The Living Well Blueprint Episode 1

Imagine living a longer life, up to 90, 95, or even 100 years. This is a possible reality, not just for billionaires or through biohacking. Take a moment to think about what you would do with the extra years. The world will change in that time, so it's important to prepare not just financially, but in all aspects of life. Our lives are getting longer and we need to adapt. Children born today have a 50% chance of living past 105. This will have an impact on how we live and how businesses and society operate. The podcast "The Living Well Blueprint" explores how to live well in a longer life. It focuses on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The host, Randy Erler, wants to inspire people to reimagine aging and find practical strategies for a fulfilling life. There is a lack of guidance for this new stage of life, so the podcast aims to help build a blueprint for living longer. Imagine your life, whatever age you are at the moment, imagine you're going to live until 90, 95, or even 100 years. This isn't some fantastical science fiction oriented billionaire biohack illusion or delusion of a long life. It's a possible reality. So I'd like you to just take a moment and imagine living to 95. If you are 50 years old, that would give you another 45 years of life. So sit with that for a moment. What will you do with 45 years? What could you do? What will the world look like in 45 years? And most importantly, how would you prepare for another 45 years, not just financially? Do you see this as an opportunity? Or does this terrify you? Now take a moment and look back 45 years. Where were you? Me? I was nine years old in the fourth grade. And if I take a moment and think about all that has happened to me over that span of time, everything I've experienced, everything I've accomplished, everything I've not accomplished, opportunities embraced and missed. A lot has happened to me, and I'm sure to you. And it excites me to look forward and think I can do all of that again. Can you look forward and see opportunity? Do you see anything? Do you see anything? There's some readings from a book called The 100-Year Life, Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Linda Gratton and Andrew Scott. They state, we are in the midst of an extraordinary transition that few of us are prepared for. If we get it right, it'll be a real gift. To ignore and fail to prepare will be a curse. Just as globalization and technology changed how people lived and worked, so over the coming years, increasing longevity will do the same. Whoever you are, wherever you live, and however old you are, you need to start thinking now about the decision you will take to make the most of this longer life. The same holds for the companies you work for and the society in which you live. Our lives will be much longer than has historically been the case. Longer than the role models on which we currently base life decisions and longer than is assumed in our current practices and institutional arrangements. Much will change, and this process of transformation is already underway. You need to be prepared for this and adapt accordingly. A child born in the West today has a more than 50% chance of living to be over 105. While by contrast, a child born over a century ago had a less than 1% chance of living to that age. That means that if you're now 20, you have a 50% chance of living to more than 100. That means that if you're now 20, you have a 50% chance of living to more than 100. If you're 40, you have an even chance of reaching 95. And if you're 60, then a 50% chance of making 90 or more. What is clear is that millions of people can look forward to a long life. And this will create pressure on how they live and how businesses and society operate. As I mentioned, those were some snippets from the book A Hundred-Year Life Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Linda Gratton and Andrew Scott. The opening episodes of this podcast, The Living Well Blueprint, will be a dissection of the many ideas presented in this book and their follow-up titled The New Long Life, A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World. We'll get into a lot more detail about both books later. But I guess I should start by telling you who I am. My name is Randy Erler, and as I mentioned, this is The Living Well Blueprint podcast. It's really a chronicle and an exploration of my quest to answer that one question. How do we live while living longer? I'm a fitness enthusiast and NASM certified personal trainer. And this podcast is designed to help you reimagine your approach to aging, inspire a vision for the next 40 years, and provide practical strategies to enhance your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. As I mentioned, I'm not an aging expert. I'm a guy, a middle-aged man, who has a lot of questions, anxieties, a sense of anticipation, dread, and hope for the future. And I see a gap in the conversation around aging. Almost all the content that I find focuses entirely on physical longevity, anti-aging, or youth extension. I'm not opposed to this. I find it fascinating. I engage in a lot of those activities. I, of course, am very interested in securing my health over the long haul. But the thing I've always thought about is, then what do we do? You have these people that talk about living to be 125 or 150. Gosh, what are we supposed to do? You know, for most of us, we're just trudging through each day. We're just going through each day. Gosh, what are we supposed to do? You know, for most of us, we're just trudging through each day. You know, retirement right now is set up as the utopia we hope to find. It's the reward at the end of our drudgery, hopefully. For most, the idea of a longer life seems like a punishment. Additionally, you know, even if you want to live to 125, 150, what have you, most of us can't afford the biohacks and the cryotherapy and all of the other widgets and gizmos that so many others promote and discuss. It seems this impossible