The last passage from the book “Outlive” by Dr. Peter Attia goes:
“I think people get old when they stop thinking about the future,” Ric told me. “If you want to find someone’s true age, listen to them. If they talk about the past and they talk about all the things that happened that they did, they’ve gotten older. If they think about their dreams, their aspirations, what they’re still looking forward to – they’re young.
Here’s to staying young, even as we grow old.”
First, apologies if this ruined the end of the book because you haven’t read it yet.
How do we stay young mentally?
Looking forward is the answer.
If we’re always looking back, reflecting about the things we did, what went wrong, what went right, what we could have done differently to change the outcome, we’ve accepted our age.
If we are present and looking forward, thinking about what we can do now and what we have left to accomplish, we’ll age feeling mentally and physically fresh.
Here are some actions we can take to feel mentally young:
Be physically active. Find a gym community and train consistently, with a sense of accountability and have goals to something meaningful like keeping up with your kids. Exercise is as great for your mind as it is for your body. Movement is medicine!
Eat a healthy diet. Support your cognitive function by what you eat. Include omega-3 fatty acids from fish and nuts (or fish oil supplementation if you need to), and eat fruits and vegetables that are high in antioxidants. Limit alcohol because there is more research showing the effects of alcohol on your grey and white brain matter resulting in limited balance, memory, speech, judgement and sleep.
Get the right amount of sleep. Speaking of sleep, there is no greater supplement on Earth that getting adequate sleep. Sleep is essential for optimal brain function, memory retention and overall mental health. Ever notice when your sleep is deprived or limited you slip into “bad habits?” The average recommendation is 7-9 hours per night.
Practice mindfulness and/or meditate. Not everyone is down with this, and however you practice is your own solution. We’ve talked about the 4-4-4-4 method. Mindfulness and meditation allows us to relax, refocus, and reduce our impressions of the daily stress we deal with.
Maintain social connections. We commonly hear that the older we get the smaller our inner circle of people we trust becomes. That doesn’t mean we can’t dig deep into the things that we need to talk about with those people we confide in. Engaging in exercise in a gym community, jiu jitsu academy, or participating in a book club builds relationships and genuine shared interests with others and is far greater that feeling isolated and doom scrolling on social platforms.
Be a lifelong learner. One of ELEVATE’s Core Values is “Constantly Learn & Always Improve.” Read books, watch videos, learn about things that interest you and experiment with different things discovering new hobbies like playing a musical instrument, pickleball, jiu jitsu (again) or learning shoot, throw an axe or fish. Stay sharp!
Play! Throw a frisbee, ball or play tag with your kids, go for hikes or join a run club, ski, snowboard, play soccer or kickball in a recreational league, or set up a date with friends to break out of a puzzle room. The opportunities to play are endless.
Revisiting a quote we shared above our entrance door back in March of this year, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” -George Bernard Shaw.
What’s one thing you can do to stay mentally fresh and young today?