The Growth Mindset That Extends Your Lifetime

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan. Dan, you have been passionate about longevity for a very, very long time. You've written books about it, you have a course in Strategic Coach about it, all the things. And some of us would love to know what, from your perspective and all the things that you and Babs do, what are the top three trends in human longevity right now? What are you seeing as you scan and participate in a lot of the different initiatives that are happening?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I've personally been committed to longevity since 1987. So I set a goal for myself in 1987 of living to age 156. And just a little background to that. So I was born in 1944. So in 1987, I was 43. And one night, I was watching on TV a documentary of senior people, people in their 80s, 90s. And specifically, all the people who were interviewed were 87 years old. So this was 1987. So all of them had been born in 1900. The documentary's topic was that all of them wanted to live till 2000, they wanted to live 100 years. The complete century, the complete 20th century, they wanted to live. But it got into a lot of really interesting things about what they had lived through. You know, you think some major events like the technological revolution that happened since 1900, even speeding up right now. In 1987, it was speeding up. You know, the First World War, the Spanish flu epidemic, Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, Second World War, and then so many other things, which I found very interesting because I'm very fixated on history as useful information.
But as they were going on, I was thinking, you know, I got shortchanged. I would like to live a complete century. But I was born in 1944, so I only get 56 years in the 20th century. So I said, I'll just make it the next century. And I set a goal that I'm going to live to 156. You know, it's a whimsical thought. Some people would call it foolish. But for me, it was an interesting thought experiment. And I said, if every time- I'm not going to tell anybody that I'm going to do that. Babs Smith and I are lifetime pals, and I had met her five years previously. I didn't even tell Babs about it, but I said, I'll just see how long it takes that every time I think of my lifetime ahead of me, the number 156 comes. And it was about three years. So 1990, I just noticed that every time that I thought of living longer, living to 156, what I noticed was that I became very, very relaxed about how much time I had.
 
And I noticed that just the number of my brain accepting that I was going to live to 156 was having a profound impact on my thinking. And one of the things I noticed is that I stopped being anxious: Did I have enough time to achieve this? Did I have enough time? Because it just so happened that the lifetime projections, actuarial tables, said that the number for males, North America was 78. So 156 was twice the 78. And I said, well, that's an interesting thing. So I was going to, you know, in my mind, I was setting myself up to live twice as long as normal. And then I went along and we had created The Strategic Coach Program. So one day, I put together a little exercise. I'd ask them a question: "So you're born here. When do you expect to die?" You know, they put down different answers. Some of them, they would think they would live to 85, and some thought that because of family history, they probably wouldn't make it past 60, you know, and so they just put the number down, and everybody in the room, as far as I know, put the number down.
 
So there was one person right in front of me, and his was 85, and he was then 48, so there was 37 years to go. And I said, "So yours is 85. I'm not going to talk to you about 85. I'm going to talk to you about 84. I'm going to ask you five questions. And the first question is, how will you be physically when you're 84?" And he said, good shape. Got energy, got muscle, and I'm very active. I said, "OK. Mentally?" "Got all my marbles." "How about financially?" "Oh, totally independent. No problems." "Quality of relationships?" "A lot of relationships, supportive relationships, enjoyable relationships." And I said, "What about your assessment of the life that you've lived up until 84?" And he says, "Did everything I wanted to do. Even at 84, I'm doing things that I really love doing and have really contributed and really proud of what I've done." And so I just fed back. I've got a pretty good memory for people's conversations. So I said, "So I'm just going to say, you're 84 years old and physically, this is how you are mentally, financially, relationship wise, and self-assessment." And he said, yeah. I said, "OK, so you're that way at 84. So what do you think the chances are, if you were that way at 84, that you would die at 85?"
 
And they said, "Well, not at all." And I said, "Well, if you were that way, then at 84, how many years beyond 85 do you think you'd live?" And they said, "Oh, 15, 20." And I said, "Well, which? 15 or 20?" And he says, "Well, 20." And I said, "Good. So before, you were going to die at 85, and now you're telling me you're going to die at 105." And he said, "Oh my God, yeah." And I said, "And I want to tell you, you just thought this through, and I can guarantee you, you can't unthink what you just did." And so I said, "You're giving yourself 20 extra years." And then we went on to finish the rest of the exercise, which was, what would you do with 20 extra years? And they write them down. And then you say, well, let's not talk about the next 20 years, the 20 extra years you're going to get. Let's talk about the next three. So if you're going to really enjoy the next 20 years beyond 85, then what would the next three years going to be about?
 
