How To Never Grow Old | Robin Sharma

Hi, this is Robin Sharma, author of the Leader who Had no Title, founder of the Titan Academy. This mastery session is all about how to never grow old.

Never let an old person move into your body. Never let an elderly person into your mindset. And what I mean by that is this, you know, age is just a label society puts on you. I've seen so many people that go, I'm 50, I should think about retiring. I've seen people, I'm 60, I guess I should stop running or climbing mountains or skiing. It's so easy to buy into the mental viruses of aging. And yet I've seen people who are supposedly old in their years, but they're so incredibly young. They look young, they feel young, they talk young, they think young, and they love young. And so, you know, age is a real trap, and you really don't want to allow yourself to get old. And I've got some tactics to you. Hopefully you're going to find them super valuable to help you never, ever get old. Number one, novelty. Lots of very good science says that the human brain craves novelty. You know about neuroplasticity, right? This old idea that the brain you have is the brain you're stuck with for the rest of your life. It's just nonsense. It's a myth. Neuroplasticity confirms the brain is like a muscle. And as you get older, if you expose your brain to novelty, like crossword puzzles, new languages, you learn chess, new skills, new conversations, new travels, you actually start to grow your brain. And your brain stays very limp. What's the word? Limber or very agile. So the first thing I'd recommend to you or offer to you with great love and respect is build novelty into your days. And that could mean, you know, reading every day. It could mean, you know, great conversations. It could mean every quarter you take a trip. It could mean injecting adventure into your week. So it may be a new drive home rather than the usual drive home. It could be, if you love Italian food, try Vietnamese food. If usually you hang out with entrepreneurs, hang out with yoga teachers. But inject novelty into your life as much as possible. It'll keep you young, it'll keep you energetic, it'll keep you sort of on the top of your game. And that fire in your belly. Number two, your social orbit, you become your conversations. So if you are hanging around with people who are going, I'm in my middle age or I'm old, you know, put me out to the pasture, oh, I guess I shouldn't be exercising or you know, I used to have a fire in my belly to do great work when I was younger, but now I'm going a coast. You want to avoid those conversations. Your social orbit affects your mindset and your mindset affects your behavior. Right? Like our daily behavior simply is a reflection of our deepest beliefs. If you believe you're old because of some label on your driver's license, then your behavior will be that of an old person. And so I'm encouraging you hang around with young people if you are at the top of your game. Let's say you are the craftsperson of your field and you've been at it for many years. My encouragement to you find conferences every quarter where everyone in the room is 20 years old and they've got the fire in their belly and they're innovating and they're optimizing and they're breaking rules. I guess that's what I'm saying. Hang out with rule breakers. Hang out with young people who are doing things differently. Hang out with people who think differently, eat different food, do things in different ways. So number two, really check in with your social orbit and make sure that's fueling your. Your longevity. Number three, I really, really encourage you, number three, which is lifelong learning. Learning is a game changer when it comes to being ageless. So you can get tired and old and feeble if you stop learning. But if every day you're listening to the audiobooks, you're listening to new podcasts, you're having those new conversations, you're injecting new information within your mindset, you're really on the path to agelessness. And then the final thing I'd offer to you is service. You know, service is so important. You will never grow old if you have a dominant purpose to get up every morning to. There was one report I read recently, I may not get it right. I think was the German socioeconomic panel. And it was sort of like the largest database on what makes people happy. The happiest people on the planet, those with the most zest for life, were people who had one thing in common. They all had a purpose for their life. It wasn't that they had a lot of money. There's a lot of research that says people with more money actually have more problems. I think the latest I heard was, I believe it was Sonia Lubomirsky who said people who make $6 million, excuse me, who have a net worth of $6 million, are only incrementally happier than blue collar workers. So basically, you get to a certain level of money where more money doesn't bring more happiness or more longevity. What this database revealed was the happiest people all had some meaning and some reason and some purpose in their days. And so if you want to stay young and if you want to stay nimble and vibrant and fully alive, find some meaning to devote yourself to. Find what I call a compelling cause that's larger than yourself to donate the rest of your years to. And that could be, you know what, you're a teacher, so it's being the finest teacher in your field. So you raise a young or influence a young generation to be leaders versus victims. You could be a hamburger, you could be a taxi driver. But your meaning is every day, every single person who gets into your cab, you leave them better than you found them. You could be someone who sells something in a store, but literally, it's all about serving them by delivering great value through the products that you're selling, selling so that you enrich your life. For me, my obsession is I want to help you be a leader without a title. I want you to help you play in rare air in your work. I want to help you be exponentially happier. I want you to live a life that makes history and release any form of mediocrity in your life. That's why I travel as much as I do. That's why I still work as hard as I do. That's why I optimize everything I do. Because I want to serve, I want to give. I want to be an instrument that touches as many people as possible as long as I get to live. So I uplift other human beings. That's what fires me up and allows me to get out of bed every single morning after all of these years of doing what I do. Okay, that's this mastery session. Please remember, age is just a number on a license, on a driver's license. Don't let it infect your mindset. Don't let it pollute your performance. You deserve so much better than that.

Hi, it's Robin. I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and definitely go over to robinsharma.com for more information, tools and resources. Mastery elite performance and living a world class life.