quest of the new edgy diet, edgy supplement, edgy treatment or therapy. But again, once you've extended life, what? Especially if your entire life's focus has been about extension. So if you spend all of your time focused on macros and micros and timing of your nutrients and your workouts and your sleep and you have a whoop and you're calculating everything, what is your life? As we reach middle age, we can't always take the time to reflect on our successes and failures. Most of us only focus on our failures. We look back and fill ourselves with regrets and feel that it's over. We blew it. We messed it up. In this age of longevity, I now see that additional 40 or 45 years as a tremendous opportunity to look at the gaps in your life, to look at the areas you've missed. And refocus and rededicate yourself to those areas. It's an opportunity. So this is an account of my journey. And as I ask questions, dig deeper, learn and grow, I'll share the process and the progress and hopefully we can build on this journey together. And as I ask questions, dig deeper, learn and grow, I'll share the process and the progress and hopefully we can build community around these questions and help each other figure things out. My goal is to inspire everyone to open themselves to the reality and miracle of living longer, to engage in personal transformation. And again, I focus not on purely physical longevity. This is about how we're going to live. It's all those other components, relationships, family, work, goals, ambitions that make up life. So why is it called the Living Well Blueprint? Well, what I find fascinating about this time is very few people have traveled the terrain we are going to travel. If you look around, there are increasingly more older people. But I don't see a lot of examples of how I envision my aging. Not that I won't get old, but I think we're reaching a point in time, intervention, medical interventions, knowledge of aging. There's a lot of technologies that will be able to help us extend our lives physically so we live longer and die shorter. So we need to reassess how we'll live. But unfortunately, there's no map for that. We are entering terrain that has not existed. There's no map, no guide, no directions. So I want to help in building the blueprint that others can use to help them through their own journey. There's a new category of aging. This isn't the first time it's happened, and I'll mention this again later. We have stages of life. There was a time there was no such thing as teenagers. And then we created this new age group called teenagers. There was a time there weren't retirees, and then we created this group of people called retirees. And we put all kinds of labels and vocabulary around that, and we all have a vision of what that looks like. But unfortunately, as we are extending life, that vision of retirement doesn't work necessarily for 30 or 40 years. I think most of us are aware of that. We look around, and we see a lot of older people really struggling. And I think a lot of that is they have way more time than perhaps they have money or relationships or social capital or any of those other things that make up life. They often end up isolated, alone, limited, and that's a sad thing to witness. And part of this journey is re-engineering and re-envisioning what it looks like as we're older. We're going to have to create a new language, new styles, new fashion sense, new everything around these older people. Right now, a lot of times, as we age, we're just trying to look younger, and we dress younger. We don't necessarily have styles that fit 80-year-olds yet. All part of the process. Speaking of retirement, back to Groton and Scott. Over the 20th century, a three-stage view of life emerged. This is how they see life being structured. The first stage was education. Your responsibility until age 18 or 22 was to get an education. The second stage was a career. From the point you finished your education until you're early to mid-60s, it was your career. And then the third stage was retirement. According to them, this is over. This three-stage life that everyone sort of follows or believes they should follow is over. So retirement, typically in the past, only lasted about 10 years. So it worked. In shorter lives with relatively stable labor markets, the knowledge and skills a person mastered in their 20s could possibly last their entire career without any major investment. They could get that degree, go to work somewhere. We know this scenario. We know people who have done this, work somewhere 40, 45 years, retire with their sweet pension and move on. We also know that opportunity is much more limited today. Especially in an idea of longevity. So one of the things we'll get into more detail later is the idea that we will all have to work longer. If we're living longer. Because the viability of a retirement of 40 years financially for most is very limited. So if you work into your 70s or 80s in a rapidly changing job market, maintaining productivity is no longer about brushing up on knowledge. It's about setting time aside to make fundamental investments in relearning. What they're saying is that now, as part of our careers, and many of us have already experienced this, we have 3, 4, 5 different careers. Sometimes related to where we began. Sometimes we've diverted tremendously. We've gotten additional degrees or simply had an opportunity and we made a pivot. We're aware of this. And it's important, especially as we're increasing lifespan, is to be flexible, be adaptable, and be prepared for this. Careers in the past started younger. They required less training and often no retraining. So we're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. We're aware of this. 