I’ve connected with Carl Honoré before but we’ve never met in person. We share the fact that we have been lucky enough to be on the TED stage twice and we’re both fascinated by the topic of aging. As profiled recently in AGEIST magazine, Carl knows a thing or two about aging boldly; he wrote a book on it. I’m so excited that we will be co-leading an MEA Mastery Week Jan 31-Feb 5 called “Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives.”
Here are his simple 12 rules for living a bold life.
- Keep on learning and experimenting. The adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks isn’t even true of dogs. Novelty keeps you energized and engaged.
- Cultivate strong relationships.
- Draw inspiration from role models. Think Helen Mirren, David Attenborough or even Michelangelo, who rebuilt St Peter’s Basilica in his 80s.
- Keep your brain and body fit by exercising and eating right.
- Channel Marie Kondo. If something – a job, a friendship, etc – no longer sparks joy, drop it. Streamline to make every moment count.
- Find a purpose that puts meaning in your life and fire in your belly.
- Be honest about your age. Lying gives the number a power it does not deserve – and reinforces the myth that younger is always better. Owning your age is the first step to making the most of it.
- Remain flexible and open to change, growth and evolution. As Lao Tzu put it: “Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.”
- Ignore the doom-mongers who say sex, love and romance belong to the young: they do not. Make room for all three however old you are, if that’s what you fancy.
- If you think growing older will be bad, it will be bad. Be positive and focus on the upsides of aging: feeling more at ease in your own skin, deeper relationships, more happiness, altruism, creativity, knowledge, experience.
- Cultivate a sense of humour. Laughing boosts health and longevity. As George Bernard Shaw put it: “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”
- Think about death. Don’t dwell morbidly on it, but don’t shy away from it, either. An awareness that time is finite gives life shape and meaning – and spurs you to make the most of here and now.
We’re going to have a fabulous time in mid-winter when the whales are breaching and the sea turtles are hatching right in front of our beachfront campus. This workshop will sell-out soon so better to apply now before you get too distracted with the holidays.
P.S. You’ll recall a recent post in which I asked you to make recommendations of how to describe a group of Modern Elders. We got 245 entries from all over the world. Below, you’ll see a visual diagram of all the entries with those that were more resonant or most mentioned larger. I particularly appreciate Andrea Quagliata’s suggestion of a “converse.” I like it because Andrea’s description was so compelling.
“As both a verb and a noun, converse emphasizes both the idea of engagement and the action of it. Also it’s just a little unexpected, in the sense that it’s not commonly used as a noun and so its use elevates the notion of dialogue, creates kind of a rarefied air while still being approachable due to its vernacular definition (nothing more democratic than a conversation). For me it also conjures images of tribal gatherings around the fire.”
