by Peter Diamandis: How long you live is a function of many factors, including your mindset.
You can actually will yourself to death—or will yourself to a longer healthspan.
My goal is to transform the way you think. The best way for me to do this is to give you overwhelming evidence of the massive biotech and medical advancements that can and will extend your healthspan.
I want you to go from thinking: “That sounds possible” to thinking: “Wow! This is really happening!”
In today’s blog, I’ll discuss what it means to have a Longevity Mindset, why it’s so important to me, and how having one can help you maximize your healthspan.
Let’s dive in…
What is a Longevity Mindset?
One of the most important elements of my Longevity Practices is creating and maintaining a Longevity Mindset.
A Longevity Mindset is one in which you believe in the ability of science to extend your healthspan, perhaps by ten or twenty years.
Further, it is a belief (and an understanding) that during these additional decades, science isn’t standing still. Instead, health technologies are accelerating exponentially, continuing to make breakthroughs driven by AI, CRISPR, gene therapy, genome reading and editing—all of which are being focused on expanded healthspan and reversing disease.
A Longevity Mindset means becoming the “CEO of your own health” and recognizing that “Life is short, until you extend it.”
What Shapes Your Longevity Mindset and Your Healthspan?
How long you live is a function of many factors: where you were born, your genetics, your diet, and your mindset. Most people imagine that longevity is mostly inherited, that the genetic cards you are dealt have predetermined your lifespan.
You may be surprised by the truth.
In 2018, after the analysis of a 54-million-person ancestry database, scientists announced that lifespan has little to do with genes.
In fact, heritability is accountable for only ~7% of your longevity.
Other studies peg this somewhat higher, estimating that heritability accounts for some 20% or 30% of your lifespan—which still means, at a minimum, that lifestyle choices account for 70% of your longevity.
The power of shaping your healthspan is much more in your hands than you might have imagined. While we’ve already discussed things like diet, exercise, and sleep, one of the biggest (underestimated) impacts on your healthspan is your mindset, which we’ll explore below.
There are 7 key mindset and lifestyle areas (under your control) that fundamentally impact your healthspan. Let’s review each area together, and as we do, I invite you to ask yourself: “Where do I truly stand in this area? Where can I improve? What would it take for me to modify my beliefs and actions?”
#1. What do you honestly believe? Understanding your ingrained beliefs about your expected healthspan is the first place to begin. At one end of the spectrum, you see life as short and precious—you’ll consider yourself lucky if you make it to 75 or 80 years old. At the other end, you’re focused on breaking through 100 years old with energy and passion, making “100 years old the new 60.”
In this latter mindset, you see aging as a disease that can be slowed, stopped, and perhaps even reversed.
#2. What media are you consuming? The type of content you consume (e.g., books, blogs, movies, news) is constantly shaping how you think and directly impacting your Longevity Mindset. Are you reading the obituaries of old friends? Or are you reading books like Life Force, David Sinclair’s Lifespan, or Sergey Young’s Growing Young? Are you reading digital content about the latest political battle or are you reading www.LongevityInsider.org, a free, AI-enabled longevity newsletter, that summarizes daily breakthroughs and innovations from around the world?
#3. Who do you hang out with? Who makes up your community? The people you spend time with have perhaps the biggest impact on shaping what you believe and the actions you take. Are you actively building and deeply engaging with a community that is optimistic and youthful, despite their age? A group actively pursuing longevity and sharing best practices and encouraging one another?
#4. Are you prioritizing sleep? Sleep is a fundamental tool to optimize your healthspan. A great book that details this is Why We Sleep, by Dr. Matt Walker. We physiologically need 8 hours of sleep per night. Do you believe the motto that “There’s plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead”? Or do you prioritize sleep and use the best available techniques to help you achieve 8 healthy hours of sleep?
#5. How healthy is your diet? There is truth to the saying that “You are what you eat.” Do you eat whatever you want, whenever you want? Are you overweight, and eating way too much sugar? Or have you intentionally shaped your diet, minimizing sugars and high glycemic foods, while eating a diet high in whole-plants and sufficient protein to build muscle?
#6. How much exercise do you get? Along with your mindset, sufficient sleep, and a healthy diet, exercise is fundamental to longevity. The latest research on longevity makes it clear that increasing muscle mass is critical. So where are you on the exercise spectrum? At one end, you don’t exercise at all. On the other end, you’re getting in 10,000 steps a day, and exercise with weights at least three times each week, focusing on interval training and weightlifting.
#7. Annual Diagnostics? Most of us are optimists about our bodies. But in reality, we have no idea what’s really going on internally—until that moment we end up in the hospital with some condition. Your job is to catch any illness (cancer, inflammatory disease, insulin resistance, etc.) as early as possible, when it is most easily reversed. And the best way to do this is to make use of the increasingly available onslaught of diagnostic technologies that can help you find disease at inception.
Why Your Mindset Matters: The “Will to Live”
I want to close this Longevity Mindset Practice segment with a notion about the power of the human mind. Specifically, “the will to live.”
Mind over physiology.
A key mindset for longevity involves being excited about the future, having something to live for, to look forward to.
My coach, Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, puts it this way, “Always make your future bigger than your past.”
Tony Robbins says, “Having a bigger purpose to live for is absolutely key to longevity.”
My favorite story illustrating this comes from the annals of American history.
As it turns out, in an extraordinary demonstration of “the will to live,” two of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both willed themselves to live long enough to see the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Even though in the early 1800’s, the average life expectancy was only 44 years old, Jefferson (who was 83) and Adams (who was 90), made it to July 4, 1826, both dying on that exact date, the 50th anniversary of the nation they had founded.
Clearly, they had a goal in mind, something to live for.
So, how long do you think you’ll live? Until you’re 80 years old? Maybe 90?
What mindset or purpose would you require to set a target of 120 healthy years, and make it there?
Your health is your greatest wealth, and today is the most extraordinary time to be alive.
Please begin to change how you discuss your lifespan / healthspan with others. Make it known to friends and family (with conviction) that you’re shooting for 100, 120, or even 156. Pick a number that inspires you and program that into your mind.
The results are powerful.
I’ll close with a compelling piece of data on why you should be optimistic about an extended healthspan, and why you should be optimistic in general!
In a study of 69,744 women and 1,429 men, published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it was found that optimistic people live as much as 15% longer than pessimists. The study was conducted over the course of 3 decades, controlling for health conditions, behaviors like diet and exercise, and other demographic information.
There is a lot to be grateful for, and a lot under your control.
