bLU Talks Boston Interview- James Flaherty

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to bLUTalks and I hope you enjoy this video.

[00:00:28] Hey everybody, we're back again with another early day late night talk show style interview. I'm super excited here today to have James with me and I think we're probably going to end up talking about longevity, you know, what your really age is versus what you feel like, all those kind of good things. So James, let's start out as you said with the most important hook which is that you are

[00:00:54] actually 91 years young today. I just saw you a couple of months ago speaking on a stage, now you're being interviewed on an iconic stage. Can you, I guess, tell us a little bit about how, I mean I'm diving in deep right away, but how do you stay so young? I think a great deal of it, I like to think of George Bernard Shaw. He said it very nicely, he said you don't, you don't stop playing because

[00:01:21] you got old, you got old because you stopped playing. No, I wrote in one of my books, I want you to remember something, the band won't stop playing till you stop dancing. So basically I want people to get up and dance, your dance card isn't full. And also in speaking, one of my favorite, favorite quotes in life, one that you can really think about is George Bernard Shaw, who, pardon me,

[00:01:48] correct myself here, George Burns, George Burns, wonderful George Burns, who lived a long time, he lived to 100. On his 95th birthday, a reporter asked him, Mr. Burns, do you ever worry about dying? And he said, I can't die now, I'm booked. And I'm booked. I'm booked. My schedule, you would think

[00:02:12] that I'm the chairman of Morgan Stanley if you look at my schedule, because I'm booked every day. And I'm not thinking about, I wonder if I'm going to wake up on the wrong side of the grass tomorrow. I know I can't, I've got things to do. I have too much things to do to die. That's a good book actually. I have too much things to do to die. I'm too busy to die. Too busy to die. Right. That's a good book title, I think. So maybe lock that in and think about the next book. Okay.

[00:02:40] So I wanted to ask you something that I found fascinating. I've started studying recently, which is the blue zones. Yes. I'm sure you've been fascinated by that. Dan Buettner is a good friend of mine. Oh really? Oh yeah. Oh, very cool. Close friend. Yeah. So I don't know if everybody's familiar with the blue zones, but I think it was like a 25 year study that he did for National Geographic. Well, it's the five places in the world where there are more centenarians than anywhere else. And he studied why. And it comes down to very simple things. They eat a more plant-based diet.

[00:03:10] They walk. They don't ride. They still work. They work in their gardens. They have intergenerational living quarters. They have contacts around them. They have friends. That's always, and that's what comes up in every study of human behavior. If you have contacts, you don't grow old. You live a longer, happier life. Isolation is now, the scientists now say,

[00:03:39] which I think is very interesting, isolation is more dangerous than smoking. And it's true. And there, and there's proof of that. There are seven and a half million depressed seniors in this country. And most of them are living alone. I say to people, you can help them really. Don't just take them to lunch. Take them a good idea. Volunteer to the library. Write the book. Do the painting. Do something. Get off your duff and move it.

[00:04:08] And if I remember correctly, two more of them, and I think there's nine, but two more of them. One is only eat till you're 80% full. That's right. And then another one is live on purpose. And that's the one that was most intriguing to me because I, that's what I've been studying is how to live a purposeful life. And if you go to Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning, that's how he said that he survived just because he had meaning. And he's, and as a talk therapist, he said, after he came back into the Holocaust, he got away from prescribing and talk therapy and he started helping people find their purpose. And he

[00:04:37] said he had a higher success ratio. And then Ikigai, a book on finding your purpose. That was a huge study. The, and then the blue zones, they did two studies, the happiest and the longest living. And both of them living on purpose crossed over to both. So living on purpose helps you literally, and it's been proven, be happier and live longer. Yeah. So do you feel you're living on purpose?

[00:04:59] Oh, absolutely. No, I, I have reason. There's an old saying, which is very, very true. You are as old as you think. And if you wake up every day and say, hot damn, I'm going to tell a story. I'm going to back up. I had a, my father died when I was very young. And so life changed drastically. He was the district attorney of the city of Miami. And suddenly he was dead in a week at age 47.

