Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
Midlife - the main words associated are 'crisis' and 'spread'. But what if we challenge the societal narrative and make midlife the opportunity of our lifetime? What if it was our invitation to become more intentional, live more purposeful, and use our accumulated wisdom to contribute to the world around us? In Midlife Mastery we'll explore ways to do that. So that the best is yet to come.
Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
David Stewart on Dropping Excuses and the 5 Secrets of Super-Ageing
here is David's website: https://ageist.com - subscribe to his newsletter. It's awesome.
here is the YouTube interview:
Join me as we dive into a conversation with David Stewart, the creative mind behind Aegist.com. David challenges the typical view of midlife. He is a living example that at age 65 you can be filling your days with meaningful activities and stay active and healthy. This will completely change your view on how we age. Our chat is full of useful advice for anyone wanting to look at aging in a new way. David calls is Superageing (the title of his podcast).
David also talks about his journey from being a high-stakes photographer to starting ageist.com by accident. He shares insights on how established companies often get stuck looking for approval from others, missing the solutions that are right in front of them. We also hear about his experiences with travel burnout and the desire for simpler ways to get around, reflecting on how our work and personal lives are changing.
To wrap up, David gives us a powerful boost of motivation. He talks about the mental aspects of aging well, highlighting the fine line between being hesitant and outright refusing to make positive life changes. With a straightforward look at the value of good sleep, feeling good about ourselves, and taking small steps towards better habits, David shows us how these efforts add up over time, influencing not just our health but our legacy. This episode is a call to rethink what we believe is possible in our later years, encouraging us to broaden our perspectives.
I'm the here fan of Midlife Mastery. In today's episode I'm hanging out with the epic David Stewart, founder of Aegis, extraordinary guy. And let me just give you one little snippet right here of what you're going to experience in this podcast.
Speaker 2:Number one I don't want to see any white space on your calendar. I don't want to see any white space. I don't want to go around navel gazing thinking about your future. No, I want you doing things. I want you filling up that calendar. I don't want to see any blocks of empty time in there. I want it filled up. You're helping people, you're meeting with friends, you're exercising. You're doing all these things. You are not stuck sitting where. I'll tell you what I really dislike. There are all these programs about, like you know, follow your passion. No, this is idiocy. Your passion is going to change day to day. All this navel gazing this is BS. Be useful. Go out there and do shit. You've been alive for long enough. You have skills. There are things you know. Activate them. Help other people. The second thing is get your body in shape. This everything rests on your physicality. If you do not have your physicality, you cannot be useful. You cannot act on any of these stuff. This is not that hard.
Speaker 1:Hello, daniel Wagner here, founder of Midlife Mastery, and today I'm with David Stewart, founder of Agistcom, and I feel I'm in the presence of greatness. David would in this humble way, way, way, way away, but for me, david is somebody who has been on a mission for a while and we're going to learn more about Agist and his mission and how far he's come and where he's going with it To create awareness that life doesn't go down of the midlife into destitution and decrepitude, but actually has a lot to offer. And his cover is newsletter. If you haven't subscribed yet, definitely do so by the end of this episode. You will want to know what's going on, and every week you see examples of people doing great at all ages inspiring, and I think inspiration is a big part of the mission.
Speaker 1:So, david, welcome to this conversation in Midlife Mastery. Thank you, daniel, great to be here. So the first question always excites me. Whatever we do as business owners, I guess there's a personal reason why we start our ventures, Unless it is pure greed and money grabbing, which I don't think is your primary reason. Why did you start Agistcom? What made you go there and do this?
Speaker 2:It was kind of an accident. As you said. Some people have this sort of ideas of a business and a liquidity event and these sort of things. I've never really run my life like that. I just sort of get curious about something. And then I investigated and that's what this was. And so the initial investigation, the curiosity, was about what's the mismatch between the way marketing entertainment, all that sort of stuff, talks about people, our age, the reality of that, and then the additional mismatch between the consumer dollars being spent versus the marketing dollars being allocated. So both of those were like wildly off and I thought that's weird. What's up with that?
Speaker 1:Love it. So how long is that ago? When did you start that investigation, as you call it? Nine years ago, wow, that's amazing. You kindly shared your age, and this is something you do in Agist. You actually boldly show the age next to the cover image. So how old are you, david? I'm 65. Beautiful. I'm 57, turning 58 this year and, slowly being proud of that, I'm still here. Let's put it that way. So what do you think? Agistcom isn't a bit controversial? Even the name. How do you come up with the name, isn't that in itself? Do you have a problem with it, daniel?
Speaker 2:No, I love it, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it because it's like Agism, and then calling it Agist, I mean it pokes a finger right in, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, why not? I mean, what are we going to call it? Super silver surfers or some kind of BS? Oh, nothing, look at that. I think that when I want to be really cheeky it's like oh geez, I never thought of it that way. Like biologists, they talk about biology, so we talk about age. So why can't we be Agists? It's just all about being.
