Want to add 7 ½ years to your life—and not just more years, but fulfilling ones? There’s actually science that tells you how. At a recent TIGER 21 conference, Chip Conley (CEO of Modern Elder Academy) was a wealth of information.
Exercise and stopping smoking both help, but research from Dr. Becca Levy at Yale reveals a tool that’s more than twice as powerful as those two combined—a positive mindset. The result is 7 ½ more years of life. Easier said than done, but Conley offers tips.
- Become a beginner at something. If you’re no longer a beginner, you’re no longer learning. Ask yourself: “Ten years from now, what will you regret if you don’t learn it or do it now?” Jane Fonda (age 87) suggests art lessons. A National Endowment for the Arts study showed art classes improve mental engagement and physical activity, resulting in fewer doctor visits and making you less likely to fall. As a painter myself, I draw inspiration from other elder artists like George W. Bush, Bob Schieffer, and the late Winston Churchill.
- Stay curious. Conley defines a “Modern Elder” as one who is as curious as he is wise. You can stimulate that curiosity at a Modern Elder Academy mid-life workshop “to fuel your gas tank for the later years.”
- Cultivate “social wellness.” Join a community to exercise, paint, or volunteer. Also reconnect with friends from the past. Conley challenged us to take out your phone and text someone from long ago. I texted Jim Lipstate, my best friend from our freshman UT year. He responded instantly, and we’re back in touch after decades of living separate lives. I suggest you try it now.
- Realize that our most valuable asset is time—edit out negativity in your life. In life’s later stages, it’s time to stop adding to our resume and start subtracting things that suck more juice than add.
- Laugh at yourself. When laughing, it keeps us from being too self-critical.
Following these tips will improve our ability to handle life’s transitions, so we can go from “caterpillar” (the prior chapter’s ending stage) through “chrysalis” (the “messy middle”) and emerge a “butterfly” (the new beginning). It also helps us to find meaning, equipping us to solve a mystery posed by Mark Twain: The two most important days are the day you were born and the day you figure out why you were born. Solving that will help us live not only 7 ½ years longer, but also live those 7 ½ years with more purpose.
Marvin and Laurie Blum at a TIGER 21 conference, learning the tools to achieve longevity and putting them into practice.