Longevity is a function of lifespan and healthspan.
The following healthspan proxies are simple, actionable steps helping you cultivate a long life of vitality and mindfulness.
But before you start, keep in mind:
- You don’t have to do it all. Start with what resonates most to you.
- It’s okay to switch. If something doesn’t resonate right now, set it aside. You can revisit it later.
- Consistency matters more than intensity. Exceptional health and a fulfilling life come from doing simple things daily, consistently, and for the long term.
Pick a topic and explore.
Food
Mindful Eating
“When we eat, we should show up for that meal 100%.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
A lot gets said about what we eat. Very little thought goes into how we eat.
The act of eating is more than just meeting your caloric goals or ticking off boxes on a nutrition plan. It’s an opportunity to connect with both your body’s needs and your heart’s wants.
Eating time is not ‘free time’ for multitasking. Food isn’t something you need to ‘get through’ with the aid of distracting rewards. Food itself is the reward. Every bite of nourishment is a celebration – eat your glory mindfully.
This simple daily practice of bringing your entire mind and body to the act of eating opens the doorway to satiety – helping you understand what you eat, when to eat, and how much to eat.
Showing up 100% for your meal is the first step in making your stomach and gut trusted companions for the long life ahead.
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Balancing Social and Silence
“A good meal brings people together, and in the company of food, we find equality.”
Food that feels like indulgence when eating alone – activating dopamine-driven reward pathways, transforms into a shared resource in the company of friends, engaging serotonin-driven reward systems.
Shared meals bring people together; unfolds new connections while strengthening existing bonds. Relationships formed around food often grow more satisfying and enduring than those built on other shared interests. [#1]
“In the Zen kitchen, silence is the seasoning that turns food into enlightenment.”
At the same time, eating alone and in silence is an act of deep nourishment while also cultivating gratitude for the food available to us.
While there is no hard and fast ‘ratio’ for balancing eating in silence and eating in company, mindful eating can guide your choices. When your body needs rest and introspection, embrace silence. When you seek connection and joy, share a meal with others. Both practices, done with intention, make living a joy and transform food into source of happiness.
Hunger, Healing, and Health
Every living creature since the beginning of time has gone hungry now and then. Our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors spent nearly a third of their lives hungry – a level of deprivation far beyond what we need today. But a little self-imposed food scarcity is a good thing.
“He who eats too much cannot be a Yogi. He who fasts too much cannot be a Yogi.” – Swami Vivekananda
Fasting isn’t about starving yourself. It’s about choosing to go hungry episodically, for brief periods. It’s a mindful way to teach yourself how not to eat.
If there’s ever a reason for distraction to be a good thing while thinking about food, it’s during fasting. Skip a meal when you’re immersed in work or something engaging. Skip one dinner a week. Choose at random.
Don’t look at fasting as starving – it’s about allowing your body the time it needs to repair itself. By giving your digestive system a break, fasting will help you live longer and stay healthier. [#2]
Body
Breathing Completely
If there is a panacea bestowed on humanity that we remain largely ignorant of – it has to be breathing. The most potent tool for longevity.
It is no coincidence that Buddha chose to focus on the breath on his path to liberation. Nor is it a coincidence that breathing is connected to nearly every physiological function in the body. We don’t just breathe to stay alive – breathing is the cornerstone of the quality of life you lead and the long-term health of every organ in your body.
The simple practice of slow, steady breathing has the power to reshape our neural circuitry, enabling us to face fears and build courage. [#3]
Our breath today will one day dissolve into air. Irrespective of how long you live, let conscious breathing be your anchor.
Stop right now. Take a long, deep breath… two if you can… three if you care.
.
.
.
Go on. Spend a minute in conscious slow and steady breathing.
Find the practice of slow breathing exercise here.
Active Lifestyle
The rise in physical inactivity is alarming. Sedentary lifestyle levels jumped from 22.4% in 2000 to 45.4% in 2022 – and they’re projected to reach a staggering 55% by 2030. [#4]
The most lethal consequence of a sedentary lifestyle is an increased risk of premature death due to its link with chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
“Health is Wealth”
Considering the reality of senescence – the gradual decline of our body’s stability, strength, and serenity – the idea of relentlessly pursuing career, wealth, and materialistic goals today, hoping to ‘find time’ for a healthy life tomorrow, is utterly flawed.
Incorporating even small amounts of daily physical activity can dramatically reduce health risks and improve both your lifespan and healthspan.
What excuse is worth risking your health when just 15 minutes of exercise a day could give you more life?
Check out this free resource to find exercises that can jumpstart your journey to a healthier, longer life.
Explore their challenges to build a sustainable monthly habit. Print it out, stick it on your wall, and scratch off each day’s target. Small steps, big change.
Listen to Your Body
Self-awareness isn’t just about recognizing your emotional state; it also involves interoceptive awareness – the ability to sense internal bodily states like hunger, fatigue, pain, or stress.
Unfortunately, over-reliance on apps and devices to track physiological metrics has diminished this natural awareness. We’ve become disconnected from the signals our bodies send us.
“Your body is not a temple, it’s the home you’ll live in forever. Listen to it, care for it, and learn from it.”
Mindful Self-observation is a simple practice to rebuild the feedback loop between your mind and body. It combines sight, breathing, and self-compassion to help you notice how you look, how you feel, and how your body functions.
You can approach this practice in a progressive way as follows,
Begin with observing your hands
- Lower your gaze and observe your palms while taking deep breaths.
- Notice your fingers, the lines, any movements, sensations, texture.
- Spend a minute or two on this.
- Afterwards, journal what you observed.
Once you are comfortable observing your palms, progress to your face
- Observe your face in a mirror while taking deep breaths.
