 Welcome back to our month on navigating relationships. In our first Toolbox episode of this month, we took a step back and we talked about dealing with uncertainty and relationships in general. Then we examined navigating a leadership role at work and those four tasks we need to do from the start of day one. We also ended that episode with a question that we get many times. How do I find new friends after I move to a new city? In the second Toolbox episode of this month, we talked about going into a committed relationship and maybe even moving in together and some of the ways in which to talk about finances with your partner and why this is so important. Lastly, we gave some tips on how to deal with romantic relationships that are growing apart. In today's episode, we're going to talk with David Romanelli. In 2017, David began a series of events he called drinks with your elders. In those, he brought the younger generation as well as people in their 80s, 90s and even 100s together and gave the elders a stage to share their stories and life experiences. Out of this came a best-selling book, Lessons from the Oldest and Wisest. In that book, he shares the wisdom that they shared with him at these events and in interviews. That book combines almost 2,000 years of life experience. We're so excited to have you join us here today, David. Thank you. Great to be with you guys. Now, in your interviews with elders, you speak about those that are in their 80s, 90s and sometimes even 100 years old. Why did you choose to talk to your elders? It goes back to my last surviving grandparent. She was in an old age home, a really nice old age home in LA and I saw that it felt like we put her out to pasture. She was disconnected. She didn't have a voice in popular culture. She was lonely and yet she had so much wisdom, so much to share. I started to realize, hey, there's this huge disconnect here and why are we not more connected with the oldest and wisest in our communities? Your book combines 2,000 years of life experience. Who doesn't want that knowledge? We were talking just before on our way over here today. We see elders in certain cultures being revered, like in Native American Indians and Asian cultures and we just don't have that here in America and it's a shame because of course you're going to learn a lot and this is why we were so excited to be talking to you today. Thank you. Yeah, it's like you turn on the light for people and we have these Instagram stars with huge followings and we look to them for wisdom and then there's like the 97-year-old Holocaust survivor who's sitting alone at the old age home and it just feels like there's a disconnect and a conversation to kind of fire up. And it's fun for us because normally we talk about how to connect and relate to people who are of your generation, who are your age. That's what most of our audience wants to do but when we think about a lot of the anxiety that drives our feelings and emotions now in our youth is around things that honestly our elders have lived through, experienced, moved well beyond and could probably let us in on a little secret that it's not that big of a deal, right? The perspective that that generation, I mean you talk to somebody who fought in World War II, talk to somebody who survived the Holocaust and sometimes people have stories about the Great Depression and it's like puts everything in perspective. Right, you talk about, you know, hashtag first world problems and the things that we stress about, right, no Wi-Fi, the wires are crossed, oh there's buzzing in my headphones, right? These are things that the greatest generation laugh at as how could this be a struggle. Well I think that's where the issue is, like it was yesterday I had saw an article where this Instagram models account had been deleted and she had posted a new one and she was crying because she didn't know what to do with the rest of her life and you know imagine this that she's going to ask her 90 year old grandmother what to do in this moment and her grandmother's like laughing like listen it's not a big deal you're gonna get over it's like grandma's is not getting it okay like forget her I can see where that disconnect will lie because there's not going to be much empathy for your Instagram account getting deleted when she had just rolled through the depression or whatever it might be, right? Yeah and it's not to take away I mean our problems are real and you know the headaches are real it's not to take away from from our problems but to sit in a room and actually listen to somebody who went through that stuff and give them a chance to share their story you never forget it it's much different than watching the history channel or reading it in a book so and I mean talk about resilience right living through some of those tragedies builds a level of resilience that a lot of us just haven't had the life experience even built yeah and that's why I think the intergenerational mix I mean because it's not just learning from their resilience but the older people they need our energy and they need our attention they need our help so it's a great exchange and I think what's so fascinating is you you look at both ends both generations and here with the youth they're feeling more and more disconnected and more lonely and technology is fueling a lot of that and you look at our elders and much like that family member of yours right they're often an old age home typically by themselves they don't have their partners have not survived with them their friends have passed away and they're sitting there in loneliness and taking some time to bridge that gap I think it's just so key yeah the loneliness is I mean it's an epidemic if you know there's I think there's a statistic like it's like when you're really lonely it's the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day and every most everyone I know has some kind of loneliness spending 10 hours a day looking at a screen and you can get away with it I mean for days and weeks at a time you just kind of burrow into your screen we go from one screen to the next and we forget how good it feels to have a human experience and for some of these people that you had a chance to down have a conversation with you know how connected do they feel to their family members into their community are they truly as isolated as we think it depends I mean more often than not they're sort of at the inflection point where it could go either way I think that's what you commonly see but