Speaker 1: Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2: Okay, this week's Thursday Therapy. We've got Chip conleyon. He
Speaker 2: is a New York Times bestselling author. He's got his
Speaker 2: seventh book out now, Learning to Love Midlife, Twelve Reasons
Speaker 2: Why Life gets Better with age. It's about rebranding midlife
Speaker 2: to help people understand the upside of this often misunderstood
Speaker 2: life stage.
Speaker 3: Let's get them month. Hi, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm good. How are you doing?
Speaker 2: You know I'm good. I I'm really happy to talk
Speaker 2: to you because with your book Learning to Love Midlife?
Speaker 2: What is what are you clarifying them? Age from midlife
Speaker 2: thirty five to seventy five? Yeah, because I'm in it,
Speaker 2: so I definitely feel it. I just turned forty this year,
Speaker 2: and you know you said that twelve reasons why life
Speaker 2: gets better with age, And honestly, I'm like, I could
Speaker 2: list you at least six of them why I love
Speaker 2: them right, Why I've liked getting older. But the flip
Speaker 2: side of that, right, the positive Z I feel more
Speaker 2: comfortable in my own skin. I don't take shit anymore,
Speaker 2: I have better boundaries, you know, I know more things.
Speaker 2: It's the part about getting old that still it goes, well, well,
Speaker 2: crap in like ten ten years, I'm going to be
Speaker 2: fifty and then god, fifty is like you know, and
Speaker 2: then and then and then I'm gonna be sixty and
Speaker 2: then and then so then I you know, had that
Speaker 2: small fear of like dying, and then I'm like my kid.
Speaker 2: So it's just like I start to feel a little
Speaker 2: lumpy in my chest and in my throat like okay,
Speaker 2: so it's like I'm embracing forty and I'm embracing what
Speaker 2: that is for me. But then also that the fear
Speaker 2: side of the getting older and and then and then
Speaker 2: my time lessening freaks me out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mid life is the doorway to later life.
Speaker 3: Midlife. Midlife is the door to later life.
Speaker 1: The doorway to later life. So midlife is a bridge,
Speaker 1: and there is a bridge between early adulthood and later adulthood,
Speaker 1: and the longer we're living it becomes a longer bridge.
Speaker 1: And that's why some sociologists say midlife is thirty five
Speaker 1: to seventy five now, which is you know, a very
Speaker 1: long bridge. So yes, for some people, for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, the idea of midlife freaks them out because
Speaker 1: they're no longer young and they don't want to be old,
Speaker 1: and so like, how do you sort like I want
Speaker 1: to just stay where I am right now or I
Speaker 1: want to be ten years younger. And what I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do with the book, you know, given that
Speaker 1: I've had six years now of having over four thousand
Speaker 1: people from forty seven countries go through our Modern Melder
Speaker 1: Academy MEA program at in Baja on our beachfront campus,
Speaker 1: is I wanted to really amplify the fact that we
Speaker 1: live in an era where anti aging products, which are
Speaker 1: often anti women products, are rampant, and everybody wants to
Speaker 1: stay young. And what I really wanted to do is
Speaker 1: have a pro aging message, not just an anti a message.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, I want to stay young too. I
Speaker 1: want my body to look like it to you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty three when I was forty three, But it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And if I wanted to put more time and energy
Speaker 1: into it, maybe I could keep it there. But as
Speaker 1: I say in the book Learning to Love Midlife, a
Speaker 1: six pack gets more expensive as you get older. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean I'm not talking about beer here, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about those abs. It takes more time more energy
Speaker 1: to keep them and so perfectly fine if you want
Speaker 1: to do that. It's just that there's an opportunity cost
Speaker 1: in terms of how much time that takes. So long
Speaker 1: story short is, there are things that get better with age.
Speaker 1: And Becca Levy from Yale has shown that when you
Speaker 1: shift your mindset from the negative to the positive on aging,
Speaker 1: you gain seven and a half years of additional life.
Speaker 1: So this is like a number one way to increase
Speaker 1: your longevity better than you know, improving sleep better than diet,
Speaker 1: but exercise better than stopping smoking. And so you know,
Speaker 1: MEA and my book are sort of a laboratory for
Speaker 1: a public service announcement saying, hey, there are some things
Speaker 1: that get better with age, which we'll talk about today.
Speaker 3: So and I love that.
Speaker 2: So take take me for example, Right, So how do I,
Speaker 2: because I do know that there are things better with age,
Speaker 2: how do I bridge that gap essentially to get to
Speaker 2: the other side of it, to not worry about the
Speaker 2: other half of the fear?
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, talking to other people. You know,
Speaker 1: people your own age, but also people older. So you're forty,
Speaker 1: are almost forty, and I'm sixty.
Speaker 3: I just turned forty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you just turned forty and I'm sixty three,
Speaker 1: so you know, and also especially talking to women, you know,
Speaker 1: in our society, you know, when you get older as
Speaker 1: a man, you become the silver fox, you become Richard
Speaker 1: Gear or George Clooney. While things are improving, there's still
Speaker 1: a challenge for a woman getting older because they're the
Speaker 1: silver vixen, and no one talks about a silver vixen.
