Living longer means living better – here’s how to get started

I could feel my father walking beside me. I’m on a familiar path, climbing through woodland towards a plateau, when tears begin to roll unexpectedly down my cheeks. Dad had died many years earlier, and I thought I had done my grieving. Yet, as I walked, I could feel him beside me, as though we were once again walking together, as we so often had.

My father died of mesothelioma, caused by asbestos exposure when he was a young engineer. I still have a photograph of my Dad, in an oxygen mask, with my two-year-old son sitting on his knee being shown a book. It’s an image that has never left me – a grandfather and a small boy absorbed in a story together, while illness had already begun to take so much away. Dad had become seriously ill more than a decade younger than I was then. He’d been active and healthy. As I walked, I realised that I was approaching 70 and might have almost 40 years that he never had.

This February, that little boy in the photograph became a father himself, and I became a grandmother. The passage of time has made my memory of Dad more poignant, not less. Those extra years are an extraordinary gift but they also ask something of me: how will I use them? For much of my career, I’ve studied work and working lives. I have written about why many of us will need, and want, to work for longer. But now I have become interested in another question: what does it mean to live well for longer? The obvious answer is to look after our bodies.

I try to do what we all know to be the sensible things: walk 10,000 steps most days, aim for eight hours of sleep, enjoy Pilates and try not to eat too many cakes. They are simple habits that I hope will give my future self a better chance. But healthy ageing is not only about the body. We can count our steps and watch what we eat, yet neglect the things that make a long life worth living. For me, living well is also about friendship, curiosity and having something ahead of you that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning. I am not alone in thinking that relationships belong at the heart of a healthy life.

My friend Robert Waldinger, who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has followed people and their families for almost nine decades. Its most striking finding is that the people who remained happiest and physically healthiest had the warmest relationships. As Robert told me recently: “Relationships protect us and enhance our health.”

I see that in my friendship with Shirley, who I met 60 years ago when we were weekend waitresses together in a fish and chip shop in Keswick. She has been alongside me through all these decades of life – its changes, losses, celebrations and surprises. Shirley is brilliant at friendship. She notices when someone has gone quiet, sends the message rather than waiting, and is also there for difficult times. What would I say to someone who wants to strengthen their friendships? Robert’s research tells us why relationships matter for our health. Shirley has taught me what they ask of us: attention, intention and the willingness to be there.

So start small. Send a message today to someone you have lost touch with. Make one friendship regular. It could be a weekly call, a monthly walk or a standing coffee. And go beyond the birthday greeting: ask how someone really is, and let them know how you are too.

Friendship is one of the threads that helps hold a long life together. To imagine the others, I keep returning to the image of weaving. When I was younger, I made many of my own clothes. I love stitching and fabric and I still love the way separate threads create something strong and beautiful.

I imagine a good life is created from many threads woven together over time. Some help us contribute; others – like friendship – sustain us. None stays equally strong throughout life. When people ask how they should prepare for a longer life, they often expect a financial answer; money matters, unquestionably. But a good life cannot be built from a pension pot alone. For me, friendship is crucial, yet we also need ways to use our energy, skills and experience.

In my life, one of those threads is ‘mastery’ – the pleasure of continuing to learn and make something of value. It can be found in work, a craft, a hobby or a new commitment. Now aged 70, I still teach MBA students and executives, and I still write. What I love is that neither has become simply a matter of repeating what I already know.

Each new group of students, each conversation and piece of writing asks me to listen, learn and see something differently. A long life gives us time to become good at the things we care about. And just as importantly, to become a beginner again. So what might mastery look like in your own life? Start with one simple question: what is something you would genuinely like to get better at? It might be a skill you abandoned years ago, a course, a choir, new technology or mentoring someone younger.

Choose something that asks a little more of you than you already know how to do.

But growth does not always come from getting better at something. Sometimes it comes from stepping beyond what is familiar. That is the thread I call ‘adventure’. It’s always been part of my life.

I do not mean jumping out of aeroplanes or climbing Everest. I mean doing something that takes you beyond what is familiar: entering a new place, meeting people whose lives are unlike your own, learning something you are not yet good at, or simply saying yes to an experience that opens up possibilities.

Last year, I took 80 MBA students to Tokyo for a week to explore how Japan is responding to longer lives and artificial intelligence. We visited companies, listened to people whose assumptions about ageing and work differ from our own, and saw a society trying to adapt to profound demographic change.

For me, it was a real adventure – stepping into a new context alongside my students, seeing the world through fresh eyes and allowing myself to be surprised.

One way I think about this is to imagine my future self looking back at me. She would certainly ask me to keep healthy and to make sure I was not lonely. But I think she would also ask: did you give me some stories to tell the grandchildren? So choose one small adventure: a place you have never visited,a class that makes you slightly nervous, a conversationwith someone outside your usual world, or a day doing something wholly unlike your normal routine. It is not aluxury. It is part of renewal.

Perhaps that is the lesson I took from my father. Weshould do what we can for our bodies, but none of us isoffered certainty. What we can do is pay attention to thelife we are building: to our health, certainly, but also to our friendships, our curiosity and the experiences that keep us open to what comes next.

I hope I have many years ahead of me. I hope to keep walking, sleeping, doing Pilates and, yes, occasionally eating cake. But I also hope to keep learning, laughing with old friends, making new ones and giving myself stories to tell my grandchildren. The extra years are not simply extra time; they are a chance to live differently.

Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at London Business School. Her new book is Living The 100-Year Life: How To Build a Career That Lasts And A Life You Love (Bloomsbury). You can hear more on Lynda’s Life Threads podcast and assess your own threads via the Threads Diagnostic at livingthe100yearlife.com