Life Lessons From 100-Year-Olds You Didn’t Know You Needed

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:35:41):

Yeah, because of course the people I interviewed that term fair and square was something they often would've used in the fifties, and that was the idea that you offer people a square deal, you offer something that's really fair. Yeah, that was another surprise for me, and I will say to listeners, I know you may have in your mind a little sign going off a cliche alert because who wouldn't want to be honest? But for them it meant something deeper and more profound. It was such a source of regret. People who had deceived, well actually let me say, if you were on the receiving end of some kind of major dishonesty or betrayal, that was a major regret in your own life. So people of course had been on the receiving end of that kind of thing of infidelity, and it was often, it really would shake their faith in the grounds of human relationships. But I would say one of the strongest regrets was a person's own dishonesty. So I had many cases, one man told me about his marital infidelity and he wasn't able to overcome his feelings of guilt about it, how he had never been able to be faithful even though he tried, his wife had put up with it. I talked to other people who had been involved in questionable business deals so that and they had those same kinds of regrets. So honestly, integrity, having your life narrative at the end of your life,

 

(00:37:16):

Because by the way, narratives towards the end of life are extremely important. You do really want to be able to sum up your life in some kind of a meaningful narrative and nobody could come back to that, but that's an important way of feeling like you're ready for whatever's next. Having acted with integrity turns out to be a major thing that people value when they're summing up their life narrative. So when you're thinking now, if you're doing something that is less than honest, if you're doing things that are deceitful or deceptive in some way, you can be pretty sure it's something that's going to interfere with your understanding of the value of your own life.

 

Mel Robbins (00:37:55):

Well, I think it's your question. You could ask yourself Dr. Pillemer, like where am I not being honest with myself or where am I not being honest with other people?

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:38:05):

Exactly. It's a way you can use right now. So it's something that for people, it's extremely actionable. Ask yourself right now, is there something I'm doing that is on the borderline of honesty, even not that I will later regret? Now, I say in the book, we aren't talking about the answer to the question, do these pants make me look fat? I mean though we aren't talking about some kind of radical honesty in which you can never be strategic, but it's more honesty and integrity and actions. I would say it might feel good now and it's not going to feel good as you review your life.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:45):

Well, I think that there's an even deeper way to apply this because most people that are doing something really dishonest until they either get caught or they just can't bear it anymore, they're not going to come clean. But there is a level of self betrayal and lying to self where I do believe there's an opportunity as you're listening or watching right now, to truly ask yourself, am I being honest with myself about whether or not I'm enjoying what I do for a living? I love the quote that you said that somebody summed it up best. I loved what I did and I made money doing it that loving what I did first was the priority because I spent so much time in my life at work. And so maybe the honest thing for you is to admit to yourself that you're not enjoying where you are right now, kind of gaslighting yourself about your current habits, that you're not actually taking care of yourself. That I need to be honest now because if I'm honest with myself that I'm not happy or honest with myself that I don't want to live another decade doing life the way I'm doing it. I need to make some changes that that right there is wisdom from an 80 or 90-year-old that you can apply. If you're 18, you hate your major, you're 20. Be honest.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:40:07):

It's absolutely true, and it's being honest with yourself too as you're thinking about a partner. Am I deceiving myself in this? Do I not really have that powerful in love feeling, but I'm simply just feel it's time? But one of the strongest arguments they would make is what Mel just said. If you are in a job right now that is unfulfilling and you're doing it mostly for the money, really be honest with yourself. I've learned after these studies to cringe every time one of my students says, I want to be a chef, but I'm going to go work in the financial services industry and then I'll do that later. They argue that it is always too late to make that kind of change that if you are in a job that is unfulfilling, really, really think about changing it. Their rule was if you don't feel good to get up in the morning and go to your job and you're staying in it exactly like Mel said, you're not being honest with yourself.

