Ep. 439: A Recipe for a Life Well-Lived

Guest: Dr. Doug Clement

“May you live long and prosper” (“dif-tor-heh”) is an idiom from a Vulcan term and is popularly attributed to Commander Spock of Star Trek.

While that may be so, it is also an apt description of the life of Dr. Doug Clement.

“The questions,” asks Clement, “is how do you do both? Live long and prosper?” The average life expectancy in British Columbia is just north of 82 years. “So living long isn’t the issue,” says Clement, “but living long isn’t a guarantee [that] you will live well, especially when you cross the 60-year mark.”

According to Clement, there are a plethora of factors that contribute to wellness. He says they include “physical and mental fitness, an ongoing sense of purpose and contribution, a sufficient amount of money to alleviate financial stress, and happiness.” Clement also points to the findings of the Grant Study of Adult Development, a Harvard program that tracked the lives of 238 people between 1938 and 2000, which states, “The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health.”

We invited Dr. Doug Clement to join us for a Conversation That Matters about his recipe for a life well-lived.