Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Add Healthier and Happier Years to Your Life | Sergey Young

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Sergey Young, a longevity investor with a mission to extend healthy lifespans of at least one billion people.Building on his investment expertise, which spans over 20 years, Sergey founded the $100M Longevity Vision Fund to accelerate life extension breakthroughs and to make them affordable and accessible to all.The investment focus of Longevity Vision Fund includes technologies, products, and services that extend healthy human lifespans and mitigate the negative effects of aging Sergey also manages a $2bln private equity fund and heads Peak State Ventures, a US-based fund with a focus on new technologies in real estate, digital healthcare and the Future of Work. He’s an Innovation Board member at XPRIZE Foundation, Development Sponsor of Age Reversal XPRIZE, and a Forbes Tech Council member.In this conversation, we discuss which breakthrough technologies Sergey is investing in to help people live longer.For Sergey, what’s possible from a technological standpoint is exciting, but that’s not all that matters.Kindness, optimism, resiliency, and doing the little things to take care of your body are all fundamental to living a longer and happier life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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of the effort to solve something problem. So I don't, I mean, again, it sounds obvious, but I think it wasn't walt disney who was just knocking to 300 doors bringing the business plan for the whole for the new um project called disney world 300 doors right and for us when we give up after trying to do something one or two or three times uh yeah i think it's just really unfair to ourselves. If this is really important for you, if you're prepared to do 100 efforts,

try 100 times, even if like 99% of this is going to be unsuccessful, it's still worth doing this. All right. Welcome back. Or if you're new to this conversation, welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are switched on, who have dedicated their life

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a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N, dot com slash finding mastery. Now, this week's conversation is with Sergey Young. It's so good. It's so good. He is a longevity investor with a mission to extend healthy lifespans of at least 1 billion people. Yes, outrageous. Yes, it's big. And wait until you hear how he's backing this thing up.

So building on his investment expertise, which spans over 20 years, Sergey founded the $100 million Longevity Vision Fund. And the whole purpose is to accelerate life extension through breakthroughs and to make these breakthroughs affordable and accessible to everyone. So he's investing in technologies and products and services that extend healthy human lifespans and also to mitigate the negative effects of aging. Sergey also manages a $2 billion private equity fund and heads Peak State Ventures. It's a US-based fund with a focus on new technologies in real estate, digital health, and the future of work. So he's a global thinker.

He's a deep thinker. He's got real business chops to be able to back it up. And his commitment to make a difference is extraordinary. So he's also an innovation board member at XPRIZE Foundation. We get into that a little bit about what that means and what that is. And in this conversation, what we do is we discuss which breakthrough technologies he's investing in to help people live longer, why he's investing in them. And for Sergey, what's possible from a technological standpoint, it's really exciting.

But that's not all that matters, especially to him. So we get into the importance of optimism, kindness, and resiliency, and doing the little things to take care of your body, and why those are so fundamental to living a longer and happier life. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Sergey Young. Sergey, how are you? Hi, Michael. Hi, everyone. I'm so excited to be here today. Yeah, so I've been looking forward to this conversation because you are working, your life efforts at this point are to make a dent in the world of longevity.

Yeah, huge dent. Yeah. And so what you're doing, you're actually, you funded some of our former guests, David Sinclair, which is cool. And I'm super excited to get into what it is that you have come to understand about longevity. So let's start with an interesting framework, which is first, if you were to give the chapters of your life just book titles you know or book chapters what would the chapters of your life be oh that's the interesting one yeah look it's obviously the first chapter is my first 25 years. And it was a chapter full of challenges because I was born in Russia. It was perestroika. And very quickly, I realized that I need to work full time and study full time to make sure my future is bright.

But I have bread and butter. And my parents and my big family have bread and butter as well. So it was a lot of challenges the next chapter between 25 and 45 years was more about career and i was investing hell of a lot of my time in making myself you know one of the best investors to the extent you can rely on that. And I was actually neglecting the importance of so many things in my life, like health, my mindset and peace of mind, time with my kids, with family, the overall balance.

And I was like a money-making machine rather than a balanced human being so then the chapters i'm currently in a chapter in currently in this um is more about sharing the best of me uh with the world and making the world better place uh so it started probably five years ago when I realized that, you know, mental health and physical health is super important for my happiness and my overall satisfaction and my ability to, you know, make, realize my biggest dreams. And so that's changed quite a lot. My life is less about money today, more about impact. My mission is actually to change the world and bring affordable and accessible version of longevity to at least 1 billion people. Some people, I mean, you find it funny. Some people say like, why only 1 billion, Sergey? What about the rest, like the other 6 billion people we have on earth? My mission is one in five people.