And what I noticed was, immediately, they went to: "Got to get in better shape, got to sleep better, got to eat better, got to exercise better. I got to financially plan for living 20 years more." So the moment that they changed the number, every thought about their life, their future life changed as a result. And we established that in Strategic Coach in 1993. So six years after I set my 156-year goal. So, you know, I was almost 50. And so it was sort of a thought process. So I was 49 when I introduced this into the Program. But now I'm 79. And a lot of people say, you know, you look better at 79 than you did at 49. I said, well, that's what this longevity thinking does to you. And I said, your body really pays attention to what your mind is thinking. So I would say, if you did a survey of Strategic Coach clients that, let's say, have been in Coach for at least five years, and you said, how long do you think you're going to live? There would be very few of them that would say less than 100 years. As a matter of fact, it's 110, 120. Not many are as ambitious as I am. But I was talking to a client who does tattoos. That's his business, doing tattoos. And he was talking about another member of Coach who on his arm had done "142" in Roman numerals.
 
Shannon Waller: No way.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. And I said, the only problem is going to be when he gets to 143.
 
Shannon Waller: Plus one, plus one, plus one.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, if you're going to do plus one, you might as well do plus 10, you know. That's an X. So this was a mindset in Strategic Coach. But if you looked outside, you looked at the scientific world, you looked at the medical world, there wasn't a lot of support for it. I remember I had a doctor in that very early first year and he came up to me afterwards and he said, you know, "First of all, this is a really great thinking process. But I have to tell you, as a doctor for 25 years, there's absolutely no chance of this happening." And I said, well, we'll see, because I said, you know, what I've discovered is that human progress is created out of human aspiration. So progress follows aspiration. I said, what if you get a million people thinking like this? What if you get 10 million people thinking like this? Do you think this is going to have an impact on medicine? Do you think this is going to have an impact on science? And what I didn't realize, what an impact it's going to have on technology.
 
So what I will say now, 30 years after setting my goal, I know that from just what I've discovered about science and technology, and I will say that all the breakthroughs have happened within the last 10 years. And these are scientific, they're medical, and they're also technological. So I would say that the lead indicators are now, and I'm going to start with science. Because about 10 years ago, there was a fundamental breakthrough, and it had to do with rejuvenating cells in the human body, any kind of cell in the human body. Our whole body consists of stem cells. And so there was a great breakthrough in San Francisco, a Dr. Yamanaka. And Dr. Yamanaka did an experiment where he took a skin cell and he reversed the cell. So, all of our cells are specialized cells, but they all come from a kind of universal cell. When we're just a fetus inside of our mother, it starts with universal cells and then skin cells develop and heart cells develop and liver cells develop, bone cells develop. But they all start as a universal cell, and he was able to take the skin cell and take it back to a universal cell, and then he could turn it into other cells.
 
And this is one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history, that any cell can become another cell. So what they're doing now is, they're creating all sorts of therapies where they'll take a healthy skin cell or a healthy fat cell or a healthy white blood cell, and they'll take it back to the basic ingredients. An analogy would be, around us every day, there are hundreds of plastics. And think of anything plastic. I'm looking at a lamp here that's got a plastic base. It would be the same as taking the plastic and taking it back to oil because the vast majority of plastic in the world starts with oil. And this is a profound breakthrough. It means that you can go back and rejuvenate any cell in your body.
 
So I'm going to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where probably the most advanced stem cell doctor in the world is. I tore my cartilage 1975 and it's really been bothering me. I got a lot of pain in my left knee. He's taking my white blood cells and he's taking my fat cells and he's turning it into cartilage. I'll go back and he'll inject into my knee. And over a period of about six months, I'll have my original cartilage back. It'll be my cells. It'll be exactly my cartilage that I had before I tore it. And that's pretty minor stuff for what's going on now. They're repairing immune systems. They're repairing respiratory systems. They're repairing brains. They're repairing brains with this. So this is a scientific indicator of where things are going.
 
The next one is, I'm going to switch here, and I'm going to do the technological one second. So in the same period, actually starting 30 or 40 years before that, there's been a technological breakthrough called artificial intelligence, which is very popular today because of the breakthroughs in apps where, based on any kind of information, you can have computers actually take one type of information and turn it into a type of information. And it's kind of similar to the stem cell translation. This is information. It's not cells, but we can take information. And the AI apps can turn it into a different kind of information. Whatever you ask of it, it will respond with a different kind of information in a different form. But the one big thing is of testing in the area of medicine. So what they can do now is that they can take a biological signal from the body and they can turn it into an electronic signal. So any cell in the body has an electronic signal. And what they can do now is that they can test out new cures, new therapies, or they could test for certain kinds of disease.
 
