Three Ways to Boost your Longevity (and Live Forever)

Regardless of rationales, it seems everyone would like to age gracefully and live well, if not forever. The movie includes plenty of practical tips for, as Marianne Williamson puts it, “re-firing, not retiring.” Check out these three surefire ways to boost your longevity:

1. Follow the fun

A recurring theme of the movie explores the Japanese concept of ikigai, which loosely translates as the “reason to get up in the morning.” Your ikigai can be whatever works for you, be it fishing, dancing, food or travel. As long as it puts a little friskiness in your step, your passions keep you positive, engaged and vital. Cultivating your personal mojo is one of the best ways to defeat the slack jaw maw of decrepitude.

And passion alone is not enough. Wexler visits the founder of laughter yoga, Madan Kataria. We find out that kids laugh, on average, 400 times a day, while adults a mere 20. With each chuckle bringing more oxygen to the brain, adults would do well to emulate more of the silliness of their scions. 

2. Move it or lose it

Wexler makes a point of stressing the value of exercise—in one of the movie’s most animated scenes, he interviews Jack LaLanne himself. But he takes it a step further by raising the notion of cognitive fitness. At a brain gym, Wexler fails miserably, but leaves conceding he may be a little sharper for it.

Wexler also explores the counterargument to his moving and shaking theory—that observing a Sabbath, secular or otherwise, might also be of merit. The lost art of extreme relaxation scores favorably as a strategy for stopping time in its tracks.