Good a team. I hope you're bloody terrific. So there's an idea that's spoken about in business a lot, and that is future proofing. And the question is how do we future proof our business? And of course you can't guarantee what will happen within the context of an entire professional industry or even within a single business. We can't guarantee what will happen moving forward. But the idea of future proofing your business this is my best understanding anyway.
Clearly not an area of expertise for me, but my understanding is that we do what we can now, We do what we need to do. We make decisions, We create contingencies and plans and put in place strategies and protocols and operating systems that will hopefully help our business not only thrive in the now, but also moving forward, thrive, survive, thrive and proliferate whatever that means in the context of
your particular business into the future. So we don't wait until something falls off, for breaks, or we don't wait for the catastrophe. We as much as we can, we predict and we think forward, and we anticipate, and we look at trends and we look at what happens in other similar businesses over time, and we try our very best to anticipate and plan for what's coming. Of course, we can't always do that with one hundred percent success,
but that's the idea. The idea is we think about where we're at right now in our business and what we might need to do be create change and adapt to moving forward to grow in the way that we want to grow over the next one, two, five, ten, twenty years. So I thought, I like the idea of that, like that term. And we've spoken about this, you know, I spoke the other day at length about increasing our health span, and so this is a little bit of
a follow on from that. And when we think about in the moment, we think about today, what do I need to do today or tomorrow or this week? What can I do? What might I do? What decisions can I make? What action can I take? What thing can I own up to? What protocol or operating system can I implement that might help me live not only a long life, but a long healthy life. So, of course lifespan,
we know what it is. And also you know, if you listen to that episode, that health span is the percentage of your total years lived or your lifespan, it's the percentage of that that you are in a relatively healthy functional, operational, physical, mental, emotional healthy state. So if you live to ninety, an, eighty eight, or eighty nine of those years are relatively healthy, then you would call that an incredibly long health span. Versus somebody who lives
for ninety years. In the last twenty five years, they're basically being propped up and in some ways kept alive by pharmaceuticals and medical interventions, and which is of course not bad. But what we find is that even though they might live to ninety years, the last twenty five years of their life is in pain, is in discomfort, is in a level of dysfunction, and so the quality of their life as an experience for the person inside
that body is not great. So I'm always saying that you will not accidentally end up rich, You will not accidentally end up happy. You will not accidentally end up in an amazing body, in an amazing environment, with an amazing business or an amazing career. You will not fall on your feet. You will not just somehow with no planning, with no work, with no risk, with no facing fears.
With no decision making, with no resilience, with no capacity to do the things necessary, you will not just somehow end up in an amazing health state, or an amazing financial state, or an amazing marriage. Things require work, effort, focused, decision making, commitment. And so when we think about future proofing our life, and again it's not guaranteed, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to maximize the chance that. So if I was to future proof my life, now,
let's use me as an example. And it's probably not a terrible example because I'm sixty and most people, it said, and most people we're talking about, the majority, are not
in good shape. If you go and find one hundred and seventy year olds in Australia and you look at how they work in inverted commas, you'll find that a reasonably significant percentage of those seventy year olds are dealing with a lot of issues physical, mental, emotional, sometimes financial, practical issues, and many of those could have been ameliorated or could have been avoided. Many of those have they
done certain things earlier in their life. Some things, of course, are genetically inevitable, but even within the context of genetic disposition. We still know that we can influence genetic expression with the way that we live, with the things that we do to our body, with our lifestyle, with our sleep, with our food, with our choices, with our mindset, with the way that we socialize. We know that we can
even impact our genetic expression consciously. And so the way that we turn out for one of the better word turnout in inverted commas at seventy or eighty or fifty is in part due to genetic disposition, but in a much larger part it is a result of, or byproduct of what we do with what we've been given. So the questions that you might think about, and this won't be a long discussion, but you know, the quality of
your life moving forward. I think about future proofing your life, or trying to guarantee as much as is possible, or to ensure as much as possible what your life will be like to inhabit for youabitant of that life, but also you the designer of that life. You get to in many ways you get to design what your life experience will be. But there needs to be much more than the design phase. There needs to be the execution and the or the planning and the execution and the