 

(00:41:05):

And I would say that is to me one of the most impactful things. They really argue that you need to choose work for its intrinsic value, not for the extrinsic rewards. As I said, the one thing older people know about is time, and they're amazed at how younger people use time. It's like a desert tribes person would look at our profligate use of water. They just can't understand it. So the idea of taking five years slogging in a job that is really unfulfilling rather than taking a risk for something else, obviously you have to plan out your own life and what's feasible, but to the extent it is possible for you to honestly assess if you really hate this job and make a change as soon as you can, they would say it's urgent.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:54):

This is coming from a generation of people whose life experience was you stay in a job and you actually do that for your whole lifetime. Whereas we now live in a reality where the average person is probably going to have, I don't know, 19 different jobs by the time that your career is over at least, and the wisdom is still be honest with yourself, do not waste your life toiling away at something you don't enjoy doing. Figure out how to make a change.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:42:23):

It was one of the biggest surprises of the study, people from the depression era generation who I figured would say, oh, find a stable job. Make as much money as you can. Not a single person said that. And you know what? It was especially powerful from older women who had not had opportunities that younger women have today. Over and over they said, I would give anything for your opportunities. Make use of them. Don't languish in a bad job. So anyway, I think that's absolutely right.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:43:07):

Yeah, I got that. Fern insight first came from a successful entrepreneur who just said, look, here's my lesson. Unless you have a compelling reason to say no, always say yes. If you're offered a new responsibility, offered a new opportunity in general, have your principle be That may take me out of my comfort zone, but I'm going to say yes. This may also sound like a cliche, but I'm telling you that thousands of people told me this, you absolutely are much more likely to regret things that you didn't do than things you did. You are more likely to look back on a missed opportunity that you could have done. So I mean, one thing they would also argue, you can be a little more cautious about decisions that are irreversible, but in many cases they would say you can experiment with a change that isn't so extreme. So say yes to the initial steps in a new career. Say yes to exploring something. I think they say, and I'm sure you see it in your work, people become inert, that they become stuck one day blends into the next, and that's where this being honest with yourself, being present and intentional as you look at your life and absolutely they want you to say yes rather than saying no if you can. So if you're wondering about some decision, some new opportunity, I would encourage you folks to say yes rather than no.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:45:02):

So there are times when what sounds like a very specific piece of wisdom sheds light on bigger issues. So the most interesting thing is a lot of very old people hadn't traveled very much when they were younger.

 

(00:45:20):

I interviewed a 93-year-old nun in Rochester, New York whose idea of adventure was her family would leave the Polish enclave and go to the German enclave for dinner. Or I interviewed people in East Texas who until the World War II or Korea had never been outside of their own county. So they knew what it was like not to go anywhere, and they valued travel incredibly. I had one woman say to me, if you've got a choice between a kitchen remodel or a trip, I say, take the trip. I would say that was something we had to resolve in my own marriage, but I think we now do take the trip rather than the kitchen remodel. But the idea there is it didn't have to be adventure travel. It could be anything but something that takes you out of your normal daily round. So people who were unable to travel much when they were young think that this is a critical thing for young people in part because it symbolizes an attitude of openness and receptivity and adventure.

 

(00:46:23):

We think of older people as being more conservative than younger people, but in terms of what you should do with your life, they're generally radical. It was over and over. Don't waste your life. The one woman told me, you have only a few years here on earth, you have to cram as much into it as you can. Don't take for granted these things and travel is that symbol. It's a symbol for doing things that they were unable to do and discovered later in life and felt that it was too late. So I would think of it that way. I thought it was an interesting insight.

 

Mel Robbins (00:46:55):

Well, I also love that you're saying big and small. These are the things you can remember. And I as a kid, remember actually the one summer I remember was the summer that we rented a motor home and went on a tour of a bunch of the US national parks as a family. I remember that as clear as day one of the highlights of my childhood. It was probably a two week period. It wasn't some big fancy trip. I also remember the fishing trips that we would take that were just an hour from the house. And so I love that reminder, cram it in.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:47:59):

At least I believe it is. And because most people, we have to remember despite our times right now, one thing that hasn't changed in 20 years and since Jane Austen's time still, if you look at surveys, most young people want to get married. Most young people plan to get married, and most young people have as a value in that marriage being married for a lifetime. So those values, even though people are doing it later, they're living together first, the core desire to have a life partner is still there. So I want to clarify that because it's not like nobody cares about this anymore.

 

(00:48:36):

I mean, this really is the most important decision that a lot of people make because you can change your career. So yeah, they believe that younger people aren't careful enough. They observe their own children. People get to a certain age and it's time to get married and that sort of thing. And they have certain rules for choosing a mate that I think are useful. One, I have mentioned already that it's okay to listen to the impressions of people who love you about your future, mate. You should absolutely choose carefully. They argue that you should make sure that you have. It's very interesting. They all talk about a gut feeling so that people who violated that gut feeling that this was the right thing, regretted it. But one thing that may sound a little controversial, but was their strongest piece of advice in this choosing a mate carefully is we may like to think of that opposites attract, but they really go with birds of a feather flock together.