sometimes you see somebody who has incredible vitality and usually they're part of like a community like one guy who's 101 goes to his synagogue like five five days a week and engages with the children engages with the community and then there's people who I met in New York City who feel invisible to the world even though they're in the busiest city in the world so it really varies and I think it with that idea of being part of community can fuel that vitality can fuel that youth and I feel like as we move to more and more loneliness depression creeps in and that's really when your health starts to wane yeah I mean it's it's a big issue that's becoming a bigger issue and I think it's it's important right now you know with all the technology becoming more efficient and more integrated we have to take a stand in some way where we we bring more human interaction into our lives well if you pulled most people would say that they they would want community and they would interact in a community that they would share their interests but when the actuality is and we've experienced this when you present a lot of people with this opportunity they're like yeah I'm busy this week because you know leaving the house and have to meet new people and being intimidating it's intimidating and we've you know we we're trying to make these experiences as as least jarring as possible I mean but it's always for all of us when we put ourselves in these situations even for us last week doing something for the first time going to do the Tough Mudder once you're in it you're like thank God and left the house you're in it yeah no I mean when I do these drinks with your elders events it's like pulling teeth to get people to do something that's different to go come and talk to their elders it's like why would I do that you know I can just watch TV tonight that's so much easier so putting yourself into a new situation is not easy but it's so rewarding when you hear stories from a completely different era that you're not going to hear about when you're hanging out with your friends in our society segregated by age and we need to shuffle the deck on that I would think when you tell most of the people about this you know oh we're doing this thing it's drinks owner oh that sounds amazing you're like oh well it's tomorrow night eight o'clock oh yeah well I got something going on is it the pistons on tonight yeah that's exactly what happens it's not it's like I was saying I got come from the yoga world in 20 years ago we were promoting yoga in the community it was hard to get people to come to yoga class and now you're promoting come listen to your elders and it's it's hard to get people to show up but I do believe that our society's trending and people are gonna want more connection with the elder generation now I think for a lot of us myself included when I think about the elders in my family there is a little bit of intimidation around this age gap and how do I navigate that and how do I spark conversation did you feel intimidated when you started sitting down with elders especially elders you didn't know I still do it's like you know I'm I'm married now and I don't I don't go to bars and and you know have that lifestyle but when I approach an elder for the first time it's almost like that kind of shyness and I don't know if they're gonna engage with me so it's almost still a little bit awkward but after a maybe an awkward moment they're also they're so grateful and so appreciative that a younger person took the time to engage to ask them how they're doing because most of the time younger people see older people as obsolete taking up space they wouldn't have anything interesting to share it's just the stereotype unfortunately yeah and to Johnny's point you know I think as we've moved as a society we have come to a place now where we're not seeing our elders move back in with us and and be nurtured in their old age but instead we're leaving that to professionals we're parking them in Boca Raton we're putting them somewhere else and then you know we get the occasional visit but outside of that occasional visit they're not really getting the communication certainly not someone sitting down to listen to those stories yeah it's not it's not in the kind of the fabric of American culture you know it's like we're very about individuality and everyone's gonna follow their own path and coming together bringing the extended family together is not really the way that we do it but people pay the price I mean there's a lot of loneliness and a lot of separation and we can do better we have to do better and one of the most common questions we get asked here and obviously social media is fueling this is how do I stop comparing myself to others and you got a great story some advice from an elder that I thought was pretty poignant yeah there was this lady Linda Jones and her dad was the iconic illustrator Chuck Jones who created a lot of the Looney Tunes and when she was Linda Jones was young she felt badly because she wasn't kind of keeping up with her father's success so she wrote him a letter because back then they wrote letters and he wrote she wrote him a letter and said dad I feel badly about myself I'm not keeping up with your success and and he wrote her back and he said Linda get the fuck off my mountain you have your mountain to climb I have mine and she said she snapped into place and realized you know it wasn't her destiny to try to keep up with her father I thought it was such great advice you know to follow your own path and don't compare yourself to everyone else yeah look at it as your own mountain and we're all to that matter and different places on the mountain right someone else's mountain top is going to be different than your own and I think that's really powerful yeah you know another interesting thing when I talk to a lot of old people you almost never hear them brag about their accomplishments in life you know it's like the greatest accomplishment is not what you have to show for yourself but who's showing up for you and that's really refreshing to hear that they didn't they don't talk about how much money they made in the mountains they they climb they talk about the love that they have in their life and the relationships they cultivated so that's what's really important yeah and there was a very powerful moment in one of your videos where you were sitting down with a gentleman and he basically was the only survivor out of his friends and family members and you asked him