If I eventually get to one in five in the world, that's pretty amazing. But it's one in five in the rooms I'm in and one in five in the communities I'm in and one in five in the businesses I get to work with and the teams I work with. So one in five is the small kind of bite sizable. Yeah. Because there is some research, actually, you're probably aware of this, that around 20% is a critical mass for cultural change. Yeah, exactly. So if you can get 20% moving in a direction, there is a critical mass that, you know, snowball effect that tends to take place. Yeah, it's almost like you're reaching the point of no return for the trend, movement, the positive change that you're starting with it. Let's call it nucleus.

So, you know, I'm actually very happy we're on the same page here. Yeah. Okay. So let's go back, though, to how did you get to a place to be an investor, a significant investor in longevity? And then let's after that jump over to like um defining longevity your point of view about it you know and so but first how did you what was early life like to position yourself from bread and butter you know uh and basically what i hear that when you say that is that um means were wanting as a child like right and then you move into like one of the significant investors

from a venture fund so yeah how did you build your wealth um so basically you know it was i'm i'm still investing a lot and and completely different uh magnitude of money in in very boring industries like real estate real real estate development, transportation and logistics. But it all started probably five years ago when I went to a doctor and with my cholesterol story, I had particularly high cholesterol and I, you know, been offered to take statins till the end of my life. It was a huge wake-up call for me. Funny enough, majority of people start to think about health and longevity after this kind of wake-up calls. It's either radical deterioration of their own health, or loss, or radical deterioration of health of loved loved ones so that's that's the unfortunate

reality how we humans start to think about this and then i asked you know is there any alternatives and uh doctor said yes you need to change your lifestyle you need to take supplements and uh you need to change your level of physical activity and in your diet. And I just couldn't really believe in that. You know, I never thought it can be as simple as that. So I started to experiment a lot with my health, not in biohacking way, but just making this small, some people call it boring changes. And the quality of my life and my mental and physical capacity improved so

dramatically so i realized i found a miracle there and it like neglected think how our body and mind works that we left you know in the past is here so i just wanted to share it with a lot of people and then i had an idea you know i i want to change one million people then i met tony robinson peter diamantis my two good friends and um when i spoke to peter peter was like well sergey why why one million and i yeah and i said why not uh he said well the thing that you will do for one billion or for one million is exactly the same. So, you know, just do your own moonshot. It should be one billion. And I love that because it's it does change your the way you think about the things that you're doing.

So when I and I thought if I want to change change healthcare and affordability and accessibility of this in the world, I should obviously use the skill and experience that I have as an investor. So that's why I set up this small longevity vision fund. 100 million fund is insignificant in financial industry terms. But for longevity as an industry, it's important for a pool of capital where you know and when i can support entrepreneurs scientists um ceos and founders uh to develop technologies which would bring much more democratic and much more actually efficient and effective version of health care to world. So that's one. And

I've done so many different things. So I've joined a parliamentary group on national longevity strategy in United Kingdom. This is 66 million population countries. So that's exciting to have an influence on that. I've done a lot of corporate longevity programs where the largest corporations that I was helping with had 300,000 people as a workforce. And it's amazing to see the magnitude of change in their mental health and physical health in such huge numbers. I'm publishing the book next August called The Science and Technology of Growing Young. So there's so many things I'm bringing to the world.

The one unifying thing about my longevity project is this is all pro bono for me. This is me sharing the best of me with the world. So it's not about money, it's just bringing the necessary means, resources and technology to stimulate and support this change. Okay. I've never heard that it's said that way, that I bring in the best of me and it's not necessarily money, right? You have wealth that you are allocating towards making a difference on the planet.

What is the best of you? How do you describe that? Okay. So one is I'm full of energy. I can tell. How do you describe that? Okay. So one is I'm full of energy. I'm like, yeah. And it seemed to me that it's less about food. There's something, certain connection that I have with universe. Day and night, you know, I could, even if I had lack of sleep for like for a week, I'm always going to be very energetic so obviously that's um that's helpful in terms of boiling the ocean of change right and um and finding and creating this one in five as you mentioned uh creating this group of people all around the world to bring this positive change right to to give people 10 20 healthy and happy

years to their life and insert it right in the middle not in the end of their lifespan so that's one two is and this is where i'm wearing this bracelet all the time from i brought it from shaolin monastery in china i spent a beautiful week there uh two years ago. I'm a very kind person. What has happened because of my life story and the huge need to work a lot of hours, at a certain point of time, probably five to 10 years ago, money only the only criteria of success and or or the thing that i used to prioritize my efforts and what i discovered uh on my longevity path and passion is that i'm a kind person so therefore i'm happy when i can share something with people. And what I teach to my kids is like every day, you should do at least one act of kindness.