Speaker 2:You know, it's an unforgettable name and, yeah, we get some pushback about it once in a while. But hey, get over it. We thought about the name for a really long time. We couldn't so much of the vernacular around people. Our age is, as I said, the goldenness, the silver, that, and it's just, oh, my God really. And we actually hired an AI language model to make us a name and that just turned out weird. So we're just like, oh, screw it. And you know, some people were like, well, shouldn't send the age dash, ist or something. And it's screw that. You know this aren't anything to get over it and it's great. At a conference I kind of sleep Like when I have my name and then I say ages, it's like I might as well say you know, racist or something.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating. In one of my conversations with Jonathan Rao he said this is like the last big bastion of society. You know this ages and you know the, the, the, the judgments we hold against this. But I was, I'm curious about your, your take on saying this mismatch in society, this mismatch in the societal narrative, the youth of sex culture that plays into that. Is this part of the mission that you want to change that?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean in a way, yes, really, we're just about presenting an alternative, we're just about putting a different item on the menu. So, you know, if you want the medicalized, infantilized silver slipper, whatever, okay, you can choose that. If you want, if you want what we do, you now know that that's available, it's possible, it's not that hard. And here was. You know, like you said, every week we show an example of here's a person. This is what they do. You want to learn about sort of the 360 ecosystem around people like us? Okay, we'll show you how to do it, but you don't have to. We're not telling anybody to do anything and you know we're not telling.
Speaker 2:I think one of the lessons that some people may or may not have learned from, like, the stuff that went on in the 60s is don't by pushing against something, you just increase the power of the thing. And so we don't do that. Like we could all week, every week, rant on and about show examples of ageism and all this is horrible and all that sort of stuff. Okay, fine, where's that going to get you? Nowhere. So what we do is we just say, hey, here's some positive examples. And you know, let's be a little aspirational about this. Let's be inspiring and let's take that point of view. And then you know we're not for everybody. You know some people are perfectly happy staying at home, eating donuts, drinking beer and dying. Okay, you want to do that? Sure.
Speaker 1:I like your approach. I don't know what led to this launch, but you like look. We want to give an alternative voice for people and you might choose or not. Take it or do it next right.
Speaker 2:I'm not playing God here. You can. It's your life, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1:But it's good that you make it available. I do feel when I shared with you right at the beginning I want to create Midlife Mastery as a platform where we offer information, where we offer inspiration, where we offer tools and stuff I mean some of the things you do, including a form of coaching or support and I said to you, what do people need? And he said, look, what they need is one thing, what they want is another. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that? On that is a wisdom here.
Speaker 2:What they need is a judgment on your part. You're going to get yourself into trouble. I'm just telling you what they want. Is them coming to you and saying I want this and giving people what they want? What we think they need is again us telling people what to do, so I personally shy away from that.
Speaker 1:Is there a specific life experience you had that made you?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't want somebody telling me what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't want somebody. It's interesting. You're very right. I hate being treated at any level. I'm very what my whole nervous system goes and defends the moment. I feel any sales agenda Right. So I used to and I feel it's the same here, right?
Speaker 2:Like if I, you know, I just contact you and I say listen, daniel, you're messed up, you need to do these five things today. And you know, okay, they may be factually true or not, but you know it's much better if I say hey, daniel, you know, these are some of the things that we've seen people enjoy doing. It seems to work out for them better, they seem to be happier and they live healthier. You know, have a look at them or not. And then it takes away. I used to study martial arts and you know, if you have two hands pushing against each other, nothing happens. But if there's no one pushing on the other side, it's much easier. Like we, just as you said, we're sort of naturally open to things and I think that that's just sort of how I like I approach things. I like I like to be more attractive and rather than prescriptive, nice.
Speaker 1:Very nice. What is, what's your background? What did you do before becoming the founder of Aegis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I come from a little farm town. I didn't really fit in. I went to engineering school because they told me I was dumb and I couldn't do it. And I knew I wasn't dumb and I did it. It was really hard but I didn't really want to be an engineer because it was just too much of a box and I'm like, too physical for that sort of kind of work.
Speaker 2:So I became a photographer and I had a lot of success of that really early, and my first ad in Vogue, I think it was about 24 or something. And then I was, I worked in Paris for the magazines and I worked in New York for a long time doing magazines and advertising, you know, at the sort of like the highest levels of that stuff. So I'd, you know, like Nike, american Express, like big, big stuff. And then when I was 56, I sort of that whole the economics of that world had changed dramatically because of digitalism, means of production and means of distribution changed and the economics of the magazine business like just were falling apart. And I gave me sort of a space to investigate this other thing and I did.
Speaker 2:So what I know from my previous career is that if you want to move the needle on something. You don't make a slogan and a refrigerator magnet like that's like a bumperster or something like whatever. It's just static. You need to tell story and people. That's how we learn as human beings, we learn from story, and most powerful part of story is the visual, is the picture. So you're, if you want somebody to read a story, show them a good picture first and then that's that's a good lead in to a story. So we are very tuned to both of those things in what we do.
