Blog: Time to talk about wellbeing

How are you? Take a moment to think about it before you answer. All too often, the automatic, breezy reply is ‘fine’ and the conversation moves on without any deeper sense of how things really are.

And after 19 months of Covid, lockdowns, shielding, ongoing restrictions and no real end in sight, how many of us can honestly say we feel fine?

At Age Scotland, the health and wellbeing team want to know how over 50s’ wellbeing has been affected by the Covid pandemic and in order to do that we need to have a real conversation – a Wellbeing Conversation.

We are inviting groups, clubs or organisations working with older people to get in touch if they are interested in hosting a Wellbeing Conversation, facilitated by the Age Scotland health and wellbeing team.

We want to hear from older people in these groups about what impact the past 19 months have had on their wellbeing and to find out how they would like to individually or as a group feel better.

In our Wellbeing Conversations, which we will deliver in person where possible but can also hold online, we will ask older people to tell us about a time they felt good about their wellbeing and what factors contributed to that feeling?

Wellbeing means different things to different people, but we’re broadly talking about feeling relatively healthy, happy, optimistic and generally good about ourselves.

Listening to older people about what helps them feel better gives us as an organisation a clearer idea about how to develop our health and wellbeing offerings to focus on the things that are important to older people – and not what we might think these things are!

For some older people the loss of connection with friends through prolonged lockdowns might have left them feeling isolated and lonely. For others the cancellation of planned activities might have been the break they didn’t realise they needed – and they feel better now than they did at the start of 2020.

Maybe someone bought a bike to exercise in the fresh air and are now fitter than they’ve ever been. Or another person worked their way through the entire Netflix catalogue with a packet of biscuits by their side. There’s no judgement here! We’ve all done it.

Everyone is going to have a different story to tell, and we want to hear as many of those stories as possible.

So if you are involved in running a lunch club or activity group for older people, sheltered housing association, veterans group or any other group for people over 50 in Scotland and you fancy having a chat about wellbeing, hear some tips on how to feel better and take part in a couple of optional extra activities please get in touch with the health and wellbeing team at healthandwellbeing@agescotland.org.uk or call us on 0333 323 2400 to arrange your own Wellbeing Conversation.

You can find out more about Age Scotland’s Wellbeing Conversations and other health and wellbeing resources here.