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They make the effort to be successful in that regard in whatever area they work in. As we get longer in our lives, we have to be increasingly more cognizant of improving our skills, being aware of changes in our industry, being aware of trends, being ready to pivot, adjust, adapt, move on, let go of what was and move on to what is. Generally, when people get into their 50s and sometimes early 60s, they simply fade away. They're tired of working. They're tired of where they work. They're tired of the people they work with. And retirement just seems like a big out. I can just escape this place I hate and it's all going to be great. Again, when you're looking at 40 to 50 years in retirement, think about the people you know who are retired, the good and the bad, and think about doing that for 50 years. We don't typically see positive examples of people who are doing that. Not to mention, what a waste of your time, talent, and treasure. This is an opportunity for you to make an impact on the world that will stretch beyond your lifetime. So, that first category is productive assets. We need to start thinking of that differently and thinking of that in a longer timeframe. Second is vitality assets. That's your health. You know, a lot of us, yes, we think about health, but we need to start thinking about our health over the span of 50 and 60 years. Sometimes we're making decisions about our health that are about aesthetics, about how we look. We just care, are we losing weight? Are we not losing weight? I want to lose 10 pounds in a week. I want to do all these things. Instead of looking at that long, extended perspective and thinking in terms of what does healthy mean over the course of a lifetime. What do I want to be able to do in 30, 40, 50 years? For me, I think about my ability to walk, move, jump, run, bike. I think about flexibility, mobility, agility. I no longer think about how much I can bench press. I lift weights, but I lift weights differently. I'm trying to maintain structural integrity and strength, not become a big bruiser. So, these are questions we'll address. What does healthy look like? And again, these are decisions you have to make for yourself. It's your life to live, but it's a conversation. The third area is transformational assets. That is essentially your mindset. What is your current mindset? And I alluded to this at the beginning, of this longer life, an initial evaluation of your reaction. Is it dread or is it excitement? Because that says a lot. Transformational assets is having a growth mindset. Seeing the future in a positive way. Seeing opportunity for growth and improvement and for the creation of a better world and better communities. It's about being adaptive and flexible. Anti-fragile is a term I love. Being able to go with what is happening, adapt, and keep moving forward and not get stuck in paranoia or cynicism, or more horribly, just stuck in the past. You can't live in the future and the past. So, according to Grotman Scott, life is going to become multistaged. So, start to imagine having two or three different careers. Perhaps in the first, that's when you're just trying to make money. That's when you grind maybe 10 or 15 years and you're just putting money in the bank. You work the long hours, the long weeks, you travel. It's very, very challenging to your health and to your relationships, but your goal perhaps, this is sort of the fire idea, financial independence, retire early. Okay, I don't like the retire early part, but I do like the financial independence and then perhaps transition to something else. And then perhaps you say, okay, I've attained this certain place, this goal I had. Now I want to shift my attention toward family or perhaps another career that perhaps has a greater social benefit, but is not as rewarding. The gift of living longer is that you don't have to be forced into either or choices. You can do something intentionally for a period of time and transition to something else. You can make choices now, but you don't have to do everything simultaneously. That's been one of the struggles. Trying to parent while building a career while having a home is incredibly difficult. So we can start envisioning that a little bit differently, stretching out the timeframe over which we have to do these things and refocusing where we put our attention and for how long. So this has happened before. If you look at pictures from way back, your grandparents, great-grandparents, it always seemed interesting because everybody looks the same age. And they sort of were. Teenagers didn't exist until we started having labor laws and then they started developing products to cater to them and school was extended and suddenly you had this group of people between the ages of 12 and 18 that sort of had special characteristics. They were unique. Prior to that, you were a kid who was ignored and then you went to work and you were treated like an adult. And we all know these stories a few generations back of our grandma who got married at 13 or 14 or 15 and had multiple kids before she was 21 and that was their lives. Well, in an era when life expectancy was in your 40s or 50s, you had to start earlier. Now we have a couple new age groups emerging. We have a new stage that I've been witnessing and aware of but didn't have a name for. And that's those between 18 and 30. A decade ago, people were lamenting how long it was taking kids to leave the home. You know, they didn't leave like they used to. You know, when I was 22, I moved out and got my own place and lived on my own. And that was true for me. And that was true for my grandparents. But today, I think a lot of kids inherently understand they need more education to establish themselves. A bachelor's degree no longer really means what it used to. Most careers are requiring advanced degrees and beyond. Kids are living at home. Kids are living at home longer. Parents are caring and financially responsible for them longer. And it makes sense to the degree that their lives will be longer. They have a little bit more time to evaluate their prospects and opportunities, to make decisions about what they want to do, to kind of figure out the direction they want to go and then commit the time to achieving it. It's okay. Kids