Why You Should Hang Out With People Older Than You

Before I get started with this post, I want to make one thing clear. I am not saying that all of your friends must be older than you or anything like that.

Instead, I am simply showing you how spending time older people created a lot of value in my life. While age doesn’t necessarily define someone’s characteristics, I have learned some valuable things when having people older than me around me.

In this article, I share why you should hang out with people older than you:

Conversations Are Very Different

Believe it or not, if you really sit down and have a conversation with people of different age groups, you’ll quickly see that the types of conversations vary dramatically. With older people, topics of marriage, building assets/wealth, buying houses, and planning the future kept coming up.

With people the same age as me or younger, we talked more about sports, gossip, social media happenings, and current life. Don’t get me wrong, I love engaging in both types of conversations, but the discussion with the older people was something very new to me.

You Learn A Lot

No matter what, people older than you have lived more life than you have. With that in mind, they tend to have a lot of wisdom and life experiences that you may not have had yet.

As I hung out with people older than me, I began learning a lot more about things to avoid or to prepare for when I did get to 25 or 30. Getting to hear firsthand experiences from things people have dealt with is extremely valuable and powerful.

They Can Open Lots Of Doors

While people younger than you can create lots of opportunities, I typically found that the older crowds were finding me more opportunities. This could be because people in my age group are still in college while those that were older were already out.

Nevertheless, you want to change up the groups of people you hang out with because you don’t know what new doors can be opened from them. If you hang out with the same crowd all the time, you limit yourself to the same number of opportunities.

They Can Provide Motivation

Often times, I hear about how my older friends are working really hard or really focused on a goal, which ends up motivating me. When I see someone that is really successful, I don’t have feelings of jealousy or anger.

Instead, I find it as a motivation and turn it into a small competition. To see someone achieving massive success that is older than me is a great boost of motivation. It allows me to set the bar high with large goals of my own.

It’s A New Experience

Above all, I love hanging out with older people because I get to experience new things. Each generation or age bracket is very different in their way of life. By hanging out with older people, I feel like I experience many more new things.

If you want to talk about new things and experience different things, try finding different age groups to hang out with. You’ll be really surprised how each of those experiences turn out.

Conclusion

Being that I entered the business world at a young age, everyone that was my friend usually ended up being a lot older than me. Nevertheless, this provided for great experiences and lots of lessons. In this article, I shared why you should hang out with people older than you.

photo credit: jesstermix77 via photopin cc