And it doesn't matter what is, you know, large thing, is a small thing, whatever you can do. This is what actually fulfill us as people. And then third, I'm very resourceful. It's like, I'm very resourceful. It's like, I think it's the name of this coach is Dan Sullivan. As he says, when I hear something about the challenging task, I don't think how, I think who, whom can I ask? Where can I get advice?

Who is the best person to help me to strategize about this whole thing where, you know, I, and we can get the resources. This is actually, you know, helping me to create the whole structure around me, not hierarchical, just as a huge network of very different resourceful, passionate people who are fascinated by our mutual mission to make people healthier and happier. When did that change from a sense of generativity, meaning giving back, to from the early days, a sense of wealth accumulation? Like, was the pivot literally when you had a

health crisis or did it start before that or was it always there yeah i was uh yeah i think it was um trying to to find a way to uh contribute to the world. And that's funny. One year before having this health crisis, my personal health crisis, there's a very interesting program in London Business School. It's called Proteus. You go there for the week. And so it's basically 10 times, 10 half days.

And then within this 10 half days, then within this yeah 10 half days you experiment with a lot of different things you've never done in life you go to the zoo and you learn the life of primates and what we can do that you meet you go to like the the the most uh disadvantage that really poor district of London. And then you spend half of the day with kids from poor family trying to do theatrical performance like a drama with them. You do painting, you do dancing, et cetera. So I've discovered this whole amazing life happening around me.

And I was just living my life in Excel table. So that was a huge opening. And I was trying to work with a few of the nonprofit organization. And I didn't have any satisfaction because all you're giving is just, you're almost like a buying act of kindness. You're just giving them money without your participation. So then this whole health crisis thing came up.

And because it was such a huge wake-up call, it was just another realization that there's so many important things in life, which are much more important than just making money. And your own health is obviously super important because it does define the quality and the quantity of your life. So this is where this whole thing started. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous.

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and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. There's the cynic that would say, okay, you're really skilled. You're incredibly resourceful, very smart. And you've made a lot of money by using your assets and resources and working hard in the Excel table, so to speak.

But making hard decisions towards wealth. using your assets and resources and working hard in the Excel table, so to speak, but making hard decisions, you know, for towards wealth. And then now you find this opportunity to say, I can apply those same skills for longevity, but there's still money involved, right? This is not a complete nonprofit venture. That's a for-profit. And that's why you're investing, I think, in tech, right? Tech for longevity. So how do you you how do you address the cynic that says oh okay this this is a little bit of a you know sheep and wolves clothing that there's just this idea he's just going to make more money and that's really his dna okay i just don't care really this this always going to be a group of people who would unfortunately spend their time effort and energy in trying to criticize or judge other people i'm not in this

game right you know i've helped so many people on on this planet already, saved a few lives, brought affordable and accessible diagnostic tools to so many pretty disadvantaged communities like in Africa or people in prison. So I don't need to argue about this whole thing. I am excited about what technology technology can do for for the people so in a way i think this uh cynical remarks is cry for help is uh and uh i would just probably give a hand of help to this person trying to speak with him or with her and help him or her to find its real sense of purpose because if they listen to their heart i don't think that you know being critical fulfills you is is uh you know positive creation which brings fulfillment to their life so in a way i'm sorry you know

these people exist and i would like to support them i would love to engage them of changing the world this this nothing yeah short of amazing or beautiful in this world when you receive a phone call from someone say sergey you saved my life and i'm not a doctor right i'm not md but all you've done you you spend enough time with them for them to understand the importance of doing for doing for, annual health checkup. They discovered early stage cancer, they fully treated, recovered, and you just gave, you know, 10, 20, 30 years or, you know, to their own family so that your kids,

grandkids can spend more time with him or with her. So that's amazing. It's very fulfilling. When did you generate that freedom to say, okay, I'm not listening to the cynic, I actually have compassion, because they don't quite understand what it feels like to live committed towards positive towards a positive benefit to others. So when did you open up that freedom? Was that late? And was that post let's go post post health or a crisis or pre? Yeah. Well, it's also the post is one of my favorite books. It's called happiness hypothesis by Jonathan Hyde. And that's pretty useful review of different happiness hypothesis. And what I realized is this number of, it's just