aren't lazier these days. They probably work harder than I ever did. But it's a different world they're going into, and it takes a little bit more preparation to thrive. So there's this new stage, 18 to 30-year-olds, that, you know, maybe they're a little bit aren't on their own yet. Maybe parents are still paying their phone bill or supporting their car insurance or car payments, those types of things, as they incrementally separate. Driving's perfectly fine. Now that I see that as part of a long life, a hundred-year life, I would rather my children take the time to figure out who they are, let their brain form. You know, why are we making decisions at 18 when we're still children and we have no idea what we're doing? As long as they are making that effort, they're working, they're sustaining themselves, they are learning, growing, trying to figure it out, and I'm witnessing that process, I'm participating in that. They're sharing that with me. I'm all for it. All for it. Because I want them to launch themselves successfully. I want them to thrive. I don't want to see them stuck in jobs they hate, going down a path they're not happy with, and not have the skills or the emotional maturity to adapt. So that's one new group that we're seeing in this multistage life. So you're going to see people go, their education's extended, or that period of time in their 20s, you're going to see people take gap years, you're going to see people just kind of, I'm going to work a couple years, I'm going to go back to school, and I'm kind of doing this, and maybe I'll live overseas, and maybe I'll move to Hawaii. Maybe they're just kind of doing things and exploring and learning, and it's okay. They may not be on a definite path, but they're on their path. And then you have this other new group that's emerging, and that is people over 75. And what you can see, there's this concept called juvenescence, where people now look younger for longer. Look at an old movie. I watched the movie Network not that long ago. It's an old movie from the 70s. The main character, the gentleman that was in it, I don't remember his name, but he was of that classic era. He had that kind of slicked back parted hair, wore the suit, smoked. And the whole time I was watching the movie, I was wondering how old he was. So, of course, I Googled it, and he was 57 in that movie. And I was astounded because he just looked so much older, and I can't figure out if it was because of the suit, the hair, just the style. If I have that style in my mind fixed to older age, but you look at somebody comparatively in films today who are in their 50s or 60s, they don't seem like that. They don't seem old. Juvenescence. You'll see adults. You go to a soccer game with your kids, and all the dads are wearing hats backwards, and they're wearing basketball shorts and sports paraphernalia and jerseys, and they dress like teenagers. They look younger. Conventionally, living for longer was seen as being older for longer. But according to Groton and Scott, there's evidence that this convention will be reversed and people will be younger for longer. So we will live long and die short. Through medical interventions, lifestyle changing. The gradual elimination of smoking alone has saved innumerable lives. But we are simply going to be younger for longer, viable for longer. So whereas retirement used to be, I'm just barely making it to the finish line, and we'll discuss this a little more later, most people, once they retire, didn't last 10 years. They were worn out. That is no longer the case. So in this new age group, this past 75, they might have 25 years. Of not just sitting in a chair, taking medication, and having drool wiped off their chin, but a viability. So sort of to revisit that, we can see that people aged 18 to 30 are behaving differently from past generations. They're following more flexible and less committed lives by not closing down options. So it still happens. But it wasn't that long ago people got married at 22. And they were all based on these clocks and the three stage life. They finished school. The next thing to do is to get married. And the next thing to do is to get married. The next thing to do is to finish school. The next thing to do is to get married. And the next thing to do is to buy a house. And the next thing to do is to have kids. And on and on and on. And we just followed sort of these patterns that everybody followed. Now there's options and people are taking them. And that's a wonderful thing. People progress through more transitions. And in doing so, they'll retain greater flexibility and adaptability and avoid being pinned down by habits. Those are transformational assets to be adaptive and flexible, not have habits that are so ingrained that they keep you stuck. In a place you don't want to be. In a place that makes you miserable. And finally, because age is no longer a stage, it's no longer education, career, retirement. It will become more fluid. And because of that, there's going to be more cross-stage friendships as people from different age groups persevere. Pursue similar stages. And you see that to some degree. Most of us experienced that when we went into college. There was, you know, what they called nontraditional students. There might be some a mom coming back to school or somebody looking for a career change, those types of things. We're just going to see that more and more. Multiple generations at the same place at the same time. I'm going through that right now. I made a career transition to become a personal trainer. In my experience so far, a lot of the other personal trainers are 25 years old. Some are in their 30s. There's not a lot. We're 54. But I love that. That's a dynamic I can feed off of. Those are conversations I get to have. We have completely different perspectives oftentimes and how we train. And some of that's because they're looking through the eyes of being 25 and a body of a 25 year old. And I'm looking through the eyes of a 25 year old. Why I exercise and what