Speaker 1: And the women have a lot of things that sort
Speaker 1: of work against them in terms of age, especially if
Speaker 1: you have been somebody who's been visible and appreciated for
Speaker 1: your good looks and you're you know, you're being swelt
Speaker 1: and and your fashion and all that. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: iris aphl just died at one o two, and I
Speaker 1: got to tell you that woman had fashion all the
Speaker 1: way to the end, and she was admired for things
Speaker 1: that you normally in the past say, oh wow, you know, sexy, fashionable,
Speaker 1: et cetera, all the way to one hundred and two.
Speaker 1: So you can still have a style to you and
Speaker 1: you can still stay in shape. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Jane Fonda was doing aerobics, selling aerobics videos in her sixties,
Speaker 1: so and she's now eighty five years old, So I
Speaker 1: would say that, you know, life has a death sentence attached.
Speaker 1: So far, you know, the tech bros and Silton Value
Speaker 1: are trying to figure out how to solve that and
Speaker 1: you know, defeat death. But right now we all you know,
Speaker 1: we're all going to die someday. The question is what
Speaker 1: do we do with the life we have? And and
Speaker 1: I just a big believer in the idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: learning how to become age fluid, so that we are
Speaker 1: not you're not defined exclusively by your chronological age, your generation,
Speaker 1: but you're all the ages you've ever been. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you're a foolish fifteen year old, sometimes you're a sixty
Speaker 1: five year old who has some wisdom, and you're everything
Speaker 1: in between. And becoming age fluid allows you to not
Speaker 1: constrain yourself based upon your age. And so you know
Speaker 1: that's something I talk about in the book as well.
Speaker 2: So okay, so what are some tips and or what
Speaker 2: are some things that you say, all right, this is
Speaker 2: embrace this in your mid life?
Speaker 3: Yeah in your book.
Speaker 1: Well let me, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say all twelve.
Speaker 3: Oh you're going to give us all of them.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you all twelve and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to focus just.
Speaker 2: Like leave one out so that way that you know,
Speaker 2: the readers can have a I mean, the listeners can
Speaker 2: have a little Okay, you know you're missing the twelfth one.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then what I'm gonna do is, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to actually give you there's five categories. I'll
Speaker 1: do one category. So the five categories or your physical life,
Speaker 1: your emotional life, your mental life, your vocational life, and
Speaker 1: your spiritual life. On the physical life, what gets better
Speaker 1: with age. So I'm going to say, I'm relieved my
Speaker 1: body no longer defines me. Now this is a hard
Speaker 1: one for a lot of people because like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: my body does define me. But think of your body
Speaker 1: like a rental vehicle that you were issued at birth,
Speaker 1: and your job in life is to maintain this rental vehicle.
Speaker 1: But the longer you've been on the road with the
Speaker 1: mental vehicle, the more dings you have and the exterior,
Speaker 1: the more paint chipping you have, the.
Speaker 2: More tattoos you wish you didn't have stuff like that too.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, that bumper sticker. You can't take off
Speaker 1: that back bumper. So no, but instead like, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: more important as you get older and as you have
Speaker 1: a car longer, is not like what does it look
Speaker 1: like on the outside, is what does it feel like
Speaker 1: on the inside. And so one of the key things,
Speaker 1: you know, just as we got comfortable in our own skin,
Speaker 1: it starts to sag. Learn how to have a sense
Speaker 1: of humor about that. Learn also how to maintain the body.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things I've learned in midlife
Speaker 1: is that when I was younger, I would maintain my body.
Speaker 1: I'd go to the gym and swim. I was a
Speaker 1: good athlete, and I did it more for short term
Speaker 1: vanity than for long term maintenance. And I think as
Speaker 1: we get older we realize that the long term maintenance
Speaker 1: piece of this is really important and the short term vanity.
Speaker 1: You know, listen, if you want to be the hot
Speaker 1: thing at fool side at age seventy five, do it.
Speaker 1: But as I said before, that six pack is more
Speaker 1: expensive as you get older. So the thing that's nice
Speaker 1: and for a lot of women they feel this is
Speaker 1: like to see that your body doesn't have to define you,
Speaker 1: and that it's just one quality about you. You realize
Speaker 1: that there are many playing fields in life. There's the
Speaker 1: there's the playing field of the body, there's the playing
Speaker 1: field of your heart, and there's the relational playing field
Speaker 1: and this soul and spiritual playfield. So when you realize, like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm getting older, you know, playing on the playing field
Speaker 1: of the body exclusively, since that's that's the only way
Speaker 1: I see myself in the world and my only way
Speaker 1: of self esteem is sort of silly. So that's one
Speaker 1: one of the twelve reasons. Let's go to the emotional life.
Speaker 1: I'm making friends with my emotions. It's one of the
Speaker 1: three in this category. Emotional intelligence grows with age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's this is irrefutable. Now you may have an
Speaker 1: uncle who's seventy five and a pain in the ass
Speaker 1: and and it doesn't have any EQ and no emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1: That's true, but on average IQ doesn't grow with age,
Speaker 1: but EQ does. And so learning how to have, you know,
Speaker 1: a friendship relationship. I think of my emotions as my
Speaker 1: best my best friends. And so when I when I
Speaker 1: have my best friend that sort of pissed off, like
Speaker 1: an angry best friend, you know, I was like, what's
Speaker 1: going on with that best you know? How do I
Speaker 1: how do I learn how to be less reactive with
Speaker 1: my anger and just sort of like tap into like, okay, anger,
Speaker 1: you've got a voice. You know what's the Pixar movie
Speaker 1: Inside Out.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good one about.