how that made him feel knowing that his friends have passed his spouses passed and he said he feels lucky and you know I found that so striking because I feel you know a lot of us would look at that perspective and say like oh he must be really sad he must be really lonely and hear him say no I feel lucky you know I'm here I'm talking to you I'm having a great conversation like that was really powerful yeah I think that's one of the things that goes into living your very old age is that there has to be a sense of gratitude and appreciation because if you wake up in a lousy mood all day chances are you're not going to live as old as you potentially could yeah yeah carrying that stress definitely damages your health and physiology and you know I feel that one of the greatest lessons that we could learn from our elders is is truly how to be happy I think everyone is searching for happiness we all we've talked about happiness on the show and how important purposes what were some of the lessons around happiness that that you picked up from the elders I think the greatest lesson I learned was from this lady she was 111 so yeah that's that qualified her as a super centenarian so of the 7 billion people on the planet there's only about 60 people who are 110 or older quite the club yeah it's a special club they're hard to find and I asked this lady what were your secrets to health and longevity in and she said sex vodka and spicy food so that the joie de vivre is common in the oldest of all that they do something each day that allows them to loosen their grip and enjoy life right to really maximize that fulfillment instead of taking those small things and holding on to them you know I cruising on social media I always stumble upon I think that there was the one African American World War two that who had passed away he was about 107 and he was smoking cigars and drinking beer up until it's like right on yeah yeah and you know the funniest the oldest lady ever her name was Jean Calmont she lived to be 122 and she ate two pounds of chocolate a week which isn't cigars but still you a lot of chocolate absolutely a lot of chocolate the secret to longevity here we go you know I was it was that video that we were just discussing and then she had also been married five times and you know Johnny goes my first thought was hell no and I I grew up in a family my mom had been married twice my dad I'm sorry three times and my dad twice and so like this is to me when I see what train wrecks were going on I my whole life has been avoiding this whole disaster and however you know she had mentioned of her life and being happy and you had a nice anecdote to the end of it which was and if I get it wrong please help me here but it was that bad things don't happen you can do it better just so just to clarify the 111-year-old lady she was she also was very resilient because she'd been married five times and so what I say is that it's not that bad things don't happen to happy people but happy people happen to bad things so you know everybody gets knocked down I mean everybody gets their ass handed to them well my first thought in that is how do you make it to 111 if you've been married five times each one of those relationships had to had to take a toll yeah absolutely now we know Johnny's you point on marriage that's take ten years of well there's another 15 off out of my life imagine how old she would have been and she stayed single I think that that's secret fact in there she did not have children so that probably added on a lot of spicy food it sounds yeah oh yeah spicy food now we're all about giving value to other people and we define value as attention appreciation and acceptance and I think going back to your point about the elderly and our elders is that a lot of times they are invisible in society they're not often walked up to and chatted up we don't pay attention to what they're up to so you know I feel that for a lot of us we think about okay I gotta make sure I get this person's attention because they're in a position of power or I want to impress this person but you did get a very powerful piece of advice from Antonia around how to show that acknowledgement to everyone so they can feel really good yeah it was this lady who was happily married for many years and she said this just great piece of relationship advice when somebody you care about walks in the room that she always makes eye contact with them and I just don't think we do that anymore you know someone walks in the room you you're probably looking at your computer your TV screen but to actually let someone know that you see them and you acknowledge them it's the best piece of the easiest relationship advice I've heard in a long time so powerful yeah it's certainly after reading that I was like oh hell yeah I mean the what you send to that room and to and to everybody there with just that's that small task is immense yeah yeah I mean doesn't take any effort barely but you know it can be a struggle he's coming back from Atlanta today and there are she travels back and forth for work and there are weeks where she'll come home and you know I'm so in work I'm not staring at the screen and I'm sure she's feeling that so that that's such a powerful tip of just you know for a second someone you cared about walked in the room drop what you're doing and just look them in the eye yeah I mean that's what it's one of the best questions to ask older people who are happily married is just like what's the advice that you have for staying in this relationship because you know and the things that they say are are worth their weight in gold so valuable so I know for myself I'm curious what are the pieces of advice for those who are in relationships who unlike Johnny want them to be successful and add years to our life well you know I think the most powerful story was a guy who just had lost his wife and he spent he was telling me this story about he sat by her bedside as she lay dying and he held her hand and they relived some of the greatest memories from their marriage surfing and or going swimming in Waikiki and going golfing in Banff Canada and their first date they had watching jazz and he said he relived all these moments and you know it was exceptionally sad but it was a special to be able to share that and it made me think you know everyone's going to have a day where they have to say goodbye to the one they love or they'll say goodbye to you and God willing you'll be holding their hand and it makes you think