review of different theories. And in one of the theory, it's almost like a happiness formula there. And one of them is your embedded level of happiness and level of positivism. So I've always been like the funniest guy in the group. And I basically, while reading this book, I realized that God gave me this passion and, you know, ability to change the things around me for a certain reason. So that's why I kind of thought if I'm lucky, and I'm blessed with, you know, pretty high, predetermined level of, you know, natural optimism, not everyone like that. So I should leverage this for for particular benefit rather than kind of trying to explain what it also i mean if you understand that then

it also gives you the um the other thought is uh and this thought is you don't need to judge your critics in the end of the day i mean some of them can be pretty unhappy or living pretty unhappy lives. So it's my mission with love and kindness and support to give these people the light in the end of their own tunnel. So let's change your dynamic rather than trying to compete. You're just trying to unite people where'd you learn this because what you're saying is not lost on me so was this early life that you learned this or was this um based on the work from the monastery i was very judgmental yeah yeah i was very judgmental uh probably i'm 49 now, first 40 years of my life.

And I was, yeah, like a different version of perfectionism. Either it's perfect, you know, usually my way, or, you know, you're on the wrong side of the table. And only when I discovered that, you know, I'm a human being, not a business machine, I started to do it. But also I think what, what is helpful here is this positive feedback loop that you're creating. The more kind things you do, the more, you know, kind things, you know, is coming back to you, right?

The world is giving you back the whole kindness that you you're giving to the world i know it might sound a little bit pathetic and idealistic but it's really fulfilling to give a hand of help to someone specifically who is in very difficult situation and it does matter whether it's psychological situation or financial situation, physical sometimes. And, you know, and I was, you know, so inspired by this positive feedback loop that I've created with small, little, you know, steps of doing act of kindness. So this is where I think people get confused is that, okay, I hear it. I've heard that a lot. I've heard optimism is important. And if they're listening, if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that my definition of

optimism is that it's at the center of mental toughness. Mental toughness is doing hard things, sometimes being flexible and nimble, but it's staying with the hard thing. And, or that's a component of mental toughness. And if you're not optimistic you pull out you're like okay forget it on to the next like i don't have what it takes it's not going to work out you know the cynic pessimistic thing will eject you from the hard thing and to go into the thin herd to move into that space that is reserved for all of us but only few enter into that deep joy or that rare space of whatever craft that you're working on requires going through some hard, challenging things. So this is where I think folks might get confused is, okay, I hear it.

And then I'm looking at you as a financial titan turned generativity amplifier for humans, right? Like there's this arc that you've had and you're saying, listen, positivity matters and not positivity. Like, Hey, everything's going to be okay. We're all okay. Let's hold hands. It's not that it's something more grounded. Do you have practices or ways that you make sure that that is front and center in your life? Are there things that you do on a regular basis? I do. So first of all, I think it's just realization that winter, well, that's my metaphorical

season for the difficult times. Obviously, you know, it doesn't apply to California. So winter is just one of the seasons right and i always remind when it's like really difficult really tough i always remind myself that well this is just one of the seasons and you know i have to live with that and uh that's actually okay to have a lot of problems sometimes and it goes in a way. So that's, I do remind myself a lot about this whole thing. The second thing, I know it sounds a little bit strange and I spent like years trying to learn this. I'm actually trying to enjoy the process of solving the problems.

So I'm redefining this whole thing from, well, just another problem, I'll have more gray hairs. I mean, how am I gonna do it into, oh, wow, that's exciting. I haven't seen such an amazing problem. Well, let's tackle that, right? Well, third is, it, is just decreasing this whole internal and external importance of being the winner. And once you have a mindset that you're trying to, to make someone else a champion is switch your focus from your ego,

your desire to prove something to yourself, to your mom, to people around you into, you know, trying to find the best in the other person. So that's, well, that's just another interesting. And then finally, my definition of luck is that luck just derives from your consistent application of the effort to solve some problems. So, I mean, again, it sounds obvious, but I think it was Walt Disney who was just knocking to 300 doors, bringing the business plan for the whole, for the new project called Disney World. 300 doors, right? And for us, when we give up after trying to do something one or two or three times, yeah, I think it's just really unfair to ourselves. So when you prepare to, you know, if this is really important for you if you prepared to to you know

do 100 efforts try 100 times even if like 99 percent of this you know uh is going to be unsuccessful uh it's still worth doing this so you know i'm i i do know that what i also like and it's probably going to be my final comment on that, is that I do realize if you want to be positive about the problems, that the good news about problems is that they scare a lot of people, not only you. So that by going into kind of troubleshooting mode in a particular troubling situation, naturally your competition intensity is just decreasing massively so it's