Speaker 1:So this transition at 56, did you see the science coming and you jumped before they pushed you, or I was.
Speaker 2:Well, I just like I said, I just had there's like more time, so I wasn't working as much. So I mean previous to that, I was just like you know, paris, new York, la, tokyo.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. Sounds glamorous. Was it glamorous at times?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty good. It was all right. I like what I do now a lot more.
Speaker 1:Are you still traveling a lot? Are you doing speaking gigs? Are you an amateur?
Speaker 2:I just came back from Kuala Lumpur, which is so far away oh my God, 30 hours door to door.
Speaker 1:How is it even?
Speaker 2:possible. It's the other side of the earth from New York. It's like you shove a pencil through the earth. Yeah, that's it. That's where you end up. Yeah, it's just so far away. I don't do that often. It was sort of a special thing. So, okay, I'll go do this I. This is going to sound terrible. I don't like to travel. I don't mind being in a new place. I think that's kind of fun and I like meeting new people and learning new things. I find the to and fro to just be an incredible waste of time and the indignities of even if you've got a nice seat and it's a nice hotel.
Speaker 1:So you're still waiting for teleportation to finally become a new place.
Speaker 2:Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, star Trek beat me up Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly. This is as close as we're getting with these Zoom calls. Yeah, I used to travel for business every week and then it all stopped and I really didn't restart. You know I travel sometimes, but not as much. It's not fun anymore. I don't know. It just isn't my experience, and I loved being in other places too. I hate you. So more curiosity around around Agest and Co. What's the monetization model? Is there one monetization model? I didn't really see the big shit. I mean, how does it work?
Speaker 2:Well, so we do sort of two things. One is visible in one's, so the visible part is we have a publication. Our publication is free, and what we do is we work with brands to bring them to the attention of our people. We have a lot of credibility with our people. If a brand wants to work with us, there's a lot of hoops they got to jump through. They have to convince me that this thing works. We have to use it for a period of time. We if it's anything that has to do with like health, wellness we have a scientific board. It's got to get through them. So we there's a lot of people that want to work with us and it's like touching this thing, so so we do that. And then we also have a B2B business. So we do large scale quant research, quality research. We produce white papers, we produce content. We work with a lot of large Fortune 500 companies because we're we're able to do things really easily that they get themselves a little twisted up with and they find it really hard to.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me understand it. So is it you, using the database, you have to give other people the science or data from?
Speaker 2:It depends. So no, we don't like the information of people who are subscribers we don't share with anybody. That's a separate, silent thing. So if we're doing quantum research, the nature of quantum research is, for one thing, it has to be verified and it has to be specific and it's expensive. So you go to a data company and you say I want, you know, two or three thousand people, these are the parameters we need. We need this verified. It can't be just like survey monkey or some silly thing like that and you're like, okay, so this is the survey, we want you to ask these questions, and so we're very good at asking questions that indicate things around people's points of view. And then we take these and then we analyze the data and we say, okay, and I mean truthfully, these big companies come to me and they have a question and I can just three minutes, I can just tell them the answer.
Speaker 1:But then you need to validate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they want to spend like huge amounts of money to make sure I'm telling the truth and it's okay. Fine, I'm happy to take your money and that's what we do, and then we'll produce content from that. Sometimes that content is for someone's internal use, sometimes it's consumer facing. It sort of depends on what people need.
Speaker 1:So at the beginning I asked you what will be a benefit for you out of this interview and you just said to subscribe to the subscribe to our newsletter. So where should people go?
Speaker 2:Just AGISTcom, well if you go to AGISTcom there's a window or you can do AGISTcom slash newsletter. We started as a newsletter. It's really a weekly magazine. It's really Beautiful. Quite an endeavor, this thing. I mean it started out as just a text based newsletter to 50 of our friends, but it's nine years ago. It's a very different thing now.
Speaker 1:How many subscribers have you got? How many people are you using your newsletter?
Speaker 2:This is proprietary information. Okay, it's a very different thing I'd be proud to share. I can tell you it's global. Our main audience is, of course, the US. Our second biggest is UK. Third, I have a surprisingly vivid audience on the Gold Coast of Australia and then sort of all over the. I just spoke in Hong Kong and I have like super fans and they flew in from Bangkok and Korea and they wanted to meet me and talk to me and like I no idea.
Speaker 1:When I signed up for the newsletter I filled in also a questionnaire to group me in.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I love that. I thought it's super smart because, instead of saying here is lots of, it's a little bit like I'm vegan, Don't offer me the steak, right? So I'm open now according to your typology and I'm getting dolphin information which feels right. Right, I feel so seen. I'm like oh yeah, this is for me. It's very smart.
Speaker 2:Because people get, there's so much information and what happens and it's all you know. You can just paralyze yourself with all this contradictory information and everybody's different, and we sort of just simplified it into just like sort of three categories and you know, like if you're a dolphin, you know you're a little more easy going. You're not like somebody keeping track of the minutiae data of your life. It's not your thing, so why should?