my goals are in exercising and what my focus on is as a trainer differ. Not right. Not wrong. Different. Our paradigms are different. They're still at a place physically that allows them to do things and get away with things I no longer can. And I'm looking through the body of a 54 soon to be 55 year old. But I love the interchange. I love the perspective they provide for me. And it often forces me to learn and grow. I'm humbled oftentimes. Right. Or I get information that challenges my own, that forces me to reevaluate it and do one of two things. Either adapt my own. Or generate a very common goal. Or I get information that challenges my own, that forces me to do one of two things. Either adapt my own. Or generate a very clear logical explanation for why I choose to remain with the same position. What I call this is friction. Friction in life is a wonderful thing. Most of us relentlessly pursue comfort. We are trying to avoid anything that makes us feel uncomfortable. I've reached a point in my life where I am grasping for that sense of discomfort. Friction, by that I just mean things that are challenging. Things that put me out of the zone where I feel the safest. What I'm doing right now is one of those things. Starting a podcast, there are so many negative thoughts, so much negative energy around it. So many things I could say to myself that would stop me from doing it. But I'm going to do it anyway. And this one might be good, this one might not be good. Everyone will be better. And a year from now, I'm going to kill it. Because I've decided that that is true for me. That that is true for me. I've decided. And I'm willing to accept the occasional feeling of humiliation, the setbacks. To be humbled by positive or negative feedback. And to use it to grow. And one of the things that happens when we don't mix with other people, this could be not just an age, this could be any demographic, is we don't get challenged. We cloister ourselves in groups of like-minded people. And we become ignorant of reality, of how others live. So this is going to be a wonderful thing. We're going to break free of those retirement homes. We're not going to live there. We're going to live in the world with everybody else. So where are we now in regards to this long-term life? I would say most of us, and as a society in general, we are in a state of ambiguity. Some people live longer, some people don't live longer. Most people that live longer, I think, are surprised by having lived longer. It's not uncommon to have people feel like, you know, I'm just done. I don't even know why I'm still here. I'm just kind of hanging on. I'm just existing. You know, there wasn't a plan to live that long because that wasn't the example that was set for them. For most people, the example was, you know, retire and kind of live a few years. Go to Florida. Take some trips. Have a little fun. Play some golf, whatever it is. Then you sort of got sick and died. You know, or in my childhood, you know, people just had heart attacks and they were gone in an instant. You know, now people live for 20 years with heart conditions. Severe, like COPD and heart ailments, and they can keep them going for another 20 years. So it's going to demand of us that we be thinking of that. Think of people you've known, people who have lived long and people who have not. Think about those who died young and what they missed. My dad died at 55 years old of cancer. He spent four years being sick. He spent four years being sick and in treatment. My dad was not. He was a good man. To me, he wasn't necessarily a good father. I won't go into all of those details. I'm not hurt by it. I don't cry over it. It isn't because of abuse or pain. It was simply neglect, I would call it. When he had grandchildren and then got sick, it was an epiphany for him of what really, really mattered. He spent his life focused on what ultimately didn't matter. And he was filled with regret. And he spent those last couple of years truly making an effort to connect not only with his sons, but with his grandchildren. And he died. And three more grandchildren were born after that. And two of them who were born prior to it really have no memory of him. So I think of the 40 years he could have had and what was missed. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know me. He knows only of me what he knew 30 plus years ago. Not the same person. He doesn't know those children. There's so much he missed. Whereas my mom at 80 is still going very strong, is creating a vision for herself, and is making every effort she can to make the most of it. To plan and prepare and do the work and enjoy her life. So think about your life. Who do you remember who is gone and what they missed? And who's still around and what makes them different? Now, they are not necessarily our best examples. We don't necessarily have examples yet. That's what makes us so challenged. That's why this is an era of ambiguity. And that's what makes us living through this as people on the edge of a frontier. This is new. This is the need for that blueprint is because we have an occasional person who inspires us. The 85-year-old that ran a marathon or the 9-year-old woman that decided to start deadlifting. And we have those little anomalies and those are inspiring. But those are often isolated events in their lives. It's not an expansive life. I often look at business and you have a lot of business people. Whether or not I agree with their business itself or their politics or what have you. But it's amazing when you see football coaches in their 70s or CEOs in their 70s or artists still at work. Or think of the Rolling Stones in their 80s and still producing new music. I used to think that was ridiculous. And now I think why wouldn't they? They are musicians. They are artists. Why would you stop? That is a limitation of a mindset. The belief that at a certain age you are supposed to stop. Why? That is something we have to extract from ourselves. If you're living 100 years, why take 40 years out