I asked people over 70 what they’d do differently if they could go back — these 5 things always came up

Some advice hits like a TED Talk.

Other advice lands like a warm hand on your shoulder at 7 a.m., when you’re about to repeat the same mistake for the tenth time.

Over the last year, I started a simple habit: whenever I met someone over 70 who seemed thoughtful—not loud, not preachy, just quietly seasoned—I’d ask a version of the same question: “If you could go back, what would you do differently?”

Coffee shop regulars, a retired teacher I sat next to on a train, a park volunteer who knows the name of every tree, my friend’s grandmother who still lifts small dumbbells while she watches the news. I wasn’t looking for grand theories. I wanted the little levers—the choices that compound.

Five answers came up again and again. The wording changed. The stories didn’t.

If you’re somewhere in the middle (like me), consider these the friendly course corrections you can make while there’s still plenty of road.

1. I would practice small courage sooner

Almost everyone had a story where fear didn’t ruin their life—but it definitely edited it. They didn’t ask for the raise that would’ve set a new baseline. They tiptoed around a conversation that needed to be said before the resentment hardened. They stayed in a job or a town two years after they knew it was shrinking them.

Small courage kept coming up. Not “move to a yurt and reinvent everything” courage—just the kind that lets you send the email, ask the question, book the class, name the boundary. One woman in her 80s told me, “I thought courage would arrive fully formed, like silver hair. It didn’t. It arrives when you practice.”

That line stuck with me. Courage as a muscle, not a mood.

A practical version I heard over and over: give yourself a simple script. “I want to talk about X; I’m nervous, and I want to get this right.” Or, “Here’s what I’m asking, here’s why, and I’ll be okay whatever you decide.” The point isn’t eloquence. It’s choosing the discomfort that moves your life forward over the comfort that keeps you stuck.

When I tried this myself—asking a longtime client for a clearer scope and a rate that matched the work—I realized it wasn’t the money. It was proving to myself that I could be direct without being dramatic. The answer was yes, but even if it had been no, I would’ve won back something more important: trust in my own voice.

2. I would repair faster (and more often)

We romanticize long relationships as if they’re built on chemistry. Everyone over 70 I spoke with said some version of: “They’re built on repair.” Spouses, siblings, neighbors, adult children—none of it survives without the habit of shortening the time between the mess and the fix.

What does repair look like? Not speeches. Not legal briefs. A simple, specific apology with a plan. “I’m sorry I was defensive earlier. You were asking for help, and I took it as criticism. Next time, I’ll pause before I answer.” That kind of sentence came up all the time. No grand gestures. Just adult calibration.

One granddad told me he keeps a “48-hour rule” with his wife. If something felt off, he brings it up within two days—calmly, not in the middle of dinner prep, and never right before bed. “Resentment sets like concrete,” he said. “Talk while it’s still wet.”

I’ve mentioned this before, but the speed of repair is a quiet predictor of whether a bond feels safe. When people know a rupture won’t turn into a cold war, they bring their real selves to the room. That, in turn, makes fewer ruptures.

And if you’re thinking, “What about the other person?”—a retired therapist I spoke with gave me this: “Go first without keeping score, but not forever.” Translation: model repair, notice who meets you there, and stop auditioning for the ones who won’t.

3. I would design my days around energy, not ego

No one said, “I wish I had squeezed in more status.” They said things like, “I wish I had gone to bed when my body asked,” “I wish I had walked after dinner,” and “I wish I had scheduled work around my best hours instead of pretending I was a machine.”

Designing around energy sounds soft until you try it. It’s brutally honest.

It forces you to notice when you’re actually sharp (for me: early morning writing, late afternoon admin) and when you’re pretending (for me: post-lunch “I’ll just power through” stupidity). People over 70 talked about respecting their circadian rhythm long before the phrase was trendy.

They took standing naps (ten minutes in a chair), prioritized daily walks, and protected one hour a day where no one was allowed to need them.

On a reporting trip years ago, I met a retired nurse in Oaxaca who takes a 20-minute walk at the exact same time every evening. “It’s when my thoughts get kind,” she said. She’s 78. She swears that single ritual does more for her mood and memory than any supplement.

I started my own version—right after dinner, no phone, just a loop—and I can confirm: the world comes back into proportion.

Call it what you want—hygiene, routine, maintenance. People who feel good at 70 kept small promises to their energy at 40 and 50. It wasn’t heroic. It was boring. And the older they got, the more they realized boring is a superpower.

4. I would invest sooner in the relationships that outlast the plot twists

Friends who show up when a parent dies. Neighbors you can text when you’re out of town and the package is sitting in the rain. The cousin you call when you’re proud of yourself and don’t want to shrink it. The way 70+ year-olds talked about relationships wasn’t sentimental. It was architectural. They described a small circle that made their life load-bearing.

They also talked about pruning. A retired teacher told me she stopped spending energy where every interaction felt like performance review. “If I left the call smaller, I didn’t book the next one,” she said. “That rule gave me my Saturdays back.”