Speaker 1:you know me now. You know now I've exposed myself to you.
Speaker 2:Well, like you're right, You're right, it helps, right. Why should I do that? You're just, you're not going to pay attention to it. It's going to make you feel bad. It's going to have you further paralyze. You know your whatever you're up to. But if you're somebody who's like you know, really into that stuff and there's nothing, there's no right or wrong. Here is what we tell people Like it's not right or wrong, it's just what's your orientation, Okay, great.
Speaker 1:So now let me talk to you in a language that's appropriate for where you're going and you're weaning the content into the weekly newsletter based on my needs. That's really power. So you have, in essence, multiple versions of your newsletter based on the segmentation in your database. That's super.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a project you know like. Then I got to make not one, I got to make three, or actually four, because they're uncategorized.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just wanted to say what about the people who did not volunteer to the data?
Speaker 2:Well then it's a report category Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean from the marketing I've done and I did it for 20 years professionally you know you're talking to the right people with the right language, operating them. Relevant information, relevancy is such a key. I want to talk to this confusion you spoke about. I'm part of a few communities now because I want to cast my net wide and learn what's going on in our in this area of interest, and I noticed some people really get themselves, drive themselves crazy trying to regulate their nervous system, for example, with so many conflicting protocols that their morning routine started 4am and finishes at 10. By that time they're exhausted enough to have a. I don't know. You know what I mean. The more you know, the more you're like what should I do, what do I not do? And it becomes so overwhelming what's your morning routine? I mean, have you got a?
Speaker 2:So I just want to speak to that a little bit. That is a particular personality type. Okay, and for that kind of personality type like I have, I have a, all right, so I have an Apple watch on, I sleep with a whoop like I keep tracking my stuff If you have that personality type, you should stay far, far away from this stuff. Just go for a walk, just keep it super simple. So your brain, because you're activating all the things that you want not to. So you know these things. We need to have some understanding of ourselves and sort of what we want to do here and how we work with it. So you know. To get back to your question, what do I do? Well, I'm a little off this week because the jet lag, but in general, so I live between. I'm in Manhattan today and then I live in the mountains in Park City, utah, about half the year.
Speaker 1:So sort of, that's the other side of the US really pretty much, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It's a two hour time shift and but people in Park City get up earlier. They got a bed earlier, people in York. So I sort of I don't really have to incur any time shift in my routine. You know in. You know we'll say, in Park City I'll get up around, you know, around 6.30 or something, depending on the season, whether it's summer or winter. In the winter I'm involved in ski race training, so I do that in the morning Soon, as summer, if I'm not doing that, I'll probably go to the gym. So it and I sort of I don't keep a really rigid routine. It sort of depends how I feel, what's going on, but I try, and in any given day there's going to be between an hour and two hours of intentional physical activity. Wow, so that could be, and in the winter it's more. It's more like four or five. I know it's really it's insane. I don't know why I do this.
Speaker 1:So, whatever it does to you, it definitely keeps you sprightly, if I sit, I'll work.
Speaker 2:It bruises my sleep. You know, I make sure one of the there are a couple of things I make sure I do in the morning so I force myself to put down, you know, something like 25 ounces of water. So it's sort of like forced watering. It's a lot of water, but I find if I don't immediately sort of rehydrate, I see it gets sort of cranky. My brain doesn't work as well. I try and move around a little bit. You know, here in New York we have these like giant windows and it looks out of the water and so the lights I get like bright light right away.
Speaker 2:When I'm in Park City I just step outside and I try and have five or 10 minutes in the morning and I just, you know, I just look at the birds and the trees and the sky and whatever, and or in the winter it's oftentimes dark, but I've got all my gear on and I go up to the mountain and that's kind of awesome too. You know, recently I told my team I don't want to, really I don't want to interact with anyone before noon. So I've been just sort of blocking my morning so that I can. I can rise and I can think and and do this sort of thing and I'll often in the building that I am in here in New York. I just take the elevator down to the gym and I'll do oftentimes here. I'll go to the gym twice a day, so I'll do like sort of a cardio thing in the morning and a strength thing in the afternoon and I go whole days. I don't leave my building.
Speaker 1:It's weird but it if you cut everything, what are you doing nutrition wise, Any anything? You've earned over the years. What do you do specifically that you're?
Speaker 2:like I, nutrition is a really personalized subject and I'm particularly trying to be non-prescriptive. So what you eat, I think, varies a lot about your activity level, your ambitions, what kind of activities you're doing and then how you personally process, absorb different kinds of food and everybody's really different on this. So I don't really subscribe to the vegan, keto, paleo, whatever. Right now I'm sort of forcing myself to have. I weigh 165 pounds, so I try and have a minimum of 160 grams of protein a day, which is a project to focus on that. But you seem quite tall, Are you quite tall?