of that or 30 years out of that? Cut it off and just go, I'm just going to throw those away. I'm going to watch Wheel of Fortune. It's fine if you don't like what you're doing. And when you call retire, meaning I'm not going to be an accountant anymore because I hate it. Then what? So this is an exercise you can do in the moment. Start building a picture for yourself. What is the ideal picture? And wherever you think it goes to now, extend it by 10 or 20 years. Now what? Because I think most people don't think past retirement and past maybe that first few years. I'm going to take a trip and I'm going to go here and I'm going to visit this. And I'm going to do nothing for six months and screw it. I'm not going to wake up. I'm going to throw my alarm clock away. And all these sort of exciting things that feel more like kids on summer break. You're taking the rules away. Then what? Because as a society across the board in multiple countries, we are aging. Older people will not be an anomaly. They are going to be a norm. They are going to be everywhere. And I personally want to see more people thriving in those older years. Right now, it's often sad to me. Retirement right now, you know, I have friends that retired at 58 years old. And it seems exciting and good for them. They don't have to go to that stupid job they don't like anymore. But what? You know, the thing that always frustrated me with that was. You have developed skills, talents, knowledge, experience, relationships over the last 30, 35 years. And now what? You put that on the shelf. And you golf. And maybe you volunteer somewhere once a week. But you just sort of are existing. And you don't have to go to that stupid job you don't like anymore. You put that on the shelf. And maybe you volunteer somewhere once a week. But you just sort of are existing. I think we owe more than that. We owe more than that. You know, the three stage life for most of our lifetimes and the examples we have was followed by everybody in lockstep. That's why we felt like losers if we didn't have a job by 24. If we didn't get married by 26. If we didn't have a job by 30. If we didn't have a house. If we weren't on the right track for retirement. If we didn't retire. That's why we all felt like losers, those of us who weren't on the quote unquote normal path. Because it was followed in lockstep. That is out the door. It is over. That's a tremendous blessing to any of us who never seemed to be in sync with where they were supposed to be. Don't you know what you want to do with the rest of your life? Don't you know what you want to study? What is your future look like? Future's long. You got plenty of time. But you need to get to work. And for any of us who felt out of sync, it's an opportunity. And even those who were in sync. I don't know if that was your passion or your parents. Or you just did what you were supposed to do. But it's an opportunity for you too. Whatever's in your heart. Whatever speaks to you. It's an opportunity to turn to that. And pursue it. You have the time. There are going to be more choices in the future. And you are going to experience many changes. So get ready. So as I mentioned, we need a new vision for aging. New language. Norms. And most importantly, expectations. So much of what I see in the longevity community is about I'm optimizing my health. I'm going to be ripped and shredded and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to live to 100. And to myself, I always think, why? If you are simply selfishly pursuing your own narcissistic physical perfection. Why do we need that for another 30 years or 40 years? What are you living for? To be healthy to me, it's a foundational component that enables the rest of your life. I want to stay healthy so I can continue fill in the blank. Going back to the Rolling Stones, if you look at how Mick Jagger lives, he doesn't live like a rock star. He exercises and does yoga and follows nutritional regimen and does all of these extensive things to maintain his physical health so he can go perform, so he can go on stage and act like a rock star on stage. So he's maintaining his health not out of the vanity about health, but to sustain himself as a musician. So part of the new vision for aging is to reorient our mindset toward health. Away from the aesthetic, the physical perfection, it being about muscles and six packs and all of those things. The 20-year-old mindset, I hope we're more mature than that at 60, 70 and 80. We don't have to live in a Viagra world, we can go beyond that. Instead, truly look at it from the perspective of what am I trying to do and how does my health support that endeavor? Then, once you've sustained your health, part of the re-envisioning living longer is what are you going to do? Now you have time and health and maybe you have some money. What are you going to do? So I alluded to this earlier, people who retire and then they put themselves on a shelf and they just check out. And I've always been frustrated by that because I feel like that's incredibly selfish. Because in my mind, in those early years in your career, you're just working, you're trying to pay your bills, you're trying to live your life, you're trying to raise kids, you're trying to pay the mortgage, I get that, that is all survival. But if you attain a position, if you're privileged enough to attain a position in which you have time, you have your health and you have money. I think a lot of the presentation of retirement in our culture encourages us to turn inward, to become selfish. To isolate ourselves in a gated community, to buy a little golf cart and to spend our days reliving our youth. Playing pickleball, golf, what have you, but that is all about me, me, me, me, me, me. This is my time. I don't think that does the individual any good. I think that turns the individual into a selfish, disconnected person who's not really in tune with the community or the needs of others, which I think is vital to a good life. So, in my opinion, we must share our good fortune, right? The