Though getting older is one of those things you simply can’t avoid, you don’t have to be reminded of it constantly. Here are 40 things you should never do if you’re over 40 and want to stay in a more youthful head space. And for more things that will prevent you from aging gracefully, These Are All of the Slang Terms You’re Too Old to Use After 40.
Any non-bed surface that you’re temporarily using as a bed is not going to do your spine any favors. “Oh, it’ll be fine,” you say. “I’ve slept on plenty of floors before.” The word “before” is very important in this sentence. If “before” means “in my 20s,” your now-40-year-old body is in for a rude awakening. And you should probably update your look with these 20 Style Tips for People Over 40, According to Fashion Experts. Watching kids try to make sense of a Walkman is both weirdly entertaining and also a sobering reminder of just how far the world has come since you were a kid and thought technology couldn’t get any better.
Selfies come effortlessly to young people. They somehow instinctively know the most flattering angles and the perfect lighting and how to capture themselves at their best. But a 40 year old trying to take a selfie always manages to catch themselves at weird angles with a few extra chins, looking older than their years. And if your looking for that special someone, check out The Biggest Secret No One Tells You About Dating Over 40. Jeans are supposed to be comfortable, but when you reach 40, it’s too easy to gravitate towards jeans that advertise your age just by the way they fit. If they’re high-waisted, tapered, and cropped at the ankle, you may have inadvertently dressed yourself in a bona fide pair of SNL-approved mom—or dad—jeans. Do you know what it’s like to be on your fifth hour of television and think, “Only six more hours to go?” Sure, you can make it through to the end of a series, but over the course of a week or so. You value delayed gratification and sleep at middle age, meaning that binging is not for you. And for more on the stars who are older than you think, check out 40 Celebrities You Won’t Believe Are Over 40. Telling somebody, unsolicitedly, that “it’s ‘you’re,’ not ‘your’” is something only an authority figure would do. Don’t be surprised when they start rolling their eyes and saying, “Whatever, dad.” So much of communication these days is done through texting and email. So when you request to actually speak to someone on the phone—or worse yet, call them without warning (and then leave a long message)—you’re in for a reminder that you’re the “old person” of your social circle. And if things have been feeling stale with your partner, check out Over 40? Here’s How to Spice Up Your Relationship.
You might be prepared to see the musician you grew up loving looking a little more gray and wrinkled, but the real surprise will be how much of the audience is made up of gray and wrinkled folks, too.
Complaining that the world isn’t exactly like you remember and noting that everything was just fine the way it was before younger folks went and messed everything up is basically like saying, “Just want to make sure everyone here knows that I’m older and wiser.” And for more helpful tips delivered to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.
Counting your “likes” on Facebook or Instagram isn’t worrisome in and of itself, but there will be a moment when you catch yourself doing it in the middle of a workday, and you’ll be seized by existential panic as you realize, “I’m a 40-year-old adult acting like a teenager!”
There’s nothing that’s going to pleasantly surprise you in that mirror. Just stick with the regular ole mirror behind it.
Eating a whole pie in one sitting—and we’ve all been there—can be a gut-buster when you’re young and in reasonable shape. But at 40, making the mistake of eating an entire pizza by yourself can leave you feeling like you’ve just swallowed a pillow filled with gravy.
You loved it as a kid, but at your age, taffy is just going to lead to painful toothaches and a sticky feeling in your mouth that never—seriously, never—goes away. Two weeks later, you’ll still be thinking, “Did I drink a bunch of Elmer’s glue? What is going on in there?”
You’re lost in your own world, immersed in the nostalgic melody of “Boys Don’t Cry” while your body unconsciously reproduces the exact dance moves you perfected at your junior high prom. Suddenly, you realize that everybody in the grocery store is staring at you, with bemused half-grins and expressions that seem to say, “Awww, look at that adorable old guy dancing to that old song.”