Speaker 1: All those emotions. That's sort of true. All these emotions
Speaker 1: exist in the eyes. And I wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Emotional Equations that was sort of based upon that movie
Speaker 1: in my own life. So learning how to become less
Speaker 1: emotionally reactive is a beautiful thing because not only are
Speaker 1: you more fun to be around with other people, but
Speaker 1: you're less reactive with yourself. Right, So that's something that
Speaker 1: gets better.
Speaker 2: With age, and you know how to you can control
Speaker 2: it better too, Like my stuff still comes out that
Speaker 2: but I don't. I don't give it as much power
Speaker 2: anymore that I used to give in my twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: There's a gain in Victor Frankel, who wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Man Search for Meaning about his experience living as
Speaker 1: a psychotherapist in a concentration camp in World War Two.
Speaker 1: I mean terrible, terrible experience, and he came out of
Speaker 1: it and wrote a book, Man Search for Meaning. And
Speaker 1: if you there's a three sentences in the book that
Speaker 1: I think define life. He said, between stimulus and a response,
Speaker 1: there is a space. In that space is your power
Speaker 1: to choose your response, and in your response lies your
Speaker 1: growth and your freedom. So this is what he's saying,
Speaker 1: is like, no matter what circumstances you're going through, you
Speaker 1: have the ability to determine how you want to respond
Speaker 1: or react, and how you choose to respond is what
Speaker 1: gives you growth and freedom. So I think that I
Speaker 1: love that quote because I think that's a quote that
Speaker 1: speaks to emotional maturity, and so it's something that we
Speaker 1: get better at as we get older.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, all right.
Speaker 1: Third, you were talking about the mental life. I like
Speaker 1: all twelve of these. It's hard for me to pick
Speaker 1: one in each category. But let's talk about wisdom. I'm
Speaker 1: marveling at my wisdom now. I know people who are
Speaker 1: seventy five years old who are not wise, and thirty
Speaker 1: year olds who are. So wisdom is not necessarily always
Speaker 1: correlated with age. But the best way for me to
Speaker 1: describe how you become wise is you realize that your
Speaker 1: painful life lessons are the raw material for your future wisdom.
Speaker 1: Let me say again, your painful life lessons are the
Speaker 1: raw material for your future wisdom. So the more lessons
Speaker 1: you've had, and the longer you've been on the planet,
Speaker 1: the more lessons you've had, probably the more rawial you have.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like you're a chef and you're in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and you got all these ingredients. As you
Speaker 1: get older, you get better at cheffing. These are these
Speaker 1: experiences of your life and knowing how to turn them
Speaker 1: into you know, a beautiful buffet. And so as you
Speaker 1: get older, if you learn how to metabolize your experiences,
Speaker 1: make sense of them, and then in the future those
Speaker 1: those that will help you. So let me talk about
Speaker 1: an exercise or a wisdom practice I've been doing now
Speaker 1: for thirty five years, since age twenty eight. At age
Speaker 1: twenty eight, I had been running a boutique hotel company
Speaker 1: for a couple of years that I ran for twenty
Speaker 1: four years, became the second largest in the US, based
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, Collegue you want to be, I wan
Speaker 1: fifty two hotels around California. So, long story short is
Speaker 1: I at age twenty eight, two years after starting the company,
Speaker 1: I was clueless, and of course I was. I was
Speaker 1: twenty eight years old running a you know, boutigotel company
Speaker 1: at that point with just one hotel. So one day
Speaker 1: I went home at the end of a week. It
Speaker 1: was a Friday afternoon, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm getting just bullied by my job as the CEO.
Speaker 1: And so I just took a journal off the wall,
Speaker 1: off the bookshelf, and I wrote on the cover of
Speaker 1: my wisdom book. And I started a practice where every
Speaker 1: weekend I would make a list of what I'd learned
Speaker 1: that week personally or professionally, and then I went ahead
Speaker 1: and would just say, Okay, I learned this, and here's
Speaker 1: how it's going to serve me in the future. So
Speaker 1: in essence, what I was doing is I was turning
Speaker 1: my painful life lessons into that raw material, metabolizing the
Speaker 1: experience so that it would serve me in the future
Speaker 1: as my future wisdom. So the process of becoming wise
Speaker 1: is not something it's something you earn. It's something you
Speaker 1: learn over time, right, and so wisdom is something that
Speaker 1: gets better with age.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like, because that's kind of how I
Speaker 2: feel right now in this moment, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: I love forty because as I've learned so much, and
Speaker 2: I would take this wisdom now over what I have
Speaker 2: when I was twenties and thirties, right, So I hope
Speaker 2: I'm excited to know even more in ten years, in
Speaker 2: twenty years. So I think that is the piece where
Speaker 2: I look forward to.