extended life is an opportunity to turn to our communities, to those outside our circle. We can use our wisdom, our knowledge and privilege to improve the lives of others, not simply build up more for ourselves. I mean, how much do you need? You can still enjoy your life. You can travel. You can play golf. Those things are not inherently bad. They're wonderful if they give you pleasure and joy and camaraderie with those people you do it with, then they're wonderful. But to have that be the sole pursuit, I think, is a waste of an opportunity of that longer life. So, I guess my ultimate objective is to change how we perceive aging. I'm not interested in life extension as an end. To me, it is the beginning. So, that's our focus here in this podcast, trying to figure out what that looks like. What can we do with this time? What can you do with this time? What do you always wish you'd done? What did you put on the shelf as a young person that was in your heart, wasn't practical, or it wasn't the right time, or is discouraged by your past? Was it something your parents, your friends, your peers, or circumstances just made you set it down? Were you a musician? Were you an actor? Were you a woodworker? Were you a writer? Were you a filmmaker? Whatever it is, how do you find that again? And how do you use it and share it with others? I guess that's one of my biggest frustrations with retirement, as it's presented now or practiced now, is it often results in people insulating and retreating. You know, we don't always acknowledge the extent to which work keeps us connected with others. It puts us in a position where we interact with people perhaps we wouldn't normally choose to interact with. It puts us in situations that create friction because we have to problem-solve and we have people who perhaps challenge us in some way. We have work that challenges us in some ways that keeps us growing and adapting, and then we stop. And we create little worlds that are completely our own, removing all obstacles. We remove the people who challenge us. We remove circumstances that challenge us. We relentlessly pursue comfort, and then we become bored and sterile and alone. Then sickly. We've got to change that. We all need to be part of the solutions, not the problems, in this world. And we must assume responsibility. So many people have the noble intent upon retirement or their older years to volunteer. One day a week I will go to the food pantry. And that is wonderful. It is good. But ultimately I think we aren't engaged in problems until we assume responsibility for that problem. Meaning we take on positions of leadership or engagement or organization that make us really invest in an issue. And I'm not saying what that should be. It could be anything. But to be invested in something is to carry a different level of weight, of friction, responsibility, of engagement, that just showing up once a week and letting other people worry about it will never touch. Ultimately this is an unprecedented opportunity. No one ever, no society, no group of people have ever lived this long. So there is no model, no blueprint, no roadmap. It will require creativity. It's going to require you to establish clarity in what your trajectory is. Meaning where do you want to go? Create a vision for yourself and start building the path toward it. Be willing to fall. Be willing to have setbacks. Be willing to be humble. Be willing to fail and keep going. And most importantly it's going to require each of us to have absolute clarity of our values. What matters to us? What matters to us? And am I using the time I have in a way that reflects those characters, those values? See most of us say things and then when we look at our lives there isn't a connection. They aren't parallel. What we say about ourselves and what we do is often quite divergent. So those are things we need to be clear about. A note about the process for this podcast. So I am a book reader. The reason I love books is it's an opportunity for me to spend many, many hours over the course of weeks oftentimes in what I perceive as a conversation with somebody who knows more about a topic than I could ever dream. They're an expert. Often somebody who has spent four, five, ten years in research on a topic or in the case of Groton and Scott in The 100-Year Life and their second book A New Long Life, they're academic researchers. This is what they spend their life doing. So what they're talking about is based not on opinion. It's not conjecture. It's the result of deep research over the course of time. So my process is to select books. As I have a question, I kind of seek out the person. And I'm going to spend weeks with that person researching it. I'll have my reaction to it. And we'll go through it. But my three errands of focus are really going to be a deep look at what I call the new old age. So what does this look like? What is it going to look like? What exists in terms of research or speculation now? What are the trends? How are we going to do this? The second area I'm focusing on is what does it mean to be healthy? I'm not going to discuss biohacks. I'm not going to discuss intermittent fasting or whatever the buzz method of the moment is. But instead, really exploring that idea and trying to flesh out what that means. And help each of us figure that out for ourselves. So we're not trying to meet an externally contrived image that we simply saw. And constantly ridicule ourselves for not attaining. But instead, with establishing where we want to be and working backwards, working toward healthy that supports our life. To have a healthy perspective of being healthy. So what does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? What does it mean to be healthy? And I mentioned earlier, connection across generations is essential in aging, but connection with our neighbors, connection with the businesses in our community, with the organizations in our community, caring about others. We've sort of put ourselves in a box, especially after