Ben Greenfield: 70% Of Longevity Is Free! The Simple Daily Habits That Keep You Young

And

that's the part I want to dive in deeper.

It reminds me, I was having dinner with Gary Brekker about a year ago.

We were at the house of this Sheikh in Dubai.

They were sponsoring this dinner for Gary Brekker.

And Gary was answering questions and someone asked him, what's the real secret to longevity? There are so many products and services out there.

And Gary said, listen, it's just two things, faith and community.

And the way you live life seems that you have a somewhat similar view.

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, there are subtle nuances, right? You could probably have a couple shots of whiskey when you wake up for breakfast and chain smoke cigarettes and have plenty of community and friends and faith, and you might not live a long time.

But the idea that once you isolate from most confounding variables, including fitness, diet, et cetera, the quality and volume of love and relationships in your life still trumps everything.

I mean, that's Harvard's longest running study on longevity.

The very happy

people study.

Right, exactly.

So why is that? Well, I think there's a certain deal of spiritual fulfillment, purpose, and meaning that comes from filling what many ancient philosophers would call the eternal hole in the soul with something that is truly eternal.

Muscles and cars and money and houses and sex and fashion and all of these things that we tend to pursue that even go beyond Maslow's hierarchy.

are finite, right? They aren't lasting, right? The nicest car on the planet is going to be rusty in 100 years.

And even if you do manage to live to 120, you're going to have some plaque in your brain and porous bones and stringy muscle, and you're going to be able to dunk a basketball.

There's all these things that you will eventually learn fall away.

And yet, if you look at the one part of you that arguably, and this will vary occasionally depending on your religious or faith-based beliefs, the one part of you that will go on to exist for eternity or the one part of you that actually is eternal is your soul your spirit and so if if you're going to to build that fitness it would involve having something in your life that is eternal and in my book that's connection to people and connection to god right like those are the two only eternal things in our lives that i can think of that are just basically immortal, sometimes untouchable, unfeelable, the idea of a spirit or a soul or a higher being.

And yet it's those things that seem to produce the highest amount of purpose and fulfillment and longevity in people.

So if you look at longevity, okay, let's say longevity on a scale of zero to 100.

How much of that scale, zero to 100, is something that we can influence based on supplements and devices, and how much is just the way we live our life without having to spend money on anything else other than our connection to people and our connection to our mind and our body.

Yeah, obviously