If you want your 70s to be the most joyful years of your life, say goodbye to these 10 behaviors

A few summers ago, I joined a sunrise walking group on a tiny coastal trail.

Most of us were strangers.

One morning, a woman in her early seventies set the pace.

She had a red windbreaker, a steady laugh, and a way of noticing small things – pelicans drafting, fishermen waving from the pier, a child learning to balance on a scooter.

When I asked her secret, she smiled and said, “I decided I was done carrying what didn’t belong to me.”

Then she picked up her pace and pointed out a cluster of sea lavender as if it were a gift that had always been waiting.

That sentence stayed with me.

Joy is often less about adding and more about releasing.

If you want your seventies to glow, the real work is unlearning what weighs you down and choosing practices that make room for lightness.

Here are ten behaviors worth saying goodbye to – not because you failed, but because you’re graduating.

1. Apologizing for existing

Many of us learned to shrink.

We said “sorry” for asking questions, taking up time, changing our minds, or needing help.

That reflex keeps joy at arm’s length.

Practice this instead.

Replace empty apologies with clear thanks.

“Thank you for waiting.”
“Thank you for your patience while I think.”
“Thank you for telling me how that landed.”

Your seventies deserve presence, not permission.

When you stop apologizing for breathing, you breathe more fully.

Joy needs oxygen.

2. Treating your body like a project, not a partner

I spent years “fixing” my body with plans and punishments.

It never made me kinder, only tired.

Your body is not a problem to solve before you are allowed to enjoy life.

It is the vehicle that carries you to the good stuff.

Retire the all-or-nothing rules.

Trade them for relationship.

Move most days in ways that keep your joints friendly.

Feed yourself enough protein, fiber, and color.

Sleep like it’s sacred.

Care for your skin because touch is soothing, not because you’re chasing perfection.

A partnered body gives back.

It lends you steadiness on stairs, curiosity in the garden, and calm during storms.

Projects end.

Partnerships deepen.

3. Collecting grudges

Resentment promises power.

It never delivers.

It drains you in slow motion and steals the chance to be surprised by people who are trying, just like you.

You do not have to reconcile with everyone.

You also do not have to carry them in your mind’s backpack.

Practice small releases.

Write the petty things on paper and feed that page to the recycling.

Say a quiet blessing for yourself: I am not the warden of other people’s growth.

Letting go is not weakness.

It is allocating your energy to the days you still get to live.

4. Waiting for perfect conditions

Perfection is a moving target with an expensive toll.

You pay for it with time you cannot buy back.

Say goodbye to the idea that you will start painting, traveling, learning the language, or dating again once you feel “ready.”

Switch the question.

What is the smallest action that moves this from idea to life within the next week.

Book the beginner class.

Drive to the park you keep meaning to see.

Send the text.

Joy rewards momentum, not flawless timing.

When I was training as a yoga teacher, I kept waiting to feel wise.

It never came.

I began anyway.

Wisdom grew from showing up, not from waiting.

5. Mistaking busyness for usefulness

A full calendar can be camouflage.

You look important, but feel absent.

Your seventies ask for intention.

Protect a window in each day that belongs to you.

Fifteen minutes is enough.

Use it to walk without your phone, breathe, pray, stretch, read a page that nourishes rather than agitates.

Say no when yes would be a lie.

If someone is disappointed, let the feeling pass through both of you.

Joy needs white space to expand.

I like to think of this as nervous system hygiene.

A calmer system perceives more beauty.

It also speaks more kindly.

6. Chasing status over substance

Status symbols are loud.

Joy is often quiet.

The loud things promise a shortcut to meaning, but they rarely deliver the aftertaste you seek.

Release the urge to prove with purchases or proximity.

Instead, choose craftsmen over logos, experiences over announcements, and relationships over rooms that make you shrink.

Let your home be a place people exhale, not a museum where everyone perches.

Choose friends who ask real questions and answer them, too.

If you want a single check to keep you honest, try this once a week:

Would I still want this if no one knew I had it?

Did this plan make me feel more alive afterward?

Am I saying yes to be seen, or to be myself?

Substance holds.
Status fades.
Your seventies are a great time to be hard to impress and easy to delight.

