In this thought-provoking episode of Next Act Ninjas, host Rachael Van Pelt empowers you to live a truly fulfilling life, rather than merely extending its duration. With billions spent on anti-aging and biohacking to extend lifespan, Rachael challenges the focus on life extension and argues for prioritizing quality of life. Exploring the metrics that truly matter for a high-quality life, Rachael discusses the importance of maintaining strong physical health, financial stability, meaningful social connections, and spiritual well-being. She emphasizes the value of embracing discomfort and striving for growth, rather than settling into a life of excessive comfort and security. Tune in to get clear on your personal measure of a life well lived. Join the conversation and learn how to master a holistic, flourishing lifestyle after 50+. Subscribe and share to help others on their journey to living better, not just longer.
Chapters
00:00 Living Better, Not Just Longer
02:40 Expanding the Definition of Quality of Life
05:24 Metrics for Improving Quality of Life
08:11 Achieving High Quality Comes from Striving and Growing
11:08 The Barriers to Improving Quality of Life
14:53 Embracing Discomfort and Insecurity to Live Better
Welcome back to Next Act Ninjas, the #1 podcast for becoming a master of your lifestyle longevity. I'm your host, Rachael Van Pelt, and today we are tackling the topic of living better, not simply longer. Billions today are being spent in the longevity economy. The race for the fountain of youth has never been fiercer. But why are we so focused on living longer when we haven't even mastered living better? Should longevity or life expectancy really be the metric we're after or is it something else?
I think most of us would agree we don't want to live longer if we're simply spending more time in decay and disability. None of us want more time drooling in a chair mindlessly staring at a screen while someone brings us our pills and a cup of pudding. But quality of life is a squishy metric that's hard to quantify, isn't it? If we want to live better, what metric should we be trying to shift?
I think a lot about extending healthspan as a healthspan scientist. Healthspan is the number of healthy years we live. But health can also be a squirrely metric. How do we define health? Is it simply freedom from disease? Is it freedom from addiction? Is it not being a slave to big pharma and major medical? Or is it feeling strong, fit, well-nourished, well-rested, unstressed? Is it having a robust immune system? Does it include good mental well-being, emotional resilience?
What about wealth? If we live healthier longer but we don't have the resources to do very much, what kind of life is that? What good is being mentally and physically fit if you aren't leaving the house much because you're being frugal out of fear that you're going to outlive your retirement savings?
And then there's social connectivity. If we have a great health and sufficient wealth, but find ourselves isolated and lonely, what good is that? And if culture doesn't value elders, if they're just waiting for us to kick the bucket so that we can get out of the way, so that they can have our jobs, our homes, our legacy, what good is having better health or wealth?
Clearly, we need to expand our definition of long-term quality of life. In my opinion, that measure needs to encompass health span and wealth span and social span. The billions that are currently being spent on defying death and finding the magic fountain of youth in a pill or procedure are missing a major point. We don't want to just live longer, we want to live better.
But how do I know if I'm living better? How might I measure and improve quality of life? I think this is an important question because "what gets measured gets managed", right? But quality of life is a broad, multi-dimensional concept. It encompasses many aspects of a person's life. The most comprehensive measures tend to include dimensions such as: #1) physical health and function, #2) mental health and psychological wellbeing, #3) social relationships and support, #4)economic and material living conditions, #5) civic engagement and governance, #6) work-life balance, #7) education and skills, #8) environmental quality, #9) personal safety and security.
That's a lot of things to take into account. But I'm going to assume for a moment that you are educated, you're safe and secure, you're living in a comfortable environment, you're not working 80hrs/wk to make ends meet, so you have at least some modicum of work-life balance. In which case, most of that list is already covered for you. If you have the time and you have the growth mindset to listen to this podcast, then your basic needs are probably met and you have the privilege of time to think about how you might make your life even better. If so, congratulations, you have already achieved a higher quality of life than most people. You have a lot to be grateful for. The rest is a privilege to pursue, isn't it?
So let's zero in on the dimensions that are going to make the most difference when it comes to living better, which takes me back to my original question. How do I know if I'm living better? We'll of course all have our own ideas of what matters most to quality of life, but if we agree for a minute that after safety and education and comfortable living environment, a high quality of life includes great health, sufficient wealth and social connectivity. How would we know if we're making headway when it comes to these aspects of quality of life? What are the metrics we might manage?
When it comes to health span, I think the main outcomes I'm looking for include: a strong musculoskeletal system, a fit cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary system, great balance and flexibility, a balanced microbiome, a robust immune system, mental acuity, emotional stability and resilience. And ideally, I want these things right up until the day I die. In other words, I want to die relatively healthy. I know that might seem silly. Why would I die if I were healthy? But what that means is you would effectively die of old age, not an age-related disease. I think it's a subtle but important difference.
When it comes to wealth span, I think we typically want at least enough to cover our living expenses. That includes your mortgage or rent, your food, your utilities, your insurance, your transportation, your clothing. And of course, we want enough to cover our healthcare or any medical expenses that come up. And hopefully that includes preventive healthcare, fitness and training expenses and any kind of acute medical care that comes up. We also want enough for discretionary spending, so we can buy nicer clothes, nicer car, eat out occasionally, travel. And then if we have anything left over, we want legacy for our kids, our grandkids, our charitable organizations. Again, we want our wealth to last. We don't want to outlive our retirement savings. Maybe we even die wealthy, leaving something to our heirs.
When it comes to social connection, I think we're looking for intimate relationships with our immediate family, our extended family, our close friends, our neighbors, our church community, others in our inner circle. We also want mutual love and respect. We want authentic connection. We probably hope to be surrounded by these people that we love right up to the end, right?