[00:05:28] And my mother was a very smart, smart dame. She was just terrific. I must've been in college when she sat me down and said, every morning of your life, you have to face your biggest critic, the highest emotional wall you have to hurdle. It's that slightly familiar face in your bathroom mirror. And you either can look at it and go, good God, another day, or face bravely and cheerfully and say,

[00:05:56] good God, another day, and go for it. I know that may sound a little corn ball, but I do that. And I never start my day depressed, ever, because I know I've got a day ahead of me. And somebody has given me a great gift, which I like to remind people when I'm talking to them. You wake up and somebody up there, some higher power says, guess what? Today you can see, hear,

[00:06:24] taste, touch, smell, share, embrace, love. Can you waste it? Hell, that's a great gift. And I look at it every day and that's it. I'm very happy with my life. I'm having one of the best decades of my life. And all of them have been good. I've had a lot of fun. I've had three careers. I was a madman, like the TV series, a writer, creative director, although there was no hanky-panky in my office,

[00:06:51] I assure you. Then I created a country inn that became nationally famous. And then in my 80s, I went back to my first love, which was writing and wrote five books in my 80s. Life goes on. And the most important job, I was a parent and I'm still very, very close friends with my two daughters, my four millennial grandsons, and my four great-grandchildren.

[00:07:17] Wow. Well, I wanted sort of deep deeper into that direction. Just before I move off of that concept that was mentioned of the blue zones, one thing I want to share with people that I thought was the most fascinating. And Dan revealed this, I believe, throughout the book. And also, if you don't want to read the book, you can go on Netflix. There's a four-part series as well. One of the things that I love that he revealed, and it goes against what we think in North America. So North America,

[00:07:45] we're like, oh, meditation's powerful? Okay, I'm going to make time to meditate every day. And I'm going to sit down on a rug or whatever, I mean, a mat or whatever. What he talked about was the blue zones, they didn't intentionally say, these are the things you have to do to live a longer life. Oh, yeah. That was their life. And then he's just studying, say they're already doing it, and this is allowing them to live longer. But with us, we're like, how do I start doing those things? How do I add more into my already busy schedule versus how do I create a life where

[00:08:10] it's already happens? I don't know if that makes sense, but it's like, if you had, let's just say as an example, one of the things I think was drink a white or a green tea a day. So instead of you saying, I'm going to get up every morning and drink that tea, what if you had a standing meeting with somebody? Could it be your partner? We go out and watch the sunset on the deck and drink a tea when we do it. Then you're creating a life that is built around versus trying to say, I'm going to add more to my life. That was the thing I found fascinating is we're thinking, how can I now change

[00:08:38] my life to be the blue zones? But they're already, they don't even know what the blue zones are. That's just life. I wake up every day and I work the garden. So I just found that fascinating. They're not seeking it. No, it's terrific. But life is, as one of our wonderful speakers, as Jen said earlier, life is what you create. And it is something you can create. You can have a schedule for your life. People say, oh, your schedule is nuts, Flaherty. No, it's not at all. I get up in the morning, turn around and make

[00:09:06] my bed. I have a full-time live-in nanny to take care of me. I don't have to make my bed, but I make my bed every morning. Go out. I have all fruit for breakfast, just fruit, no bread. Go down to my pool. I'm spoiled. I have a pool. And I do 30 minutes of serious exercise. Go up, shower and change for the day. And I dress. If I look sloppy, my work is sloppy. Around noon, I have a handful of

[00:09:31] mixed nuts. That's my lunch. And I have a big dinner around four o'clock, a big healthy dinner. But it's not a hard schedule. It's become habit. It's life and it's healthy. And I miss it terribly if I don't kind of stick to it, even when traveling. I just got back from Europe where I was living very nicely on a 5,000 calorie a day diet. But hey, I got used to it. It was fun.

[00:09:59] Yeah. I mean, I think it's... Oh. Okay. Oh. Sorry. It's not used to me. All right. Let's go over that. Okay. Right. Well, I'll add to that. I think it's fascinating. Like whenever you eat healthy, how much you can actually eat. Like when you look at something, like whenever I... If I'm eating healthier, it's amazing how much food I can consume and still not gain weight versus when I'm

[00:10:27] not eating healthy, how little I consume and I gain weight. And one of the things I found fascinating about the food side of things is they've done studies to say that sugar is more addictive than heroin. And how many people do you know that literally say I'm stopping sugar and just have no problem and do it? I mean, it doesn't happen very often. But what I find fascinating about it is that the few times I've tried to do it and I've done it for a little while successfully, food starts tasting so much better. You think it's the opposite. Like in other words,

[00:10:56] the sugar is like, Ooh, like when I start, it's too strong. But it's funny how we've gotten accustomed to eating so much sugar that eating fruit feels like, Ooh, gross. But when you start getting back that flavor, that's the stuff that's flavorful. I mean, I just find it fascinating. You would hate the idea of not eating bread. I don't eat bread except for dinner parties. But then when we have bread, wow, I really enjoy it. But we do not eat bread in the house or potatoes.