7. Arguing with reality

Arguing with reality is the fastest way to lose every day.

You can wish the world were different.

You can also act inside the world that exists.

If you face a health limitation, pace yourself with respect.

Adaptations are not defeat; they are design.

Use walking poles, sit for balance poses, ask for a ride, buy the comfortable shoes that keep you outside longer.

If a relationship has changed, let it be true and decide your next kind, honest move.

Accepting reality frees energy for shaping what you can influence.

That freedom tastes a lot like joy.

8. Letting digital noise set your mood

Joy does not thrive in a constant siren.

News cycles and social feeds are designed to keep you leaning in with a worried heart.

Build a fence.

Decide when and how you consume information.

Curate the accounts you follow so that the majority evoke curiosity, learning, or laughter.

Put your phone to bed outside your bedroom.

Meet friends in person and ask questions that do not fit in a comment box.

When I get lax about this, my mind scatters and my body tightens.

When I reset, I remember how wide and interesting the real world is.

That shift shows up on my face.

9. Hoarding “just in case”

Stuff can be a story about fear.

Fear of scarcity, fear of loss, fear of who we would be without the weight of our history.

But clutter steals attention.

It also traps energy in yesterday.

I am a minimalist because less helps me hear myself.

It is not about stark rooms; it is about rooms designed for living.

Release what you do not use.

Give your heirlooms new lives in the hands of people who will enjoy them.

Keep a small archive of meaningful items and let the rest serve someone else.

Your future needs space.

Joy likes to stretch its arms.

10. Outsourcing your joy to other people’s approval

This is the big one.

We all want to be chosen.

But if your mood depends on being praised, invited, or validated, your joy sits on a shaky chair.

Bring your joy closer.

Create a daily ritual that is both small and non-negotiable, something you do because it returns you to yourself.

Ten minutes of tai chi on the patio.

A page of journaling with tea.

Watering the plants while you name what went well today.

Texting one person a genuine compliment.

Build a life that would still feel meaningful if nobody clapped.

Approval becomes a nice extra, not the power source.

One last insight before we wrap up

Letting go is not an event.

It is a practice.

You say goodbye to apologizing, and a new setting invites you to bow again.

You stop hoarding, and then a tough season whispers that you might need everything, just in case.

Each time you release, your capacity widens.

Your seventies can feel like a second adolescence – curious, experimental, less afraid to be seen as you are.

If it helps, here is a simple evening rhythm I use when I feel myself slipping back into old behaviors.

I write three lines: what I am proud of today, what I am releasing, and one small invitation for tomorrow.
Pride rewires the inner critic.

Release lightens the backpack.

Invitation makes action feel friendly.

I also turn to cultural practices that teach softness without surrender.

From Zen, I borrow beginner’s mind – the willingness to meet the ordinary with fresh attention.

From yoga, I borrow satya – truthful living that aligns words, choices, and values.

From my grandmother, I borrow the habit of placing a glass of water by the bed for morning tea.
Every culture holds small rituals that ask us to be present.

Presence is the soil joy grows in.

If you are tempted to overhaul your life in one sweep, pause.

Choose one behavior to retire this month.

Make it easy to succeed.

If you are saying goodbye to busyness, protect a single fifteen-minute window and defend it like a garden gate.

If you are releasing status-chasing, give yourself a buying sabbatical and borrow books instead.

If you are clearing grudges, write the letter you will never send, then tear it up and touch your own chest with gratitude for the peace you just purchased.

And if you worry it is too late, let me pass along what the woman in the red windbreaker told me on that coastal trail.

“You can start a joyful life on any Wednesday.”

Then she squinted at the horizon and laughed.

“Good thing it’s Wednesday a lot.”

Final thoughts

Your seventies can be spacious, creative, and playful.

They can be the years you stop auditioning and start living as the person you’ve been rehearsing.

Say goodbye to the habits that shrink you.

Replace them with small, repeatable acts of care and truth.

Pick one behavior above and retire it for thirty days.

Tell a friend what you’re doing.

Track your energy, your sleep, your laughter.

When you notice more light in the ordinary, you will know you’re on the right trail.

Joy does not need perfect circumstances.

It needs your attention.

And your attention is yours to give, starting today.