***Making Living Longer a Goal

Living your life as if you are going to live a very long time helps you live longer. It also increases the likelihood your of being happier your whole life.

An East Sussex man recently obtained a 25-year mortgage on a $400,000 rental property. The UPI article doesn’t sound remarkable until you learn the man is 102 years old. Does this centenarian know something we should know? I think so. He sees himself collecting rent for many years to come. Wishing doesn’t make something so, but it blazes a path for the opportunity.

My favorite example of deciding to live to 100 is George Burns. If anyone should have lived a long life, it was George Burns. After all, he got to play the title role of God in not one, but three movies (Oh, God!, Oh, God! Book II, and Oh God! You Devil!). Through his movies, he became more successful and well known in his eighties and nineties than his earlier success at vaudeville, radio, and TV.

His career began as a song and dance man. Not taking himself too seriously, he often broke the “fourth wall” by breaking from the skit and chatting with the audience about what was happening. He loved to work and said, “The happiest people I know are the ones who are working. The saddest are the ones who are retired.” He was very devoted to his wife Gracie and his two adopted children, and he had many close friends.

He booked a big hundredth birthday bash at the London Palladium. In his comedy routines he often quipped, “I can’t die, I’m booked.” I initially thought that if he had booked a bash for his 101st and other birthdays, he might have seen more birthdays–and perhaps he should have taken out a 25-year mortgage as well.

With more careful research, however, I found that at age 98 he fell in the bathtub and hit his head. His health went quickly downhill after the fall and he died six weeks after his hundredth birthday. Instead of taking out a mortgage, he probably needed to see himself as flexible and coordinated and keep himself in shape to manifest it. A nonskid bathtub floor might have helped too. It was looking forward to his 100th birthday bash that helped keep him alive to 100.