And let's not forget another aspect that is often neglected when we talk about quality of life and that's spiritual wellbeing. Sometimes this gets lumped in with mental and emotional health. Sometimes it gets lumped in with social connection with our religious communities. But I believe spiritual wellbeing is its own dimension or category that can have a huge impact on our overall perceived quality of life.
And let's face it, we would love to have all of these things without having to put in a lot of work, wouldn't we? The less work we have to do to maintain these things, the higher we might rate our quality of life. And yet, the truth of the matter is, much of the satisfaction we get in life comes from the effort we put in. I would not appreciate my strong muscles as much if it didn't take a little bit of work to maintain them. I wouldn't appreciate my home as much if I had inherited it. I wouldn't appreciate my relationship with my husband as much if marriage was always easy.
We think we want easy, when in fact our perceived quality of life hinges more on effort and what we learn along the way. The joy is in the journey, as they say. It's not in the crossing of the finish line. I think that's why an athlete often gets depressed after they win a gold medal at the Olympics. They miss the goal setting, the training, the focus. Putting in work along the way also serves to ingrain the habits that allow us to sustain these things. If we simply inherit money or win the lottery, but we haven't learned the habits of managing our finances, we're bound to lose that money very quickly. The same would happen if I handed you an incredibly fit body, but you'd never learned how to train it. You would lose that fitness almost immediately. Easy come, easy go, right?
So clearly a high quality of life isn't simply about having abundant health span and wealth span. There's a less tangible component to it, something akin to striving and growing. Crossing a finish line or winning a gold medal is not necessary. So if we want to live better, not simply longer, life extension is not the goal. High quality of life is the goal. And the dimensions that we're looking to optimize have to include health and wealth, social connectivity, spiritual longevity, and so forth; holistically, what I call lifestyle longevity.
We don't have to accept that these things inevitably decline with aging either. If we want to flourish in our 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond, then we're going to want to focus on improving the outcomes within each of these four areas. So I'm going to challenge you today to ask yourself: How will you keep your body and mind strong, fit, well-nourished, immune, flexible? How will you continue to build your wealth and effectively manage your finances? How will you nurture your social circle? How will you build strong relationships, love your neighbors? How will you nourish your spirit?
As a coach, I found that the biggest barriers for people making strides in all of these areas, their quality of life, the biggest barriers are comfort and security. This may sound counterintuitive at first because isn't that what quality of life is all about? But let's face it, we live almost too comfortably in the Western world. We have a roof over our head, a comfortable bed to sleep in, running water in our homes, clean water to drink. We have access to an abundance of food and refrigeration to store that food. We have access to top medical care. We have comfortable chairs to sit in, temperature regulated homes, 24/7 entertainment on our TV screens. We have cars and computers that are fast and reliable. Our mobile phones now do more today than most computers did a decade ago.
We live in an abundant world even if we don't always appreciate it. So how can this be a barrier to improving our quality of life? Because this daily comfort can make us weak. It makes us almost fearful of being uncomfortable. Me included. I know that my comfortable bed makes it harder for me to get up in the morning, my comfortable house temperature makes it harder to go for a run in the hot summer or the cold winter, my 24/7 access to food and water makes it hard to go very long without eating or drinking. You should see what I pack to be comfortable camping these days with my family compared to when I was backpacking and mountaineering in my 20s. It's funny! We just become so accustomed to comfort over time. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Our ancestors, they worked hard for the life that we're born into today.
We can be grateful for that abundance, that comfort. But where it gets tricky is now this level of comfort becomes maladaptive. Our bodies were made to adapt to a variety of environments, a variety of conditions, a variety of foods. Our bodies remain flexible when they have to adjust to extremes like feasting or fasting, hot or cold, hard work and rest. Likewise, our mind and our spirit do better when they're constantly working to adjust to different social situations, a variety of emotions and mental challenges.
During the quarantines in 2020, we saw quite clearly what happens when this is taken to the extreme, when we aren't getting out of the house, interacting with others, subjecting ourselves to outside stressors. We were mostly stuck on the frequency of fear and recoiling into things like mind-numbing food, alcohol, and/or entertainment. Under the guise of safety, we were forced into a situation that actually accelerated decline. While we were safe and comfortable in our homes, many of us saw tons of muscle atrophy, brain atrophy, social and spiritual decline. It's the exact opposite of what we need for human flourishing.
My point is our need for security and comfort is a double-edged sword. Of course we want to be safe, we want to be secure, we want comfort in our lives, but too much of it, too much safety and comfort leads to decline; it becomes maladaptive. If we want to live better, not simply longer, we have to be willing to get uncomfortable. To build our health span and wealth span, let's be willing to work our muscles and our minds much harder than we have been. Let's be willing to get out of our comfort zone, to put ourselves out there, fostering community, building deep, intimate, and authentic relationships.
Let's encourage our spirit to keep expanding rather than shrinking in on itself. Ironically, that willingness to embrace a little discomfort, a little insecurity is exactly what will make life better. We aren't going to look back and say, "boy, I sure am glad I stayed safe and secure and was perfectly comfortable my whole life". We're not going to get to the end of life and say that, we? I think we'd rather look back and say, "I am so glad I lived a great life right up to the very end. I kept up my spirit, my health, my friendships, and it feels great to be leaving a legacy".
How does that sound? If that's the kind of flourishing Next Act that you're after, be sure to stay tuned to this channel. Subscribe and share with others in your tribe who would want that as well. Because together, we're all going to achieve more, aren't we? Until next time. Live well, love more, age less my friends.