Making the transition successfully into retirement requires developing habits and using them during this time. Retirement Coach Gary Allen Foster joins me to discuss important habits to develop to age successfully. This idea for the episode came from a recent blog Gary wrote- 10 Habits That Will Improve Your Life the Most After 55. I cut these down to four of the most important habits for us to discuss.
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RS: The topic for today’s episode is Important Habits For Aging Successfully. My guest is fellow retirement coach Gary Allen Foster. You can learn more about Gary at his website, MakeAgingWork.com. Gary writes weekly for his blog, so if you go to his website, you can subscribe to his newsletter and also request a copy of his free eBook, which is Realize Your Full Life Potential- Five Easy Steps To Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.
The inspiration for this podcast and video blog came from a recent blog that Gary wrote that was titled 10 Habits That Will Improve Your Life the Most After Age 55. So, I wanted to have Gary back to discuss the blog that he wrote and talk about some of the most important habits. So, welcome, Gary. Thanks again for joining me.
GAF: Well, thanks for having me back and thanks for the commercial Reid, I appreciate that.
RS: Yep, absolutely. Gary was the first guest that I had on so it’s good to have Gary back. So, let’s dive right in Gary. It’s really important, especially as people transition into retirement, to develop some habits. This is a trying time for a lot of people. Making this transition (into retirement) can be difficult. So, developing and having some of these habits in place before we reach that point is important.
So, you write a lot, you write weekly for your blog. So, what led you to write about the importance of developing habits? Was it something in your own life? Was it a conversation with a client? What was the impetus for your blog on this topic of developing habits?
GAF: Well, that’s a good question. I think that really is kind of an accumulation of things. I think you’re right, I mean, part of it is experiences in my own life. Just observation I think from going through life conversations with people, watching people go through transformations and transitions. And I think just an increasing awareness on my part of how vitally important habits are.
Habits, let’s face it, Reid, you know this, I mean, habits drive our lives. You know, you’ve heard the phrase: the man makes the habits and habits make the man. And I do think that there’s a tendency, a lot of it being culturally driven, where we contend to kind of move into these later phases of our lives with habits that aren’t conducive to us living a fully productive and healthy life.
GAF: You know, and I could go off on several different tangents here to give an illustration, but I think a couple of things, maybe we’ll talk about this a little bit. It’s things such as exercise and diet relationships. These are habits that play a vital role as we get older, as we move past that double-nickel time in life. And that’s kind of an arbitrary selection of a timeline. But you know, habits just are so vital, and difficult to change. There’s no question about that. In fact, I’m not so sure you can change habits. I think you just really have to replace them. So, I hope that kind of gives you a perspective on why I feel is important.
RS: Yep, absolutely. So, you have in your article,…you list 10 habits. I think you really give the readers a bonus of 11. There’s the one extra one that people should develop, but I really wanted to focus on a few of these, Gary. Some of them that I feel like (believe) are probably the most important. So, I’ll, I’ll list those and then we’ll talk individually about each of those.
The first one is Don’t Retire, that you had on your list (in your blog), the second one is Up Your Exercise to Include Strength Training. And I think that’s one that people also don’t think about. And then the third one is… I combined a couple of yours (from the blog) and I called it Continue Learning and Being Challenged. And the fourth one was (is)… I called it Maintain Your Social Connections and Assess Your Relationships. And again, I kind of combined two of the ones you had in your article and we’ll talk individually about each of those.
But before we jump in and talk about Don’t Retire, is there any other habits that you would add to that list that you find vitally important that I didn’t include? Maybe ones from your readers because I think at the end of your blog article people can respond.
GAF: Yeah, there is one, definitely. My sister-in-law is an avid reader of my blog, I don’t pay her to do that, she actually wants to, but she commented and said…by the way, this particular blog has gotten the highest readership and a response of any that I published out of the 96 or 97 that I’ve put out….so I apparently struck a nerve with a few folks. But she came back and she said, you need to include Laughter. And I said, oh my gosh, how could I overlook that one? And she’s absolutely right because she’s a woman that is very upbeat, laughs a lot and I’m thinking, it’s hard to think negative if you’re laughing, right. So, yeah, I think laughter would definitely be one that if I were to rewrite this article, I would include that one too.
