This 86 Year Old's Life Advice Will Blow Your Mind...

As a 86-year-old, is there a lesson that your parents taught you that has stuck with you to this point? Beauty comes from within. So all of the fillers that you can use, all of the things you can do to plump up your face and do all of that, it's never going to make you happier or younger. You're just going to morph into something that you won't like when you look in the mirror 10 years from now. And until you appreciate who you are, then you'll never find happiness. Do you think too many people are not realizing how good they might be? Sure. If you have people around you who are feeding you negative things about yourself and about, oh, you can't do that and that'll never happen, you have to let them go. Even if it's a family member, it has helped me survive. And I'm not the only one. Where do people go wrong in life? In this video, I'm speaking with Sandra Hart, an 86-year-old woman who also happens to have over 700,000 YouTube subscribers. She literally might be the oldest YouTube influencer in the world. Today, she's going to be sharing some of her greatest life lessons, her advice for someone of your age and truths about enjoying your life that will honestly blow your mind. How old are you? I am 86, two months away from 87. Once you reach an age, you're actually going on the journey to the next year. Happy early birthday in advance. What does it feel like to be 86 and almost 87? I recently fell and broke my hip and I was living an 86-year-old life feeling like a 60-year-old. But once this happened to me, all of a sudden it made me realize, hey, you know, you're 86, the window is closing and you really have to think about how you want to spend the rest of your life. What have you done in your life to get to that point and then feel the way that you feel? I have had things happen in my life. My husband was schizophrenic. He was very dangerous. He eventually was murdered. I was going home to a life that was very scary, but I realized that I'm strong enough to get through anything. So that experience actually made me realize that I am stronger than I ever knew I was because I was able to survive all of that trauma. I had three children to raise by myself. And instead of letting it fall on my knees and not get up, I had to get up, dust myself off and move on because I had responsibilities. I had my children to think about and I knew that they couldn't lose me and their father as well. What keeps you young in this sense? I just think it's a positive attitude. I think that is you get up every day and find one thing to be grateful for. I don't care if it's just being able to put your feet on the ground, being able to look at the sunrise in the morning or just enjoy the smell of coffee, maybe that's brewing, but find one thing in life to be positive about and to be grateful for, you know, because most of us, we live a life, maybe woe is me and we're always thinking negatively and the glass is half full instead of, you know, full. It has helped me survive and I'm not the only one. I agree with that. So this journal exercise that you have filled out, that's why we put this in the journal, one thing that you're grateful for, just because no matter what happens to you in life, no matter how good of a day it was, no matter how bad of a day it was, it always forces you to remember there is one thing you can always be grateful for. Absolutely. Just one thing. It doesn't have to be gigantic. Right. It just can be just maybe feeling a drop of rain, you know, on your face or something that's just so refreshing. What do you think most people go wrong in life, in the process of aging gracefully in the way that you have? Well, I think the most important thing is to be yourself. Until you tap into that uniqueness and until you appreciate who you are, then you'll never find happiness. But as soon as I started talking about things that I knew and that were true to me, that's when I became successful. And once you find your own lane, stay in it, be unique to who you are and embrace that uniqueness and you will find that you will probably lead a happier life and a more successful life. Do you think too many people are not realizing how good they might be? Sure. They don't believe in themselves and they don't have the confidence and maybe they have not surrounded themselves with people who believe in them. You can have a lot of people around you who are jealous of you, of your success, and they bring this negativity around you. It just absorbs into your soul and your psyche. So I've always said no matter who it is, and this may be very hurtful, but even if it's a family member, if you have people around you who are negative, who are feeding you negative things about yourself and about, oh, you can't do that and that'll never happen, you have to let them go because that will hold you back and keep you from being happy. I've had so many people that have contacted me that say it's really hard to let go of family, but once they did and they walked away, they felt something lifted from their souls and they could lead a better life. What might be hard for somebody in a situation where they're surrounded by the wrong people could be something very easy for that person to do if they're in a different environment. So you grew up, you were born in the late 40s? 1939. 