creation phase. So when I say, right when I'm seventy, in in fact, in just over nine years, when I'm seventy, I want to be I want to be in a strong, functional body as much as I can with the knowledge I have, the skills, I have, the resources I have, and the genetic potential that I've been given. Right, So, right now, at this age sixty nearly sixty one, I go right, So what do I need to do then to make that nine and a bit year intention a
nine and a bit year reality. How do I optimize the chances of me being a seventy year old that is atypical. That is not for ego and not for accolades, but atypical in the sense of I'm much stronger, I'm much more operational, my immune system is stronger, I'm more flexible, I've got more fitness, I'm my brain works better than average. I'm still learning, I'm still unlearning. I still have purpose, i still have focus. I'm still of service and value
to others. I'm still loving my life, I'm still growing, I'm still How do I maximize my chances of everything that I just said being real for me at seventy, Well, there's a bunch of stuff, but I'm going to give you a few. I don't know how old you are, buck fast forward ten years. Think about you in ten years, think about you in five years, if you want, think about you in thirty years. Like whatever's relevant for you,
wherever you're at. And the funny thing is when we're young, and I know I have a lot of kind of for want of a better term, a middle aged and by that I mean people somewhere in the ballpark of
forty forty forty five. We have quite a lot of people in the thirties, but also people in the fifties who listen to this, is that when you're in your twenties and thirties, you know you while you conceptually understand getting old, the experience of time, the experience of time between about forty and sixty is for me anyway, it's been a complete distortion. It's like by that I mean twenty years experientially feels like five for me and for
many people that I talk to. And we also know that we humans have a propensity to put our head down and just do life, groundhog day life, even when it's not working, even we're doing shit that's giving us bad results, even when we're putting crap in our body, even when we're spending money on things we don't need, while simultaneously being in a bad situation financially continuing to have unproductive, toxic, destructive conversations with people about the same thing.
We just do this. We get in this ridiculous kind of pattern of repetition and ritual and frustration that doesn't work, and then we stick our head up and oh fuck, now we're fifty. And this is not about This is not about oh, you're broken, or you're weird, or you're bad, or I'm weird, or but this is about Okay, you're human. You've done some dumb shit. Now let's do better. Put up your hand if you've done dumb shit. All the hands are up. Why because we've all done dumb shit.
Who wants to do better shit moving forward? Don't overthink it. All the hands go up. Of course, we all want to do better moving forward. But here's the thing. You are not going to stick your head up in a decade and go, fuck, how did I get here? This is amazing? Oh my god, things just worked out. Oh my god, I fell on my feet. Oh my god, the opportunity fairy knocked on my fucking door and here I am. Life is nirvana. It's not happening. It doesn't happen.
It happens maybe in the movies, maybe on the Disney Channel, maybe I don't know, but for the most part, it doesn't happen to us regular humans. We are going to create an amazing existence or we're going to be swept along in the momentum that is our current existence and reality, which for some of you is not the existence or reality that you want to inhabit. So if where you're at right now and you think moving forward is somewhere between great and fucking amazing, this may not be for you.
But if you realize that your current operating system is not optimal, and you realize that perhaps based on your current trajectory, your existence in ten years might be somewhere between not very good and fucking catastrophic, then now is the time, Like this is the time now. I know
it's not convenient. I know you didn't think about it, and maybe not now today, but definitely now as in nowsh nowish today, tomorrow, the next day where we start to think about, we start to design and construct and plan for the future existence that we will all inhabit. So in ten years, two things are going to happen. Three things are going to happen. There's three potential outcomes. In ten years, you're going to be one dead. Let's
hope that's not the reality. You're going to be two alive and in a better place because your future proofed your life, or alive and in a worse place, or maybe I guess there's option four about the same place. But we all know what it is that you want. At the very least, we want to kind of hold on to what we've got, But I think most of us, on some level, we want to create a better version
of what we currently and habit. The quality of your life moving forward and my life moving forward, will be about your willingness to just do the to identify what do I need to do and do the work. And I know this is not a revelation. I know this is not a new construct. I know this is not
new information. But the truth is that despite the obvious truth of this, the obvious reality of this, most people just don't do it because we are so in the moment and while we'll only ever live live being a present tense verb in the moment our life moving forward in ten years, it's just going to be a series of now moments between them out now and then, and so for you to be able to define what matters to you moving forward, your goals, your values, and your needs.