Calling your old band mates and seeing if they’re up for one more shot of glory is a surefire way to be reminded that life moves on. You may have the same chemistry you did as young rockers, but you may not have the same stamina. Also, you’ll probably have to end your gigs early because everyone has work in the morning, and the drummer has to drive his four year old to preschool. Oh, how times have changed! And for more great over-40 life advice, here are 40 Etiquette Mistakes You’re Too Old to Make After 40.
Festivals like Bonnaroo, Pitchfork, and Lollapalooza always sound like great ideas in theory. But then you get there, and it’s all endless lines and Porta-Potties and overpriced beer. Standing on your feet all day while surrounded by strangers invading your personal space is a young person’s game.
Four hours of sleep or less? That might’ve been fine when you were in your teens or 20s. But try something like that now, and you’ll get a brutal reminder that your sleep bank isn’t like a checking account with overdraft protection. You need a solid eight hours or your brain and body will revolt against you.
Warming up before a workout isn’t just something for professional athletes. As your muscles age, they need more preparation for strenuous exercise. Stretching improves blood flow to your muscles, making them less likely to tear or twist during your workout, and it opens up your blood capillaries, which helps your muscles function at their best. If you don’t dedicate at least a few minutes to stretching prior to every workout, your overstrained and aging muscles will be punishing you for it tomorrow.
As a general rule, googling symptoms is a bad idea. Falling into a rabbit hole of disease anxiety isn’t going to make you feel any better (or younger). If you have worrying symptoms, see a doctor. Don’t go looking for evidence on message boards that your days are numbered.
Keeping up with a four year old as they slither through climbers and crawl tubes like a spider monkey is challenging for anyone. But the older you get, the more difficult it becomes. You don’t want to sit this one out and join the other parents or grandparents on a park bench, but everything in your throbbing, overtaxed body is begging for it.
Unless you were alive when Blockbuster was the only way to see the latest new releases in the privacy of your home, nobody is going to appreciate a humorous reference to “be kind, please rewind.” And when they stare back at you with clueless expressions, your attempts to explain why this is so funny, which involves a detailed explanation of how VHS tapes worked and what “rewinding” is, you’re inevitably going to feel like you’re explaining ancient history with cave drawings.
It can be fun to revisit that feel-good sitcom of six New York friends from the ’90s and early aughts…until you start noticing how much the world has changed since the show first aired in 1994. Nobody dresses that way anymore, or has those haircuts. And most of the plots would be entirely different these days because everybody would communicate by text. Realizing just how old and out-of-date your favorite sitcom is can lead to the inevitable conclusion that you too must be old and out-of-date.
If it’s been a few years since you grew out your facial hair, be prepared for some unexpected gray hairs—probably a lot of gray hairs. If your last beard made you look like Gerard Butler, you might just be shocked to discover that your current beard is more reminiscent of Gandalf the Gray.
People in their 20s and even 30s will endure all kinds of foot abuse in the name of fashion, but those kinds of sacrifices seem less justifiable the older you get. Do you really care that much about how your footwear looks that you’re willing to submit your heels to medieval torture? (Yeah, we didn’t think so.)
Puppies are cute, but they’re also a lot of work. They need to be house trained, and given plenty of exercise, which will invariably involve running around a dog park and shouting, “No, no! Rocky, take that out of your mouth now! Bad dog! Bad. Dog.” As a young person, having a dog can be a character-building challenge. But at 40 or older, it’s just adding another responsibility to an already exhausting schedule. Yes, the snuggles are great. Then your pup starts running, and running, and running…
There are currently 2,823 different emojis in wide circulation, according to the Unicode Standard. And 230 of them were created in 2019. Trying to keep up with what emojis actually mean and how to use them correctly is a full-time job. And the only people with that kind of free time are kids who live rent-free with their parents. Don’t risk becoming the old person who sends an eggplant emoji thinking he’s talking about eggplants.