RS: Perfect. And the one that I would add, Gary, is Mindset, how we view retirement. Do we view it positively or negatively? And I think we need to go into retirement with a more positive mindset than I think a lot of people do. I covered mindset in a previous episode that I did. So, I didn’t want to add that to this list. But I do think that our, the way we think about things, is important too. So, let’s jump in and talk about the first one, which is Don’t Retire.
GAF: Okay.
RS: And I have a hard time with the word retire or retirement because I think it is a word that has a negative connotation. Instead of looking at this third phase of our lives as something that can be positive and all of the opportunities that it offers, people look at it negatively. So, what did you talk about in the blog article around the topic of Don’t Retire?
GAF: Golly, this is such a big area and really a, I think an area within our culture right now is really transforming…to transitioning. And I’ve really kind of swung in my own thinking about this. Look, retirement as a mindset is not going to go away. It’s so deeply entrenched in our minds that people are not going to completely dispose of it. But I do think that there’s a trend line now in which people are realizing that.
And you and I’ve talked about this, I mean the old traditional model of off the cliff labor to leisure type of retirement is not resonating with this boomer generation that’s moving into retirement age. So, we’re definitely seeing a trend line away from that. And I think that’s all very healthy.
GAF: Now there are some, demographics that are driving some of that as well. I mean, we have an aging population. We don’t have a lot of younger people coming up behind us. But I think at the same time we’re beginning to realize just by looking at people who’ve retired and haven’t retired well. We’re also learning the importance of the impact of working and continuing to be challenged on our overall health.
So, I get excited when I think about the fact that this whole age group right now could be moving toward a mindset. And, that’s a such a key word, mindset, that says maybe on unretirement or semi-retirement is a better way to be thinking about this. So, come down, and frankly, I’ve kind of evolved on this myself…I come down on the concept of unretirement. I made the decision back in my forties that retirement didn’t really make sense and I didn’t intend to retire.
GAF: And that is intensified as gone forward. You know, as I validate the importance of, of not being in a retirement mode in my own life and seeing people around me that haven’t retired well and the impact that’s had. And in talking to more people that are finding excitement in what would normally be this retirement period. So, it’s kind of a rambling answer, but I really do think that that’s…in fact, I think you and I earlier before we started, we’re talking about, you know, some publications that are coming out.
And you know, Chris Farrell has written a great book called Purpose and a Paycheck. Chris is a very talented writer who writes for Next Avenue. He’s an economic journalist, and I’ve known this for years and he’s kind of evolved now to where he’s saying, Hey, I’m coming down on the side of unretirement because of the vitality that is associated with that. Plus also he’s seeing it. He’s seeing more and more people he talks to are saying, Hey, I’m, I’m going back into something, you know, I’m not headed to the lazy boy. I’m going to go do something because I think it’s better for my health. I can contribute. I feel like I’m maybe wasting my resources if I do retire.
So, I’m encouraged by that and there are a lot of reasons for it. I think there’s health factors, there’s economic factors that are all behind this whole trend line toward unretiring. So, I hope that got to where you wanted to go with that question. But that’s part of my thought on that.
RS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think retirement, a lot of times Gary, is just figuring out the right balance or changing the balance between work and leisure in our lives. Because we’ve worked a lot of times for 40, whatever, let’s just round it to 40 years, 45 years, whatever it is. We still want to be involved and we still want to be challenged and we still have things to offer, especially if we’re going to live until we’re 85 or 90, (or beyond) which wasn’t what was happening in previous generations. There’s still this big gap (amount) of time in our lives where, where we can (need to) find things to do.
So, it’s not… (to Me) it’s not about making a choice between work and leisure, just moving from one to the other. It’s finding the right balance between those two. And all of the other things that go into our portfolio of what we need, I call it an Encore Portfolio of what creates this time in our lives that’s happy and rewarding and has meaning and purpose and all of those types of things.
GAF: Well I think you’re spot on about it. My quest I think really is engaging people with the idea of looking at it (retirement) differently. To your point about mindset, and it really is kind of the central theme when I do engage people on a coaching basis is to work toward a lifestyle that is a balance of learning, leisure and labor. And that seems to really resonate, especially with executives. They’re saying that makes sense because I’m not going to totally disengage.
I’ve worked with a lot of hospital executives or healthcare executives, oftentimes hospital CEOs, CFOs, COOs, people like that, very intense and stressful jobs. And they know that when they get to that point, they don’t want to go back to doing that or they don’t want to stay doing that, but they know that they’re not going to head for the lazy boy because that’s just, that’s, that’s too severe. They know they want to do something. So, this whole idea of a balance of labor, leisure and learning resonates with them because it’s not a total disengagement. And I think that’s one of the things that they’re fearful of.
