There’s an old saying I’ve never particularly liked:
“When my time’s up, my time’s up.”
Really? I’m not convinced.
Of course, there are things we cannot control. I could walk out of my front door tomorrow and get hit by the proverbial bus. Life comes with no guarantees.
But assuming I successfully avoid the bus, I don’t believe we are simply passive passengers waiting to discover how many years we’ve been allocated. I believe we can train for them.
And that idea is at the heart of why I wrote Back to BEING a Human BEING.
Nobody trains for getting old. We train for almost everything else in life.
We train for a marathon. We prepare for exams. We build careers. We plan weddings. We save for retirement.
Yet one of the biggest physical challenges most of us will ever face is becoming an older human being, and hardly anybody trains for it. We just arrive there. Then we’re surprised when our bodies aren’t prepared.
I’m approaching my 50th birthday, and I don’t see 50 as the beginning of the end. I see myself as half a centenarian.
Hopefully, I’m only halfway there. That completely changes the conversation. Instead of asking, “How do I avoid getting old?” I’m asking:
“What does the 80, 90 or 100 year old version of me need me to start doing today?”
That’s why I call myself a Centenarian in Training.
And you can become one at 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70.
It isn’t a prediction that you’ll live to 100. It’s a decision to start behaving today in a way that gives your future self the strongest possible chance.
My mentors are already 100, I study centenarians.
I’m particularly fascinated by the ones who haven’t simply accumulated birthdays, but who have retained their independence and quality of life into very old age.
People who are still living at home. Still walking. Still shopping. Still cooking. Still participating in their communities. Still living rather than simply existing.
Across different cultures and different parts of the world, there are recurring themes in the way exceptionally long-lived populations live.
Their diets tend to be centered around simple, predominantly whole foods. They move naturally. They spend time outdoors. They have purpose. They remain socially connected. They rest. They belong. And their lives generally look far less complicated than the modern lifestyle we’ve created for ourselves.
They haven’t discovered some £500 a month longevity biohack. In many ways, they’ve just remained very good at being human beings.
Those people have become some of my greatest teachers.
They are the people I study and talk about in Back to BEING a Human BEING, because I’m far more interested in what someone thriving at 100 can teach me about living than I am in accepting that chronic disease, frailty and dependency are inevitable consequences of ageing.
This became personal for me. A number of people in my own family died far younger than they should have from lifestyle related diseases.
That stays with you and at some point I realised that I didn’t want to simply accept the same trajectory for myself or allow it to become the blueprint for future generations of my family.
I wanted to understand what I could influence. That distinction matters. I cannot control everything that happens to me. None of us can.
But there is an enormous difference between saying “I cannot control everything” and saying “I cannot influence anything.”
I can influence how I eat. I can influence whether I move my body. I can influence my strength and fitness. can influence my sleep, my relationships, my stress, my environment and many of the habits I repeat every single day.
Those ordinary decisions, repeated for decades, matter.
So perhaps my time will be up in 20 years. Perhaps 30. Perhaps 50. Who knows? But while I’m here, I intend to stack the odds in my favour.
When somebody comes to work with me, I don’t start by trying to turn them into some perfect wellness robot who never eats pudding and spends their life measuring biomarkers.
I take them back to basics. Back to understanding hunger, health and their own physiology. Back to the habits human beings practised long before modern life made everything so complicated.
In other words, I take them Back to BEING a Human BEING.
Then I ask them to think about somebody they probably don’t think about nearly enough: their future older self.
What kind of 80 year old are you training to become? What about 90? Could you still be doing your own shopping at 100?
Could you still be living independently Could you still be travelling, cooking, laughing, walking, learning and making plans?
Nobody can promise you that. I certainly won’t. But we can start training for the possibility. Your old age starts now.
This is ultimately why I wrote Back to BEING a Human BEING.
It isn’t a book about trying desperately not to die. Quite the opposite. It’s about living.
It’s about recognising that longevity isn’t particularly exciting if the extra years are spent unable to enjoy them.
I don’t simply want more years. I want more healthy, independent, useful, joyful years.
And I want that for the people I work with too.
So the next time somebody shrugs and says:
“Well, when my time’s up, my time’s up…”
Maybe ask them:
“Yes. But how are you planning to arrive there?”
The better question is whether the way we live today can improve our chances of becoming the strong, capable older person we’d like to be tomorrow. I believe it can.
And that’s why, at almost 50 years old, I’m not winding down. I’m training.
Back to BEING a Human BEING.
Being A Centenarian in Training and hopefully, I’m only halfway there.
I’m not interested in anti-aging. In fact, I want to age. I want to age for many, many more years to come. I’m not looking for the next anti-aging regime, miracle cream or secret to staying young.
I’m interested in pro-aging: growing older well, staying strong, healthy, independent and excited about the years ahead. Aging is a privilege, and I fully intend to do plenty of it. So “anti-aging” is officially out of my vocabulary.
I’m pro-aging, and I’m training for it.
https://backtobeingahumanbeing.app
Sharon’s Website:
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