Returning to MTV after a long absence is like going back to a mall you used to frequent in your youth. It’s mostly deserted except for some teens with baggy pants and too many tattoos who think they’re hilarious. That’s what MTV is now.
Carrying a couch up four flights of stairs because a buddy is too cheap to pay for movers and he promised to pay you with beer and pizza feels like a bad idea even when you’re young. But unloading a U-Haul full of boxes and furniture will ruin your whole week in your 40s. Your body is no longer designed to haul a mattress up to the top of a five-floor walk-up.
Some people will always be open to discovering new artists and hearing new music. But most of us reach 40 and our musical tastes stop evolving. We like what we like, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s no point in lying to yourself and claiming that a 9 p.m. start time for a party sounds in any way reasonable. Maybe it did when you were younger, and any party worth attending would be raging ’til dawn. But it’s time to face facts that 9 p.m. sounds more like a great hour to slip into pajamas and watch Netflix rather than leave the house for the evening. ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb If you think announcing to a crowd “we are two wild and crazy guys” is a surefire way to get a big laugh, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. And you won’t fare much better if you move into ’80s or ’90s SNL comedy territory either. Lines like “You look mahvelous” or “Makin’ copies” have lost their cultural cache, and only serve to make you feel like a fossil.
Spoiler alert: The clientele at sports bars typically isn’t middle-aged professionals. They’re young dudes in sports jerseys calling each other “broham” and giving each other high-fives. There’s nothing wrong with downing pitchers of beer and shoveling in plates of hot wings while watching your favorite team, but doing so in the company of people who are still trying to figure out what to major in is maybe not the crowd for you anymore.
A Bloody Mary? Sure, no problem! A bunch of mimosas followed by a Moscow Mule or two, and then some Jagermeister shots for the road? You’re going to wake up feeling like you gargled sawdust before being trampled by a herd of angry buffalo.
If you haven’t seen your old high school friends in decades and you think Facebook is a great way to see what their lives look like today, you may want to reconsider this impulse. They’re not going to be quite as young as you remember. And the horrifying evidence that your old high school friends are, in fact, growing noticeably older will lead you to an even more traumatizing reality: This can only mean that you’re getting older, too!
Rule No. 1: Just don’t do it. The comments section is where all negativity on the internet lives. It’ll make you sad and confused about why youth culture has gotten so mean-spirited. And then you’ll turn into one of those cranky old people who sneers at kids, assumes the worst of them, and mutters Clint Eastwood-isms like “Get off my lawn!” It’s a cycle of cynicism and despair that you should avoid like the plague.
Wait, so let’s get this straight, a guy named “PewDiePie” has made millions just by recording himself playing video games and making smart-alecky comments? That’s… a thing now? A 40 year old watching YouTube celebs—like DanTDM or CaptainSparklez—is incapable of masking their contempt and confusion, especially if that 40 year old knows how much these “stars” gross in a year.
Even if you were considered a talented dancer back in the day, what constituted as dance music in your youth has changed considerably in recent years. You may have impressed the crowd at your niece’s wedding with your killer robot moves, but dubstep is an entirely different league altogether.
We understand the sentiment. You just want to be prepared in case your phone dies or you can’t find a solid Wifi signal. But be prepared for people to mock you as a result.
Having a general sense of what the weather will be like today is one thing. Having an hour-by-hour forecast of the changing temperature—including exactly when you’ll need an umbrella and/or a light jacket—is behavior that almost never occurs in people under 30. If someone asks you, “What’s the temperature outside?” And you’re like, “Well, that depends. Let me open up my three weather apps and I’ll see if I can get a consensus,” they’re going to be making some assumptions about your age.
Remember that scene in Star Wars where Obi-Wan Kenobi uses a Jedi mind trick on the Storm Troopers and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for?” Yeah, think of that quote any time you’re even remotely tempted to check out Tinder. This is not the app for you. Instead, try out one of these.
