Live Long, Die Short (15 page)

Life has curveballs in store for us: bunches of them. Even when we don’t realize we’re at bat. Having a pulse is being at bat all the time. How we age
is a function of how we handle these curveballs, how we avoid at least some of them, and how we expect them without stressing over them. One of the ways we can avoid some of those “slings and arrows” or rebound when they hit us is to be in the best shape possible, at our “fighting weight.” When we experience a threat to our physical self, for instance, like I did when I had my leg injury, do we meet it head-on with a robust intellectual, social, and spiritual strength that can get us back on track, or does it permanently derail us and begin us down a path to further decline? If the threat to our aging comes in another dimension—the intellectual, social, or even spiritual—will resilience in these other dimensions help us to prevail no matter what we encounter in our magnificent journey through our lives?

Perhaps the analogy of riding horses is more useful to our understanding of this concept. When we fall, or get knocked out of the saddle, being strong in
all areas of our lives
can allow us to get back on and live with whatever adjustments we need to make. Living a healthy lifestyle, then, is about more than just being leaner, or better looking, or smarter, or able to do things others may not be able to. It’s about
using and growing our skills, capabilities, and talents
so that we become as resilient as we can be in all areas of life, so that those threats we cannot avoid will not unseat us, will not take us out of the race. Rather, this resilience will allow us to be a survivor and to age successfully, to be as vital as we can possibly be, for as long as possible.

Masterpiece Living Pearls for Using It Before You Lose It

1. Sit in a comfortable chair (just for a little while), put your feet up, and
   think.
   Picture yourself going through a typical day in five years: What does the day involve? How much walking? What brain and physical skills? How much strength? Resilience? Ability to read? What other people are involved?
   
2. Now picture yourself on a
   special
   day in five years: What brain, physical, and social skills will you be using?
   

   Example:
   Are you traveling? What does a travel day involve? How much walking? What tasks require strength? Balance? Ability to communicate? Ability to make your way in a foreign country or at higher altitude or in colder or warmer temperatures?
   

   Example:
   In your special-day scene, are you playing music or teaching or playing with your grandkids, or building something, or riding a bicycle? Again, what skills will you be using?
   

   Example:
   Are you doing something with a group? What group is it, and what are you doing together?
   

3. Now make a list of those skills used for both typical and special future days. Divide them up into physical, intellectual, and social skills.
   

   You have before you your immediate goals for your own successful aging. These are physical, intellectual, and social skills you must have to live the life you want to live. You may currently have the ability to walk, or the stamina to travel, or musical ability, or membership in a group; or you may not. In either case,
   in order to be able to do these things in a month, a year, or five years from now, you will have to continue to use or develop these skills and abilities now.
   

4. Make a personal lifestyle plan for each skill or ability. Remember, this is going to take some time. Be patient and realistic, and remember,
   small steps
   . Resist declaring a heroic goal and telling all your friends. Develop a plan—a pathway, really—where you will incorporate using or learning these desired abilities in your everyday life. It will be very advantageous to have a coach, someone who knows why you value cultivating these activities, skills, or abilities. Such a coach can guide you through rocky roads ahead, or merely remind you of why you made a lifestyle plan in the first place.
   

You will have to train like a warrior before a battle, a fighter for a fight, or an athlete before a championship game. The default situation, what will happen if you don’t pay attention, is decline—losing. You’re training for the fight of your life: the rest of your life. Your training is
using, refining, and even growing better skills
. Do that, and life will not take you to the metaphorical mat. Life’s left hooks may knock you back on your heels sometimes. You may even get knocked down. But if you are the best that you can be physically, mentally, and socially, you will be more resilient and able to last the duration and be in charge of what this next phase of your life looks like. So put on the
Rocky
music, charge up the stairs, and raise your arms. You have what it takes to prevail, on your terms.

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states.
—CAROL WELCH

W
hat would you be willing to do to get the following outcomes: reduce the likelihood that you will be afflicted with heart disease, or stroke, or cancer, or diabetes, or dementia, or osteoporosis; reduce the likelihood that you will fall, and if you do fall, reduce the likelihood that you would break a bone; feel better; look better; and overall have more energy to enjoy life more? Sound good? Would you be willing to
move
? Yes, just moving, for thirty to forty-five minutes most days, in order to reap these benefits? You’re thinking there’s got to be catch; there’s something I’m not telling you, right? How and why can so many good things come from just moving?

No catch. It’s true. It’s simple, and only a few of us are doing it. A 2008 National Health Interview Survey study found that 36 percent of adults were considered inactive.
¹
If we focus on older adults, that figure rises, along with the risk of—you guessed it—heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, dementia, and osteoporosis. The same study found that 59 percent of adults never participated in vigorous physical activity lasting more than ten minutes in a given week.
²

In a 2000 review in the
Journal of Applied Physiology
, Frank W. Booth, Scott E. Gordon, Christian J. Carlson, and Marc T. Hamilton pulled no punches and signaled that they take this very seriously. “Make no mistake,” their review begins, “our society, and even the world’s population in general, is truly at war against a common enemy. That enemy is modern chronic disease.”
³
And in a later piece discussing the review, Dr. Booth and Manu V. Chakravarthy tell us that we’re facing a “silent enemy”: “sedentary lifestyle.”
⁴
Their point is that man has a basic requirement to be physically active in order to be healthy; that he has inherited this from his ancestors; and that the rise of chronic disease has resulted in more sedentary lifestyle, which in turn results in more chronic disease. This is a threat to the lives and welfare of this country and, in fact, the globe.

SEDENTARY LIVING INCREASES THESE CONDITIONS

Angina, heart attack, coronary artery disease

Breast cancer

Colon cancer

Congestive heart failure

Depression

Gallstone disease