Speaker 1: One of the questions I like to ask people sometimes
Speaker 1: if they feel like, oh, they're in their midlife, they're
Speaker 1: fifty years old, and they feel like I'm stupid now
Speaker 1: or something like that, like do you make better decisions
Speaker 1: today at age fifty than you did at age twenty five?
Speaker 1: And almost always they say yeah. Almost always they say yes.
Speaker 1: And I said, guess what, you make better decisions because
Speaker 1: you've built some wisdom along the way, and yes, you
Speaker 1: made some mistakes, and yes, at age fifty you're disappointed.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that people in their late forties
Speaker 1: often hit the bottom point of the U curve of
Speaker 1: happiness and the bottom point of life satisfaction is because
Speaker 1: often it's around mid forties that people's like, I had
Speaker 1: all these expectations and then and they're not coming true.
Speaker 1: I had these hopes and dreams, and and you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's in our career or in our romantic life,
Speaker 1: or you know, financially, et cetera. And and it just
Speaker 1: hasn't happened my body. And so, you know, Brende Brown,
Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine, said, Chip, Chip, you know
Speaker 1: you understand there's a midlife unraveling that goes on. And
Speaker 1: I said, Brene, midlife unraveling. What are you talking about.
Speaker 1: That sounds terrible. Unraveling sounds like something that happens when
Speaker 1: someone loses their mind. And she says, no, look at
Speaker 1: the word ravel in the dictionary. And she said, to
Speaker 1: something that's raveled or is a ravel is so tightly
Speaker 1: wound you can't get it undone. So think of like
Speaker 1: a you know, uh, spring, a yarn exactly. So to
Speaker 1: unravel the midlife unraveling is learning how to unravel all
Speaker 1: your expectations and all of your obligations. And part of
Speaker 1: the way you do this is you edit. What we
Speaker 1: at MAA at the Modern Aldy Academy call the Great
Speaker 1: midlife Edit. We help people learn how to edit their lives.
Speaker 1: And that is beautiful because what it does the first
Speaker 1: half of our life is about accumulating, and the second
Speaker 1: half of our life is about editing. And if we're
Speaker 1: really discerning and good edit we get rid of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's not serving us and we instead focus on
Speaker 1: what is serving. In clean mindsets, it makes sense. Fourth category,
Speaker 1: which I'll pick is the vocational life for the professional life.
Speaker 1: I'm joyously stepping off the treadmill. So in midlife we
Speaker 1: come face to face with the fact that our parents,
Speaker 1: or our community, or our family broadly may have defined
Speaker 1: success for us. And we got on that damn treadmill
Speaker 1: in our twenties and we started running, or maybe in
Speaker 1: our teens, and we started running based upon what bas
Speaker 1: upon this sort of definition of successism, success ism being hey,
Speaker 1: you know what defines success in society. And then there's
Speaker 1: around midlife sometimes we sa like, you know what, that
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to me. That's like my parents' definition of success,
Speaker 1: not mine. And so there is the opportunity for people
Speaker 1: in midlife to take stock and to look at their
Speaker 1: life and say, like, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: litigator anymore. I want to be a pastry chef. We
Speaker 1: had a sixty year old woman come to the MAA
Speaker 1: in our Baja campus. We have a campus in Mexico
Speaker 1: on the beach in Baja and then also in the
Speaker 1: Santa Fe New Mexico on a regenerative horse rips twenty
Speaker 1: six hundred acres beautiful. So long story short, as she
Speaker 1: came to Baja and she said, I hate being a
Speaker 1: litigation attorney. I feel like I have armor on all
Speaker 1: the time. I don't want to do this anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: midlife and I feel like I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do next. So one of the exercises we did with
Speaker 1: her cohort was the question about purpose. How do you
Speaker 1: find your purpose when we feel like you're not on
Speaker 1: the right path. And usually your purpose comes from one
Speaker 1: of four paths. Something that excites you, something that agitates you,
Speaker 1: something that you're curious about, or something from earlier in
Speaker 1: your life that you really loved and had a passion
Speaker 1: for but you feel like you've sort of neglected it
Speaker 1: or it just didn't have time for it anymore. In
Speaker 1: her case, she had a dream one night while she
Speaker 1: was at Maa at the Modern Old Academy, and she
Speaker 1: had a dream that came up about around the idea
Speaker 1: that she loved cooking pies with her grandmother and being
Speaker 1: in her grandmother's kitchen. And she also then realized when
Speaker 1: she got conscious in the morning, whenever she goes to
Speaker 1: a new place, like on vacation, she always looks in
Speaker 1: the map in her digital map for bakeries, and she
Speaker 1: walks into bakeries, she smells it, and then she just
Speaker 1: looks at what they've got, especially if it's in a
Speaker 1: different part of the world from where she's normally living.
Speaker 1: And so by the end of the week, she realized
Speaker 1: she was going to get off the litigator treadmill and
Speaker 1: instead she was going to become a pastry chef. And
Speaker 1: she's now going to go out and create a bakery
Speaker 1: in her neighborhood. So learning how to get off the
Speaker 1: treadmill and learning how to do the thing that you
Speaker 1: really want to do, this is the time in midlife
Speaker 1: where you come face to face.
