What a thrill it was to be there, outside, in the sun or rain, a part of something.

Or maybe for you it was that medieval calligraphy set you got for your 12th birthday, the one that you became so engrossed with that you spent half of the summer practicing the letters until you got them just right, then the other half writing elaborate but totally illegible letters to your 20th century friends and family? 

Maybe that one was just me?

Whatever it was that floated your boat, I have a newsflash for you.

Hobbies: not just for kids. 

Caption: Above is hobbyist guitar maker Dave Aguilar who I photographed and made a short film on. He is holding a guitar he made out of recycled wood. Check out my film about Dave here.

Benefits to Hobbies on Health

It won’t come as a shock to anyone that doing things that make you feel good is a good idea. But research shows that voluntarily engaging in enjoyable leisure activities doesn’t just make our days more pleasurable; it’s actually associated with a slew of positive physiological and psychological results from lower blood pressure, cortisol levels and body mass index to higher levels of positive psychosocial states. 

In Fortune Magazine, Courtney Cope, MS, LMFT and senior manager, clinical operations at BetterHelp, shares that hobbies are beneficial because they can:

  • anchor us back to our most positive childhood memories.

  • remind us that life doesn’t always have to be so serious.

  • promote mental relaxation.

  • reduce our blood pressure and improve our mental health.

  • allow us to feel successful and competent in a world that can feel very much outside our control.

But don’t dash out and buy a new calligraphy kit just to leave it on the bookshelf collecting dust. If you’re anything like me, between work and family and life, you are long on ideas and short on time. So how do we get some of our time back so we can devote it to greater well-being? 

(If you do dash out and buy a calligraphy kit, by the way, shoot me an email and I will absolutely give you my address so you can send us a medieval-style letter.)

Getting Time Back

The first step to making time for a hobby is examining where your time is actually going in the first place.

We’ve all likely experienced some version of this: you sit down in the morning to work and, before you know it, it’s lunchtime and all you’ve done is fire fifty emails back-and-forth (most of which could have been resolved in a five-minute phone call instead). Productive? Sure, kind of. Time-efficient? Probably not.

Tim Ferris, author of the Four Hour Work Week, suggests only answering emails 2-3 times a day: Once in the morning, once prior to lunch, and once in the late afternoon. 

Our phones are another time-drain. According to a recent New York Times article, teenagers spend half their waking hours on their smartphones, and the average adult spends 3 hours and 15 minutes each day. 

I read the book How to Break up with your Phone by Catherine Price last year, and it was very eye opening. She offers numerous tips, some of which are summarized here in Forbes, including:

  • Assess your relationship with your phone in the first place

  • Learn to ride out the cravings, just as you would if you were quitting smoking

  • Set boundaries for yourself around your phone use

  • Try a trial separation and see how it makes you feel (Are you squirming in your pants? I am!)

Tips on Finding a Hobby 

Congratulations! You’ve carved out all this newfound time in your day and you’re ready to spend it making yourself happier and healthier, i.e. picking up a hobby. 

When deciding what hobby to choose, don’t feel as though you must limit yourself to the usual suspects of adult sports leagues, art or writing workshops, and movement classes like dance and yoga (although all of these things are truly awesome, too--ask Allison, she does pretty much all of them).

Your hobby can be just about anything as long as it brings you joy. Here is a list of weird hobbies to bring some inspiration:

Let us know what you decide to do, and how you made the time to do it! We always want to hear from our readers. 

Go onward, to age well and prosper. See you next week. 

Age and Prosper is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support Age and Prosper, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Source: seniorstockphotos.com

Age and Prosper, Health Longevity Newsletter

Welcome to Age and Prosper, a new weekly newsletter about all things aging and longevity through Substack: https://ageandprosper.substack.com/

I am Tom Sanders. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a photographer, author, filmmaker and college professor with a professional focus on seniors (as in people in their 60’s+, not 12th graders). More on me to come. I’ll also occasionally be joined here by my wife, Allison Arbuthnot Sanders, a writer, editor, and health and wellness enthusiast. 

Each week, we are going to bring you three relevant, science-backed health stories and trends relevant to aging and longevity in bite-size formats, as well as lifestyle stories on people who are aging well. 

Since we’re new here, please allow me to introduce myself. For the last two decades, I have photographed and filmed thousands of people in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond. In fact, the oldest person I photographed was Merle Phillips, a 110-year-old woman in Chicago who authored her first book at 72-years-old, then went on to write 12 more books by the time she reached 110. Are you inspired yet?  

Caption: A photograph from Tom’s series on centenarians 

Awesome! Me too! Early in my career, while still in my 20s, I had the opportunity to photograph and interview aging and longevity experts like Dan Buetner, author, producer and creator of the Blue Zones Diet, and Dr. Gary Small, a well known memory, aging and brain expert out of UCLA. Hearing what they have to say while also regularly spending time with seniors at vastly varying levels of mental and physical wellness got me really interested in how and why our brains and bodies age so differently. Now that I’m pushing 40, I’ve leaned into this even more.

While not everyone wants to live to be 110 like Merle (Allison maintains she isn’t interested), we all (should) want to age in a manner that makes what years we do have productive, comfortable and, hopefully, happy. Healthy longevity is the goal! 

Allison and I speak frequently about what a challenge it is to sort through the wealth of information–often conflicting–about how to age well and prosper. Since we spend a lot of time sifting through it already for our own personal curiosities and self-improvement journeys, we decided to go ahead and share the goods we find with you. 

So, this newsletter is for anyone who wants tips on how to age well and make the most of the years they’ve got. We’ll do our best to keep it current, accurate, and not, like, totally obvious, like this recent story declaring that french fries are really bad for you. 

It does not matter if you are 27 or 70, you can make changes anytime to feel better and increase your longevity. Aging well starts now! So, let’s jump into it! 

This week’s theme: Our personal relationships contribute to our longevity. 

  1. A recent student from Science Daily states that not only does isolation decrease happiness, but it’s a contributing factor to causing dementia. It can be really hard to put yourself out there and socialize and make friends but it is imperative for your brain and happiness!

  2. Authors Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz just wrote a book titled "The Good Life - Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness," in which they conclude that it is our personal friendships and their support that help us live long meaningful lives. 

  3. One of my more popular senior photo series, which I shot for Belmont Village Senior Living, was on couples who had been married for fifty+ years. At the time, Allison and I were newlyweds, and we collected their best advice for long and happy marriages. I noticed that almost all of these tips align with leading relationship expert John Gottman, PHD Psychologist on how to improve your marriage and partnerships. One woman told Allison to hide her credit card receipts. That is not one of Gottman’s tips, but seeking a therapist if you’re feeling inclined to hide your financial transactions from your spouse is. According to Gottman, the average couple waits six years before seeking help for relationship problems. And keep in mind, half of all marriages that end do so in the first seven years. 



Thanks for joining me! Please forward this newsletter on to friends, family, strangers, anyone that you think wants to age better and improve their quality of life. See you next week with more news on how to age and prosper.

If you have any suggestions for future newsletter articles as we get going on this, I’d be happy to hear them. You can reach me at info@tomsandersphoto.com

Age and Prosper is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.