- Use a mirror in a private space, like your bathroom.
- This is a practice of connecting with yourself. Not being a critique.
- If needed (optional), use the phrase – “I’m enough” in your mind with every inhale.
- Practice for 1 – 2 minutes and write down your reflections.
Once you are comfortable observing your face, progress to your body
- Observe your entire body with clothes while taking deep breaths.
- The focus is on general awareness, posture, facial expressions, or emotional cues.
- Here too, if required use the phrase – “I’m enough”.
- Practice at least for two minutes and write down your reflections.
Once you are comfortable, progress to observing your body without clothes
- Simply observe your entire body without clothes while taking deep breaths.
- Notice details like scars, skin texture, posture, or areas needing attention.
- See your body as it truly is. The focus is to deepen body acceptance and help you connect more intimately with your physical self.
- Here too, if required use the phrase – “I’m enough”.
- Practice at least for two minutes and write down your reflections.
This is not a rigid step-by-step process. If observing your body feels overwhelming, simply return to observing your palms or face. The practice is about meeting yourself where you are.
These observations help you become more attuned to physical sensations, gradually strengthening interoceptive awareness – the ability to listen to your body’s subtle cues and signals.
Make sure you journal. Journaling is where these insights come together, deepening the connection between your mind and body.
Mind
Psychological Experiences
A good life is often viewed in two ways – hedonic (high on satisfaction, comfort, and security) or eudaimonic (high on meaning, significance, and purpose).
If happiness and meaning are the destinations, then psychological richness is the journey.
A psychologically rich life thrives on diverse, perspective-changing experiences. Neither a happy life nor a meaningful life fully captures human motivation, as both can become monotonous and repetitive over time. [#5]
Here are some simple everyday practices to cultivate psychological richness, nurturing cognitive flexibility and resilience – essential ingredients for long-term well-being:
- Introduce new experiences into your routine. Try a new cuisine, take a different route to work, or explore a hobby outside your comfort zone.
- Embrace discomfort to grow. Have conversations with people who hold different viewpoints or visit places with cultural practices different from your own.
- Choose learning over certainty. Read books on topics you know little about, watch documentaries that challenge your beliefs and patterns, or watch historical series offering insights on humanities and cultures.
- Ignite new emotions through cultural diversity. Attend a theater performance, visit an art gallery, or listen to music from unfamiliar genres to broaden your perspectives.
Emotional Intelligence
Sensing, identifying, and naming what is happening inside us is the foundation of emotional intelligence.
“Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way.”
The key to emotions is simple: pay attention. When emotions go unrecognized or suppressed over long periods, they manifest as stressors that take a toll on our mental, physical, and social well-being.
The good news? Simply naming your emotions can be transformative. Labeling emotions reduces their intensity and helps us manage them better.
Here’s a simple practice to build emotional awareness. It only takes 2–3 minutes,
- Wherever you are, find a quiet moment to pause.
- Close your eyes, or keep them open with lowered gaze.
- Focus on your breath, letting your attention settle on each inhale and exhale.
- Notice the sensation of air at the tip of your nose – it may take a few breaths to notice it fully.
- Scan your body for tension: clenched teeth, a tight chest, or heaviness in your limbs. With each exhale, consciously release that tension.
- Once you feel more settled, ask yourself: What am I feeling?
- Be patient. Let emotions surface naturally and stay curious about what arises.
- When the emotions become clearer, name them. Simply acknowledge them by saying to yourself, “I’m feeling ______.” If multiple emotions arise, that’s okay. Let them come and go, and focus on the one or two predominant feelings.
- Once you have acknowledged the feelings, gently open your eyes.
- Write these feelings down to solidify the connection between your mind and emotions.
- Return to whatever you had to do with the awareness of your current emotional makeup.
With regular practice, you’ll become more emotionally attuned – replacing automatic, impulsive reactions with thoughtful, intentional responses.
The Art of Doing Nothing
Since childhood, most of us have been conditioned to fill every moment with activity.
We spent our early years in classrooms, our evenings packed with homework or extracurriculars. As we grew older, the treadmill didn’t stop. Weekdays became a relentless pursuit of productivity, while weekends morphed into a frenzy of socializing or ‘catching up’. Every moment seems accounted for, with little to no room for something as unthinkable as doing nothing.
But here’s the truth: doing nothing is not laziness; it’s a radical act of self-preservation. [#6]
“Peggy, just think about it. Deeply. Then forget it. And an idea will jump up in your face.” – From Mad Men series in Netflix
Doing nothing is the deliberate practice of stepping away from everything – tasks, goals, distractions; and simply being. Scrolling through reels does not an empty brain make!
Every now and then, doing nothing is essential to step back and allow the mind to process all the information subconsciously, construct new patterns, and design fresh perspectives. Counter intuitively, you are building your cognitive reserve by doing nothing.
So, how do you practice the art of doing nothing?
- Be quiet, all by yourself.
- Resist distractions.
- Don’t plan. Don’t analyze.
It may feel uncomfortable at first, but stick with it. In a world obsessed with doing, the art of doing nothing is a revolutionary act. It’s a moment to pause, breathe, and simply exist without expectations.
Related topic: The Art of Delaying Decisions
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References:
#1: Breaking Bread: the Functions of Social Eating, Influence of Food Type on Human Psychological–Behavioral Responses and Crime Reduction
#3: Dr. Jack Feldman: Breathing for Mental & Physical Health & Performance
#5: A Psychologically Rich Life: Beyond Happiness and Meaning
#6: How to Take a Break — The Case for Empty Brain Hours, Doing Absolutely Nothing Has Mental Health Benefits
Nikhil Kabadi 