 

(00:49:39):

They argue that you should marry somebody or you know what? I'll say, Mary, even though we know that this could mean a long-term partnership, but just to make it so I don't have to say that every time I'll say, Mary, marry someone who's a lot like you, who is fundamentally very similar to you. So the idea is this is a fact. One of the strongest facts from research on social relationships of all kinds, unfortunately or fortunately, we like people who are similar to us. For example, you'll notice that when you first have a child, pretty soon your social network consists only of other people who have children because you gravitate towards them. And so your friendship network consists of people who also have children and your other folks drop out. That's just one example. We like to be around people who are fundamentally similar to us more than we like to be around people who are very different and most important is people who share similar values.

 

(00:50:37):

So I think that's one of the things they mean about choose carefully. You have to go beyond attraction. Another feature of choose carefully is that nobody wants to lose passion, but your relationship, they say you have to nurture qualities of friendship. And I'm going to give one very specific piece of advice. People who are in long marriages offer this piece of advice, and I want to offer it directly to your listeners. Embrace your partner's interests. So rather than being angry that she's playing golf on Sunday, learn to play golf rather than learning. And I can use my own daughter as an example that one of the things your husband loves is fantasy football. Rather than being angry about that, join the Fantasy Football League. I had many older people say, people I call in the book Tough old guys opera. I'd never thought I'd go to opera, but I just decided my wife likes that and I'm going to do it. People started to do the practical step in so many relationships of the anger that mounts because a person has a specific interest and the partner thinks it's ridiculous. Here's one of the things that people, I interview older people across the racial and ethnic spectrum, and one piece of advice that came through from many of them is when you're choosing a mate, watch how your prospective partner plays games. So I interview,

 

Mel Robbins (00:52:15):

What do you mean by that? Cards or basketball or all of it

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:52:18):

When you're actually playing a game, when they're doing a leisure activity, like playing a game. And so to make it concrete, one of my interviewees who was Dominican

 

(00:52:29):

From the Dominican Republic, if you go to many social clubs or anywhere where there are lots of Dominicans, you will see people playing dominoes and they play very cutthroat dominoes. And she said, I observed the guy I was interested in. I saw he was competitive, but he was a gracious loser. I saw there was someone else who said in a Chinese senior center, I watched my future wife play and I could see how she related to the other people. And somebody else said, I tried to play something like a tribute, some game with my guy I was interested in. And he threw the board up in the air and stormed out of the room.

 

(00:53:11):

So watching how your partner operates, again, being the researcher thought that was one concrete thing. The other piece of advice I took to heart is if you're having a lot of serious arguments, you find there's a pattern to arguments rather than therapy. The cure might be a sandwich because my wife and I though we'd be traveling and we'd forget to eat. And our argument who chose the bad hotel or why we got there after the museum closed would be unbelievably intense until we realized that we were hungry. And there's good research on this mouth showing that you should not argue when you're hungry. And so one of the things the elders said, one of their little lessons is if you're having an intractable argument, get something to eat and see what happens.

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:02):

I love that advice. And here's what I'm realizing. My mouth is kind of open now processing what you're saying. My husband and my kids do that with me. I will get so lost in what I'm doing and then next thing you know, I'm bickering about something just so stupid and I'm the jerk, right? And somebody in my family will go, when's the last time you ate? And sure enough, five or six hours ago,

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:54:29):

Try it out a cup of tea and a biscuit if you're having a terrible argument. So that was one of their key points.

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:35):

Wow. I love that.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:54:36):

Yeah, I think it's a good

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:38):

One. I think it's a really good one.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:54:40):

Well, another piece, there's one piece of advice I think that really sums up a little bit too of this whole area, if I could share it. So sometimes a cliche is way more than a cliche. So sometimes a saying or an expression has this real power, even though it's been used a lot. And when I asked older people for their advice for a long marriage, you can imagine one thing I heard. I'm sure your listeners can don't go to bed angry.