Speaker 2: With that and it's almost like just letting go then too,
Speaker 2: of the expectations that yeah, not only parents, but also
Speaker 2: that you put on yourself too, Like what you expected
Speaker 2: would happen, Okay, well it didn't. Now let's reroute in
Speaker 2: a way and not get in a funk about it.
Speaker 1: Right exactly exactly. And the good news is if you
Speaker 1: found something in your twenties, thirties or forties that you
Speaker 1: just love doing and you took a different path than
Speaker 1: what was expected of you. Good for you. And you
Speaker 1: may want to still stay on that treadmill. But there's
Speaker 1: something about the treadmill but I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about for a second. A treadmill is something you know,
Speaker 1: you can speed it up, you can slow it down,
Speaker 1: you know, but you're not moving anywhere. You're actually getting
Speaker 1: to work out, which is great, But the landscape's not
Speaker 1: changing time. Even if you're doing the thing you love doing.
Speaker 1: You got to get off that damn treadmill, and you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to see other things because the
Speaker 1: landscape doesn't change than that little screen on the treadmill
Speaker 1: that sort of shows you that you're running in the desert.
Speaker 1: Now you're running there on the beach and like, but
Speaker 1: that's just that's a screen that's not life. And so
Speaker 1: getting off the treadmill is also important. And then the
Speaker 1: last category of you know, these of twelve, there's five categories,
Speaker 1: is the spiritual life. And you know, I've just what
Speaker 1: I'm going to use is I've discovered my soul. And
Speaker 1: there are people who are lucky enough in their you know,
Speaker 1: teen years or their twenties or thirties or forties to
Speaker 1: really feel like I'm I've got a connection to my soul.
Speaker 1: It's something I understand, like who I am and why
Speaker 1: I am here on earth, or maybe even if you're
Speaker 1: bullieant in past lives, that I understand my past lives
Speaker 1: that have led me to being here in this life.
Speaker 1: But a lot of us don't have that experience. A
Speaker 1: lot of us. Actually, the primary bring system that has
Speaker 1: really defined us for the first half of our life
Speaker 1: has been our ego. For all kinds of good reasons,
Speaker 1: ego is the thing that individuates us. It's the one
Speaker 1: thing that defines us and helps us to be who
Speaker 1: we are. It's the thing that propels us forward. But
Speaker 1: often in midlife it's like our ego has gotten the
Speaker 1: best of us. It's like the ego's taken over. And
Speaker 1: so there's a guy in Richard whar he's a Christianistic
Speaker 1: who fame, has written lots of books, and he's an
Speaker 1: maa alum and teacher. And what he said is like
Speaker 1: the first half of your life, your primary opering system
Speaker 1: that sort of defines you is your ego. And it's
Speaker 1: around midlife, you know, forties, fifties, sixties, that something starts
Speaker 1: to stir inside of you, and it may have been dormant,
Speaker 1: and it's it's something that speaks to like your interest
Speaker 1: in meaning and the meaning of life and something bigger
Speaker 1: than yourself. And maybe it's something religious or spiritual that
Speaker 1: has a curiosity there. And what he says is that
Speaker 1: you move from the primary opering system being the ego,
Speaker 1: to the primary operating system being the soul. But nobody
Speaker 1: gave you any operating instructions for this new thing you're
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's defining your life, the soul, and
Speaker 1: so you sort of have to make sense of it.
Speaker 1: And I see, and sometimes it's it's external circumstances of people,
Speaker 1: you know, the divorce that happens, that comes out of
Speaker 1: left field, getting you know, fired from your job, having
Speaker 1: a health diagnosis, having your parents pass away, struggling with
Speaker 1: being an empty nester, which you will be someday, Janna,
Speaker 1: you will be that.
Speaker 3: Don't like I don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just had a baby, so I'm an
Speaker 2: old mama now. So it's going to be a while,
Speaker 2: yeah till that, But I hope and pray obviously, But yeah,
Speaker 2: so I mean, where do you where do you find
Speaker 2: yourself struggling the most in your midlife.
Speaker 1: So well, that's a great question.
Speaker 2: Because obviously, I mean, you've written, you're you know, you're
Speaker 2: very successful. You've got a bunch of successful books, You've
Speaker 2: lived a successful life. You know, you're you're you're on
Speaker 2: here now talking about your new book. And it's like,
Speaker 2: I have to think that. You know, again, we're all human,
Speaker 2: we all have there's that one thing that's like that
Speaker 2: it's our tough point. So it's like, what do you
Speaker 2: think yours is?
Speaker 1: I think I have multiple, but I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: that's pretty that's really clear to me, and that is
Speaker 1: I can see the narrative of my life. As you
Speaker 1: get older, you're much better able to see the narrative
Speaker 1: of your life, the pattern recognition of like, oh I'm
Speaker 1: doing that again, or like and one of my patterns
Speaker 1: is to be the hero. That's the archetype that defines me.
Speaker 1: And there's there's lots of archetypes out there. There's like
Speaker 1: the hero, there's the caregiver, there's the explorer. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the court jester. But I have a tendency to
Speaker 1: fall into wanting to be the hero, and it gives
Speaker 1: me self esteem. And so one of the challenges I
Speaker 1: have in midlife is whether it's in my family life,
Speaker 1: or it's in my friends, or it's in my career.
