My Longevity Secret

This week I turned 85, and apparently that makes me a public utility. People ask me all the time: What’s your secret?

I don’t take medications. I don’t have any chronic disease. I sleep well. I play tennis, dance Argentine tango, practice piano, and still work seven or eight hours a day in the Pilates business, which I helped put on the map in 1991 when I founded the Institute for the Pilates Method, now PhysicalMind Institute.

So naturally, people assume when they hear the Pilates connection that they already know the answer.

“Ah,” they say, “it must be Pilates. You’ve been doing Pilates for 60 years.”

No. It isn’t.

I could show them plenty of people who have also been doing Pilates for decades and do not look terrific. Many are fat. Many are full of complaints. Many are forever running off to some functional medicine doctor in search of the next magic bean. Not me.

So, I’ve been thinking about what my real answer. Then I realized the thing that has made the biggest difference in my life.

Amazon.

Yes, Amazon.

Now, I have a long history with Amazon. In 2007, I was one of the first 400 people in the world to buy a Kindle. How do I know? Because I received an actual printed letter from Mr. Jeff Bezos. Imagine that: a real letter, from a real person, about a product that actually worked. Even then, I was impressed, because the Kindle was a brilliant invention and, like many brilliant inventions, plenty of people greeted it with the enthusiasm usually reserved for root canals.

At that point, I already had two patents related to Pilates equipment, and now I am up to nine. Anyone who has ever become an inventor and gone down the patent road knows exactly what that means: it is often less a path to riches than a deluxe package to bankruptcy. But that is another story.

So how did Amazon become my longevity secret?

Not because I was some early obsessive shopper. Quite the opposite. A decade ago, I barely used it. I lived in Manhattan in the Village. If I needed something, there were ten stores on the next block. I’d walk over and buy it. End of story.

Then I moved to Chelsea. Suddenly, no supermarket nearby. Routine things like paper towels, toothpaste, Windex, dish soap, all the boring necessities of life, were no longer so easy. Yes, you could get them at Duane Reade until Covid arrived and half the merchandise migrated behind locked Plexiglas. As if they were the crown jewels. Now if I want toothpaste, I have to ring a bell, wait for someone to appear, ask permission, and stand there while a clerk unlocks a cabinet so I can pay too much for a tube of Crest.

Then Duane Reade stores started disappearing. The only nearby location was five blocks away which in Manhattan is not a cute little jaunt when you’re dragging home heavy bags of detergent and paper goods and whatever else civilized life requires.

So, I stopped doing what I had always done: wasting time hauling basic supplies back to my apartment like a pack mule in lipstick.

And I started using Amazon almost daily.

Now, when I’m in my kitchen and notice I’m low on dish soap, I walk five steps to my computer, open the Amazon tab, type it in, and that day or the next it’s in my building. My building has a manned package room. It is computerized. Everything is logged. I get an email. I can pick it up 24/7 or have it brought upstairs. It’s so easy it almost feels illegal.

But there’s more.

Whole Foods is in my building. Not near my building. In my apartment building. And at the other end is an Amazon return store. If, on the rare occasion, I buy something I don’t want, I walk to the other end of the building, hand it to a clerk, and that chapter of my life is over in 30 seconds.

That kind of ease matters.

People love to talk about longevity as if it comes from powders, plunges, peptides, gratitude journals, or sleeping on a slab of Himalayan yak wool under the moon. But one of the biggest stress-reducers in life is not having every tiny task turn into a production.

And then came the TV saga.

For a month I tried to buy a Samsung Frame TV. Not some obscure object smuggled out of a Bulgarian warehouse. A TV. A very popular TV. In my neighborhood there was Best Buy, Samsung itself, and PC Richard. Over the course of a month, including store visits and online attempts, not one of them managed to complete the order and deliver the television properly.

One day I waited around for delivery during the usual ridiculous window, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. At 3 p.m., a man arrived. Did he bring the new TV? No. He came to haul away the old one.

That was the moment.

I opened Amazon, found the TV, ordered it, and the next day it was delivered to my apartment building. Done.

I never thought I would buy something that expensive from Amazon. I also never thought the company that manufactures the TV, plus two major retailers, would prove less capable than the website where I also buy dish soap and batteries. Yet here we are.

Amazon also made it possible for my business to function on a scale that would otherwise have been impossible.

PhysicalMind started with certification programs, newsletters, live training, and all the rest. We no longer do basic certification; we focus mainly on continuing education and the products I invented. Joe Pilates had 13 patents. I have nine. Mine may not have the romance of his, but they are useful, original products, and if you have a body, some of them can help you.

The problem is that manufacturing and shipping physical products everywhere is not simple. It is not a charming little extension of running a Pilates studio. It is a different universe: inventory, regulations, taxes, shipping, customs, customer service, country by country complications. It should be impossible for a small business.

But Amazon made it possible.

Because of Amazon, I can sell in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere, with more countries opening. Every market has its own rules, taxes, and headaches, but Amazon has created systems that actually support sellers. Not fantasy support. Real support.

And this is the part almost no one talks about.

When you have a problem with Meta or Shopify or half the digital world, you often end up in some endless loop where the mission is not to solve the problem but to politely stall until you lose the will to live.

With Amazon, you get answers. Real ones. Sometimes from AI that is surprisingly competent. Sometimes from actual people who know what they are doing. Intelligent people. Helpful people. People whose job appears to include fixing the problem, which in 2026 feels almost subversive.

Years ago I had a superb experience with Kindle Direct Publishing. I was startled by the level of actual support. I began my career in 1963 at Scholastic Magazines & Books so publishing is my foundation. Maybe Amazon never entirely lost its book DNA because KDP delivers a level of service that practically non-existent today.

Whatever the reason, it stands out.

So yes, my longevity secret may be deeply unfashionable.

Not Pilates.
Not supplements.
Not skincare.
Not alkaline water.
Not “biohacking.”
Not cold plunges.
Not a woman on Instagram telling me to hum at sunrise while rubbing magnesium oil into my spleen.

My secret is this: I work with and benefit from a company that makes life easier instead of harder.

That matters when you are still working every day which I am.

People always ask, “Why are you still working?”

And I say, “Because while I’m still young, I need to build up my retirement account.”

This is usually the point at which they fail to laugh, because humor, like customer service, is now in short supply. But I mean it. I still have things to do. I still put in the hours. And one reason I can is that I waste less time on stupid friction.

I’m just trying to get through the day—hoping to get it right. And Amazon makes it easier.