Live Long, Die Short (13 page)

Indeed, it can be difficult to keep children in your life. I encourage you to continue to make the effort, for the benefits to your quality of life and risk of disease are substantial. Look ahead and plan how you will keep children, or at least younger people, in your life. Consult Tips Nine and Eight for guidance. Keep up the fun!

Congratulations! I don’t have to tell you how children enhance our lives. You should know, however, that intergenerational contact is associated with lowered risk of many disorders and with enhanced quality of life and better aging. Remember, kids grow up, so plan on how to keep children in your life. Keep up the good work!

My Score (question 12) ______________

My Cumulative Score (questions 1–12) ______________

90–100 Congratulations!

You are a lifestyle gold medalist. Your lifestyle is indeed a symphony, for you are clearly paying attention to all the dimensions that influence your health and aging: the physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual. You’re managing your stress and remaining positive about the next phase of your life. I applaud your efforts but caution you to stay alert. Life has a way of surprising us with challenges that can easily knock us off track. So, take this assessment every six months and keep mindful of the basic lifestyle requirements to stay authentically healthy and age successfully. Keep up the great work!

75–89 You’re on track.

And you’re beating the odds right now with your current lifestyle. That’s not to say you’re not still at risk, but you’re clearly making efforts to be healthy and age in a better way. These efforts are paying off but are still falling short of what your efforts could do. So, look at the areas
where you’re at risk, read the recommendations in the sections addressing those risks, and begin making small changes toward more authentic health and more successful aging. Your efforts won’t be wasted; I guarantee it. Onward and upward.

60–74 There’s room for improvement.

OK, so you’re doing well in some areas but you’re also still at risk for some bad stuff happening to you—stuff that could threaten your independence and quality of life. So let’s take this as a wake-up call. Remember, it’s never too late to make positive changes that can lower your risks and put you on the road to authentic health and successful aging. Don’t worry about it; just find out the areas where you’re at risk and read the recommendations that apply to those areas. Take small steps and
you will improve
. I guarantee it. Just be patient, be clear on what you want to achieve, and keep pressing, even when you fall short. Be in it for the long haul, because that’s what you want your life to be—long, and not encumbered by impairments that come with chronic disease. You can do this. Remember, it’s never too late—or too early.

Below 60 This book is a great investment!

The good news is that you’re going to benefit most by reading this book. The bad news is that you’re at significant risk for very bad stuff happening that can potentially threaten your independence and your quality of life. This isn’t time to beat your breast or call yourself names; it’s time to celebrate the fact that you’ve taken the first step toward authentic health and successful aging by
knowing you’re at risk
. Knowing this, and knowing specifically what you’re at risk for, puts you light years ahead of many of your peers. Now, knowing what to do about those risks—well, that puts you in a great place to jump ahead with your life.
The biggest danger for you is trying to do too much too soon, and losing confidence that you can make a difference.
So, look at where you’re at risk, review the recommendations for those areas, and review
chapter 3
, which helps you set realistic goals. Then begin! Be patient, be realistic, be confident you can do it,
because you can do this!
There is no specific timetable, but you must begin now if you want to reap the huge rewards that are waiting for you to claim. OK? Good. Onward and upward.

Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.
—TAO TE CHING

I hope from what you wanted, you get what you need.
—JUDY COLLINS, “BORN TO THE BREED”

I
f you have a pulse, there are risks out there, circling overhead like buzzards, waiting for a moment when you’re weak, or susceptible, or less resilient. Whether it’s a cold or cancer, these threats are out there, waiting to swoop in. What keeps them at bay is your resilience, resilience developed by a lifestyle that builds up your physical, mental, social, and
spiritual strength and results in authentic health—
the state of genuine vitality consistent with our human origins and individual nature.
This is health resulting in resilience, and it is achieved by deliberate attention to not just one or two of the components that make us human but all of them. Medicine may have fractionated us into a cardiovascular system, a neurologic system, a gastrointestinal system, and more, but we are
whole integrated beings
, more than the sum of our parts. The interaction of the ten trillion cells and multiple systems and unique experiences and emotions, the smooth interaction and attention to the whole, is what keeps us alive and healthy even as we age. This smooth interaction might also be called “holistic” or “whole-person strength.” As in our analogy of an exceptional symphony orchestra, each cell, each organ, each system interacts and blends with others to create one functioning organism that is, again, more than the sum of the parts.