Speaker 1: I want to be the hero and I want to
Speaker 1: come in and save the day. And you can say, like, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds great. You know, if you're good at this,
Speaker 1: like keep doing it. But the problem, there's problems with that.
Speaker 1: Number One is if you if this is the archetype
Speaker 1: that defines you and you get self esteem from it,
Speaker 1: you will find situations where there's no hero needed, Like
Speaker 1: things are getting solved. Let the people who are in it,
Speaker 1: they're like solving, they're being heroes. Why do you have
Speaker 1: to be the hero? Why DoD be the ego fed
Speaker 1: person who's like, oh, Chips save the day. So there's that. Secondly,
Speaker 1: it's tiring being a hero. And so for me, one
Speaker 1: of my challenges in my life is how do I
Speaker 1: put some boundaries up? And I've gotten better at this,
Speaker 1: but I have a long way to go such that
Speaker 1: you know, I know I can see there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for me to be a hero there, but how do
Speaker 1: I help become a hero coach for other people to
Speaker 1: become a hero, so I don't have to always be
Speaker 1: the hero. So I'm working on that, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, the program is really helping that. It's help
Speaker 1: It helps me teach people how to not be just
Speaker 1: be heroes, but how to help, you know, solve their
Speaker 1: life problems and navigate your transitions.
Speaker 2: I so get that because I also think people need
Speaker 2: to learn their mistakes too, without the rescuing. Like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people come to me now to be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, what do I do now this? You know,
Speaker 2: my husband cheated on me and you know, something comes up,
Speaker 2: and so I've been there was one instance where I
Speaker 2: was helping someone close to me that you know, their
Speaker 2: husband cheated on them, because obviously I love helping. I
Speaker 2: want to help like that's but then it becomes this
Speaker 2: thing where when they go back or we see them,
Speaker 2: I'm like, now it's like it's now affecting. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, probably what's going to happen again because you've
Speaker 2: been in that situation where the person and we'll most
Speaker 2: likely cheat again. But I don't want to say that,
Speaker 2: so it's just I'm like I've kind of I'm like,
Speaker 2: all right, people have to learn the lessons there. I
Speaker 2: learned my lessons and people told me kind of not
Speaker 2: what to do, but when I tried to be the
Speaker 2: hero and to help into whatever. So now I'm like,
Speaker 2: I've kind of stepped back and be like here's my advice,
Speaker 2: and you know, but I can't. I can't put the
Speaker 2: cake on try to rescue this situation or try. Like
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's because then it becomes too heavy and
Speaker 2: on my side too, because it brings up old things
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you get you know, you got to teach
Speaker 1: someone to fish. You can't just bring them to the fish. Right.
Speaker 1: What do you love about the show?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: And how has it for you made you wiser about
Speaker 1: yourself and about wind up? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well I love first, I love growing right, So something
Speaker 2: that you said to is the mistakes, right, Like, there's
Speaker 2: I I love to not that I don't regret anything
Speaker 2: in my life. There's things that I've gone through that
Speaker 2: I to this day am so grateful for. They were
Speaker 2: very hard memories, but I've how I deal with them
Speaker 2: now or something comes up, or if I get retriggered
Speaker 2: for something or something from childhood, like the way that
Speaker 2: I respond now is so different, and I owe that
Speaker 2: to a lot of the people that I've you know,
Speaker 2: obviously worked with privately in therapy sessions, but also every day,
Speaker 2: like I'm challenged to be a.
Speaker 3: Better version of myself.
Speaker 2: And so when I walked in today, you know, to
Speaker 2: have this interview with you, I'm like, all right, where
Speaker 2: where can I kind of look in the mirror and
Speaker 2: go all right, this is where I'm struggling with my midlife, right,
Speaker 2: so I'm afraid of you know, dying or I'm afraid
Speaker 2: of you know, getting older, And here's why. And so
Speaker 2: it's it's an opportunity for me to keep growing and
Speaker 2: to keep learning and too because now I walk out
Speaker 2: of this going, oh, I'm I feel more positive.
Speaker 3: I feel lighter about it.
Speaker 2: I feel more excited to tackle things and not put
Speaker 2: expectations on what I thought would be where I'm at now.
Speaker 2: And so it's just like for me, like I love
Speaker 2: this show because I get to talk to people like you,
Speaker 2: and I get to continue to grow and learn and
Speaker 2: embed you know, all the other knowledge that you've received
Speaker 2: from other people like Brene and all your other you know,
Speaker 2: close friends.
Speaker 1: You know. Let's do a little exercise here that any
Speaker 1: of us can do but I'm going to do it
Speaker 1: with you. You're forty years old. Now, how long do you
Speaker 1: think you're going to live? Like if you've had to guess,
Speaker 1: I mean based upon you know, longevity trends, based on
Speaker 1: your family, based upon your own personal health habits. Actually
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: What, So this chip, I've had this thing where I
Speaker 2: always said I was going to die young and I
Speaker 2: don't know why, and I honestly didn't.
Speaker 3: Think i'd make it to forty.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I think it was like, I.
Speaker 3: I just I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I always had that. So now
Speaker 2: I go the first first number that popped in my mind?
Speaker 1: Did you have a sense of urgency? Like okay, like
Speaker 1: if you're going to die young, there do it all? Now?
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know, but now I'm like, I made
Speaker 2: it past the number that I thought I was going
Speaker 2: to not make a past. So now I the first
Speaker 2: number that popped in my mind was eighty.
Speaker 3: That's just where which.
Speaker 1: Would be young you would if you if you passed
Speaker 1: away at eighty, that would be younger than what's average
Speaker 1: for a Caucasian woman in the United States.
Speaker 3: I mean, my grandma's ninety five. She's turning ninety five, Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: And she's like healthy as a but she also came
Speaker 2: on like then, you know she she Back in the day,
Speaker 2: they weren't eaten process, you know, and had stuff sprayed
Speaker 2: all over there.
Speaker 1: That's true, but they also weren't as aware of things
Speaker 1: that were healthy. You know, you probably drank more, they.
Speaker 3: Probably eat it exactly. Okay, all right, all.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, So here's here's the math. I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're gonna little ninety. Let's let's let's say
Speaker 1: that as just a thought, okay, or we can even
Speaker 1: do eighty. But I'm gonna do ninety because if you
Speaker 1: got grandma's ninety five, that's actually good.
Speaker 2: I've got a grandma that's seventy five, and I got
Speaker 2: another grandma that's turning ninety.
Speaker 1: Okay, there we go, So ninety. So what percentage of
Speaker 1: your adult life starting counting at age eighteen do you
Speaker 1: think you have ahead of you if you live till
Speaker 1: ninety I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to do the mast say that again, I'm confused,
Speaker 2: say that. I'm okay, So well, I'll talk real slow
Speaker 2: with math of me.
Speaker 1: Here Okay, that's fine. What percentage, what percentage of your
Speaker 1: adult life do you still have ahead of you? Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean because you from your forty forty adult adult
Speaker 1: it started at eighteen, so you have twenty two years
Speaker 1: behind you, and so if you live till ninety, they
Speaker 1: have fifty years ahead of you. I mean, I'll do
Speaker 1: the math for you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Seventy percent of your adult life is still ahead of you.
Speaker 1: Oh so that so for the person who's thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: I have forty like I'm in client, I'm dying, I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's not much time left. I'm going
Speaker 1: out to pasture. No. Not really. The average age of
Speaker 1: the person who comes to MAA is fifty four, and
Speaker 1: the average they think they're gonna live till is ninety,
Speaker 1: and fifty four is exactly halfway between eighteen and ninety.
Speaker 1: And when you tell a fifty four year old you
Speaker 1: still have you still have as much adulthood ahead of
Speaker 1: you as you do from now un till age eighteen,
Speaker 1: they're like, really, so we don't have very good longevity literacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, that just totally changed everything for me my brain.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jeff, you just gave me years of my
Speaker 2: life back.
Speaker 1: Well, and here's and then let me give you another
Speaker 1: thing because this is in the book, but it's also
Speaker 1: something we do it at, you know, in our workshops.
Speaker 1: What is it you know now or have done now
Speaker 1: that you wish you'd known or done ten years ago? Jenna?
Speaker 1: What is it you know now or have done now
Speaker 1: that you wish you'd learned or done ten years ago?
Speaker 2: Okay, So that one's a hard one for me because
Speaker 2: if I would have done it, I wouldn't have had
Speaker 2: my two beautiful kids.
Speaker 1: Okay, you had twins.
Speaker 3: No, I had.
Speaker 2: I have an eight and a five year old with
Speaker 2: my ex husband, and I've got one with my new fiance,
Speaker 2: So okay, got it. Looking back, obviously I would have
Speaker 2: not have gone through seven years of just a really hard,
Speaker 2: you know, abusive relationship with you know, affairs and all
Speaker 2: of it. So having said that, I have two beautiful children, right,
Speaker 2: So if I would have been stronger and had known
Speaker 2: my worth more, I would have gotten out of that
Speaker 2: a lot sooner. Now that I wouldn't. I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: continued the relationship. But how could I say that when
Speaker 2: I have two beautiful kids?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I mean, listen, but you might have you
Speaker 1: might have left after the first kid. Who knows I mean?
Speaker 1: Or you know? So now I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: do the following. This is this is this is the
Speaker 1: more important part of the question. Ten years from now,
Speaker 1: when you're fifty, what will you regret if you don't
Speaker 1: learn it or do it now?
Speaker 3: That's a good question.
Speaker 2: What would I regret if I don't learn it or
Speaker 2: do it now?