about are you really appreciating the person that you spend your days with I think we tend to take our partner for granted you know you just wake up next to him every day and gets it they annoy you and they have the habits that drive you crazy but if you had to say goodbye to them imagine how you would feel and to look through the lens of an elder looking back and just really wake up and appreciate the person that you spend all your time with and think about those moments that you do have together to be fully present you know going back to that device uh how many times are we on our vacation with that loved one and we're still on our device not present not there and when you look back on your deathbed or sadly on their deathbed those are the moments that you're going to be holding on to and cherishing those experiences together yeah and so it sounds so dark to talk about the deathbed but just to have a wake-up story like my best friend my age and her husband 46 years old great shape it wasn't feeling good checked himself into the emergency room a few weeks ago 30 minutes later he was in a coma and septic shock and just like you know been in ICU for 30 days I mean this stuff can happen and you know we have to live for today and if you love someone let them know you love them today it sounds so cliche until you go through that and you don't want to go through that well it's certainly I mean we've all heard the you know a lot of times people within their life they talk about you know not wanting to have regrets and of course uh make trying to get squeeze out as much time with their loved ones as possible for us you know we certainly don't want to have many regrets left on the table so we're putting it all out while we're here uh and the one that's the more difficult is spending time with loved ones especially if they're across the country you know yeah I know for me when my dad passed you know we weren't on the greatest of terms our relationship was frayed due to my decisions to start the company and and move out here and looking back you know there is an immense amount of regret that I didn't have those moments to just be honest and say I love you I appreciate you all the support you given just kind of took for granted that oh we'll still be arguing next week we'll still be arguing next month but it doesn't always work out that way it doesn't work out that way and I mean I think you have to that's why another great reason to talk to people who are older and ask them their regrets and ask them how what they what how you can learn from their mistakes it's not just the things that they did right and that that'll wake you up as well now for a lot of us when we think of our elders we think of them as pretty accomplished having reached a level of success that maybe we're yearning for we wanted to get to that point do you have any advice for our audience and how to turn these elders into mentors who can help guide us and shape us I mean I think we just have to recognize that there are older people all around us all the time you know and and you're gonna see maybe there's an older person living next door if you're lucky enough to have a grandparent the guy sitting alone at the airport waiting for his flight the person behind you in line at Starbucks and to take a moment to stop and engage it's not as hard as one might think and nine times out of ten they'll love the opportunity to talk with you and that's it can all come from just that initial hello yeah and it starts with eye contact right that simple acknowledgement so if you're listening acknowledge our elders who may be struggling in the grocery line or struggling to get across the street and hit the crosswalk button I mean those are great opportunities to just stop and acknowledge them I and certainly I think a lot of young folk have an assumption that older people don't want to be bothered that they're busy they don't have time or that's for their family members to share those stories with they don't want to be so honest and vulnerable exactly yeah I mean what I always like to say is and put yourself in the shoes of an older person you know I mean there's a loneliness that they might have lost their spouse they've lost a lot of their friends you can't just go to yoga class or go on a run because you know you're older and spend a lot of your time sedentary just sitting at home so for a young person to knock on your door and engage with you it's so incredibly refreshing and they don't have many outlets left they're desperate for some kind of connection something that can wake them up and make them feel alive and it has a family a family member with older family members myself like to say oh it's just up to their family to hear those stories I've heard those World War II stories 20 times at Thanksgiving it's time for them to share it with a stranger someone who may not have heard that story yeah and the stories are unbelievable I mean I can reel off a hundred stories but once you engage and they start telling you it's from a different time in history and as I mentioned it's so it's such a different experience to hear it from somebody firsthand then to watch it on TV or read about it in a book and I would think it helps you with your listening it helps you with your patience you know we saw some of the technical difficulties you had with some of your interviewees right where you struggled at times to understand each other but that patience and being an attentive listener goes a long way towards building those social skills yeah it definitely requires slowing down you're not going to get the quick sound you're not going to get the quick sound bite you know if I want to post a story on social media it takes me a long time to kind of assemble and assimilate and digest everything and there's one story that I'd love to share with you where I asked this 93-year-old lady if she could send me a picture so I could share her story and she said oh yeah I'll put it in the mail you know it's like the mail it'll take a week can you just email it to me so she said okay my granddaughter has email so I'll write down your email address and it took me literally five minutes to share my email address and at first I was really impatient and getting annoyed I didn't have time for this and there was a certain breaking point where I just said okay this is funny and this is a generation gap and this is on me not her so you might want to listen or share that one why wait wait a minute what okay no no no why like the letter