 

Mel Robbins (00:55:11):

Don't go to bed angry.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:55:12):

Yes. So I really wanted to unpack that. What did that mean? Why was that so critical when you were in your eighties and nineties beyond, why was that a piece of advice that you wanted to offer younger couples? Why was it so important? And one insight was from long experience really. If an argument carries over to another day, it's just more of a problem and you should really be dealing with it. But it also has to do with the sense of the shortness of life. They realize that any night could be the last night, so you need to resolve things beforehand. Now, you don't need to think that as a young person, but I thought that they really felt very strongly that a grudge that continues for more than a day or two is very diagnostic. It really calls for attention and that their sense of the fragility of these relationships. So I thought that was interesting too.

 

Mel Robbins (00:56:15):

Well, I also think that if you go to bed angry and then you have one of those sort of cold standoff days, it gets less and less likely that you're going to address it. And then the thing that was the source of the argument never the thing you're arguing about. It's some deeper feeling goes unaddressed.

 

(00:56:37):

Whereas if you force yourself to lean toward the person and lean into, well, what's really upsetting you, then you now are starting in your relationship to just be willing to talk about the deeper thing. And that's almost nine times out of 10, at least I find in my marriage of 29 years, that just being curious about the deeper thing, being willing to apologize without going to bed, holding the grudge while you sleep, or being pissed off while you sleep. It releases that pressure valve and it allows you to kind of resolve this thing quicker and it gives you a baseline understanding of where those sort of trigger points and landmines are emotionally for your partner and yourself.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (00:57:27):

I totally agree. And it also, it's like a mediation. You set a deadline and so it gives you a deadline by which yes, you have to apologize or express understanding.

 

Mel Robbins (00:57:38):

Yeah, you might. It is helpful at times to step outside the room. I'm going to take a step outside the room for an hour and cool off. I'm going to go eat a sandwich. So I'm not angry with you. But if the deadline is with yourself personally and with your partner, we don't go to bed angry. We actually discuss what happened and unpack it and apologize for what we need to before we go to bed. That's really helpful. Practical advice.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:03:21):

Yes, and I love that shoes in the store window metaphor.

 

Mel Robbins (01:03:25):

Okay.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:03:25):

I mean, I think that that really is the concept that if we're constantly comparing ourselves to what we could have done, it is a really dangerous and damaging possible thing, I would say. Well, one thing you could do if you're listening to here is you could reflect on this. Am I making certain kinds of decisions or do I tend to second guess myself? Is there something I'm second guessing right now that would be better just to let go or just to leave it alone so you can analyze yourself? Where are you doing this? Kind of emphasizing your own regrets. So one thing is just awareness and you can definitely look at what's going on and you can let it go. Another thing you can do is become aware that you're being pushed towards a kind of perfectionism by our culture. And the more you are watching so-called influencers showing you their perfect refrigerator, their perfect bedroom, their perfect body, their perfect face, you are going to be pushed towards perfectionism.

 

(01:04:25):

So you can inoculate yourself against that. But finally, you need to practice self-compassion. You need to actually begin to understand that you're not going to express perfection and have this kind of a self-compassion and self-forgiveness. So I think a number one thing is definitely being aware of it. I will give one piece of elder wisdom I think, which is really critical about this. It applies to other things, but I would sum it up as you're criticizing yourself worrying about things you might've done. Kind of thinking about this pair of shoes you bought is really taking the long view.

 

(01:05:11):

There is a certain logic to asking, will I really care about this when I'm 80? But this particular thing, I'm worrying about myself taking that view as if you were one of the elders looking back on your life. So people tend to torture themselves about in the moment, about missed opportunities or mistakes, but by taking the long view, will this really matter over the longest period of time, I think that you can get a certain amount of peace with it. So I would say those are the essence of elder wisdom on that. The other thing about this kind of regret is one thing is to focus on what you learned from it rather than on how bad it was or whatever you did or failed about it. So you can reframe it, you can shift it to here's what I learned from it, rather than, here's how I mess things up.

(01:07:05):

The experts believe meaning people in their eighties, nineties, and even 100, that happy if only attitude is futile and leads to disappointment. And one of the reasons why this is something that has been a huge change in my life is that it's occurred to me that it's so easy to be waiting around for happiness. It's so easy to be disappointed with where you are. It's so easy to wake up and be in a bad mood for no reason at all, that it's a skill that you can learn that I practice now to be happy in spite of everything that's going on, to be happy for no reason at all. And I'd love to have you unpack this choice that you have that if you could embrace this attitude that you can choose how to have a good attitude and be in a good mood and not dwell on your expectations or disappointment or make it a habit to be unhappy, how important this is and how much it changes your life.