And that's my third point that I'm going to make. So the first one is stem cells. Second one is... They can now do testing for new therapies 10,000 times faster than doing it in a manual, like in labs. They can now do 10,000 tests in a day, where before you could do one test in a day. And that is sweeping through the entire medical industry right now. So you got the stem cells, which is sweeping through medical industry. You have the AI. And the other thing is the diagnostic testing. Because they can now detect anything that's going on in the body electronically. You can get diagnosed five years before it would actually show up as a disease. They can see that these cells are heading in a direction, and you're getting more and more advanced warning.
 
If you think about another realm, it's like weather reports. I mean, we've had all these terrible storms that make the news because everybody's a news reporter now with their cell phone. So people said, oh, the terrible storms. We've never had terrible storms like this. And I said, oh, yeah, we had them a century ago, but they weren't reported on. You know, you would have a hurricane and 600 people would get killed. And today, nobody gets killed. The reason is because we have advanced warning. We have all sorts of technology that can tell us come. The amount of people who are dying from violent weather in one century is down by 99%. Same hurricane 100 years ago kills thousands. Today, it kills maybe a half dozen. The reason is that our weather- And there's diagnosing, you're getting advanced warning. So that's a phenomenal breakthrough, both from the AI standpoint is they can create the new therapies, but it's actually in the diagnostic.
 
Now, the third part is medicine, and there's a profound mindset change going on in medicine, that all disease is just an aspect of aging. So, you know, you have diabetes, you have heart disease, you have lung disease, you have dementia, you have all sorts of diseases. But what they're saying is that all these diseases are just different kinds of aging. And we now have the means, not to stop the aging... Well, first of all, slow down the aging, stop the aging, and now start reversing the aging. So for example, Babs and I have been experimenting with this for about 10 years now. Actually, probably 30 years, but because of the breakthroughs of the last 10 years, we've made great progress. So I'm 79, but based on a very sophisticated set of tests, I'm actually right now 68 from a biological standpoint. And I have a goal by the time I'm 90 that I will be reversed another 11 years. So I'm 11 years difference between my chronological age now and my biological age. And my goal by the time I'm 90, I've reversed from 68 to 57. And by the time I'm 100, I've reversed to 50. So when I'm 100 years old, which is still a long ways away from my 156-year goal, I'd be fit and healthy as a fit 50 year old.
 
So those are the three things. So this is profoundly changing medicine. And medicine will all be regenerative medicine, where you're either regenerating healthy cells or you're repairing damaged cells. That's what I see. And I tell you, people take me more seriously now about my 156-year goal 30 years later than they did when I first talked about it. You know, it was a neat thought process. And we know that all of our clients extend another 20, 25, 30 years to their career, and then they start behaving in a way that they are going to live this long. So they get fitter, they get healthier. But not only that, but they have bigger and bigger goals that keep them healthy and fit. So there's a real interplay between mindset and behavior.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, it feels like, Dan, we've always talked in the Strategic Coach about a Ceiling of Complexity, and I really do feel that the old retirement age of 65, which you've blown way past, or certain mindset things that happen at 70, you've talked about that. It's another ceiling, and you can see people hitting it, and they're bored, and they're frustrated, and this is really this propelling them through to a whole new future. But again, it starts, as our last podcast, it starts with mindset, right? You have to have the vision, because your quote, human progress happens out of human aspiration. If you don't have the aspiration, you will not be looking around seeing the scientific breakthroughs, especially in stem cells, the technological breakthroughs with artificial intelligence, which is amazing for both testing medicines and diagnosis, and then being able to look at aging. Everything else is a factor of aging.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it's all aging.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah. I love how you talk about the fact that all medicine will be regenerative.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or repair. Yeah, regeneration is taking what's healthy and keeping it healthy. Repair is taking what's damaged and making it healthy again. Two aspects. So one of our clients, Richard Rossi, a 25-year client, is starting next, I think it's next April, in North Carolina in Winston-Salem. He's created the first trade show for all the industries in the world that are connected to regenerative medicine and repair medicine. And this is the first time that everybody who's involved in that- And I feel very, very proud that it's a Strategic Coach client who's in the Free Zone Program is actually putting this together. And Winston-Salem is kind of the epicenter of regenerative medicine because it's Wake Forest University. And this is where it all started. It all started at this one university about right at the same time that I was setting my goal for 156. They were starting a research center for this. And I met the doctor, I've met the doctor who actually started this, on Zoom. So it's kind of neat, but it's human aspiration, you know, that if enough people want to live longer, guess what. As a whole, we're going to live longer.
 
