MINDFULNESS, GENERATIVITY AND SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING AMONG OLDER ADULTS

Abstract

Healthy ageing is becoming a demand rather than a privilege from personal to societal perspective. One of the inevitable components of healthy ageing is wellbeing which is dependent on the quality of the consciousness. Mindfulness nurtures consciousness leading to behaviour regulation and well-being. Generativity is an attribute which connects individual to the society and predicts well-being significantly. The primary objective of the research was to find the relationship between mindfulness, generativity and subjective well-being among the older adults. Whether pursuing hobbies and social engagements affect the mindfulness, generativity and subjective well-being of olds was also investigated. With the help of standardized questionnaires the data was collected from 205 willing male and female older adults between 60 and 70 years from selected areas of Mumbai and Pune Metropolitan Region. Independent sample t tests and regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed significant effect of pursuing hobbies and social engagement in mindfulness, generativity and subjective well-being of older adults from their counterparts. Mindfulness was found to be a significant predictor of generativity and wellbeing of older adults. Mindfulness and generativity together significantly predicted the subjective wellbeing although generativity did not individually contribute significant variance in the subjective wellbeing. The implications of the research are discussed in the context of enhancing subjective well-being in the older adults by mindfulness training and promoting activities to pursue hobbies and social engagement which would help them for healthy ageing.