 

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:08:09):

And here's where you get to a core of wisdom that is in some ways unique to older people. So in some ways that insight to me justified the project because you can say, choose to be happy, and someone can very reasonably say back to you, well, that's just a platitude, what about that? But when you get to be 70 and beyond just about everybody and no body hacking is not going to fix this, just about everybody bears some burden of chronic disease and sometimes crippling chronic disease and just about everybody has experienced loss, you've certainly lost your parents. You may have lost siblings, you may have lost your partner. So you have a whole group of people who have experienced many of the things that young people worry about.

 

(01:08:59):

Second, we have a fascinating finding from hundreds of studies that on average older people are happier than younger people. So if you ask a survey item like how happy are you on a scale of one to 10, have the past five years been some of the best of your life? People over 60 or especially over 65 are happier than younger people. So you've got those two things. How can people who are experiencing an accumulation of loss in negative life events still be happier than younger people are? How would that occur? And one of the things that we found, and it's supported by other research, is this conscious choice to be happy not because of all circumstances aligning perfectly, but choosing to be happy given the current circumstances in which you now exist.

 

(01:09:55):

And there are various techniques they employ which do map on to other ones that people do use in psychology, but these are their own indigenous ones. They would argue that it involves things like waking up and saying, I'm going to make this as good a day as it can be. It's waking up and saying, as one of my interviewees did that basically this can be a good day. How can I make this count? And it does involve trying to consciously avoid negative emotions about your situation to look for what's working in my life rather than what isn't working in my life.

 

(01:10:39):

So they would argue again and again, we're a group of people, if I could speak as one, we're a group of people that a lot of crap is happening to. I mean, if you're going to be an old person, unless you can choose to be happy in spite of your circumstances, you're not never going to be happy. Every single old person would be miserable because if you at 30 got the level of arthritis and your friends are dying off and all these things are happening, you would just hate it and be miserable. They are obliged to find a way to get around this. So that's why I think again, this notion of 2000 older people yelling at you, this one insight is one way to get yourself moving in that direction

 

Mel Robbins (01:11:20):

And just think of how much it would change your life.

 

(01:11:23):

And I love that saying that it's not the years and your it's, it's not the years in your life. It's the life in your years. And if you could teach yourself to default toward choosing intentionally to look at what you do have, choosing intentionally to look at what is working, choosing intentionally to wake up and make today a good day simply because you woke up, what a difference that would make in your life.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:12:14):

This is one of the insights that when I give talks on this, that people want to hear the least. So the one thing when I tell them, elder wisdom about your health, I get this feeling of fingers and ears and I'm not listening, but they had I think a profound insight that I wish people trying to do public health messaging would embrace. And I've tried to argue that in different venues, young people, when they think about their health, and I imagine some of you out there have said this or know people who said it, I like smoking. I like eating junk food. I like not exercising and I don't care how long I live. I really don't. If I enjoy these things so much, if I die at 69 rather than 78, who cares? What America's elders know is you will not just die at 69. Medical science is going to keep you alive in a state of incredibly burdensome chronic disease for one or two decades. So your worry isn't dying. They say, don't worry about dying, worry about chronic illness. And we know now from increasingly powerful research, what you do in your thirties and forties and fifties can be more important than what you do in your sixties and seventies.

 

(01:13:32):

So these sort of heart, healthy, chronic disease of prevention lifestyles in midlife are really critical. So one of the main messages that they want to say is anytime you hear yourself saying, I don't really care about this unhealthy habit, you don't really need to live that long. That's not your worry. Your worry, you aren't going to live unhealthily and then drop dead. You're going to be burdened with chronic disease. And when you see it in lots and lots of older people and hear them talk about it, many of them are so regretful that they couldn't stop their spouse from smoking. They couldn't get someone to become more healthy. And it sort of ruined not just one year, but a decade or two of life because you will be kept alive in a state of very burdensome chronic disease. So I've tried to argue over and over that should be your motivation, that you want to do everything you can right now to avoid this.

