Would you like to know how long you have to live? When are you going to die? As I researched for my book – Rethink Retirement – I followed a link to access The Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator. Let me talk you through my experience and you some reflective questions.
Hi, it’s Dr. Denise Taylor. Would you like to know when you’re going to die? It’s been quite interesting as I’m writing my book, I’ve came across a paper and that had a reference to some doctor who’s come up with a longevity index and it’s quite long. And I went through all the questions and I answered them all properly, truthfully.
And of course, it wants to know your age and weight and your medical history, and I don’t have anybody in my family who’s died of heart attacks, so that’s all a big plus. it talked about eating it talked about how you deal with stress. and I think by the time I answered all the questions, I came with, an age of 98 would be wonderful. if I can stay in good health until then, but clearly, we don’t know. I could get run over by bus sort of thing. we never know what’s going to happen. Interestingly, I changed my weight as I’m overweight at the moment and it made no difference when I knocked a few stone off.
Um, so that wasn’t the key factor, but I think stresses and family history is cause a lot. It’s down to your genes. And then I came across one by a financial services company and that was very short. It was trying to work out how long you needed to invest for, for your pension.
Pretty much it was just age and weight and a bit of family history. And that one put me at 92. And again, I was adjusting my weight. That’s not making a difference. So, that’s not really an incentive, to me to lose the weight that I clearly would love to do. Of course, if I ended up getting diabetes or being told that I was, um, in risk of doing it, then that would probably prompt me to lose a couple of stone.
But I think it’s interesting. It’s interesting to think about that. And I forgot to say that on the first one it was about, well, what are your views of aging? I’m 65, 66 later than this year. And for me this is absolutely fine. As you can see, I don’t dye my hair, I still don’t wear makeup and I’m quite happy to embrace the age that I am, but a lot of people don’t.
And it must be really hard if you’re in the public eye because you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. You can think of some of the celebrities that we read about, in all of the press, not just the, the popular press, it’s your views of aging. If you worry about ageing and think it’s going to be a hard time and you are pessimistic for the future, that has a real negative impact about how things are going to go and how long you’re going to live and.
Being optimistic about your future is such an important, position to be in. And I’d like you to have a think about this. What are your views of ageing? And be honest. You may be worried, you may have, a family history and worry about how that’s going to be.
You may have based your life on how you look externally and many people do. External appearance changes, then you might wonder about the internal you, something else to think about. Now, if I could help in any way, these are areas that I’m working with my clients, but as I’m working towards, submitting my manuscript for my next book, which is Rethink Retirement, I’m very much thinking about how people make ageist comments, but how often it is us who says things. We can say negative things about us. If I trip over, I’ve just fallen over. I’ve not had a fall! Sometimes people can say, they can’t do that because of the age that I am. For me … age is not going to stop me. I might not be going out clubbing until three in the morning and be really looking forward to one that closes at about 11 or at least leaving at 11. So, we make adaptations.
This, like many of the other videos I do is unscripted. I just talk from the heart and I hope within it there are aspects that you find interesting and thoughtful and gives you something to think, ponder on, and if it has led to anything, I would love to hear from you.
But until next time, take care. Denise Taylor. Take care. Bye-bye.