only you and just another guy and another guy who are brave enough to sustain and try to hold in this situation so you know in a way even in logical terms we want to compete with you know one against three or one against 200 so that's that's a rational way to explain it. Okay. So you use frameworks. You're not practicing, like you're not waking up and saying, and I don't subscribe to this, but I want to make sure that I'm not assuming something that's not true, but you don't wake up in the morning and say positive things to yourself. What you're doing is you're using frameworks to say, listen, I want to give to people. I want to create positive in the world. I want to see challenges as opportunities. I want to be in the thin herd space and compete against

just the few that can handle the hard decisions and the risk tolerance as opposed to the many. And that's the game I want to be in. And so you're using kind of upstream frameworks. Yeah. So when I was young, I was And so you're using kind of upstream frameworks. Yeah. So when I was young, I was using like Dale Carnegie, you know, smile. Oh, you did. You know, to the mirror, you know, 10 times in the beginning of the day. But there was like, I was like really young by this time. I was probably in the school, not even at university.

But otherwise, what I use, the only tool that i use today is meditation because what it does is is connects my kind of mind and body and my heart and and um when you in doubt or in difficult situation go here your heart knows the answer right so that's yes it's actually meditation is helping me to come back to my roots as human being not as a rational uh you know human being uh living in the head in in my head i'm trying to live in my heart and is your practice 10 minutes, 20 minutes? Yeah, it's 10 minutes. I do, last six months, I do use Muse because I'm trying to use the technological, a lot of gadgets which can stimulate the change in a lifestyle. So I'm using Apple Watch.

I can see you're probably wearing Oura Ring as well. So I love Muse because it's such an amazing way to give you feedback. There's not a lot of things that you can take as feedback when you meditate, but so they use sounds of nature. Early days, I invested in an EEG, a neuro EEG company.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. To create from laboratory to mobility, you know, to be able to measure it for athletes and have a down regulation protocol and an up regulation protocol prior to games and after games. And so that technology is interesting. It still hasn't kind of gotten out of the starting gate, though. So, yeah, that's very interesting.

I'm using neurofeedback as well, right? Which is we use that. And it's amazing. I'm like a very chaotic, energized person, but after, you know, have, you know, I had like probably 10 neurofeedback sessions, 30, 35 minutes each. You know, I feel like, you know, I'm in Zen. Oh yeah. It's a, it's a game changer for sure. It's hard to access the high quality stuff, right? Like I'm not convinced that Muse is more of a toy than a tool. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But to get to the true grade where you can really see what's happening and make a refined training approach towards it. It's quite amazing. Okay. All right. So this is important to me though, is that I would love to hear your definition of longevity. What does longevity mean to you? How do you define it? Yeah. So I thought about this a lot, as you can say, and I've developed extremely broad, intentionally general definition of longevity. For me, longevity, whatever increased the average lifespan and health span in the world is longevity for me. Some people take very narrow lenses here, But in the end of the day, the beauty of this kind of pretty general definition of that is that I'm really agnostic about the tools that we can use or, you know, I can support or people can develop for us to live longer and add 5, 10, 15 healthy and happy years to our life. So it can be things like meditation, right? Things like neurofeedback, you know, having sense of purpose, doing act of kindness is just another way to bring, you know, healthy and happy longevity

to our life. Or it can be early cancer diagnostic, the companies that we're investing in there, because it saves, people recover with 93 to 100% success rate from that, rather than finding when cancer manifests itself. And it's almost like a piece of that. So just a lot of different tools that we're supporting and I'm supporting to bring this version of longevity to the world. So it's intentionally broad.

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that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. How long do you think it'll take for us to live 150 years? On average. Yeah, so I do think that in 20 years from now, we're going to have tools and technologies

which would make living to 150 possible. So in a way, we will be able to break through this ultrasound barrier of 122 years like the largest uh recorded uh lifespan on earth thanks to these beautiful uh french women um and we'll be able to do so so right now we know how to live to 100, right? Some people make it to 120. But my real aim is not only to bring this lifestyle changes to the world. So this is important because this is the only thing that we can do today to take back control of our health and equality of our life, but also support this breakthrough technologies. And the candidates are gene editing and gene therapy next one is regenerative medicine like stem cells organ regeneration it's also very important

or longevity and appeal we already have two direct candidates they're generic drugs right and they can but they have a positive side effect they they making us live longer uh it's metformin and rapamycin um and all we need to do is just do a trial and and to uh support and go through regulator through fda and to make them longevity drugs so with very high probability we're gonna have longevity drug in 20 years uh from now and it's more and more technologies coming there i just don't want to overwhelm you think about this whole development of our virtual identity or integration between human brain and a human brain and artificial intelligence or computer power yeah that

offloading of consciousness or uploading of consciousness idea gets me twisted like that part yeah i start going it well to me it's one it's mind bending you know because i i've been i've spent my professional life sorting out like what is this interface between mind and brain you you know, and brain and body, and mind, brain and body with environment. And so this idea that we can offload our consciousness, almost put it on ice and store it for later, starts to get me like, one is what are we doing? And the second is, how is that even possible? But I don't know enough about the science of it. Can I offer you perspective on that?