RS: Yeah. And I think a lot of that challenge too Gary is just finding where to refocus, your passion, your purpose, your interests, your experience. How do you take all of that and figure out what your next step is going to be?
GAF: Well, I think there’s a lot of research on this and we could go into a lot of detail, but I mean if these just simply look at, and I always kind of come back to this whole Blue Zones concept and where they looked at these five countries where people live the longest. And Okinawa, I think, is probably the classic example. There are two factors that come when you think about Okinawa. Number one, they, they have a longest, the greatest longevity really on the planet. And at the core of that longevity is that they function with the, with the word called ikigai, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that or not, I K I G A I (pronounced eeky guy), and it really means a reason to get up in the morning.
That’s what has driven their lives and they rarely stop working. And usually their work involves some sort of physical activity and so they have a… They live longer, but they also have a much shorter period of morbidity before they die. In fact, in some cases it’s like you work one day you go to bed and you don’t wake up. I mean it can be that quick. So, we’ve got that…we’ve got a lot of evidence out there for the fact that retirement doesn’t make sense and continuing to work does make sense. But that’s a whole different topic.
RS: Right. Let’s jump into number two, which is Up Your Exercise to Include Strength Training. And this is again…this is one that I think is really good and it’s one that gets overlooked a lot in the whole exercise area as we age. And I know you’ve done quite a bit of reading and research and talking to people about this, Gary. So, what are or why is it important to include strength training in addition to our typical walking, running or cardio workouts that people do as they age?
GAF: Well, it’s a favorite subject for me and I appreciate you bringing it up because I, for one, have been an advocate of strength training for, you know, 30, 40 years. But really kind of unknowingly doing it without a full understanding of the positive benefits. And more recently, just based on some studying and reading it’s just, it’s reinforced the fact that it’s so important.
And let me just go to the main point, we are incredibly naive when it comes to health care as a culture. We don’t really understand how our bodies work. We’ve turned our whole health thing into a $35 copayment experience where you go to your doctor when things are off the track. We don’t think proactively, we think reactively. And this is one of the areas where we’re severely undereducated and that is the fact that our bodies, starting at about age 30, or in our thirties, we began to contract a condition called Sarcopenia.
GAF: Sarcopenia is of relatively new word in the medical field. I mean, it really didn’t even come up as a concept until like 2012 or somewhere in that vicinity. It’s a condition which fundamentally is the loss of muscle mass. We all start experiencing it in our thirties and it really intensifies when we get into our 50s. And it’s one of the reasons that we end up in kind of an extended morbidity condition because we don’t pay attention to our muscles and our tendons and our ligaments. And so, I’ve become a very strong advocate of including weight training in our exercise program. And, people been advocating this for a long time, but I don’t think we pay a lot of attention to it.
I’ll just (pose a) challenge, go to go to a 24-hour fitness and see how many people you see in there who are over 50. It’s increasing, but who are the people that you see there mostly? Well, you see the, the tattooed tank top (muscled) guys, right? And there are ladies. And that can be pretty intimidating to somebody… Well I don’t want to go to the club because I don’t look like those guys. I don’t want to hang around with them. Well, it’s a pretty shallow excuse for not finding some way to do some level of strength training, because if you don’t, your body is going to deteriorate at an accelerated rate.
There’s a great book, which I advocate to everybody I talk to. It’s called Younger Next Year, written 15, 18 years ago. It’s been a bestseller for years. But one of the core messages that the doctor that’s a coauthor, and there’s this…and this is a phrase that has always stuck with me. He says, “aerobic exercise will give you life, strength training will make it worth living.” I’ll say it again. Aerobic exercise will give you a life, give us the oxygen we need, strength training will make it worth living.
Okay. So, you know, we see these bent over hunched people walking with canes. I can tell you that if they had started strength training 30 or 40 years prior, they wouldn’t have…they wouldn’t be like that. So that’s, that’s my soapbox.
RS: All right, let’s jump into number three on the list, which I… Again, I combined a couple of yours. The two that you had, Gary, were Challenge Your Brain and Learn Something New Every Day. And I combined that (those two) into Continue Learning and Being Challenged. And I think one thing that happens when people get closer to retirement or shortly after they retire, is that they stop finding things that are of interest to them. They stop learning, they stop trying to find those things that challenge them like they had in their career, and they stop doing these things.