Speaker 1:No, no, not really. I thought you'd be like a six foot. I'm about six feet. Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, and one of the zoom things. You never know how tall anybody is oh yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1:So yeah, on the diet. So I guess, what are you optimizing for? I mean just how you feel, or certain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think that you know there's a couple of things you want to. You want to get the energy mix right. So you want to make sure that you know calories in, calories out is in more or less in balance. If you want to lose weight, you go slight deficit. If you want to gain weight, you slightly above. But you sort of want to get that like. Whatever that is and that's. You can pretty easily determine that you know like you're getting fatter, you're getting skinny. Then you know the next thing is what's the like?
Speaker 2:I'm a little more scientific about it. So it's what's the macro composition? So how many grams of protein you're getting a day. So I try and keep the protein and the fat about. Even so you know there's like 160 grams of protein, a ton of protein, and you know like something like 35, 40 grams of fat. I get most of my fat from olive oil and then the rest of it is carbohydrate and the carbohydrate sort of varies depending on what I'm doing that day. So if I have two hours of I'm intentional exercise, that's, I burn off a lot of fuel. Protein and fat aren't really you know, you can use them for fuel, but so I eat a lot of sweet potatoes, things like that, and then a lot of green stuff. So I, you know, in the morning I'll have, I think, for breakfast I probably have I don't know eight, 10 different kinds of like plant matter that I eat, and it's still like the variety is good.
Speaker 1:Those sounds very intentional. Your life sounds very intentional, it is. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's this level of awareness and luxury that you grant yourself that you like. You know I want to do the best, I know right.
Speaker 2:But that's just like I'm an owl, so I just wanted to.
Speaker 1:I wanted to say look, I'm an owl, you're not a dolphin, clearly.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not a dolphin. So what I do works for me and I don't advocate that other people do what I do.
Speaker 1:But I think it's such a key, david, I mean this typology that you do. You create it or is it based on something else? Or you just I like it, I really like it, because it would save so much confusion when people, if I try to do what you do, it would be so unnatural, it'd make you crazy. Yes.
Speaker 2:Even just talking about it, and for me to live the way you do, I would just yeah, no, yeah, it wouldn't make you a latch. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I like that. I want to come back to ages, running it for nine years. Well, what's one of the fondest or most vivid moments? And come up right now, a success, a celebration, some pivotal moment where you're like, oh wow, this has been worth what, what, what? What shows up?
Speaker 2:You know, whenever I I love events, I love speaking. We did ages, did an in-person event before COVID. It was not, it was like 300 people. It wasn't really big. It was like super emotional for me that there were these 300 people that came together and they were so lit up because there were 300 people like them in the room. They never had that before. That was pretty great. And then I really, like you know, speaking in front of these, you know these big conferences and you know there's one kind of impact that we have with our publication and our newsletter and our podcast.
Speaker 2:Mostly those people are like-minded, so they're, they're sort of already aligned with us and that's why they're there. They want affirmation of you, know what they're doing, they want to learn more about this. When you speak at, you know, a big finance company or insurance company or anything like that, they're not. I mean, maybe some of them are, but as a whole they're not. And so when I come bouncing out there and I say, hey, I'm 65, this is what I do and then I start showing pictures of people, like you know, I always show that. I show like a Google slide or Google search slide, show me old people, and they're all sort of like old and decrepit. And then I show like a page, a sheet of ages covers, and I said, nope, this is what it looks like and they're just like. It's like shocking to them. They don't. Most people don't understand that there's an alternative. It's just sort of like oh, there's this sort of grim decay and I just got to suck it up and this sucks.
Speaker 1:But but this is math. No, sis, right, I mean, we keep perpetuating. And it also changed. I remember my father's father at age 60, he was old, he lived, he was hunched over with a little stick and he died. He was his life and then he died Right. So that did change. But I so what is the title of your talk? If you talk, how come you get invited to a large finance? What do you need to do that? Inspire them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started all of that. I think that you know sort of my unique product offering is that I got a lot of information. Like you want to know how to do this, I can show you exactly how to do this. These are the five things you got to do.
Speaker 2:If you're not doing any one of these things, this is not going to work. You know, and we can dive into the minutia of each one of those as much as you want, but I can I also tell people like this is not about where you were. This is about where you are and what you can become, and it's much bigger and broader than you can ever imagine. And don't believe the hype that, like you know, at whatever age it's over, it's over. If you want it to be over, I mean, I don't have no problem with that If that's what you want to do and it's, as you know, use the word intentional to do these sort of things.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're 25, you can just whatever you know, you can just pizza and beer, and this doesn't really matter when you're 65, it matters. And so you have to be somewhat intentional about this. You have to think about what you're doing, what you know, I tell people I just do this finance thing so I say okay, if you exercise and you eat this way, this will pay you dividends going forward. If you don't exercise and you eat this other way, you're going to be paying interest on this. So you know, it's up to you. Whatever you want to do, and I it's. I am really physical guy and so very often just me bouncing out of my sneakers and I just like, hey, let's talk about a number, I'm 65. Whatever you make it, and just the mouths open. They're like how?
Speaker 1:is that possible?