I would love that. If you want to discuss, Michael. So every time we're fearful or we're scared or we're unsure about certain technologies, I'm always starting to think about certain applications when it's like really no regret. And one of the implications is, for example, is cross-generational wisdom transfer.

So think about, we have an old saying that grandfathers and grandmothers are here in this world after their death until their grandkids remember about them. So think about the digital. I would love to talk at least once a month to the digital copy of my favorite grandpa. I mean, he was just amazing in terms of defining my identity of, you know, teaching me, you know, how to be positive in the most difficult situations. Right. So with this in mind, if this is, you know, and, and remember, you know, when we die, you know, all, all the experience, all the wisdom we develop in this

world, we almost like write it off. So this is different than what I would think I was thinking are you is what, where you're going down. It sounds beautiful to me. And there's a phrase that I was introduced from a New Zealander friend of mine who says, it's called waka paka, which is this, we are all under the sun cross-generational wisdom sharing whether it's from a dna perspective yeah or it's from a fireside chat perspective and so what i hear you saying is that and i go oh man i'd love to talk to my grandfather i'd love to hear him and so i i was and so that sounds actually quite doable. Yeah, exactly. That doesn't sound hard. You know, like if you and I were to offload some of our insights and we could upgrade as we went with more wisdom, assuming we got to some of it, that we could

pass that on to others, right? Like a family or otherwise. seems actually um not that far of a stretch from music you make some music you press it and then we're writing the book right and you know your ideas and your passion is there in the book exactly or you know i don't know if you've seen this video of south korean mother who met her daughter in a virtual world. So I think it has like more than 20 million views on YouTube. It's heartbreaking video. I'm a father of four kids and I've done only first minute of that. So what has happened? She lost her daughter two years ago in the age of five because of the pretty severe disease. And there's guys in virtual reality studio, which done processing of all the videos, the photos,

the audios that left after this poor girl died. And they created the virtual copy of this girl. And the mother the virtual copy of this girl and the mother and virtual copy of this girl met in the virtual environment. My goodness, this is heartbreaking. Right. But can I judge or can I criticize the, this whole technology, which made it possible for this beautiful soul and heart and this wonderful women to met her daughter in the virtual world. Yeah, I'm not sure about this.

So we tend to be so binary about the future. So we're like, it's either one or zero. But usually, all new technologies is a number of small applications when it's like super helpful and super needed for people who are in difficult situations or do need this. Yeah. So, again, beautiful. And where I was going is I had a conversation with a gentleman who wants to put his consciousness on ice, so to speak. And then when technology, and then his body dies, because it's not going to live to be past, let's say, 105, whatever.

That's even much longer than most people now. I think, is the average lifespan 85, 87 in that range still? Yeah, so if you talk about US, it's around 80. If you go to places like Singaporeapore japan it's somewhere on 85 yeah okay so his body's gonna die and his mind he wants to live on to wait for technology where he can take his consciousness and put it into another body and that's not an unfamiliar concept to you i imagine you know but that is um i start to i start to get that's not an unfamiliar concept to you, I imagine. But that's the one why I start to go, what? How does that?

It's a little bit mind-blowing. Obviously, it's a different thing. For me, it's just a little bit selfish. So in a way, I'm indifferent. Whether breakthroughs that I'm supporting and we are supporting and developing are going to be available for me or for my kids or the next generation of the people on that planet. I'm just part of evolution. I was born and I will die, but what you go in between two beautiful events. So that's the idea.

But obviously, who am I to judge the people? And we all have fear of death. And it's a huge driving force behind our decisions about our dreams, what we do in life and what we don't do in life and uh for some of the people you know fear of death um um goes into this uh well pretty interesting and exotic forms and uh some people just go to cryogenic camera and and um freeze themselves their their bodies after death. So I don't do that. I'm more interested in fundamental shift on this planet rather than just surviving in this exotic form.

Yeah. You know, your approach is really consistent about there's an openness to you and a giving to you and a wide view of humanity. And even consistently in the way you've pushed back on a couple ideas that we've been talking about, like your approach models or represent your model very clearly. So it's noted. Now, when we talk about practices for longevity, I want to know what sciences you're interested in based on the companies maybe you're investing in or you're really excited about. Because the practices right now are, okay, you want to live more healthful. You want to live a higher quality life for the time that you're here.

