The 40 Forever Protocol

I am not trying to live forever. I have no interest in becoming a 147-year-old raisin floating in a nutrient tank while robots spoon-feed me algae paste.

I would simply like to feel forty forever. The main reason… most men and women by 40 have some stuff figured out and the body is just at it’s peak physically, intelligently and spiritually. Hit the stop button and keep this level of agility and acuity while I increase wisdom, experience and skills.

Forty is a nice age. You still get up from a chair without a strategic plan. You sleep funny and recover. You can chase your grandson, pick up your dog, build a deck, walk five miles, and still have enough energy to annoy your friends at dinner.

This protocol isn’t about immortality. It’s about maintenance.

You don’t keep a Ferrari in a barn, fill it with diesel, and wonder why it runs poorly. Yet most people spend fifty years doing exactly that to themselves.

The body is a remarkable machine. Give it clean inputs, remove unnecessary stressors, move it regularly, and it generally responds by surprising you.

The Forty Forever Slow Aging Protocol is built around six systems.

System One: Shadow Work

Most people are carrying emotional backpacks full of bricks they don’t even remember picking up.

Carl Jung called it the Shadow.

The Shadow is the part of yourself you don’t want to admit exists. Your anger. Your fears. Your insecurities. Your need for approval. The wounds from childhood. The parts of yourself you hid because somebody told you they weren’t acceptable.

You can spend fifty years pretending the Shadow isn’t there. It still drives you through life daily. Keep the baggage and the wear and tear increases. Losing the shadow instantly relieves subconscious stress you are constantly processing.

Stress isn’t just emotional. It is biological. Chronic resentment elevates stress hormones. Constant worry disrupts sleep. Unresolved trauma creates vigilance and tension that eventually show up in the body.

Some people look old because they’re carrying forty years of emotional debt.

Spend time journaling. How much do you think I write a week? A bit too much if you are a subscriber?

Ask difficult questions of yourself, the experts and God.

Seek to discover…

What angers me?

What am I afraid of?

Who am I trying to impress?

What parts of myself have I disowned?

The objective isn’t to become perfect. It’s to become fully integrated.

A human being at peace ages differently than a human being at war with himself.

System Two: No Contact With Narcissists

This one upsets people.

I don’t care. You are not a snake handler.

Some people are emotional black holes.

Every conversation or text becomes about them. Every accomplishment that needs to be acknowledged becomes their competition. Every boundary you set becomes your fault. Every disagreement becomes a trial in front of an imaginary jury where the verdict is in before any level headed conversation.

I recently experienced a fifty plus year old man tell me when corrected on something trivial he “didn’t take correction from ANYONE because”… ready… “He is a self authored sovereign mutherfu…”

Okay. I agree. You’re sovereign from me and all the attention, advice, free meal, drinks, cigars and evenings I have supplied for you.”

Give them their freedom and authority. As Byron Katie would say: “Love What Is.”

I agree and suggest sometimes that is done at a complete distance.

You cannot heal in an environment designed to keep you confused. You cannot applaud a true unacheiver to soothe their need for approval and admiration. I’m out.

No amount of vitamins can compensate for living inside chronic emotional chaos.

If someone repeatedly manipulates, demeans, gaslights, controls, humiliates, exploits, or emotionally extracts from you, distance becomes medicine.

You do not owe unlimited access to people who repeatedly injure your peace. Protecting your nervous system is anti-aging.

Peace lowers the biological cost of living.

Full time:)

System Three: Frequency and Recovery

Everything in the body operates rhythmically.

The heart beats. Brain waves oscillate. Cells communicate electrically.

Sincere Recovery matters a ton.

Start with meditation, breathing exercises, calming music, prayer, and restorative practices all influence stress levels and the nervous system.

The objective isn’t magic.

The objective is creating conditions where the body spends less time in survival mode and more time repairing itself. The body heals best when it feels safe most every time. Drugs don’t fix anything, they can help create the environment where the body steps in and repairs itself.

System Four: Clean Inputs

Your blood is essentially your body’s delivery system.

Feed it garbage and eventually the neighborhoods look rough. Support it and everything improvesin the mind, the body and the psyche. Luck improves too.

Drink plenty of water.

Eat foods that resemble things found in nature.

Prioritize protein while reduce excessive refined sugars.

Move and maintain healthy blood glucose. Measure is with a monitor once a quarter for a week.

Use supplements intelligently and selectively to fill nutritional gaps rather than compensate for terrible habits.

Structured water enthusiasts believe altering water’s organization may improve hydration, though research remains limited and emerging. Drink clean water regardless. Your cells are mostly water and your body appreciates quality ingredients. I’ve worked inside the water industry a dozen times. The science is not sketchy. It’s real. Get off municiple water. The cou ty or city must make sure no one ever gets sick from microbes in your water supply. Nice idea, until you discover the neurotoxins in the water are not “to keep toith decay down”.