Threats to our health and successful aging are not only always present; they are also always looking for opportunities, any sign of vulnerability in us. Are we depressed? Is the Big Uneasy—stress—compromising our immune defenses? Are we eating poorly? Have we become sedentary, or obese? Are we not getting enough sleep? Are we isolated from others? Are we negative or pessimistic? Do we have no purpose or passion about living? All of these are holes in our defenses. Our health and successful aging are a finely tuned, complicated choreography of whole-body strength: physical, mental, social, and spiritual; all necessary, like links on a chain. When we pay attention to all these, we are being true to our human roots; we are rediscovering our ancestral legacy. We are being
authentic
to the core of our human needs and not allowing ourselves to be distracted by the latest health fad or claim for miraculous transformation of our bodies and minds.

This whole-body strength is the result our lifestyle, the choices we make every day. And what is the lifestyle that can build this strength and resilience? The ten tips that make up
part II
of this book are a guide to building and maintaining that lifestyle, developing resilience, and keeping disease, particularly the chronic disease that saps our independence and quality of life, at bay. Buddhists use the term
spiritual warrior
to describe one who combats self-ignorance, which they believe is the source of suffering in the world. Perhaps then, by helping us overcome our own ignorance about what makes us sick and what keeps us well and resilient, the Ten Tips are a guide to becoming a warrior for your own true, authentic health and successful aging.

The results and feedback of your Personal Lifestyle Inventory (which I highly recommend you take) will point you to specific areas in this section, but whether you took the inventory or not, the Ten Tips are the key to building the resilience you’ll need to weather life’s slings and arrows, or, if you prefer, life’s curveballs.

Read all of the Ten Tips in
part II
. Then concentrate on those areas your inventory feedback indicated needed attention or any areas you would like to strengthen. Remember, we can have many strong links, but if there is even one weak link, we are vulnerable. At the end of each tip, you will find suggestions for converting what you have just learned into action. These Masterpiece Living Pearls are gems of advice collected from the experience of seeing thousands of older adults change their lives. These suggestions have worked for them, and will work for you.

Reread the tips as often as you like. You will take away something new each time: something that resonates more with where you are in your personal journey. You will see overlap within them. This only reinforces the fact that we are one whole being with many interdependent components. Remember, we function like a symphony.

As you embark on a lifestyle change, remember what we talked about in
chapter 3
: small steps, even embarrassingly small steps. It’s about building on successes, however small. If you fail to achieve your goal, it was too ambitious. Forget the setback and set a new goal that you can achieve, and remember—
no goal is too small
. Creating stress and anxiety over your goals will only add another threat and torpedo your efforts. Be patient. Allow yourself time. It’s about a lifestyle change. Changing how you live your life. That’s big and, by definition, takes time. Be kind, yet unwavering in your desire to adopt your new lifestyle. If you are patient and persistent, it will happen, and you will find that living a lifestyle that makes you stronger will become your new normal—easy and rewarding and empowering.

And remember, life has a sense of humor, and perhaps a sense of injustice, so plan on life throwing you a curveball.
It will come,
usually unannounced and without fanfare. One day you’re on top of the world, all systems go, and the next minute, you’re not, and life can change forever. How it changes; how much it changes; whether we’re worse or better, weaker or stronger, still on track or sliding into decline—it all comes down to our
resilience
.

Resilience is the holy grail of successful aging. In physics, resilience is defined as a material’s ability to resume its original shape or position after being bent, stretched, or dented. To age successfully, then, is to do all we can to avoid being “bent, stretched, or dented” and to bounce back when we are. Resilience, in human terms, is the ability to quickly recover from illness, change, or misfortune. The MacArthur Study first helped us realize the importance of lifestyle to aging successfully. Subsequent research has consistently and overwhelmingly validated this view. The right lifestyle gives us resilience. Resilience is about toughness. So use the Ten Tips to hone a lifestyle that will give you the tools, support, and understanding to take life’s curveballs and hit them out of the park—or at least to not strike out when life calls you up to bat.

Either you’re growing or you’re dying, trying to get better or just trying to maintain. If you only try to maintain, then you take away
any reason to do anything better.
—LOU HOLTZ

If you think you can do a thing, or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
—HENRY FORD

D
uring the 1960s, when the country was bound together in the exciting quest to land a man on the moon, we watched with wonder as America’s finest risked their lives to venture into the unknown, and in so doing they captured our admiration and became modern-day heroes. On several of the Apollo missions, however, we were shocked to see astronauts, recently plucked from their floating capsules, carried off the rescue helicopter on stretchers. We had to wonder, as indeed NASA did, what was it about space that, in just a matter of days, caused these highly screened and trained space athletes to become casualties?

We knew little of space and theorized all kinds of science-fiction explanations for what was happening. In fact, we know now that the Soviet cosmonauts had experienced similar difficulties on returning to earth after long missions and frequently had to be carried from landing sites in reclining chairs. In time, NASA determined that lengthy exposure to zero gravity—to weightlessness—was the culprit.