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LifeloggingI am Apollo Lemmon and this is my lifestream. I invite you to join me in my exploration of an integral life. I am focused on discovering what it means to live a life rooted in integral consciousness and I explore spirituality, art, community, technology, fitness and other aspects of a fully engaged life. I am now living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
I can always be reached at apollo@apollolemmon.com
Our future promises technologies that will radically extend our lives, but right now there are tested methods for living long, exciting and healthy lives, even beyond 100 years. Dan Buettner has studied the world’s best aged people and found the lifestyle features that they have in common, creating a set of guidelines for living better and longer.
In a recently released TED Talk, “How to live to be 100+“, Dan outlined how he conducted his study by visiting regions of the world with higher rates of centenarians and noting what these communities have in common. He dispelled some longevity myths at the start and then laid out some of the key features shared by each long-lived community.
National Geographic writer and explorer Dan Buettner studies the world’s longest-lived peoples, distilling their secrets into a single plan for health and long life.
~ TED: “How to live to be 100+”
Some key points to take away from the talk:
Right Outlook – Know and be able to articulate your sense of purpose, and ensure your day is punctuated with periods of calm.
Eat Wisely – Instead of groping from fad diet to fad diets, use time-honored strategies for eating 20% less at meals. Avoid meat and processed food and drink a couple of glasses of wine daily.
Belong to the Right Tribe – Surround yourself with the right people, make the effort to connect or reconnect with your religion and put loved ones first.
Dan has published the book Blue Zones to present his findings and launched the Blue Zones website. There’s a lot of very practical advice scattered throughout the website and, though I haven’t read it yet, I suspect the book is just as useful.
One feature of the website that I was impressed with was the Vitality Compass, a quick assessment of lifestyles that gives personalized recommendations for living better. It must be taken with a grain of salt and an unusual degree of honesty, but it seems to be a useful tool.
Much of what Dan presents in this work serves as validation for a lot of things we have already known to greatly increase health. What is most valuable in this work is that it gives us a framework that combines these scientific and folk insights and says unequivocally that this is how we should live if we want healthy and rewarding lives.
What will I take away from this and add to ways I am reshaping my life? I think I’ll likely start drinking wine more than just a couple times a year.
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