How long you live is a function of many factors, most importantly your lifestyle and mindset.
My goal is to transform the way you think and to enable a Longevity Mindset.
I’d like to do this by giving 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 would be amazing” to thinking: “Wow! This is actually happening!”
Over the next two blogs in this series, I’ll explore in detail what it means to have a Longevity Mindset.
Today, I’ll cover what a Longevity Mindset is and how you can develop one.
Let’s dive in…
What is a Longevity Mindset?
One of the most important elements of my personal longevity practices is creating and maintaining a Longevity Mindset.
But what exactly does that mean?
A Longevity Mindset is one in which you make a concerted effort to keep yourself in the best possible health in order to intercept the coming scientific breakthroughs that will enable you to reach “Longevity Escape Velocity” in the next 10 to 20 years.
It is a mindset which understands that accelerating exponential technologies such as AI, genome sequencing/editing, epigenetic modification, and gene therapy have the potential to extend healthspan and reverse disease.
Every year at my 5-day Platinum Longevity Trip, my goal is to enable all members to deeply appreciate the extraordinary scientific transformation that lies before us. Ultimately, to empower you to become “the CEO of your own health” and to recognize that “Life is short until you extend it.”
What Shapes Your Longevity Mindset?
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.
As I mentioned in the previous blog and am repeating here to make a crucial point, you may be surprised by the truth.
Research suggests that heritability is accountable for only ~7% of your longevity.
One of the biggest and most underestimated impacts on your healthspan is your mindset.
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 about your healthspan?
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) constantly shapes how you think and directly impacts 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 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, sharing best practices, and encouraging one another? A group that exercises together on a regular basis?
#4. Are you prioritizing sleep?
Sleep is a fundamental tool to optimize your healthspan.
As I’ve mentioned before, 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, “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 maintaining and (if possible) increasing muscle mass is critical. So, where are you on the exercise spectrum?
On the one end, you don’t exercise at all.
On the other end, you’re getting in 10,000 steps a day and are exercising with weights at least 3 times each week, focusing on interval training and weightlifting.
#7. Are you getting an annual diagnostic upload?
Most of us are optimists about our bodies. But in reality, we have no idea what’s really going on internally—until that moment when 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.
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. Every year I go to one of the Fountain Life centers to get my annual “Upload” to understand if there is anything going on in my body I need to know about, and how to optimize myself and prevent any disease before it happens.
How many of the above behaviors are you practicing?
In the next blog, I’ll share a tool to help you evaluate your Longevity Mindset and explain why having a Longevity Mindset is so important to me personally.