Get your sleep right. Eat fruits and vegetables. Get your nutrition right. Hydrate properly you know haven't uh have the skill to think well optimistically um as opposed to fear-based and um you know and move well get your heart rate up okay so those are kind of the basic things and then laugh as long as you can as often as you can okay so those are some very basic things you're saying i want to get ahead of some of this technology to say let's rather let's see if we can get ahead of cancer let's see if we can get ahead of promoting cell turnover growth from from a stem

cell perspective what are the technologies that you're most interested in and what are the practices that i just mentioned that you use to increase the quality of your life right now? Yeah. Okay. So I call it horizon one, two, and three. Horizon one is what we discussed in the beginning, which is changing your lifestyle today. And we will come back to that.

I have five buckets and they're very similar to yours. And we all know that some people find it boring but i i love it because they actually know but you can make this change tomorrow morning or today so that we'll come back to that then horizon two is is all these technologies which would give us longevity breakthrough in 10 to 20 years from now this is where we're investing in and technologies that we're supporting through Longevity Vision Fund. And they are all we discussed, like gene editing, gene therapy, organ regeneration, organ

replacement, stem cells therapies, developing different kinds of drugs against longevity or age-related disease. And then it's obviously Horizon 3 that will help us to live to 200 or forever. This is all digital version of ourselves, human brain AI integration, replaceable body parts, and basically or internet of body and changing definition of the humans.

So, but this is really far away. This is 25 to 50 years from now. So I'm not particularly focused on that. So what do I do today? when i have 30 seconds on longevity uh i tell people do their the most comprehensive version of annual health checkup and this is super important the reason being is that if you catch killer monsters like cancer heart disease diabetes on, your recovery rates is just amazing. So this is almost like plus 10 years statistically to your lifespan and healthspan as well. So that's actually super important.

And it was not the case a few decades ago. But right now, technology gives us the opportunity to do it and it's obviously it's constant monitoring of your health so we tend to think about Apple Watch you know as a useful device measuring our step count but it's it's just all it becoming personalized healthcare device where do we go to get that better than general practitioner annual checkup? Like where, where are you suggesting that? Yeah. So remember I'm big fan of affordable and accessible version of healthcare. So it's not like I would recommend going to a particular clinic, right? And where it's at in the end of the day annual checkup is pretty standard procedure

you just need to make sure that it's as focused on killer monster on killer disease as possible so whatever defines the risk of diabetes heart disease and cancer would work right you can do everywhere and with with current level of technology, like the brain of the MRI machine is get updated every six months. So artificial intelligence, which is embedded in MRI next door is already enough to catch so many types of cancer. It's an early, very early stage. I'm going to human longevity center in California, but I, I know, you know, tens of my friends. I just, you know, I just gave them the, what I do there. And they, they, they, they find it easy to reproduce it in the hospital next door. You just, you have a dialogue with your doctor saying, you know, focus, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and i would love to bring focus into neurodegenerative disease but we're just beginning we we we right in the middle of winning the war against cancer which is 55 65 years statistically but we hit in the other way a wave of neurodegenerative barrier of

neurodegenerative disease and there's so many things that we don't know about this whole thing and they usually come later in our life somewhere on 80 85 and when we 80 85 years alzheimer's included yeah yeah so that's that's the biggest problem so we don't have a lot of diagnostic tools for that but nevertheless so i'm a big fan that uh you know go wherever you where you can go and just make sure it's as comprehensive as possible. It's that every dollar spent on early diagnostic has 10 to 20 times saving effect in terms of your future healthcare costs. So that's important. Smoking is awful right cigarette smoking is like minus 10 years from your life or

um um uh irresponsible driving like even if your state allows you to have glass of wine before you just go and drive your car don't do that right because statistically this is like minus two years to your life so that's like a second bucket like don't die stupid thing um and the third one is about diet you know as heavy plant-based as possible you don't need to be religious about meat or fish i i wild fish and uh organic um meat because i'm afraid of growth hormones and antibiotics and uh different bacterias in in industrial meat but that's that's basically it fourth is physical activity 10 000 steps a day would work perfectly for your body I mean you can do a lot of extra stuff and some people do but like the act of