y okay why then e like eat y e a like apple okay h like hat okay d like david pardon d d like david I got y e a yes then an a like apple a like apple the at symbol the afro sand the what you know the at symbol the afro sand the a with the circle around it like you have an email addresses it's like oh you know how they are an a any okay I got an a at like yeah yeah and then mac.com so it's m like mom mom.com no no no mac.com so it's m like mom yeah then a like apple wait a minute you gave me an a before okay let me tell you what I had I had y e a hd what are you laughing at I'm it's just funny trying to trying to do this because email is is not your generation so it's so funny the I know I'm an old fart that is wonderful yeah yeah yeah so you know we all have those experiences what's funny is I sense there's patience both ways in that right she's being patient with you exactly exactly now we're there situations I do feel a number of our audience members encounter this with their elders where you were intimidated someone had received a lot of accomplishments they obviously have had a very successful life where you went into the conversation feeling a little intimidated you were laughing earlier if we were intimidated by Kobe Bryant did you experience those conversations with elders I haven't I've shied away from the people who have the big followings and who are famous there's so many of them who are not known and deserve to have their stories told so I've really kind of gone in a different direction now maybe I eventually will be star struck by somebody but so far I haven't kind of like digging into the shadows it seems to me to your point earlier that a lot of our elders are just pretty humble and were there moments of surprise where you weren't expecting to hear that type of story or accomplishment from someone you're talking to the surprises interestingly enough for people who said they don't have anything important to share but then they you know they were like a single mom who raised put five kids on her own through college and just had great advice like she said I was tough and strict as hell and I never stopped telling them how much I loved them you know and as a parent with the young children you need those kinds of those kinds of nuggets of wisdom are so meaningful yeah absolutely and let's talk about raising children obviously the elders have a wealth of knowledge around raising families not only supporting their spouse what were the lessons you learned as a parent that you could impart on our audience raise each child differently don't have like their the parenting package that you wrap around all your kids raise each child differently you know the kids don't necessarily care that you spoil them with the nicest things they just want to feel the love they want to you know this one's mother who could never make it to her kids practices because she was always working she said that you know she'd get home from her waitressing job and sit at their bed and rub their head and just be with them for two hours and they knew that she loved them and they knew that she was loving them the best she could when she could and now she has a great relationship with them in their in their adult life and so you know those are the things I mean if you have kids like it's hard raising kids and you you know don't always feel like you're doing it right and you have some bad days and some good days and you know and the bad days suck so it's great to hear like okay I can do this you know I can do this this is a formula that's manageable well with you know anything when you're dealing with people I mean it's it comes down to art and parroting it's is its own art form and you know the the suggestion I'm not raising your kids all the same like raise them individually you know that's that's certainly going to go a long well in a long way and allowing them to feel as an individual rather than you saying well listen this worked for your older brothers is going to work for you I was gonna say yeah that definitely led to some strife in my household oh and in mine being treated exactly the same as your sibling can be very difficult yeah yeah so that was some great some great wisdom and listen for every story that I tell about positive elders you meet some grumpy resentful worried elders and you learn a lot from them too what do you think are the biggest differences that lead to that I think going back to our earlier point you know everyone wants to be happy we're all seeking happy but you know there are a significant number of us who are going to get to old age and not be happy who are going to be grumpy and what were your lessons from the grumpier more negative elders I mean I think the biggest thing is like if you're a worrier when you're 32 you're going to be a worrier when you're 42 and a worrier when you're 62 and these conditions follow us it's like just like with happiness if you're attaching you're saying I'll be happy when my kids get into school and I'll be happy when I lose weight and I'll be happy when you know my show gets picked up and those conditions follow you and your whole life so at a certain point there has to be a moment where you make a change and you bust loose from the conditions that you attached to your life yeah so instead of I'll be happy when it's I am happy right it's changing it because when you when you add the win I will be happy when that's fleeting a large portion of society looks at a lot of things in that manner and to only know that not only are they not going to clear up the those patterns and pathways are only going to be even more hardened by the time you're 65 75 so no matter what age you are now time to get to work and let's talk about regret you know I'm I'm not quite an elder like Johnny but I I do have my share of regrets what were some of the biggest regrets you heard from our elders that could help us get on the right path I think a lot of them were taking the partner for granted and then they die you know a lot of people and they're especially when you get into their 90s are almost all of them are widows or widowers and I think there's a lot of regret that you never think your partner's gonna die and then they die and it's a tragic thing and there's a lot of grief and they would they wish they could have those years back so I think that's a big that's a big that's a big deal I mean I think with health you know there's that there's this saying in the western circumstance where you spend all your wealth to you spend