 

Mel Robbins (01:14:36):

One of the main takeaways from people in their eighties, nineties, and one hundreds in your research is that as you near the end of your life and realize you don't have 50 more years, you have a handful. That knowledge creates gratitude,

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:15:30):

I'm not sure if you've ever had anybody on who's sort of a gratitude, the kind of gratitude, happiness researcher. So this sense of gratitude for small things is a key part of this. Well, this sense of gratefulness for small positive things is a key part of this broader concept of that happiness is a choice rather than a condition. So it is a shift in focus to, again, gratitude for those things in your life that are working rather than focusing on those that aren't. I'm going to metaphorically pound my fist on the table and say that this is something that your listeners should really absorb and take to heart because it's practical wisdom that is so evidence-based that if you are in a very bad time, things are extremely stressful. If you can infuse a positive emotion into that, your negativity will drop. So one thing that has been extensively studied is people who are caring, say for a person very debilitated with Alzheimer's disease, those people who are unbelievably stressed constantly up all night, the person is wandering, but who are encouraged to think, I'm doing something great here. I'm fulfilling my al or marital responsibility. I am showing that I am a competent person because I can do this simply in infusing or I'm grateful I still have this person. You can infuse positive emotions. It's not like you have to get rid of the negative ones, but there's pure scientific evidence. If you bring in positive emotions into a very negative and stressful experience, the negativity drops.

Dr. Karl Pillemer (01:17:43):

I have a big one and then I have a smaller piece of advice for your listeners. But I would say for all of it, the things I learned can be summed up in an expression which also reflects some earlier things we've talked about. But I'm going to take the risk of reemphasizing it, and that is live like your life is short. That is understand that every older person I talk to and the older they were, the more likely they were to say life is short or life is really short, or life is really, really, really short. Or as one retired engineer said, it seems like it passed by in a nanosecond.

 

(01:18:25):

I had a 99-year-old, actually, one of my favorite quotes in the book is a 99-year-old looked at me and said, I don't know what happened because the next thing you know, you're a hundred. I can guarantee every person listening to this that when you get in your eighties, nine and beyond, you'll say, I cannot believe how quickly this passed. It seemed like my life passed by almost in an instant. Now the thing about older people is they're telling you don't let that depress. You use that as a superpower. I mean, use it as an understanding to both take the long view. Whether my colleague has a nicer office than me isn't going to make any difference to me in 60 years. And in the short term, life is going to seem so short that I cannot waste it in things that aren't ultimately fulfilling. So I would say the one message that came in all the books I've done all the research is this overpowering sense of how short life really is.

 

(01:19:32):

And over and over people said, there's not enough time to cram everything you want to in it. Don't waste your life. So I would say, I think in the Hebrew scriptures, teach us to number our days so that we may get ourselves a heart of wisdom. It's very hard to do so depressing for people, but if you live like your life is short, you'll make very different decisions about how long you stay in a crappy job, about how long you stay in a bad relationship, about how long you wait to express love to people you love about how much time you spend with your children when they're growing up. That's what older people have to tell you, that you're going to come to my age and you're going to say, wow, this was a short time I had. And you're going to reflect very seriously on how you spent your time. And I think if you live like your life is short, you have a pretty strong chance of a better life.

 

Mel Robbins (01:20:29):

I am so grateful that you're here. I feel so inspired by everything that you shared with us because it is true. I don't care how old you are, whether you just finished high school or you are in your eighties. When you look back, it feels like it went in the blink of an eye and what you shared today, you gave us the practical tools and the powerful insights and the life-changing wisdom that we need in order to start living more intentionally, choosing happiness, making amends, and doing the things that are well within our power starting today to change the course of our lives. And so I just want to say thank you. Thank you, professor Piller for being here. Thank you for the research that you're doing. Thank you for showing up and sharing all of this with a sense of urgency, that this is not only something to pay attention to and to share and to be inspired by, but it is a gift and an opportunity for you to start changing your life right now.

 

(01:21:35):

And thank you. Thank you for choosing to listen to something that could change your life. Thank you for caring about the wisdom of people in their eighties, nineties, and one hundreds. And I guarantee you, if you could get in a time machine and you could go and time travel and see yourself at the age of 90 or a hundred, you would tell yourself right now exactly what you just learned today. So don't just listen, go do something about it. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend, because remember he said one of the five big things that you need to do is to say it. So I'm going to say it. I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And now you have a roadmap, wisdom from people in their eighties, nineties, and one hundreds that you can use to create a better life starting right now. Alrighty, I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll be there to welcome you in the moment you hit play.