Last week I discussed the importance of maintaining your financial and mental assets. This week I will focus on the importance of building a community and maintaining your health for increasing healthspands.
Community
In elementary school, having a robust social network was easy. If you still live in the region where you grew up, you likely still have many of those same friends. How have your relationships with them changed over time? As you age and your values change. You might have travelled or gone to school, creating distance in those friendships. It is crucial to be aware of this and curate your friends according to your values.
“You become who you surround yourself with”
Mark Zuckerberg
One of your most important decisions is who you surround yourself with. The easiest way to grow is to surround yourself with individuals with a growth mindset. You choose who your friends are and what you do with those friends, so choose friends that will support your longevity habits rather than hinder them.
Social media is not social.
With so many forms of social media, we feel like we are in contact with many people. In reality, these technologies are isolating us from each other. We keep tabs on what our friends are doing, so there is no need to talk with them to see how they are developing.
Cal Newport touches on this topic in his book Digital Minimalism. He wrote about how important it is to disconnect from technology and spend time together. Your willingness to socialize is crucial to your adaptation to a long life. The key takeaway from that book was to call, not text.
To make socializing one of your longevity habits, find social activities you enjoy. If you are new to the city, joining a club can help you find people with similar interests. These clubs can be for meditation, running, dancing, public speaking, or anything that interests you.
Apps such as Meetup are ideally suited for developing your social assets. They show you what is happening near you. The best part is, if you don’t find what you are looking for, you can create it and help others like you. Technology should be used to facilitate planning activities together, not to replace those activities.
Join my longevity community, and start building your social assets. By subscribing to my free newsletter below, you will be kept in the loop on how you can curate your habits for long life.
Health
Your health is the most important of the assets I have described. If you have good health, you can work on the other assets. It is the foundation on which extended life is built.
Medical researchers such as David Sinclair show that our perspective on aging is changing. Aging is being seen as an illness that can be treated rather than an inevitable part of nature.
It is easy to see a treatment for aging as an impossibility. It would have also been impossible to imagine humans able to fly only a century ago. 66 years after the Wright brothers showed that human flight was possible, we landed on the moon. Things are only impossible until they are done; then, they are seen as inevitable.
Longevity research is in its infancy. But if we went from proving flight was possible to the moon in 66 years, imagine what we will discover in 66 years of longevity research. This is especially true when you consider that technology has made the rate of discovery exponential.
While technology will continue to develop and help you to stay healthy, you are responsible for maintaining your health. Adapting to a longevity diet and the physical habits of longevity requires a dedicated effort. This might be challenging, but it gets easier as you activate the feedback loop of motivation.
Waking up daily with a mindset of possibilities and maintaining a long-term view are the best ways to make healthy habits more approachable. Skipping your run to watch Netflix can be tempting. However, If you take the time to consider how that habit will affect your life in ten years, it will be easy for you to turn off your screen and go for that run.
You can use visualization meditation to imagine how your habits will affect you. Take my company lunches as an example. We get lunch from our restaurant every day at lunch. These lunches boost my financial assets but are detrimental to my health. They generally lack vegetables and are heavy in meat, carbs, salt and fat.
A daily look at my habits would show these meals as a positive because I am saving money today. However, a longer-term perspective shows them as unfavourable because they will be detrimental to my health if I eat them every day for an extended period. Do you have any similar situation in your life or something suitable for today but bad for tomorrow? Let me know about it in the comment section below.
Time for nothing.
A bonus asset is a discretionary time; this is the time reserved to do whatever you want. You could go for a walk, read this blog or use the time to develop new skills, as mentioned in part 1. Remember that balance is critical. While self-development is vital in preparation for long life, it is equally important to spend time living that life.
When agency is required, use it; otherwise, remember to galumph. Life is long and beautiful; take the time to appreciate it while it is happening. Correct your path if you feel your habits are bringing you down the wrong road but focus on living your best life.
If you want some help lining up those, let’s talk, I might be able to help you on your journey. Otherwise, subscribe to my newsletter below to have this insightful content directly in your inbox.
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