COVID, of getting used to clicking buttons and having things sent to us or delivered to us or picked up for us. And we've removed people from the equations. We don't have interactions. We don't really understand the connections with each other. And there's something lost there, because then we simply feel like floating, autonomous beings, disconnected from others, making us more anxious and depressed, distrusting of others, yet at the same time, residing right next to them. So if we're going to live longer, we're going to need each other. Especially in this crazy world, we need each other. We need to be connected in multiple ways with many people. This is an area of focus for me. My greatest connection right now is with my wife and with my children. And one of my failures over the course of my adult life has been in making strong connections with others and maintaining them and nurturing them. And that's one of my commitments, is trying to stay connected with people, reach out to people. And that's a hard one for me. But community, building community, but not just in an isolated sense of these are my five people and everyone else can bugger off, but in the sense of understanding that we're all in it together. Everybody has hurts and fears and struggles, and we can all support each other as we go through this journey. So one of my goals in the next 40 years, that brings me to 94, 95, is to simply continue to grow. That's not a smart goal, that's a vague goal, but I have that broken down. I have a one-year plan, I have a five-year plan, I'm working on a longer plan. I am developing for myself very specific things and achievements I want to attain. And I'm simply trying to think bigger than is my natural inclination, and I encourage you to do the same. Think about that next 40 years. I want to grow because it's in opposition to what is the norm as we age. I want to continue to grow at a time when most or many become insulated. Move into those closed-off communities, live with people just like themselves. Live in houses just like everybody else's, they make money like everybody else, they share the same hobbies and the same habits. And there they remain, unchallenged, like fossils in an old people museum, driving golf carts, listening to classic rock and playing pickleball. That is the most terrifying vision I could ever erect for myself of my older years. Life is so much more than that. We owe more than that to others. As the saying goes, to those who are given much, much is expected. So this is where I will leave you today. I'll go back to the beginning. I want you to sit with this single question, what will you do with another 40 years of life? Take the time to let that burrow in and let it fester. Or I always say, just let it bake. Come up with a specific response. Play with it. Further, does that feel like a blessing or a curse? Just let that first thing pop up. If you kind of feel that sense of dread, why? You can do a mind dump, you can journal, you can talk through with your spouse, you can just think through it. Why? For most of us, we have visions of the future that are constructed for us through movies, TV, what have you. We watch sci-fi movies. We envision this dystopian future or a utopian future or it's neutral or we're flying cars or we're not flying cars or we blow each other up or we don't. But we constantly live in this moment. Start to imagine your life 30 or 40 years from now. If you can't imagine it, that's where you begin. Go as far as you can imagine and then continue to extend it. And then think of how you're going to fill in that time. If you can only think toward retirement and going to on a cruise or multiple cruises. Now go after that. Go past that. You got to stretch a little bit. What are you going to do? What could you do? And how do you prepare? And again, this is not just about money. It's beyond money. There's too many other shows about money, but we don't discuss life. We're not. Take some time to think through these questions and listen to your heart. Look back 40 years or 45 years. And just sit with how much you've done, how many things have happened to you, both good and bad. How many different incarnations of you have existed in that span? How many bad haircuts, bad outfits, bad decisions, good decisions, relationships, careers, jobs, experiences, whatever. Okay, the old mindset kind of stops. We think we're kind of done. But you're not. You can do all of that again going forward. Now you're smarter. Now you might have a little money in your pocket. Maybe you don't. You don't have to have money. You have to have the will and the desire to create a life that reflects what's in your heart. You can do this. We can do this. In the next episode, I'm going to break down in a little more detail, the 100-year life and the new long life. The components they've set aside for kind of how we need to logically approach these extended years and prepare. And as episodes go, it's going to be driven by questions. Either the questions I'm experiencing as I go through or the questions we offer up as a community. But for tonight, that's all I've got. Thanks for listening to the Living Well Blueprint podcast, a chronicle of my quest to answer one question, how to live while living longer. Join me, Randy Earler, on the quest to reimagine aging, inspire a vision for your next 40 years and provide practical strategies to enhance your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. Remember, age is just a number and we have the power to shape our lives and well-being at any stage. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue to explore the fascinating world of aging, health and longevity. Until then, keep embracing the ageless mindset and live each day with purpose and passion. Together, let's unlock the secrets of living our best lives and inspire others to do the same. If you like this episode, please subscribe and share it with friends. Until next time, this is Randy Earler wishing you peace and courage for the adventure ahead. Take care.