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about what I did last night. Let's talk about what you did last night. That's how that happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's important to understand it doesn't. It doesn't happen in a vacuum, right, there is a meeting up to this. Yeah, I really, I really I understand much more of what you do now, David. So I like your approach, though, that you don't want to tell them. You just say, look, I don't care what you do, but my data tells me there are two trajectories, and you can start to decide in which direction you want to go. No guarantees, but increase the odds. You know I have some stuff that can increase the odds.
Speaker 2:And it's hard. I mean, that's the other thing I tell people like you. One of my favorite profiles I ever did was Joan McDonald and we met Joan. She's a big star now, but it was like four or five years ago and when Joan was 70, her daughter, michelle, who was a trainer, came to Joan and Joan at that point and it was like 220 pounds, blood pressure meds. I mean she was like going downhill really fast and Michelle said okay, mom, this is how this is gonna go. You either continue doing what you're doing and I'm out because you're gonna spend the last 10 years of your life in a hospital hooked up to tubes. I don't want anything to do with this, we're done or you come with me, I'm gonna train you and things are gonna change.
Speaker 2:And so I think I met Joan at 70, I think she was like 72 or 73. She was at 130 pounds and she can do 10 dead hang pull ups with a 25 pound weight. So I'm pretty strong and that's hard and but it's very intentional. This was not easy for her to do. You know, this is a lot of change of diet, change of lifestyle, all of this. And I pointed out to people, especially women, and I say, okay, don't tell me it's impossible. You can tell me you don't wanna do it, but don't tell me you can't do it, I can't. It's a trade off, it's hard, I'm not. You're just not gonna wake up one day and this is I like you, honestly right.
Speaker 1:Don't tell me can't be done. Tell me you don't wanna do it, I'm fine. You don't wanna do it? You don't wanna do it, great. But if you wanna do it, I was all right. I don't have a problem with that. You know, in this particular story, her daughter putting the emotional leverage on and saying, hey, mom, here's how we're gonna go, and I think that's it needs to be done. It needs that wake up call, right, because it's very easy to just I mean, I mean, you've seen people change. You've seen people not change, oh yeah. And you try to inspire them, or you try to tell them here is the you know shock, and you're like in a Bible, right, don't do this, do that, it will give you some where we're gonna end. What do you think really helps people make that change, that consciousness? I mean, mom, are you?
Speaker 2:inspired. Well, I think everybody, each one of us, all day long, we're doing calculations, we're doing an ROI, so what's my return on investment Interesting? We say to ourselves every single action we take. We say to ourselves, well you know, will this work for me? So that's sort of the first thing to understand is yes, this will work for you. Most people don't believe that. They, the vast majority of people, do not believe that if you change your diet, you start learning how to sleep and you exercise and things will change. They don't believe that. So that's sort of the first thing. And the way you overcome that is you show, you just say, well, here's Joan, joan was a housewife, she was a Bob, she was gonna die. And this is Joan now, yeah, and they'll be like, oh well, she's really special. I said, well, here's another 400 people.
Speaker 1:Like they're just normal, literally. So you're slowly crossing out a list of excuses until they have to say either okay, I don't wanna do it, yeah, so well, I think it's great if you get them to that point at least to tell of honesty. It's not anymore an excuse story or a victim story.
Speaker 2:It's like I make a choice now because so then the next question now the harder thing to overcome is I don't deserve this. So that's much harder. So I'm not, I don't go there. You know I tell people, well, you probably do, and you know why do you think you don't? But that's sort of a bigger thing. But those are sort of the two big impediments. Either this will not work for me. This, you know I've done the ROI. It doesn't. I don't get the return I want, and you know it's usually well, I went to the gym for five days and nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, wow, so you're talking. It's belief or self-belief, right? I mean the number one. You can help with proof, you can help with examples. Number two it might need some therapy and some deeper digging. You know how come you don't? Yeah, gary, though, because you're almost, you, almost I'm hearing the other side too, People punishing themselves with sickness because they don't feel they deserve a long head prosprous light, right, and I'm no analyst, I don't know, but it feels like it, right.
Speaker 2:And then right and it comes across as I just want to enjoy my life. I want to do, you know, I want to do what I want. I want to eat Doritos, because that's how I enjoy my life. And you know, okay, you're committing suicide.
Speaker 1:I think that's very early. I mean, as a kid, you definitely don't get rewarded with an avocado, right? You've done well. Here is some wonderful food for you, right? So I think we, even today, as I'm going to say, I'm going to treat myself, meaning I do something I know isn't good for me. I mean what a mismatch. I mean, how do, how do, how do we get that wired in our brain that we believe that right?
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, that's not my. I just say here's where we've added this other item to your menu. You can choose this item or not, Totally up to you.
Speaker 1:I really like that approach and you're right From the beginning. I don't want to be preached to, not more than any other guy, so let's not move into this role of a prequel, because all you're going to get is pushback Coming back. You said three things Learn to sleep.
