Aging Wisely

Lee Daniels in his LA backyard.
Pajamas by Maison Margiela (WSJ)

Producer and director of critically acclaimed, successful movies (Monster's Ball, The Woodsman, Precious, The Butler) and TV series (Empire) Lee Daniels, 61, has it all together. Excerpts from his WSJ interview:

What time do you wake up on Mondays, and what’s the first thing you do?
I start at 7 a.m. I pray, which has really been new, because I didn’t do that before. As this pandemic has grown, I’ve found myself praying longer. I pray, meditate and, after, I do my hike [in Franklin Canyon Park]. I do a brief workout. I do my infrared sauna. Then I shower and begin work.

Do you have a go-to breakfast to start the week off right?
I put on 17 pounds at the beginning of the pandemic, so I had to drop it all. If you’d asked me at the beginning, I would have said pancakes and bacon. But now I don’t have breakfast at all; water is what I have. I don’t eat until 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

You’re doing the fasting thing.
I’m in it to win it.

Do you drink coffee or tea?
So I lied, I’m sorry. During the holidays, I wasn’t completely fasting. I’d have a double shot of Starbucks espresso with eggnog. I’d put it in a blender with ice. If I wanted to treat myself, I’d put a slab of whipped cream in it, but that’s rare.

Do you take any vitamins?
Once you get past 60, you take everything under the sun. I take eight or nine every day: vitamin D, a men’s 50+ daily multivitamin, vitamin C, Flora Plus, lecithin, an advanced probiotic... adrenal support and liver detox.

Do you have a time-management or efficiency hack?
The last thing I do before I go to bed is I look at my schedule for the following day, and that really gives me an understanding of whether it needs to be edited, altered, [if] I need more on it [or] I need more me-time so that I can pace myself. Sometimes I like to cram it, but then I find myself out of steam.

What’s your media diet?
At the end of my workday, around 8, I’ll go into my bedroom and I’ll start with CNN, I’ll move to Rachel Maddow, and then I’ll hear Fox, so I can hear what they’ve got to say. I get a lot of alerts on my iPhone, [so] throughout the day I’m listening to news [on] Apple News.

Lee Daniels and I are doing the same things--fasting, meditating, exercising, consuming vitamins, viewing media that we disagree with--but he's doing it better. He's an excellent role model for us over-60's.

One other thing that I'm striving to do is to resist being provoked. Anger, along with pride, is an ancient sin that is too often praised. Lee Daniels has advice on that subject, too.

What’s one piece of advice you’ve gotten that’s guided you?
It’s never personal. Don’t take it personal.