This week I was a guest on Gina Gardiner & Friends, a UK podcast for leaders. Gina has coached leaders and their teams for more than thirty years, has written more than thirty books, and ran an award-winning school for twenty years, much of it from a wheelchair after a ski accident and two failed back surgeries. I coach strength in a gym in Westmont, Illinois. You'd think we'd have little in common. We ended up in the same place within the first few minutes.
The line her team pulled for the episode graphic says it best: "It's not just about living longer. It's about living well." That's the idea behind my book Death Resistant, and it turns out it's an idea leaders understand better than most, because they've seen it in their companies. Plenty of businesses last a long time. Fewer stay healthy the whole way.
I've built and sold a company, I run a gym and a nonprofit youth sports league, and I've watched a lot of capable people run themselves into the ground. The pattern is almost always the same. When things get busy, sleep goes first, then movement, and then the eating falls apart because a tired body grabs whatever is fast. Then they try to fix it in reverse order, starting with a diet, and wonder why it doesn't stick.
Death Resistant puts it in the order that works: recovery, then movement, then nutrition. Sleep first, because everything else costs less willpower when you're rested. Move every day, and walking counts. Food third, because once you're sleeping and moving, your appetite starts telling the truth again. It's three circles on a napkin. That's on purpose. The plan you can remember is the plan you'll keep, and the plan you'll keep for forty years beats the perfect one you quit in six weeks.
Gina's show is built on a "can do" view of life, and her own story is the proof. She didn't get there with a shortcut. She got there by doing the next right thing every day for a long time. Same as a long, healthy life. Same as a company that lasts.
Listen to the full conversation, or read the longer write-up of the Death Resistant framework on the Mighty Oak Athletic blog.
If you run a team, a senior program, a library series, or a community group and want the Death Resistant talk, I give it at no charge. Details here.
— Michael