Ageless: happy brain, longer life

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today, you are the youngest you'll ever be. Right now, today, this moment, this second, this place

and time, you are the youngest you'll ever be. And that's really exciting, so what are you going to do to celebrate that?

When I was a teenager, I got arrested for trying to steal a cop car. And it was definitely a huge turning point

because it was at that moment that I needed to decide whether I was going to continue to go down that path

or I was going to create a new life. We don't always need to know where we're going.

We just need to go, and that's OK. And I think that was the biggest lesson I learned in my life was

that sometimes even if I can't see where I'm going

or what's at the end of this road, that it's going to be OK. How do we allow ourselves to fully immerse ourselves

into who we are and who we are becoming? Instead of every year that goes by,

we get this anxiety and stress over how we're getting older instead of being excited about, OK,

I'm wiser now. I don't want to be the person I was in my 30s. I don't want to be the person I was in my 20s.

I want to be the person that I am now, and all I can do is hope that when I am in my 50s and 60s,

I continue to integrate into this person. Into this human more and more and be a better person.

People are going to always have an opinion about what makes your heart sing, and that's OK.

But you have to make your own inner voice louder than theirs, and that's always going to be the key to success.

My one tip to age less is to worry less.

There's some interesting emerging research around anxiety and aging. So, for example, people, as they age, especially in midlife,

there tends to be a peak of generalized anxiety disorder. That's where it's most prevalent is in middle life.

Another link that's been started to be identified is that there can be a link between anxiety

and the development of Alzheimer's dementia. And so, that anxiety seems to activate

a certain part of the brain called the Default Mode Network, and when that part of the brain is overactive, that has been associated with Alzheimer's disease.

So I mention this because it can be very, very helpful to notice when we're getting caught up in anxiety now.

And maybe even start to think of working with our own anxiety as a preventative measure so that we're less likely to develop dementia down the road.

My advice to my younger self. My health advice to my younger self.

Sleep more because it has such a huge effect on your mood. There are many reasons why it's

been tough to reconnect with your body, and you've felt uncomfortable and unsafe and maybe

ashamed in your skin. As you heal, remember to not only heal your thoughts and your mind but also

bring your body into your healing and self-development. Learn to listen and understand the story that you carry

and how you store your stress and anxiety and even your trauma so that you can learn

how to process and express and release and feel free to inhabit who you are fully.

As we age, I think it's really important for us to state that regardless of your age and at any age,

we all deserve the opportunity to live to our highest potential and to our full potential.

What advice do you have as we age in terms of how we need to pay attention to our mental health?

We should never excuse aging as a process to accept less, not for our health or our mental health.

But also using age as a welcome tool in which we have learned different skills in which to cope

and most likely cope better with our mental health concerns. Using that to also question, have we always

been coping appropriately? And are there things that I should be changing because it has not worked over the years for me?

So paying attention to the little things and to the big things as well. But at the baseline, knowing that once there

is a reduction in how we cope with stress, how our physical and emotional health is changing, our key is to say we

need to pay better attention to our mental health. And then seek help with the explanation that it's regardless of age that we

choose to be in our best physical and emotional health and well-being space. What's the interface between mental health and teaching

in your opinion? As you get older, your body doesn't move [LAUGHING] like it normally would. So that makes you think about as you

get older what things that you used to could do, so you may grieve those particular things,

or you may think about death a little bit more. As you have kids and they get older, or you have grandchildren, you start

to understand that we can't live forever. So that can definitely play a major role into the way you look at life.

You may get anxious about those particular things or some people may even get depressed about those things. But then also, when we age, we look

at the world completely different because of our different experiences. And we understand different aspects of ourselves,

which makes even as you age, you may not hang around the same people that you used to hang with,

or you may need other things to fulfill your life than you did when you were younger. So all of these different things can be stressors on you

but then also understanding how to cope with those particular things and understanding what do you need to do differently to be able to address those issues.

You're my best buddy. How did you meet Nonnie?

Do you remember? The neighborhood, and she's my fake grandma. [LAUGHING] I'm the fake grandma. We are like a big family.

My daughter lives next door to me. Both of our yards meet their yard. We didn't know who's these people moving in, and the first time we met them, that was it.

Now, we're just one big-- we have three yards and one big family. [LAUGHING]

How long are you? Nonnie is going to be 80 years old. Nonnie is old.

How old do you feel? Well, sometimes my body feels old, most of the time,

it feels pretty good. So it feels kind of young. Not as young as you.

What's your biggest adventure you've been? My biggest adventure was to get on a big boat

and come to America. Were you a pirate? [LAUGHING] No. I was not a pirate.

[LAUGHING] What advice do you have for me?

To be a good boy. To be a good student. I know you're very smart and enjoy life which I know you do.

Big time. Big time enjoy. [KISS] I like to focus on the positive and not the negative.

I'm always like a day ahead of everything, and I'm a very positive person, and I think

that's what keeps me going. I've had a lot of heartaches through the years, but you get over it. You don't get over it, but you make the best

that you can and always stay positive, and I tell that to everybody. I tell my children. I tell my grandchildren.

Positive is the best medicine that anybody could have and makes everything good.

Bye. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING]