Life Is Long!: 50+ Ways to Help You Live a Little Bit Closer to Forever - Hardcover

KAREN SALMANSOHN is a happiness and wellness expert who is the author of numerous best-selling self-improvement books like Instant Happy and How to Be Happy, Dammit, with more than one million copies sold. She has studied to be a yoga and meditation teacher at Ishta Yoga; founded the DO IT healthy eating program; been featured on the Today show, The View, CNN, and Fox News; served as a columnist for Oprah.com, Psychology Today, CNN, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Match, and Huffington Post; and been featured in the New York Times, Business Week, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Time, Marie Claire, Fast Company, InStyle, Self, ELLE, and the New Yorker.

INTRODUCTION

Want to live to one hundred—and feel thirty? Me too!

I’m a late-in-life mom, and I want to be around to dance at my son’s wedding. With this in mind, I recently promised my son, Ari, that I’d do everything I can to live to one hundred.

Ari wanted me to live to two hundred, but I bargained him down to one hundred.

Ari accepted my counteroffer.

As a happiness and wellness expert, I’ve always been interested in living a healthy lifestyle. But after my vow to be a centenarian, I became particularly passionate about learning and practicing as many healthy habits as I could memorize and muster.

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What you hold in your hands is the handy, fast-paced, curated result of all the hours I put into researching the secrets of living both longer and younger. I wanted to snag two out of two. After all, I’m not simply interested in increasing my quantity of years on this planet; I also want to improve the quality of those years.

I’ve grouped the tips in this book into two buckets: body and mind. As it turns out, longevity is linked to not only physical health but also mental well-being! The first half of the book contains the body-focused tips (colored blue in the table of contents). The second half features the mind-focused tips (in a pretty teal color!).

Regardless of whatever your present age might be, I know the tools in this book will help you—because they’ve already helped me!* I definitely feel younger and more energetic. Friends, family, and coworkers also keep telling me that I don’t look (or act) my age.

I even fooled my blood lab into believing I’m younger.

I had my blood tested recently. Dr. Yaffe joked with me: “Karen, you have the Harvard of blood tests for someone your age!”

Meaning? My blood doesn’t look, feel, or act its age either.

I’d love to help your blood behave age-inappropriately as well. With this in mind, I’m excited to share all that I learned in my quest to live to one hundred plus!