Speaker 2:There are really five things. So these are the five tenets of super-aging, and again you're getting to the mate of it. Well, it's not particularly your original thinking on our part, we just sort of put it together. The first thing is you've got to learn how to sleep. If you're not sleeping, figure it out. So there's like a lot of obvious now. If you're caffeine sensitive, pay attention to that. Don't drink alcohol before you go to bed. You're going to wake up two hours later. Don't do that.
Speaker 2:Think, understand the relationship between what you eat when you eat, how much you sleep, and if you can't, if you're still not sleeping, get yourself a sleep coach that can teach you how to sleep. So I mean, my sleep is sacred. I track my sleep. I wear these things called Bose sleep buds every night. They just play a little music to me. I wear a sleep mask every night. I take a little magnesium before I go to sleep. I'm careful with I don't drink a gallon of water before I go to bed, because I'm going to be up all night Now and I just sort of for me anyway, it's not hard, but it is hard for some people.
Speaker 2:Mostly sleep is about I tell people don't crash the plane. You're trying to crash the plane. It doesn't work. You need to. The plane is your brain and you need to slowly ramp that down. If you think it's a switch, it's not. You're going to wake up two hours later ruminating about something or other. So sort of figure that out. If you can't figure it out yourself, hire somebody who can. Who can, because nothing works. If you're not sleeping, nothing else, I'm going to tell you, is going to work.
Speaker 1:So this is literally your pillar number one or five you have to sleep.
Speaker 2:All kinds of bad things happen if you don't, if you're not sleeping. Well, tons of data on that You're going to get, you're going to get fat, you're going to you're going to be looking at Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, heart disease, all kinds of things, and you're just going to be dumb. So you know, go to sleep.
Speaker 1:Clear message here. Okay, Number two, number two David.
Speaker 2:So you know. Number two what are you eating? Figure that out. As I said earlier, I don't I'm not prescriptive on that. I know people who are vegan athletes and that works really well for them. I know people that are, like you know, like basically full on carnivores and their blood work is perfect. It's you know. Again, it requires taking responsibility for who you are and what goes into your mouth. I didn't put the Twinkie in your mouth, you did. So you know this is fully in your control. Yeah, it's not an act of God.
Speaker 2:The next thing is how are you moving? So you know, any kind of movement is better than no movement. So if you're not, if you're really sedentary, do an hour of intentional walk a day. People are like, oh, I can't do that. You can go for a walk with your friends, you can talk, you can listen to podcasts. You know, just figure it out. Just that going from nothing to just that is like an enormous increase in mortality outcomes. So, and then you know you want to sort of layer on eventually, figure out your aerobic stuff. You want to definitely be doing strength training.
Speaker 2:We lose somewhere between 3 and 5% of our muscle mass every decade. You get the worst. As you get older Between 60 and 70, if you're not doing something about it, you lose 50% of your muscle mass. Wow, that you fall, break a hip, you're going to be dead in a year. Not everyone, but a lot of people will be. So you know, pay attention to that, pick up heavy shit and, ladies, you are not going to turn into Godzilla. It is not, unless you're taking serious anabolic steroids not going to happen. So you know, that's a movement.
Speaker 2:Number four how are you managing your stress? So stress is unavoidable. It is all around us, is the nature of being a human. However, we have the option to manage it. So what are you doing? You know some people do meditation, some people do breath work, some people do walking in nature, some people go bowling with their friends. You know, whatever my suggestion is, get yourself a routine that is locked in, because bad shit is going to happen to you. I guarantee it. Nobody makes it through life with that bad stuff happening.
Speaker 2:And if you have some kind of stress management system there, let's see. I don't even really like using that word system, but something that you do, that you know, that you can self-downregulate is key. So chronic stress enormously bad for your long-term health. Acute stress is good, so, like lifting weight, acute stress good. Learning a language Acute stress good. Chronic stress bad, not good, yes, no good.
Speaker 2:So and the last thing is this sense of connection, and I take connection sort of a big way, so connection to other people, connection to something greater than you, you know, be that God, religion, spirit of the universe, something, and connection to, like, your purpose in life. What are you doing? So you sort of want all of that stuff and if you pull one of those legs out of the stool, the other ones aren't going to work as well. So you do all that stuff and you're living on donuts Not so good, you know. You do all that stuff and you're not leaving your apartment Not so good. So you just sort of want to think about these things. And for people, what I tell people is sort of like look at these five things and just say to yourself which one do I? Am I the worst at so level that one? Stop that, yeah, figure out what that is. Just improve that one thing and maybe just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, that was really valuable and I know that on your website there will be tons of data on those five pillars, those five areas and science. People need it. But I think it's what I like about your let's call it your teaching or your toolkit it is self-evident and it's fairly logical and obvious, which doesn't mean it's common. Common sense isn't very common, as Tony Robbins pointed out. 30 years ago, 40 years ago, you spoke about legacy. No, you didn't. You spoke about meaning purposeful. What is it you feel your legacy will be? I mean, you work in this. You want to live a long and healthy life and demonstrate that we have a billion in a matter of how we show up.