What matters to you moving forward is or what's kind of matter to you moving forward, It's important to get clarity around that. It's important for you to create a plan now, a strategy now, an accountability system now, a timeline now, and then for you to be able to systematically, methodically, intelligently, courageously execute that fucking plan so that this is not
just another thing that you almost did. How many people have got a mine field, a waste land of things that they almost did in their rear view mirror, fucking everyone. If nothing changes, nothing changes. The quality of your life moving forward will be dependent on a bunch of things.
Your ability to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability, your ability to and willingness to solve problems in real time, to ask great questions, to be resilient and perform under pressure, and importantly, your ability to outwork and outlast sounds like an episode of Survivor to outwork and outlast your motivation, Like, what do you want to look and feel like when you're seventy? What do you want to perhaps more importantly, feel and function like at seventy? How do you want
your brain to work at seventy? And more broadly, what does successful at seventy or sixty or fifty? Just plug in the number that's relevant for you. What does successful at seventy mean for you? What does that look like? What's happening when you think about that future version of you? And things are going great? When you imagine yourself there, When you visualize yourself in this five or ten year
future reality, what's happening there? What's happening there? And what do you need to do now to make sure that that actually becomes real not just some theoretical construct. As you listen to these words, it's not just an imagination thing. It becomes an actualization thing. It becomes something that's transferred from a construct in your non physical world that is your mind, into a real experiential outcome in your physical, three dimensional life, the one that you exist in and inhabit.
What a successful seventy year old you look like function like, and future proofing you is not about It's not about knowing or predicting every possible challenge, event or outcome, but really about it is about planning for the future and creating outcomes. But it's also about you being able to be flexible enough, and resilient enough, and adaptable enough and open minded enough to be able to thrive whatever happens. Because the ship show is coming. It comes for all
of us. The ship show is coming. And the challenge is not to avoid the shit show, not forever anyway, but it's about being able to navigate it. So I'm going to wind up with this. We'll keep this quite short a few minutes. So when you think about future proofing you, what does that mean in terms of your relationships? What does that mean in terms of your financial security?
What are some actions that you can take or decisions you can make, or changes that need to be implemented to improve at least the chances of you being financially in a good place when you are pick the age. What does future proofing look like when you talk about mental and emotional health. You know how you work, What are some things that you can put in place? To increase the likelihood of future you being in a better mentally and emotionally place than perhaps historical you has been.
And what about cognitive function? How are you going to keep your brain working well into the future. Let's put aside the mental psychological stuff. Let's talk about just the brain performance. So your cognitive capacity to work optimally, to solve problems, to remember things, to focus, to be productive, and to be able to have great communication and to be able to do all the things that a brain does at a high level. What's your plan moving forward
for that? And what about social health? What about interaction, connection, love, being loved, community, Like we know that for people as they get into their older years, that while of course socialization is very important across the lifespan, for many people the social component to their existence is almost the biggest determinant of how well they live and how long they live.
Like our ability as we get older, or our capacity to be able to be connected and to communicate and to socialize and interact and to belong is crucially important. What's your future proofing plan for that? And then we
think about your physical capabilities. And I'm not talking about what you look like, but just being able to walk, just being functional, just being operational, being able to pick up a grand kid or two, just being able to move across the landscape with some level of confidence and competence, and just being atypically strong for your age, and even thinking about what retirement might look like. I spoke about this recently in the health Span episode. But again, like
the idea of retirement is a fucking stupid idea. If that idea looks like essentially doing not much and relaxing on the couch and watching the Telly, if retirement still involves purpose and meaning and interaction and connection and some solving problems and some fun and some travel and some you know, some ongoing learning paths. So we're still using our body, We're still using our mind, We're still using
our brain. We're not retiring us. We're where we're retiring from a job or a career, but we're still operationalizing and optimizing what we have to work with as well as we can. Ah. I think that went all right, considering I pretty much made it up on the spot. But I just like the idea. I just like the idea of thinking about future proofing you. I like it