So, I wanted to talk about some of what you’ve learned over the past about this and what, you know, the reason that you separated these in your blog and some of the reasons why it’s important to continue learning and to continue to be challenged as we age.
GAF: Well, our education system was and is front-loaded. And we still kind of live in that world of, we pile all the education in the first 18 to 22 years. And I think we’re trending away from that with the understanding that we can’t just do that. We can’t… I’ve got a friend, and he and I have had a number of conversations about this. I suggested a book that I’ve read, and I said, you know, you might want to read this book. He says, no, I don’t read. I don’t read. I said, you don’t read. And he said, no, I haven’t read a book in 40 years. I said, well, that’s unfortunate. But I was surprised, quite frankly I was surprised.
I remember a statistic from a few years ago because I had done a toastmaster speech on reading. And I discovered that… And this is a statistic that goes back, you know, probably seven or eight years, but it said that the 33% of high school graduates never read another book after high school graduation.
GAF: And that, that statistic alone alarming. But then I found out that it’s 40% of college graduates don’t read a book after college graduation. And that’s…and then you throw in the fact that 95% of the books in this country are read by 5% of the population. So, you know, that’s a rather alarming trend line, and then you wonder why our brains deteriorate. Because our brains are a muscle, and then they’re going to…your brain is going to atrophy, just like any muscle.
We do strength training for our muscles and ligaments, so challenging ourselves and continuing to learn is one of the reasons that we keep our mind from atrophying. So, you know, and there’s, there’s growing evidence, although I don’t think they’re really, really pin this down, but there’s growing evidence that the more we challenge our brain, the less likely we’re going to lapse into dementia as we age.
GAF: So, because, and I, and I’ve always kind of clunked to this fact because I know one of the myths of aging is that our brains are going to deteriorate. That we’re going to lose neural connections. The fact is, that’s true if we allow it. But we now know through the advances that we’ve made in the area of neurology is that we can build new neural connections.
You know, we’ve got the neurons, we don’t really lose the neurons. We get 100 billion of them, give or take them a couple of billion. They’ll stay there. It’s, it’s the synaptic connections that are important. And the way you create synaptic connections is to continue to learn. So, we can rebuild synaptic connections, make our brain just as it… Now we’re going to be a little bit slower at getting things done. We know that. But the fact is we can be just as smart at 70 as we were at 20 or 30, and we know that for a fact.
GAF: But we’re not going to get there unless we challenge ourselves. We’ve got to step outside our comfort zone. You know, are we going to read comic books or are we going to read a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. It’s that sort of contrast. I think we need to learn to challenge our brains, take ourselves out of the comfort zone.
And I think I shared with you on the last podcast, they did that study of… Took two groups and had one group contemplate a brick wall and another one to watch a TV Sitcom. And then when they tested them afterwards, the electronics going on their brain were the same for contemplating a brick wall and watching the TV. So, we just have got to do more learning. I think the boomers are beginning to understand that.
And I think that’s one of the reasons you’re seeing more proliferation of things like the massive online communities now where you’re, there are more ways for us to go out and learn now inexpensively and people are beginning to get take more advantage of that so, I think that’s a great trend line. I think that’s going to be very encouraging on down the road.
RS: Yeah. I just want to add a couple of things to that too. I think it’s important to continue learning and being challenged too because if we have this whole long time period in retirement, the (continued) learning and being challenged opens up so many new opportunities to us, things that we may not have thought about that we would enjoy pursuing. And so, it opens up some opportunities us.
But I think that the continued learning and being challenged also brings back some of the things that maybe we enjoyed doing in our childhood or as early adults that we kind of put on the back burner because we got so busy with families and careers. And, so whether it’s picking up that instrument that you laid down back in high school or elementary school or learning a foreign language or things like that, there’s so many things that are open to us now. And then the second thing I will comment on that is a lot of universities are opening up their doors to older students coming back and they’re offering free tuition. You can audit a class if there’s, if there’s spots available.
So, there’s lots of opportunities like that for people too, to continue learning. And again, learning about things that maybe you didn’t know you had an interest in. And so, there’s lots of ways to do that and there’s lots of advantages to doing that too.