1939? Yeah, yeah. I grew up, I remember at night being in Washington and they would have air raid sirens going during World War II and we'd have big black blinds that they'd pull down so that the light would not get out and we could hear the sirens. So yeah, I've lived through a lot. What year do you think I was born in? I don't know, you tell me. 1999. 1999, oh my gosh. You're a baby. But you're so smart, you know. You're so wise for your years, you know. You're an old soul in a young body. Thank you. Do you think life was better back then if you think about how you grew up? No doubt. Really? No doubt. I grew up in the 50s. It was the best time in the world. Every night on Saturdays, I would go down by bus by myself to the YMCA and dance and have a good time. I come home by myself on the bus, walk home in the dark, the door would be unlocked and I was not afraid of anything. I felt safe. People were more honest. They were more caring and I think they had better morals, better ethics. I don't know what has happened today that it seems like the ethics and morals have just thrown out the window. You know, you can do all kinds of crazy things and it's accepted, you know, and it scares me because I don't want my grandchildren to be growing up in to a world where life is like that. What can we do as younger people in today's world to make it feel a little bit more like that? I really think we have to get back to caring about one another and really caring about each other instead of being so narcissistic and into your own me, me, me, getting married and having children and Keeping a family unit because we are in crisis here. Even the United States people aren't getting married. They aren't having children. I don't know if it could ever happen, but I hope there is some type of movement that could bring back morality. Do you journal? Yes, journaling is very important. So what you are doing in this journal that you have is wonderful. Journaling helps you figure out a lot of stuff in your life. I've always told people that if they have a problem and they're trying to work something out, sit down and journal and make a list of all the things maybe that your bucket list you want or all the things that are bothering you and just get it out there into the universe. And it helps you to see things more clearly because when you see it on paper and sometimes when you get things out into the universe, it becomes more clear to you and you find the answers that maybe you were looking for that were bottled up inside and you couldn't quite figure it out. I agree. One thing I've noticed after talking to people all over the world is that privacy is something most of us only think about after it's already been compromised. Today's sponsor, Cape, exists to fix that problem at the cellular level. Traditional carriers collect and sell massive amounts of personal data. And when breaches happen, your phone number is often the weakest link. Things like SIM swaps and silent tracking don't get stopped by apps or VPNs. Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier. They don't ask for your name or address. They collect as little data as possible and they protect your number using cryptographic keys so no one can move it without your permission. It works like a premium carrier but built from the ground up for security. If you want to protect your digital life at the root, you can check out Cape using the link in the description and get 33% off for six months. Okay. So again, so for people who don't know who you are, you also have a YouTube channel? Yeah. And 730,000 subscribers from I think the time I last looked? Something like that. What is your YouTube channel about? My YouTube channel, it started out as motivating women over 60 to believe in themselves, not to feel invisible, to not worry about the wrinkles because beauty is inside and it comes out no matter how old or young you are, but for some reason Gen Z's got a hold of me and put me all over TikTok and I became an OG influencer, but I didn't do it on purpose and then all of us and then I realized there are so many young people out there that maybe their parents are too busy. They can't relate to their parents and they need a grandma. They need somebody to advise them. So who's who's editing these? Who's filming? Who's editing? I do. I'm a one-man band. Yes. That's incredible. When I think about why I started speaking to older people, like people have asked me why older people instead of anybody, right? You could have interviewed any demographic, my grandparents. So two of them passed away when I was young, one of them passed away recently. The other one lives in Lebanon. So for me, I feel like I'm looking for the advice from a grandparent figure that I would have loved to have received. What's the relationship you think young people should have with older people? I really think that younger people get so much wisdom from their grandparents because they've lived a life that these children will never live because as you know, the world has changed and I don't know, you know, whether it's going to recycle