[00:11:22] We'll have pureed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes. Well, I'll say one thing that I can't do with the blue zones. And it's like, if I want to follow all nine, I actually can't. And there's one I can't do. And so I think we may have covered eight and I'm going to say the nine. I might've missed one. But one of the other ones is drinking a small glass of wine a day. And my wife is a former addict in AA and she hasn't drank in 11

[00:11:49] years. So I haven't drank in 10 years and 363 days. So we can't do that one. But that's the ninth one. It's okay. Seltzer water works just as well. I stopped drinking on my 80th birthday. I thought, you don't really need to drink anymore and stop. Just decided right that day and never had another drink. Wow. And do you feel better or different? Anything? No, not at all. Seltzer is my drink.

[00:12:16] Wow. I love it. So, you know, we have a few minutes left. If you were to give somebody, and I'm sure you've done an interview like this about living a long, healthy life, living a long, successful life, what would be your top, I guess, two or three things that you share with people? I know you shared some of them already, but. One thing I've been talking when I have to give a keynote, I'll say, I'll give you my longevity

[00:12:40] recipe. It's very simple. There are only three ingredients. The first one is discipline. That is self-care. I call it the family refrigerator. Things wear out if you don't take care of them. The water dispenser won't work. But if you maintain it, you take care of yourself and you live healthfully, you eat healthfully, you do the amount of exercise without making it painful. It does not

[00:13:06] have to be painful. It really doesn't. Then that's terrific. And of course you, you don't smoke and, and give up drinking. It won't hurt you really. Number two is to be present. I am present in the, my community and my church and my circle of friends. And I have friends that range from mid thirties to nineties, and they all know each other and all like each other. And I love that. I love that,

[00:13:34] that different point, that different point of view. I'm very close to my, my daughters. We travel together. One lives in England. One lives in Pennsylvania. We are immensely very, very, very close, intensely close to each other. But being present, reaching out, participating in the world is crucial to your world. I also say to people, go back to that bathroom mirror that I introduced you to

[00:13:58] earlier and ask to look in the mirror and say, you, would you want me as your best friend? Ask if you wouldn't want to be your own best friend. That's a real good question to ask yourself. When you walk into a room, what are people thinking? Ah, here he comes. God, I wonder what he's going to whine and bitch about now. Or are they going to say, Oh great. She's here and everything's going to be better. Everything's

[00:14:23] going to be solved. It's negative, positive. That's up to you folks. Very easy. The third ingredient, purpose. Absolutely. Have a purpose, have a reason to wake up with a smile in the morning. You've got things to do. You're not, not what, Oh God, what am I going to do today? And generally you do nothing and say, I've been busy all day doing absolutely nothing. No. So life isn't that hard unless you

[00:14:51] make it that way. I love it. I want to, um, finish with a story and then I want to ask you how we can learn more, like how we can follow you further. Um, has everybody here or any, I should say, has anybody here heard of the rat park study? The rat park study? Um, I think I have, you may be thinking this like they, one of the things you hear a lot in addiction is the opposite of connection is addiction. Oh yeah. And the opposite of addiction is connection. And they did a study and I think it was Vancouver, but it was in BC. Uh, I think actually,

[00:15:20] what's his name? Um, why can't I think of his name? Um, he's the famous guy that talks about addiction all the time. Gabor Mate. I think he was involved in it. I might be wrong, but it was in the seventies. They did this study and what they did was they put rats in a cage and they separated some of the rats and they were on their own. And what they found is the rats that were community together, hanging out together, what have you. If they gave them heroin or water, they would take

[00:15:44] the water. If they separated the rats, they would take the heroin to me. And that's an hour and a half documentary, but summarized in 30 seconds. But to me, that summarizes life right there. Even rats say, if I'm by myself, I'd rather have this thing here. But if you give me a community, that water seems like it's better for me. Yeah. I, I also tell people, I talk a lot about parents and families because that is who you are. Your DNA is going to determine who you are. And I say,

[00:16:12] well, while we're talking about parents, how are yours? How are they today? How will they be in five years, 10 years, 15 years? Don't wait till they're 86 and it's a crisis. Solve it now. Say, when dad dies, is there enough money for mom to go on living? If mom dies, can dad tie his own shoelaces? They shouldn't live alone. Don't let them live alone. I really tell people, don't do it because

[00:16:36] I see it. I see the problem. I've got at least four friends who have money. Some of them, not all of them, but it doesn't matter. It's not the money that's solving their problem. They're living alone. And I see them going downhill. Wow. So you said you've written a new number of books. Yeah. This is the last one. Loving Longevity. I also even have a website called thelovinglongevityclub.com.

[00:17:06] Thelovinglongevityclub.com.

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