GAF: Well, I think one of the things that we should probably mention, and I absolutely agree with you, I think that is a definite positive development. And I think also we’re beginning to see, although very slowly and again I think Chris Farrell mentioned this in his book Purpose and a Paycheck, is that we’re seeing gradually, we’re seeing companies now begin to understand that they can no longer turn their back on the older talent that they have turned their back on in the past.
We’re seeing companies now understand the importance and significance of multigenerational workforces. How they can reinforce each other, benefit from older and younger people working together, and realizing that they’re, you know, they’re pushing a lot of talent out the door with these mandatory retirement or downsizing or rightsizing or ostracizing or whatever you want to call it.
RS: A lot of talent and a lot of knowledge unfortunately leaves organizations and it… Without being transitioned, without that knowledge being transitioned to younger, talented employees too.
GAF: Well, and I think this manifests itself in one other way. If I, if I may just make a quick comment on that is that one of the offshoots of that as you well know, is that we’re seeing more businesses, two to one businesses started by people in the 50 to 65 age range, twice as many businesses started in that age group than people in their twenties. I saw a stat the other day, which is staggering to me. The 41% of people in the 55 to 64 age range are now self-employed business owners.
RS: Yeah. Wow.
GAF: So, you know, that’s…
RS: I a trend that I think is going to continue.
GAF: Yeah, I believe you’re right.
RS: Yep. All right let’s take a look at number four and that is Maintain Your Social Connections and Assess Your Relationships. And I combined a couple of yours, Gary. Yours were Assess Your Relationships and Do Some House Cleaning. I found (this) is an interesting one. I don’t think that’s one that people would consider. And then the second one you had was Maintain a High Level of Social Activities.
So, let’s talk about those. And I wanted to cover the first one too is why did you have Assess Your Relationships and Do Some House Cleaning in that list? Because I found that was interesting and I, and I do think that is important for people to look at and develop a habit around.
GAF: I don’t suspect I made many fans with that comment, but the fact is and let’s be real about this. There are people that energize you and there are people that drain you.
RS: Yes, exactly.
GAF: We all, we all have them in our lives and you know, I’ve maintained throughout my life that frankly, life is just a series of choices. So, we have choices in our relationships, and I’ve known people… I’ve probably been guilty of this myself or I’ve had people that I guess I could call friends that frankly were just Debbie downers or Dale Downers or whatever you want to call them. And it just, they can’t ever seem to get to the positive side of the ledger. And just being around them as a drain. Well, I think this kind of intensifies and we get north of 50 or 55 or into our sixties and just say, hey, you know, I don’t need to be carrying this ball and chain around with me.
GAF: So, I guess as tough as it may sound, and oftentimes we’re really good stuff is what this is within the family. And I’ve had that happen. I mean, not in the immediate family, but the, you know, I watched this go on for years with one of my wife’s cousins just was a drain across the entire extended family spectrum. And finally, my wife and her brother just stepped in and said, hey, this is over. You know, we can all learn to do it. Well, it was painful on both sides, but I think one thing that’s important to understand about this is typically the biggest benefactor of making that kind of a move is that Debbie Downer- because they’re more inclined to make a change once they have the truth revealed to them.
And so I think one of the best things you can do is if you’ve got that kind of relationship, be candid about to say, hey look, this can no longer continue- we love you, but we’re not going to spend time together, I’ve got to be done (with this). And I just, you know, it just doesn’t work for me. Whatever words you’re going to use, get it done. I think you need to get those toxic relationships out of your life. Jim Roan is one of my favorite motivational speakers and he’s known for his comment that we rise to the level of the five people that we spend the most time with. So, if we’re hanging out with negative people, it’s going to have a negative effect.
So, the flip side is that we have the option to go out and seek out and find relationships that are reinforcing, that are energizing, that are emulating, because that’s really where most people are. But we have to be proactive about that. And I think as we get older, and this is where retirement comes into play, there is a tendency to kind of, you know, become self-absorbed when we retire. And one of the things that deteriorates oftentimes, and in many cases, is that we began to reduce our spectrum of social relationships, if you will. So, we have to be proactive about building that back up.
RS: And I think that becomes harder after we leave our work a lot of times in retirement because a lot of those friends that we had at work now disappear for a variety of reasons. Either they continue to work, or they move, or they change jobs, or they, you know, whatever. There’s a variety of reasons, so we have to put some effort into continuing to develop those too. So, it’s assessing the relationships and doing some house cleaning I think, like you pointed out. But I also think the other thing we have to do is we have to develop some of those relationships and put some work into doing that. And I think men in particular, I think we have a more difficult time doing that than women do in a lot of cases.