all your health to gain your wealth and then you have to spend your wealth to regain your health that's a common theme is that you know you wish that you took a little bit better carry yourself when you were younger because you pay the price when you're older yeah and I think there's a lot of relationships with children that go awry and they lose contact for many years and then you know when you're old you need you need people to show up for you you need to you and you want to be surrounded by people that love you and if you didn't invest in your relationships when you were young and they're not showing up for you when you're old it's it's no fun yeah and was there any advice around how to rekindle you know I know I've had strife in my family and I currently even have some family members that aren't talking and I feel like every family goes through those struggles was there any advice that the elders had on how to you know repair those broken relationships or mend those fences before that moment there was one lady I met who had a near-death experience she died for literally 20 minutes and she was in Egypt and she was telling me the whole story she was like her face was blue her eyes were dilated they're like she's done there's nothing we can do and she shared the whole thing where she went through the the tunnel and you know it was the whole crazy experience that people talk about and she said she came out of that with the revelation that honesty is everything and honesty is just to be as honest as you possibly can be with the people that you care about and that was what she said was very healing there has been a lot of research with people getting it to retirement age and then when retiring and then moving on and then feeling a bit useless after that point or that they're they're they don't have that their purpose is gone their purpose is gone and with that did you get much advice on for the seniors who move beyond that and who move beyond that healthily and happily well that's a big deal you just mentioned I have a neighbor who's in his 60s and he's got plenty of money but he's worried sick because he can't get a job just to keep him busy he doesn't need a job to make money and he's worried sick that he's going to be bored the rest of his life so what you're talking about right now and the ageism and how people are squeezed out of the workforce is it's a big deal and it's a big struggle for people so there's a lot of chatter about that right now but it is a big issue yeah I mean you you look at centarians and mega centarians and super centarians and 120 I mean the retirement age is 65 yeah 70 most of us will be retired so that's still a lot of years left a lot of mileage left to try to maximize it's like a lot of people feel like oh listen just give them a set of golf clubs I don't learn how to golf and that's what I'll do for them it's like no that's that's that's not purpose right it's a hobby oh yeah the retirement system the kind of the template that we have where you retire when you're 65 when you go golfing the rest of your life I mean that's a flawed system I had a saw a lady in Starbucks who's an elder and she said that all of her friends who followed that program they're all dead now so you know you have to stay engaged and you have to find a purpose and feel challenged yeah I think the problem is that daydream is good while it's a daydream but then when it's actually upon you I know when my great uncle retired he was itching to get back to work and do something yeah like that little honeymoon of retirement we had a big party in his garage and he was all excited talked about all this work he's going to do on the cottage and you know he got through some of the work he's like okay I gotta get back to work I gotta do something yeah he went back to driving trucks and we're like you're retired this is what you worked and and grind it out for for these moments he's like no I need to get back behind the wheel my dad's been retired for a good while now and he still puts in 10 hours a week doing it work for friends and just just to stay busy just to have that going on and there's also the social component to that of course right I feel like retirement for a lot of us does lead to that isolation even if you may not have purpose in work you have co-workers that you can talk to and socialize with and you know I know for us that's one of the biggest reasons we've been running this bootcamp for 12 years is even now even the youth are isolated and they don't get social interaction so imagine how isolating it is you know when you're retired and you don't have those opportunities yeah and for entrepreneurs who are listening there's tremendous opportunity to create businesses that engage the aging population 10,000 people are turning 65 every single day so the population's getting older and the baby boomer generation they're not going to stand for the isolation and you know being treated put out to pasture they're not going to stand for it I saw a really interesting article actually that all of the boomers who built these beautiful mansions on golf courses and reached this level of success they're now selling those houses because they can't get up the stairs they can't take care of it it's just too big and none of the millennials want to buy them they don't want to be so isolated they don't want to be in the golf course they don't want a palatial mansion they want something a little bit more modest a little bit more minimal so we're now seeing all of this aging boomer population look at some of their life choices and realize you know maybe this wasn't for me and now they're lacking in purpose and and certainly a lot of those the homes in healthcare at that age is it's certainly expensive and I had I'd just seen an article where there was a guy who managed to stay in a motel because it was cheaper than going to an old age home did you see this article no he stayed at Best Westerns I want to believe because he averaged it out it was about $60 a night and he said the difference is that in a hotel they treat you like a customer so they get you the paper it's always hot coffee they're nice and bubbly when you're checking in oh mr so and so here's your room he's like you go to a retirement home and you're a patient that's a different type of service yes so he's like I didn't want the bedpan and I didn't want all of that medical stuff around me so he traveled the country staying in hotels and it ended up being cheaper than if you were to go to a