The point is simple.

Put cleaner things in and require your body to do less cleanup.

System Five: Movement and Recovery Therapies

Human beings are not decorative furniture.

We were built to move.

Walk. Lift. Stretch. Carry things. Get outside.Train with intention. Have sex.

High Intensity Interval Training has enormous value because it briefly asks the body to perform difficult work followed by recovery.

That process improves conditioning, metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, and cardiovascular fitness.

Sorry Goggins, we do not need to train like a Navy SEAL. If you do, congrats. You simply need to regularly remind your body that it is still expected to be useful.

Recovery matters equally. Massage reduces tension and improves circulation.

Red light therapy has shown promise in areas such as skin health, tissue repair, and recovery. I have a patent in the area and have been utilizing it for 25 years reducing inflammation and increasing cisulation and lymph flow. It shock your mitochondria into work. That’s 50% of the number of micro cells in your body that are the batteries. Oddly they do have their own seperate DNA than your own body. A gentle little pulse of frequency to them is a gift.

The objective isn’t chasing every wellness fad.

The objective is improving circulation, reducing unnecessary stress, and creating an environment where recovery happens efficiently.

System Six: Values and People

This may be the most important one.

Most people have no idea what their actual values are.

They know their preferences. They know their politics. They know their favorite restaurants.

Values are different.

Honesty. Curiosity. Loyalty. Faith. Kindness.

Adventure. Responsibility. Freedom.

Generosity. Integrity. Humor.

Sit down and identify yours.

Then evaluate the people around you. You do not need friends who share your personality.

Different personalities make life interesting. You do need people who share your values. A quiet introvert and a loud extrovert can become lifelong friends if they both value honesty and loyalty.

Two extroverts who value completely different things eventually become adversaries, rivals usually. You’ve certainly met two people who’ve hated each other and you think “but they’re exactly alike.

Perhaps you’ve introduced people who had a lot in common and they had no interest in each other? Yeah, they already spend all their time with a person just like that.

Now…The quality of your relationships may be the greatest anti-aging strategy ever discovered.

Peaceful relationships preserve energy.

Meaningful relationships create joy. You are in control of that, it’s a choice. Viktor Frankl agrees with me. So does Carl Yung and Nelson Mandella.

Joy might be the most powerful medicine in the world.

Forty Forever

I think our culture has confused aging with decline. They’re not the same thing.

You will get older. That’s the deal. Your hair may turn gray. My beard is silver and adds 15 years when it’s in full bloom.

I wear it like an outfit for awhile, then shave it off.

Gravity eventually wins a few arguments. My butt cheeks, jawline and under arms would agree. So be it.

You may need reading glasses and occasionally make noises standing up.

Fine. But decline is completely negotiable. I have good friend from high school that has had Parkinson’s since we were extremely young. Thirty years later he’s vibrant, well and healthy constantly working out and travelling and engaging with you g vibrant friends and his closest 6 high school friends. I admire him greatly. Kudos to Tim.

You can become calmer.

Wiser. Kinder. More grateful. More physically capable than people twenty years younger. That makes you more fun to be around.

You can have better relationships. In fact, I guarantee you will, starting with the one with yourself.

Better sleep Every night. Today I dream like I did when I was a kid and I sort out problems in my youth that my subconscious is now just addressing. It couldn’t when every day was wrangling the last emotionally abusive conversation with my mother. Better emotional regulation.

You can know who you are. You will settle into yourself. The sooner the better darlin’.

The cosmic joke of life is that by the time most people finally become comfortable in their own skin, they start worrying about losing it.

Don’t. Take care of it. Just use it well.

Laugh often. Humor makes the mind work in abstraction and creativity. So does anxiety and depression. Thank you very much I would rather make you laugh and no one laughs harder at my jokes than me.

Walk outside. Lift heavy things. Rapid exercise under duress in short bursts resets metabolim. All the “experts” in their wedge can argue yet after 30 years of seeing and learning every type of exercise in infomercial production… Time Under Tension or High Intensity Tention cannot be beat for both red and white muscle tissue life. Your ancestors did not go to the gym, they lifted heavy shit and ran from bears.

Anerobic exercise is useful for kids and pro athletes. A ski run for me is 8-12 minutes. I can cover 5 miles in that time.

Eat real food that’s delicious, not kale and kashi- food should have joy. Rapidly remove chaotic self centered people.

Do your Shadow work Peter Pan. Grow.

Recover intentionally. Know your values. Choose your people carefully.

You’re not trying to live forever. You’re trying to arrive at ninety and still feel like forty.

There’s your infomercial for the day.

Good news.

Everything you need, you probably already own.

RL