Psychologists tell us that our formative years are roughly the first seven years of our lives. Those years are when we, as children, are sponges soaking up what we see and hear around us. So it was for Kathie Donovan. So it is for all of us.

We accept what we hear from our parents and early teachers about ourselves without questioning its veracity. If we’re lucky, what we hear about ourselves is positive for the most part.

But often that’s not the case and we grow up with beliefs that we are not good enough, that we lack something that would make us better people. Our lives end up reflecting those beliefs perfectly.

That’s how it was for Kathie, who, despite a highly successful career in television, was a “hot mess” in her personal life.

Until she decided enough was enough.

Today, at 73, Kathie offers courses, seminars, books, and a podcast series that guide us to finding what she calls “sustainable happiness.” If you want to be inspired right now, listen to what she has to say as our guest on The Art 2 Aging.

What’s your travel dream? Visit every county in Ireland, every state in the Union, every province in Canada?

Why not think bigger? How about every country in the world? That’s the goal of our guest and his wife this week on The Art 2 Aging.

Wayne and Sally Schmidt are in their 60s. They gave up their Groundhog Day life in Australia and embarked on a journey that, to date, has spanned 81 countries and taken seven years.

Their story is one long travel adventure and Wayne lays it all out, along with some great travel tips, in this week’s episode.

Visit their website: traveldinestay.com where you can share vicariously in their adventure.

Wills and estates.

Alongside life insurance, wills and estates are two things most people don’t want to think about, let alone do any planning around what happens to their assets when they die.

This is why 68% of Americans and about 50% of Canadians will give their heirs lots of headaches at death.

This week, The Art 2 Aging takes a very practical look at wills, estates, estate planning and death taxes.

We have engaged the expertise of a top financial planner in Toronto, Canada to help navigate the ins and outs of all this.

Even though tax and estate laws may vary from country to country, at a high level the financial concepts and strategies are very similar, if not identical.

This is vital content to know if you own anything, let alone anything of value!

How many of us are working in jobs or professions that no longer fulfill us?

Plenty.

But most of us don’t see a way out; we need to continue to work for the paycheck, to support our families, to pay our bills.

What we yearn for, while heading off each morning to a job that leaves us feeling empty, is an inner sense of meaning.

James Adams felt that way. He was a senior marketing executive with decades of experience, an entrepreneur in the food industry, and he was fed up.

So in his 60s, he embarked on perhaps the greatest risk of his profesinal life. He quit.

Walked away from his career.

Took up meditation and along the way began to find himself again.

He now teaches it to what he calls “forward thinking companies”.

James is our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging.

The NBA kicked off its 79th season this past Tuesday, for those of you who are into basketball.

In 79 years, the game has come a long, long way. It’s a truly international sport, the seventh most popular game in the world, according to World Atlas.

The NBA itself is international in terms of team rosters with 125 players from 40 different countries outside the United States donning team jerseys this season.

But we’ll bet that the league has only seen one foreign player who is related to the Russian literary giant, Leo Tolstoy.

And that man is Tom Meschery, whose own journey to fame rivals that of his famous uncle and the subject of our encore episode this week on The Art 2 Aging.

Did you know that 50% of American men between 65 and 74 take statins? How about women? Try 39% of women 75 and older.

There are a further 8 million people in the UK who take statins at a cost of 100 million pounds a year to the National Health Service.

What is going on? Do statins even work? Or are they just another drug to make Big Pharma even wealthier?

Well, this week, we’re going to deep dive into statins to see if they in fact work. To do that, we have brought back a former guest, Australian cardiologist Dr. Warrick Bishop.

And what he will tell you about statins, cholesterol, and heart health may amaze you.

What does retirement look like for you? Have you thought about what you’ll do with all that time on your hands?

All too often, we are told what a ‘retirement age’ should be and then we are shown images of retired people enjoying long walks along beaches or lounging poolside on a cruise ship – in other words, we are almost spoon-fed stereotypes by marketing and advertising agencies.

Our guest this week on The Art 2 Aging begs to differ and she has the research to back up her contrarian views of what retirement is, when it should occur and why. Susan Bell is an Australian market researcher who has done her own in-depth market research and what she has to say about retirement is a breath of fresh air blowing through a room filled with stale air.

So, you’re 53 years old and you get fired without warning. What do you do? Well, if you’re Gail Mercer-Mackay, you don’t panic. You go to Arizona to play golf for two weeks and do some serious journaling as well.

What Gail discovered (besides still having a slice) was that she wanted to be a writer. Long story short, she did become a writer and founded a content creation company in the process.

Today, the company routinely earns revenue in the millions and at the age of 69, Gail is still going strong.

Hear her story this week on The Art 2 Aging.