retirement home that's interesting and the whole retirement home system is so wackadoodle because you know there's these dead spots in our communities I mean you drive by retirement homes and we wouldn't ever stop to knock on the door and see how people are doing you know they have thousands of years of history in those places but they're completely isolated from the rest of the community so that has to change there's a powerful form of meditation that you do at your drinks with elders events that I think even would inspire our audience and can you share what this meditation is yeah so it's just a visualization if if you want to try it with me just take a moment and close your eyes and imagine I'm just going to go way forward in the future and imagine you're older a lot older and you just had your 90th birthday and so your friends and your family your grandchildren maybe you had a few great grandchildren they came over they celebrated you had a great cake and then everyone leaves and you sit down after a long night and a little bit of loneliness starts to set in you because you're 90 you recently lost your partner of many years and you pick up the phone because you want to say hi to your friends but a lot of your friends have passed away by the time you're 90 and your kids don't they don't live in the same town so you won't see them for a while your your grandchildren you might not see them for months and so you start to feel this kind of this loneliness you can't just wake up and go on a run the next day because you're you're a lot older now you can't just run the yoga class and so the loneliness can sometimes be very oppressive and you're not sure what to do who to call where to go and then you get a knock on the door and it's your neighbor who's in their 30s and they they show up and they want to ask you to share your story and they want to invite you over to to share with their friends and you can imagine how refreshing that is in the situation that you're in so just to sometimes put yourself in the shoes of and what it's like to get older and I believe a lot in karma and how how you treat people when they're older will say a lot about how you're treated when you're older it's a powerful exercise to really think about that I think a lot of us are so in the here and now and our devices and nowhere I'm going on vacation it's even difficult for us to visualize that far into the future yeah and I think we we don't think about it but sometimes there's a lot of fear and aging and you look at someone who's older and it's scary you don't want to have to think about it but it is part of life and with technology and medicine a lot of us are going to live to be very old so I think it's important to understand what that's like and to have empathy when you're young and start to nurture those connections now so that you keep that going as you get older and feel like you're integrated in the community now I know with my dad's passing and and my grandfather's passing one of the the most difficult parts in their lives were their loss of mobility my dad had an injury to his neck that he lost feeling in his arm and I do feel that for a lot of us as we age mobility is going to become an really important factor in in our quality of life obviously you practice yoga was there anything that you learned from our elders who were limber and who were in great shape that could help us maintain that physical side of things so that we can have the movement be able to to live a long happy and fulfilling life I mean there's certain kinds of exercise that'll just crush you I mean running is so hard on your body you know and most of the time you don't see people that live to be very old who were runners now I have my in-laws are runners and if they're hearing this they're probably like it's bullshit but the pounding is just so intense right so intense and you know you have to think in terms of longevity the stretching is much healthier and then you want to be agile you know I mean I think the yogis say you can tell how healthy somebody is not by the shape of their body but by the agility of their spine and I think that really carries into old age yeah your ability to pick things up as you get older totally comes down to exactly that and for a lot of us we're not thinking about those things right yeah I mean like having a bicep the size of your head I mean what's the practicality of that well it's great if you're an influencer like Johnny but that fades so you're going to want to be able to move you're going to want to be able to hang out with your grandchildren and actually get on the floor and get up and pick things up and and that is something that wanes as we get older yeah and I think even more than the physical health is the mental health and how you exercise your mind and you know like just gratitude there's this leading researcher on gratitude and he says that gratitude you have to be a badass to be grateful because gratitude is morally and intellectually demanding you know it's easy to wake up and fixate on all the stuff that you got to get done and it's hard to wake up and shift your focus to everything that's good in your life and so just mental strength is really important as well yeah and when you're in a state of gratitude you can't have any other emotional feelings you're strictly in gratitude unlike you know multitasking I can be afraid I could be angry but when you're focused on gratitude and being grateful that's the only state that you can be in well it yeah and the whole thing about it shifting on focus of of what you have rather than what you don't have and it's certainly it is a shift and it does it does take patience and it does take work to be able to do that I certainly know when I had learned about appreciation and started practicing it I know that not only did my thoughts about where I was in life changed but how I woke up and approached every day changed yeah it's I mean it's an everyday practice it's so easy to focus on what you need and what you don't have one of my favorite quotes is this to think you need something you don't already have as a form of insanity and I think it's true I mean your whole life you could be searching for the things you don't have and how are you going to appreciate the things you hope to have in the future if you can't appreciate what you have right this moment so and I think for a lot of us taking a step back and thinking about where we were you know as a kid where we were just five years ago allows us to actually find