GAF: Well, no question about it. I mean, women are just better at networking and building relationships; they’ve got these webs that they have to form and complete… My wife talks to her sister two or three times a day. And I keep saying, I think you guys were on the phone for an hour twice today. What can you find to talk about? Well, I have to come back up and say…you know that’s a vital social connection for her. And I can’t sit here and say that I’ve got one comparable to that.
So, it was interesting. I just, this morning, or I guess it was last night, something flashed across the TV screen that said 31% of Americans don’t know who their neighbors are. What does that say? It’s kind of garage door up, garage door down, right. You know, and we’re not, we’re not the social animals that we should be.
RS: Nope. So, on that, on that topic, I wanted to…, I think there’s been some interesting research around the importance of social connections in regards to longevity and happiness. And I recently came across a book, Gary, that I wanted to share with the listeners, and I don’t know if you’ve read it or not, but it’s about the importance of social connections. And it was written by a psychologist named Susan Pinker, and the book is called The Village Effect, and talks about 10 principles that are predictors of a long life in the book. She also did a Ted talk on the topic which is easy to find and I’ll, I’ll include links in the transcript to both of these. But most of the 10 predictors were things that we often hear about. So, she talks about things like smoking and drinking, and we need to exercise, and watch our weight, and watch our blood pressure, and a lot of those things.
RS: But the two things that she talked about that were the top predictors of longevity, ones that we often don’t think much about were, number two was the quality of our close relationships, which I think is pretty easy, really (doesn’t) need much defining. And then the number one predictor was what she labeled as social integration. And what she means by that is the degree to which you interact in person with a variety of people during the course of the day.
So, that could be things as simple as talking with our neighbor. Like you just mentioned, a lot of us don’t know our neighbors. So, it could be just talking with our neighbors, striking up a conversation with the person checking us out at, at the store, or at the grocery store, the coffee shop, whatever it is. Anyone you have brief interaction with throughout the day, she labeled as the number one, and both of those have strong ties to social connection. So, I think it goes to show the importance of that.
And, you and I’ve talked about the negative things that happen when we don’t have this social interaction. It can lead to depression and suicide and isolation and all of these things that can negatively impact people and make them go downhill really quickly. All (of these negative things) have to do with, with our connections with people or our social connections, our relationships.
So anyway, I thought that was very interesting that those two are at the top of the list. And she also goes on to say that they’re not only crucial for our longevity, but she also talks about them being important for our happiness and for our learning and our resilience.
GAF: Yeah. I’ll need to get that book because I think she’s spot on in that regard, especially as we get older. And I think we’re seeing in some ways, you know, you look at some of these upscale retirement communities. I think a lot of that is based on facilitating higher levels of social interaction. I mean, I’ve talked with folks that have gone that direction primarily because that was the main benefit. They felt that they have the opportunity to be more social.
Now, to me, the one downside of that is that social interaction then becomes really only social interaction in your own age demographic, if you will. And I think there’s a, I think that’s a strong argument for social interaction, including younger people.
RS: That’s a good point. And, and, and yeah, that was another one you had on your list and your blog article too, which I thought was a good, which could be lumped into this whole social connection aspect is, is the benefits that both sides get working with young… The benefits we get from working with younger people and the benefits that younger people get from working with (older adults.)
GAF: As I alluded to earlier, I think companies are beginning to see the benefit of that, whereas before it just wasn’t a logical thing for them to pursue. But I think they’re seeing now that there is a mutually beneficial relationship when you have that multigenerational workforce. So that’s, and that could be, in and of itself a whole different discussion topic. But I think that’s an encouraging trend line.
RS: Yeah, I do too. Well, that’s a good place to end, I think for today. Gary, thanks again for sharing your blog. I really, really enjoyed all of the points that you had in there and thanks for sharing your insight on the habits to age more successfully.
GAF: Well, thanks for having the opportunity and again for the commercial. I appreciate your support and encourage you to continue to do what you’re doing here. I think you’re getting a good, strong message out, a message that needs to be heard.
RS: Absolutely. And we’ll have you back on to talk about another topic soon. Gary. Thanks again and thanks to the readers and listeners. We’ll see you next time.
