Life.

It’s not really such a mystery.

You’re born.

You become a teenager.

You become an adult.

You somehow or another hit a midlife crisis.

You break your hip, you fall.

And then people are shoveling you into the earth.

And throughout it all, there are three truths in life you will never, ever be able to avoid.

Truth #1: You will gain weight

Remember when you slid down the birth canal?

And they measured and weighed you. You were nine pounds, two ounces. What a hefty boy or girl you were.

You were in the 90th percentile in height growing up. You were in the 88th percentile in weight.

It seems like we were always measuring, and weighing, and doing things. And then all of a sudden, you start gaining weight. How did that happen? And then you started to age. And then, wait a second, we’re going to skip ahead, talk about aging? Not quite yet, my friend.

When it comes down to weight, everybody will gain it throughout life. Our metabolism starts to decrease as we get older, no matter what supplements or how much we work out, we still feel a little different in the midsection.

Even, I, Joe Fitness, who goes and works out at the gym. I could tell you sometimes I’ll sit down in one of my shirts, and I’m not holding in my stomach muscles, and I feel. And I think to myself, that is a little softer than it was 20 years ago.

Just a little different feeling. And I still do my abs, and I still do my running, and I still do my cardio, and I still do all this stuff. But for some reason or another, my midsection feels just a little more like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. You can’t notice it much, but I notice it because that’s the truth about life. As we age, we get softer, our muscle tone changes, and we gain some weight. You can’t control it, you can’t fight it. You certainly can work out, but there will always be a part of your body that will just show up just a little bit more in a bathing suit than other ones.

Sorry, I don’t accept that aging weight gain, I fight it.

Truth #2: Aging

You’re going to age, no matter what. We can fight it, we can take supplements, we can work out, we can look fantastic at every age, and that’s something you need to embrace. When you’re 55, you’re not going to look like you did when you were 25. When you’re 75, you’re not going to look like you did at 55. It doesn’t mean that you can’t look absolutely unbelievably amazing at every age that you’re at. We’ve been consumed by age in our culture.

So many times, people will e-mail me, and write me, and say I’m a 53 year old woman but I look more like 41.

I’m a 31 year old man and I look more like 22.

I always tell people to rephrase that.

I’m a 51 year old man, and I look like an amazing 51 year old man.

I’m a 45 year old woman, and I rock 45 like no one else has ever rocked it.

We never are going to stop the aging process. It doesn’t mean that we can’t look beautiful as we age.

It’s how you phrase things.

Truth #3: You’re going to die

So why don’t you start living?

We’re all going to die. That’s the one thing you can’t stop, no matter what. No matter what, there is going to be something that’s going to get you in the end. For some of us, it’s just old age.

For others, it’s just cancer.

For others, it’s a heart attack.

For others, well, and here’s the big secret: It’s stress.

If you manage stress well and you are happy, and you have lots of love and relationships in your life, you’re going to live a longer life.

There’s a wonderful Harvard study.

That talks about longevity.

In that Harvard study that talks about longevity, it talks about the people that live the longest. It’s an 85 year study, and they found the people that lived the longest actually have the best relationships in their life, and the least amount of stress.

You notice it wasn’t anything about money, it was the best relationships and least amount of stress.

To have friendship.

To have love in your life.

To manage your stress well because all of us are going to have stress, no matter how you manage stress.

To me, when I’m stressed out, I can literally feel my body age. I can feel stress crawl through my body. So what do I do? I breathe deeply. That still doesn’t work. The only way you’re going to manage stress is to literally go head on into the things that bother you, confront the people, confront the demons. That way, you can manage the stress.

So that’s the key to living a younger, healthier life. Managing the stress is everything, talking things through, being honest with people in your life, not living a life that is, well, compromising on deep, core levels, eliminating the people in your life that literally zap the energy from you.

When you’re able to manage stress, you can literally take all the things that happen above and live a much longer life.

You can do everything preventative in life, and you can be the best at what you are.

If you’re 22 right now reading this, you look the best for 22. But just realize that, at 42, you’re going to look different and be the best at 42.

When you’re 56 years old, don’t tell people you look like you’re 40. Tell people you look the best for any 56-year-old you’ve ever met. When you’re 80 — and by the way, I met somebody on an airplane one time that was 80 years old. He rocked it. He looked great. He dressed great. He had a beautiful smile. He had happiness in his eyes.

And I asked him what his secret was.

And do you know what he said? I am being the best at being where I am right now in my life. I’m the best 80-year-old man I can possibly be. I’m never going to look like a 25-year-old again, but I’m going to be able to rock 80 like no one else.

Jack la Lane, the old fitness guy, everybody loved. He was this big, strong, muscular guy his entire life. He still aged. He still had skin that hung in different places. But when you looked at him, you used to say to yourself, man, when I get to be 80, if I look like that, I’ll be happy. Be happy where you are. Be happy exactly where you are in your life.

And realize that every age and every stage is an opportunity to rock life like never before.

Because with age comes wisdom.

And with wisdom, you have the tools to eliminate the thing that will kill you more than anything, which is stress.