walking is the simplest thing that we can do uh and then fifth is always i call it peace of mind right there's this area that we discussed together with you as uh you know being happy meditating having enough sleep i remember i know pretty well the uh founder of one of the best longevity centers in london and so when i met him the first time the first thing he told me he i was asking his advice about this and that and he said sergey every night we have an amazing opportunity to visit the best clinic in the world we go to sleep and i was like oh wow that's amazing yeah so and i uh there's matthew walker book here called oh yeah we had a while while we sleep after this book you know i added one hour of sleep to my life so now right now my rule is like eight hours in bed which means seven hours of uh full sleep so that's that's

your the first you know the first horizon and and the problem with that, it sounds pretty boring to people. So I still don't know. I'm still trying to crack this code while we're all very excited about having longevity and appeal or organ regeneration solution or gene therapies for world deadly disease in 10, 20 years from now. How do I convince the people to take back control of their own health and increase the quality and quantity? I think that people are excited about living well, but they're more excited, let's call it anxious, about the missing out and about meeting the needs that they need to make sure that they ensure day in and day out. So it's an anxiety thing as opposed to this luxury thing. And so there's so many maladaptive ways to cope with the underlying condition of anxiousness,

drinking, alcohol, shitty food, shitty sleep. There's just maladaptive ways. But unfortunately, it's a snake that keeps eating its tail, which is problematic, obviously. So I think if we can crack anxiety, we've got, or address that bit, which is the, you know, full heart meditations that you're talking about. That is one way definitely that is both evidence-based and has been around 2600 years as a, as a preferred practice preferred practice and so i i really appreciate your framework you know the the three kind of levels as you talk about it and make let's we can all invest in level one right now zero technology okay it's zero technology zero cost

if you're on plant-based organic food it's it's actually on the family basis, it's minus $500 to $1,000 from your cost budget. Okay, so what do you do? How are you cross-pollinating your fund with XPRIZE? What is that relationship? I couldn't quite sort that out. The only relationship is me, yeah. Oh, it's you, okay. Yeah, so I love XPRIZE.

For those who don't know, it's a non-profit foundation. It was founded by Peter Diamantis, my very good friend. And what I like about XPRIZE, this is my favorite impact platform. So what I found, and this is where we actually first met with David Sinclair, is I said, OK, I'll put some money to develop the new XPRIZE, the new technological competition when 300, 400 different teams around the world will compete for one single prize. It's actually, we're going to be giving prize to 10 winners, but for one prize pot. And the winner get it uh and the the idea of that of age reversal x price to for everyone to bring their

age reversal interventions um technologies to make sure that with in the course of one year we can revert our biological clocks back. So biological clocks is just set off your biomarkers, like your blood test indicators. And then we just need to make sure that the group of people who were utilizing this particular intervention became one year younger, something like that. So I put a little bit of my personal money to develop this competition and right now um we're looking for the sponsor because we need somewhere around you know 20 to 50 million dollars um to fund this and the beauty of this that um uh you pay you know only for the outcome right if we will be able to reverse aging in a safe way

and uh well that's great we all win and and it's it's all going to be funny and uh i i've been blessed to have an opportunity to discuss this um age reversal x price and and supporting this price with uh so many wealthy, but also very kind people who just want to support the change in this space. The last XPRIZE we've done was Global Learning XPRIZE with Elon Musk. He put $15 million of his own money for the winning team to develop open source free of charge software, where you can put on the old Android or Apple

device, give to kids in Africa or people in prison, and then can learn English, Swahili, or any other language with zero support in course of 12 months. So that's amazing, right? And we have a lot of ideas in XPRIZE. I love working with the team there, but that's really this different kind of nonprofit organization who actually you are in the driving seat of changing the world. Man, the conversations you're in, the position you've created in life for yourself to make a difference is remarkable. And, you know, I want to, whatever I could do to put some wind behind your sail

because it is up and, you know, you have captured something amazing, beautifully done. And what I'm most inspired by is the words you choose and the way that you string your ideas together. I'm most inspired by that. And yes, the technology that you're investing in,

I'm sure it's worthwhile. I don't know how to vet technology and invest properly, but I'm sure it's worthwhile based on the structure of your mind that is evident in this conversation. So Sergey, thank you. And if I can be a friend in any way towards your mission, I'm happy to do that. Thank you. And you have your own longevity coach to the extent that you need one, Michael. You know, so many things I can learn from you specifically about the way our mind work, right? And connection between mind and body, et cetera.

You're very welcome. You know, it doesn't matter for me whether I'm helping one person or thousand. I'm always dedicating time to that. So feel free to reach out and for the audience, just sign up for our newsletters at sergeyyoung.com. We have a lot of stuff that, uh, that we're sharing, uh, and it's a big part of my mission as well. Awesome. I'll put all that in the show notes. We'll amplify it. And, uh, thank you for your

time and your wisdom. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, everyone. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community.

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