This book is rich, inspiring and full of practical and soulful advice on living long and well. Robbins is a powerful buster of negative ideas about aging.
I differ with Robbins on some aspects of his dietary suggestions - he is committed to a low fat, nearly vegetarian approach and I personally feel much better eating plenty of good fats and fish, pasture raised poultry and meats, along with lots of vegetables. I complete agree with him that our Standard American Diet (SAD) and our Standard American Lifestyle (of high stress, isolation and low physical activity) are toxic to our health and dramatically increase the negative aspects of aging.
Robbins begins with a wonderful introduction of “A new vision of aging that can help you live years longer” and expands into:
Part 1: The World’s Healthiest Living People
Part 2: Our Food, Our Lives
Part 3: The Body-Mind Connection
Part 4: Why Your Love Matters
Part 5: The Human Spirit
A few of my favorite quotes:
“ Throughout the industrialized world, people are living longer, but they are getting sick sooner, so the number of years they spend chronically ill is actually increasing in both directions.”
“It is within your grasp to realize the opportunities for beauty, love and fulfillment that occur at every age of your life. It is possible to live your whole life with a commitment to your highest good.”
“Ageism represents a prejudice against a group of people that all people will inevitably join if they lie long enough. As a result, an ideology that equates aging with deterioration steals hope from everyone, and at every stage of their lives.”
“I have been blessed to know many men and women who when they reach the age of fifty or sixty, begin to free themselves from cultural constraints and to express themselves in ways they had not dared to do before. They become less defined by what others think of them and more by what they think of themselves. Increasingly freed from the burden of having to fulfill other people’s expectations, their lives start to reflect a new kind of willingness to be exactly who they are… They become more alive.
This last quote beautifully expresses what I see as one of the juicy invitations from the second half of life: To break free of earlier limitations and to expand into bright new possibilities.