Some tips from science and experience on ways to live better, and longer:

1. Laugh often, at yourself, and if necessary, at others, since they do the same silly and dumb things we do. We’re all in this together.

2. Don’t smoke. Really.

3. Get some sort of regular, moderate exercise, and try to include some muscle building activities.

4. Put family and friends first. They are, after all, your shelter against life’s major storms.

5. Drink red wine (1-2 glasses per day).

6. Have a reason to get up in the morning. Purpose in life sustains us. Research on the concept of “retirement” confirms this.

7. Do most things in moderation. Exercise by itself is healthy, but overdoing it can be extremely unhealthy. Eat whatever you want, but in moderation, and stop prior to feeling full.
8. Get regular sunshine, which provides Vitamin D, and most of us are deficient in this vitamin.

9. Fight a good fight, and then let it go. Chronic worrying and stress are toxic.

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"And now, coming in to pitch is Mike Moore, who is six-foot-one and 212 years old"

Herb Score, famous MLB pitcher and sportscaster

A funny thing happens on the road to happiness. Obstacles appear. Most are of the known sort-chronic self-doubt, anxiety, trouble in relationships that we refuse to address or fix, and bad habits that we have gotten into over time. These obstacles slow us down, and on occasion, stop us in our tracks. And then we curse ourselves for being human.

A funny thing happens, also, when the crazy and unpredictable enters our lives. Events transpire at exactly the wrong times, and the wrong people enter our lives. Dumb luck sits on our doorsteps, much like the annoying vacuum salesmen who want to soil your carpet at dinnertime and spend an hour cleaning it up. Natural disasters, on a large or small, and personal, scale, occur, and without warning. So we curse our fates.

A funny thing happens, finally, when we accept our realities as they are instead of how we would like them to be. No life is lived perfectly, and none of us that have lived for very long escape without battle wounds or scars of some sort. Some are more obvious, while others are more inconspicuous. However, when we stop fighting and battling at every turn, and when we learn that we are stronger than our insecurities would have us believe, we adjust and move forward more quickly. The clamoring voices in our head release their grip on us, and our notion of what is important in life, and what we are meant to do with the time given to us, becomes crystal clear.

And then, we live.

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