Shannon Waller: This is where I appreciate the baby boom generation, where there's just a lot of people who don't want to be aging. They wanna stay young, they wanna stay vital, they wanna stay interested, they wanna stay healthy, and they're willing to put time, effort, and funds to make that happen. And there's multiple millions of them, which you and Babs are both leaders in this, generation ahead, but it's really gonna benefit everybody. And there's just this swell of interest in this particular way of looking at the world and then investing in it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Can I ask you a question? What's it done for you? Because you've been along since I've been talking about this, pretty well. As a matter of fact, you joined us before I started talking about it. What's it done to your own thinking?
 
Shannon Waller: Well, there's a couple things there, Dan. One of them is that it's just become such a normal way of thinking. And I have, we've talked about this before, longevity in my family. So my grandparents died at 91, two weeks shy of 96, 97, and 106. So I kind of frankly took it for granted a little bit. I'm like, I can get to 90, 95 without even trying. But Babs is like, OK, well, you have to live as long as we do, Shannon. So my original number was 125, and then I upped it to 135 so I can check out with you guys.
 
Dan Sullivan: Beam up.
 
Shannon Waller: Beam up. I added that term to our lexicon because I talk about dying too much. This is depressing. Yeah. So before we beam up. And so it just has become kind of normal is a big part of it. And then the other part, you had a shift in thinking about knowing that you always had enough time. The other thing that I find is a really a "youthing" strategy, if that's the right word, is just this focus on Unique Ability, doing what you love to do. And we get comments all the time about how our, my work with a lot of my colleagues for over 20 years, and we all kind of look not that different than we did before and because we love what we do, we love with whom we do it, we love who we do it for and with, and we get to do what we're best at. We don't suffer some of those same stresses or anxieties or going against the grain that a lot of other people and organizations do. And I think that's actually a big, we don't talk about it really that much that way, but I think all the regenerating strategies in the world, if you're unhappy with what you're doing for a living, may or may not be so successful. So when you combine a passion for life in your contribution, along with a passion for longevity, look out. Like, why would you stop? So those are some of my thoughts in terms of hanging out with this longevity conversation.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and I think the numbers in the United States right now, it's approaching about 90,000 centenarians, so 90,000 individuals. And this is not a journey that you do alone. Okay, because there are some exceptions of people who lived, I think the, where you actually have birth records to prove it, a woman in France got to 122. She was a unique case. But now, you know, all the insurance companies in the United States, without saying very much about this, within the last 10 years have changed their premium paying period from 95 years old to 120 years. And there was no big announcement about this. It's based on the principle that a child born today will probably have a real possibility of living to 120.
 
Shannon Waller: That's kind of fun, Dan. Going back to you right at the beginning when you were talking about that television show where, you know, people were 87 and wanting to live a full century. Our eldest daughter, Madison, was born in 2000. So her chances of living to 100 are… What's the expression? Don't die of anything stupid? You know, unless that happens, knock on wood, she should be able to see a century no problem, which is kind of exciting and kind of cool.
 
Dan Sullivan: But I think it's going to be an area of great inequality because there's those who want to and will be given every support in doing so, and those who say it's impossible and will not be aware of all the things. So it all comes back to mindset. Our eyes and our ears only take in what we're looking for. What our brain is looking for. My brain's looking for anything that'll help me get to 156.
 
Shannon Waller: And has been for a long, long time, so you're very tuned in. And I'm very clear that there are some people who don't like their lives and don't want to, and they'll be checking out, right?
 
Dan Sullivan: And they get to check out.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, and that actually is a choice for a lot of people, which is interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it is a choice.
 
Shannon Waller: So this is great, Dan. Thank you for such a clear breakdown of the top three trends. I'll just reiterate: scientific with stem cells, technology, artificial intelligence, and really the whole new insight into medicine that it is really about regeneration and repair. Those are just really fascinating. And there's lots of resources around all of those things, but I think it's a great conversation to help people know what to tune into. Great. Thanks so much.