Speaker 2:I'm not one of those people that's super focused on legacy. I mean some people. This is really important for them. I'm not.
Speaker 1:I think, is it then contribution or having fun while you do it? I mean, what drives you?
Speaker 2:It's usefulness I mean for me. I tell people this whole idea of a living longer and healthier. This is not about putting numbers up on the board. It's about being strong so you can be useful. That is the point. You need to be useful. I want you to be as strong as possible. Strong means physically strong, emotionally strong, mentally strong, learning strong, financially strong all of these things. The stronger you are, the more useful you can be, the more impactful you can be. The weaker you are, the more people are going to help you.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be on that side of the equation. I want to be on the other side of the equation. For me personally, what motivates me is to become the Maslow South Alkstilization. I want to become the best version of me that I can. I feel like I've given this thing. Okay. Now what am I going to do with it? I have to make it the best that I can. The amount of people I impact now, versus when I was a big time photographer I did a lot of big stuff the impact I have now is like a orders of magnitude greater than what I used to do.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating because you started pretty much my age right. I'm 57. Your new venture started at age 56. Did you imagine it would grow to that or did it just get started because it felt right?
Speaker 2:I had no idea.
Speaker 1:But you felt it was. It lit you up, it excited you, it made you happy. It was just like curious to me.
Speaker 2:There's a huge opportunity here. There's just all this other dumb crap over here, and then there's nothing.
Speaker 1:I like your matter of factness, it's just better. Very good, david, we're almost an hour and I've never done such a long episode. I really inflow with you. I love it. If you had to, you shared some nuggets, some wisdom here and there. But let's say, somebody makes it all the way to the end of this wonderful podcast. What would be a? And it might not land with you because you don't like advice giving. I can tell already what would we want piece of advice you give somebody who is struggling with midlife, with these transitions, and I don't know where to turn. I mean, is there something you would like to share?
Speaker 2:Okay, for you, we will do this. Number one I don't want to see you white space on your calendar. I don't want to see any white space. I don't want you around navel gazing thinking about your future. No, I want you doing things. I want you filling up that calendar. I want to. I don't see any blocks of any time in there. I want it filled up.
Speaker 2:You're, you're helping people, you're meeting with friends, you're exercising, you're doing all these things. You are not stuck sitting where I'll tell you what I really dislike. You're all these programs about. You know, follow your passion. No, this is idiocy. Your passion is going to change day to day.
Speaker 2:All this navel gazing this is BS. Be useful. Go out there and do shit. You've been alive for long enough. You have skills. There are things you know. Activate them. Help other people.
Speaker 2:Second thing is get your body in shape. This everything rests on your physicality. If you do not have your physicality, you cannot be useful. You cannot act on any of these stuff.
Speaker 2:This is not that hard, and I think that you know people. Every once in a while, somebody will come to me and they'll be like Well, I'm a this that I don't know what to do, and maybe I should, you know, become a yoga teacher or some kind of? Okay you get, you're gonna be a public support, okay, fine, you want that? Okay, great, you know. I think that you know you and I know some other people in the space and I take a very different approach. I'm much more hard ass about this. Stop thinking about yourself. This is not about you. This is about who you can help. It's about everything around you, and if you keep focusing on yourself, you're just going to get lost in a maze. You know. Don't do that. You know to the extent. Think about yourself, those five things I told you to do. Get that wired in. Okay, great.
Speaker 2:Now go out into the world. Are you helping your neighbor take your trash out? Are you helping the kid? Are you tutoring the kid down the block because he's having trouble with math? Are you going to go out there and start? You know some kind of a company that's going to address some kind of problem, like, do it. And these things compound and they add on top of each other. So the first time you do something like this, whatever it is, ever small it is, it's going to be really hard and shocking to you and then you say oh, I survived. Oh well, what else can I do? Well, I can tell you a lot more than what you're thinking. Wow, there you go.
Speaker 1:I would never bowed. I'm just thinking shit, it was my coach, I I'd be.
Speaker 2:You don't want to use your coach.
Speaker 1:Tough, no, seriously Tough, low Good stuff, but meaning it from a you know, come to a good place, but no bullshit, no you know, come to me with a problem.
Speaker 2:If somebody comes to me and they really want to know, what do I think that's what I'm going to tell them.
Speaker 1:That's great. No, you, I really I felt a lot of very clear directive energy from this David and it's been a real pleasure talking to you. Got a lot of it out. Personally, I really hope that one day we'll meet. Maybe I'll be at your next live event, at your live conference. Maybe I'll make it to be one of your covers when I'm 70 bucks? Yeah, that would be amazing. Hey, listen, anything else you want to share?
Speaker 2:I think I might have said it earlier it's not about where you've been. It's about who you are and who you can become and expand your imagination. Your greatest limitation is your poverty of imagination of what you can do. It's greater than what you're thinking, wow.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, mr David Stewart. Thank you very much, much later.