that stuff to be grateful for yeah because a lot of us are present forward looking thinking about the future and what we don't have in time in time again we just have to take a step back and realize well you know four years ago I couldn't run this fast I couldn't lift this much weight I couldn't talk to this many people I didn't have this level of confidence at work so it is looking backwards to see just how far you've come to find that gratitude and we love the five minute journal I don't know if you're I have it yeah that's great it's a fantastic practice morning and evening a few prompts you fill it out every single day and it really reinforces the gratitude and it does it's been scientifically shown to lift your mood and change your mental health which I think is huge as we get older it's huge and like I was trying to paint the picture when you're 90 and you may not have the agility to get around but if your mind is fit and strong that's that's really important because you're going to be spending a lot more time with your thoughts and if you have beautiful thoughts it's going to be a beautiful life if your thoughts are going down a black hole it's going to be a struggle well and certainly we were just discussed and you were mentioning if that's if you were a worrier at 40 imagine what that was going to look like at 65 so it's no time like the present then they get positivity training and getting that fixed that why I mean fixed out change is difficult transforming yourself we're actually gonna it's going to be an upcoming theme month for us transformation but transformation is hard change is very hard a lot of us are set in our ways what was the biggest transformation you saw or witnessed from an elder who just in their youth were one way and then as they age they they changed oh wow that's a good question I have to think about that one I didn't I didn't write a lot about the elders that transformed I think the more interesting part was looking through the lens of an elder and seeing their perspective looking back over their life and what they see as the important moments that stood out across 80 90 100 years and I mean what you know everybody over that span of a lifetime goes through hell that you hit rock bottom you go through hell not all the elders ever bounce back from that that's a decision that you have to pick yourself up and bounce back a lot of them they stayed down for years and that usually manifested as some kind of illness or disease so that the the wherewithal to pick yourself up and keep trucking that's an important one I mentioned just the value that you place on relationships and community is really important if you spend a lot of alone time it tends to to wear on you as you get older so it's really like looking through from the lens of an elder looking back on their life another interesting thing that I learned is I would always ask if they're scared of death because when you're 80 90 100 years old any breath could be your last right and honestly not one time did they say they were scared to die and most of the time they said they welcomed it and I thought that was really really interesting because death is a scary subject in our culture yeah I definitely feel like just thinking about it that it's scary for me as I sit here so I can't imagine getting that place but you know that's just it that resiliency and understanding how to be grateful for the life that you have and all of the things you've been able to accomplish I would assume allows you to get there yeah and also you know in yoga the the shavasana is like the most wonderful part of yoga it's the the corpse pose or the death pose and learning to just relax into that peace is the feeling that you kind of sense is what happens when when older people are approaching the end it's not this scary anxiety-ridden thing but it's like a a sense of peace now one last question before we go we had author Charles Duhigg on a few months back and he did a lot of research on habits and we asked him all of this research everything you learned how did it change your behavior what lessons did you take from the elders that you applied directly to your life and changed behavior whether it was in your parenting your health any of that when I get in a fight with my wife we end it I mean just like we got a quick conflict resolution like it's not worth it taking taking it a step further than that so we end it right away I just try to show up for my kids and be present with them as best I can and sometimes you know I get down on myself that I'm not getting them like the fanciest things or taking them the fanciest places but I think some of the greatest moments are just just being there and letting them know that I'm there with them I see them I hear them I feel them and I think more than anything it's just that happiness is what you can find in this moment and not looking to some future moment or some complicated for a formula you apply to your life because those things make it really make it hard so just keeping it simple and realizing that I'm blessed and just to appreciate my life as it is right this moment and not hoping it it changes for some future moment and what are your conflict resolution tips with your spouse to own the issues that I have in the moment to but be willing to apologize and not have a lot of like pride in my relationship defensiveness ego yeah and a play as a team you know I love the phil jackson's book 11 rings and he talks about like tribal relationship stages of the tribal relationship and you know family is a team and learning to play as a team and get on the same page and check my ego at the door and just have honest communication and and not take it to bed not take that the fighting to bed with us well thank you so much for joining us thank you for taking the time to speak to our elders and write this fantastic book thank you so much it's such an honor to be with you guys I appreciate it's great haven't you is there anything that you want to plug on the show or yeah so the if you go to david romanelli.com you'll see I have a new slate of drinks with your elders intergenerational events coming up soon and my book is called life lessons from the oldest and wisest it's a great read for any age whether you're 15 or 95 and it's got something for everybody you can get it at amazon get it from my website barns and nobles thank you so much right and we're gonna be checking out one of your drinks with elders yes Johnny might be on stage love it Sharon Smith though