back to anything, but I think grandparents give love without any type of rejection or parents sometimes will give you advice, but there's strings attached to it. But grandparents give love and advice without any strings attached. Were you close to your parents growing up? Yes. My parents, I was very close. Yeah, I was afraid of my father, but it was normal. I never lied to my parents. I was always there because I respected them and I didn't want to do anything that would make them disrespect me. You know, I didn't want to go against them because my father was strong, but I'm so glad he was because he taught me good morals and he taught me to believe in myself and he taught me to be honest. At 86, is there a lesson, a life lesson that your parents taught you that has stuck with you to this point? This is something my father did not do. My father didn't hug me enough. In that era, they didn't share much. They kept things to themselves and they just went on with it. So I have learned from the fact that my father didn't hug me enough that I love to hug my children and tell them that I love them and that they're very important and they're very special. So I think hugs are so important. I know it's a simple thing, but just hugging somebody and say, I love you, you know, you're important to me, goes a long way. It goes a long way and making people feel that they're worthy. I love that. Yeah. If you're looking back on life, what do you think has been the best decade of your life at this point? The best decade started when I was 50 because I was raising my children. And when I was 47, I met my husband, you know, not my schizophrenic husband, but the man that I married and meeting him allowed me to do what I'd always wanted to do. I'd always wanted to be an actress. I worked with Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese. I worked with so many directors and had wonderful times as an actress. I was off-Broadway. I had two leads and off-Broadway shows. At 50, I've always said every 10 years, I have reinvented myself. Every 10 years, I have had a new chapter in my life and it's been wonderful. Yeah. So you met your husband. When I was 47, when I met him, he was never married before. He was 13 years older than he had no ex-wives, no children. He was very outgoing, very social. I miss him. I really miss him. You know, Brett misses him too. He was very good to my children. He passed away. He passed away two years ago on the 7th of November. And you guys were together. That means for 38 years? We were married 41 years and then six years that we went together. So almost, you know, close to 50. Pretty cool to meet someone in your late in life and have that successful of a marriage. Yeah. So that's why I said it's never too late. Very lucky. I'm really very lucky. He was lucky too because I was good to him. What do you think that people should be looking for in a partner at this point? If it's a partner that they want to have the same sort of relationship with? Well, I think you have to be friends. You really have to be friends because once the excitement and the chemistry of first love wears off, you have to really like one another. You have to have a lot of things in common that you enjoy and once that that chemistry kind of dies down and you get bogged down with children or whatever, you have to respect one another and you have to really be friends. When you think about your husband and all the years you spent together, can you define the word love for me? Love has many faces, but I think love is chemistry. Love is compassion. Love is sacrifice and commitment and tolerance. Being able to go to bed and hug one another and say, I'm sorry or you know, let's get over it. Let's not go to bed angry, you know, as a 86 year old. What are three mistakes we should never make in life? Well, the first one is to try to be someone else. Don't ever emulate someone and copy someone. Find your own unique self. And the second one is to eliminate all negative people from your life. It's really important because you will never find happiness as long as you have people dragging you down and pulling you at. The third one is always remember that beauty comes from within and it's not an outward thing. So all of the fillers that you can use, all of the things you can do to plump up your face and do all of that. It's never going to make you happier or younger. You're just going to morph into something that you won't like when you look in the mirror 10 years from now. So appreciate the wrinkles. Know that and I've always said every wrinkle that I have is where a smile has been. You've earned them. Yeah, so I've earned them and don't be afraid of them because it doesn't, it doesn't measure who you are. What is success then, in your opinion? I think that if you can sit down at the end of your life and say, am I happy? Did I lead a purposeful life? Did I do something to help someone else? Other than myself, then I think that's success. Probably the best thing that you can do is life is to do something for someone else. Whether it's just a phone call to make someone's day. Thank you so much, Sandra. Thank you, Will. Such a pleasure being here with you today. Yes, it was for us as well. Thank you.