Here’s what hit me hardest: almost no one said they wished they’d “networked” more. They wished they’d noticed who made them more themselves and doubled down—regular breakfasts, yearly trips, honest deadlines like “let’s talk the first Sunday of every month.” “Make it a calendar thing, not a vibes thing,” one grandpa said, and then laughed because he’d just used the word vibes with a straight face.

On the flip side, a lot of people regretted letting pride delay repair with a sibling or old friend. “Someone has to go first,” I heard again and again. Not to accept bad behavior or reopen a door that should stay closed. Just to find out whether the distance is a season or a verdict. Worst case, you get clarity. Best case, you get twenty more years with someone you thought you’d lost.

5. I would build a life I don’t need a vacation from

No one over 70 dunked on travel (many of them travel more than I do). But they drew a clean line between escape and exploration. “When I was young, I used vacations like a pressure valve,” one man told me. “I’d grind for fifty weeks and try to feel alive for two. I wish I’d made the fifty better.”

That looked like small design choices. Five-minute morning light. A daily craft (cooking, woodwork, sketching) that made their hands smarter. A commute they could walk. A job they reshaped—sometimes laterally, sometimes for less money—so they could be present for the stuff that actually feeds a soul: Tuesday dinners, recitals, unhurried phone calls, walks that end at the long way home.

One grandmother said it this way: “Make your ordinary days accident-proof.” She didn’t mean bubble wrap your life. She meant build routines that catch you when everything else goes sideways.

When her husband got sick, she kept two anchors: a nightly tea with music and a weekly park bench with a friend. “I could still breathe,” she said. “I’d already practiced.”

I’m vegan, so my everyday joy often starts in the kitchen: a pot of beans humming on Sunday, a quick tahini dressing I can pour on anything, herbs on the windowsill.

It sounds small until you realize small is the whole point. The people I spoke to didn’t fantasize about yachts. They fantasized about one more late August evening where the light looks like honey on the table and the conversation refuses to end.

What surprised me most (and how I’m using it)

I expected big regrets: “I should’ve bought the house,” “I should’ve taken that job in Tokyo,” “I should’ve saved more.” Those came up, yes, but as supporting characters. The leads were always the humble choices that determine whether you have the bandwidth to enjoy the bigger ones: small courage, quick repairs, energy-first routines, relationships on purpose, and ordinary days designed to be kind.

So here’s the tiny blueprint I’ve been testing—no performative reinvention required:

• Do one scary-but-useful thing before 10 a.m. Send the hard email. Book the appointment. Ask the question. Tiny courage, banked daily.

• Repair within 48 hours. Even if it’s awkward. Especially if it’s awkward. “I’m sorry for X; I’ll do Y next time.”

• Protect one energy anchor. Same bedtime. A 20-minute walk. Real lunch away from the screen. Choose one and treat it like oxygen.

• Calendar two touchpoints a week. Coffee with a friend. A standing call. Make it boringly reliable.

• Give your ordinary day a treat. A cooked breakfast, a chapter at lunch, music during dishes. Don’t save the good mug for guests who might never come.

Two quick scenes to make this real:

The call I almost didn’t make.
There’s a friend I’d quietly drifted from. We’d both been busy, then careful, then weirdly proud. A 74-year-old at my neighborhood café (a retired judge who reads poems aloud, unprompted) told me, “Call him and talk like you want a future.” I did. We had an honest, slightly clumsy catch-up that ended with “same time next week?” That was eight Thursdays ago. We’re still at it. It didn’t take a miracle. It took thirty seconds of small courage.

The dinner I stopped postponing.
I kept saying I’d host more, then waiting for my place to look like a magazine. A 79-year-old church volunteer said, “People don’t need magazine. They need soup.” Now I run a low-stakes first-Sunday pot of something—chili, coconut curry, pasta—and a salad. Phones go in a bowl by the door. Folks leave with leftovers. It’s the most alive two hours of my month and the easiest habit I’ve kept.

If you want one line from each lesson

• Small courage sooner. Discomfort now beats regret later.

• Repair faster. Love lasts where repair is normal.

• Energy over ego. Design for the you who has to live your day.

• Relationships on purpose. Calendar your people; prune with kindness.

• A life you don’t need to escape. Make the ordinary tender on purpose.

None of this is flashy. That’s the point.

The people ahead of us aren’t begging us to reinvent ourselves every quarter. They’re asking us to make small, human choices that snowball into a life you actually feel while you’re living it.

If you’re looking for a place to start before this tab closes, try this: text one person “Can we talk for ten minutes this week?” put one walk on your calendar for tomorrow morning, and choose one thing you’ve been avoiding and spend exactly five minutes on it. Not heroic. Just real.

The over-70s in my notebook didn’t talk about legacy. They talked about Tuesday. That’s the day you can still reach. That’s the day that, multiplied by a couple thousand, becomes a life you don’t want to edit in hindsight.