Speaker 1: While you thinking about it, let me tell you my story,
Speaker 1: if that's okay. So when I was fifty seven I'm
Speaker 1: fifty six actually, but fifty seven mostly. I moved from
Speaker 1: San Francisco to Baja to Mexico and to live on
Speaker 1: a beach. And I was writing a book about my
Speaker 1: experience of helping to run Airbnb with the founders, and
Speaker 1: they called me the modern elder. That's why it's called
Speaker 1: the Modern Alder Academy. They said, Chip, you're twice the
Speaker 1: age of the average person here, and we love you
Speaker 1: because you're a modern elder who's as curious as they
Speaker 1: are wise. It's like, okay, So I went down to
Speaker 1: Baja to live on the beach, and I was fifty
Speaker 1: seven when I started thinking about this, and I said, like, wow,
Speaker 1: ten years from now, what will I regret if I
Speaker 1: don't learn it? Or do it now? And in Baja,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well I regret if I didn't
Speaker 1: learn Spanish. But I had a mindset as like I'm
Speaker 1: too old to learn a foreign language. But the fact
Speaker 1: that I imagine the regret ten years from now and thinking
Speaker 1: like oh, at sixty seven will be harder than att seven,
Speaker 1: that anticipated regret is a form of wisdom, and it
Speaker 1: like catalyzed me. It gave me the incentive like I'm
Speaker 1: going to learn this now. Similarly, I started learning how
Speaker 1: to surf at age fifty seven, and I started learning
Speaker 1: how to surf because at sixty seven it was going
Speaker 1: to be harder to learn to serf than at fifty seven.
Speaker 1: So I learned to surf because of right near a
Speaker 1: there's a surf break just down the beach from me.
Speaker 1: So as we know longevity to literacy and we know
Speaker 1: we're going to live longer, the thing that we have
Speaker 1: to get clear on is that we need to become
Speaker 1: a beginner over and over again. We need to be
Speaker 1: open to learning something new. We need to be you know,
Speaker 1: not focused. The problem for some people as they go
Speaker 1: into midlife, is they only want to play the games
Speaker 1: that they can win or that they do well, and
Speaker 1: their sandboxes get smaller and smaller, and so instead, what
Speaker 1: we really need to do is be open to like say,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a beginner again. I'm going to
Speaker 1: try something new again and have with it, because if
Speaker 1: we're going to live a long life, it's really important
Speaker 1: that we don't just start to calcify and just like
Speaker 1: our life gets smaller and smaller. So having said all
Speaker 1: of that, to have any thoughts about what you would.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, now it just opened up my because
Speaker 2: at first I had one that was a little bit
Speaker 2: more open where it was just like I need to
Speaker 2: give myself more time because I give time to my kids,
Speaker 2: to my fiance. It's like I don't do the things
Speaker 2: I really want to do because at the end of
Speaker 2: the night, I'm exhausted. The time has run out, Right,
Speaker 2: So the only time that I really give myself is
Speaker 2: forty five minutes to at least work out, Like that's
Speaker 2: my thing, that's my that's my time that I've put
Speaker 2: into a schedule. But to think about it more like sure,
Speaker 2: like you know me and my fans I've been talking
Speaker 2: about learning Spanish. I'd love Spanish. But for me, I'm
Speaker 2: like thinking about myself and what would I want to do.
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to learn how to play the pans know, always,
Speaker 2: and it's just something that I'm like, well, I don't
Speaker 2: have time or you know again, yeah, I'm forty years old,
Speaker 2: but think about when I'm fifty. If I started now,
Speaker 2: how good I could be playing then.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's cool. And there's certain things where like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be harder to do it, and learning language,
Speaker 1: surfing piano may be harder over time, maybe not be,
Speaker 1: but you know, for me, the one that I have today,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty three and I have I have two sons
Speaker 1: who are twelve and seven, twelve and nine, Eli and Ethan,
Speaker 1: and I had I had them. I'm a gay man,
Speaker 1: and I had them with a lesbian couple of her
Speaker 1: friends and they asked me. Originally it was gonna be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the sperm donner, and okay, that's
Speaker 1: my thing, but because because they had two boys, they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, we really want you to be in their
Speaker 1: lives and so you know, The thing I would regret
Speaker 1: at seventy three if I didn't do it at sixty
Speaker 1: three is to invest more time into my son's lives.
Speaker 1: And it's really easy for me to not do that
Speaker 1: because I have a full life and I've got all
Speaker 1: this stuff going on. And but man, twelve and nine,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the.
Speaker 3: One informative years too, This is.
Speaker 1: The these are the years. Yeah, and I don't I
Speaker 1: don't live in the same city as them. So the
Speaker 1: fact that I don't live in the same city means
Speaker 1: I have to make an effort, and it means that
Speaker 1: we have to do vacations together and et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And it's just but it's but it's lovely. I was
Speaker 1: just with them, you know, for the weekend, and I
Speaker 1: just it was so great. And So if there's a
Speaker 1: if there's a point on all this is midlife or
Speaker 1: starting to get toward midlife, is when you start to
Speaker 1: value your time more and you start to realize, yes,
Speaker 1: the thing that you're fearful about, Jenna about, okay, out
Speaker 1: there in the future, I'm going to die someday or
Speaker 1: I'm going to get old, and I'm going to get
Speaker 1: decrepit and or I'm not going to look good. I
Speaker 1: mean the invisible. For women, the biggest fear is invisibility
Speaker 1: for minutes, irrelevance. You know, that is an opportunity to
Speaker 1: actually say, Okay, what can I do? You know, time
Speaker 1: is precious, what are the things I can do? And
Speaker 1: so long story short is I mean, I just love
Speaker 1: this because it helps people at a time in their
Speaker 1: life where they might have normally put on blinders and
Speaker 1: been bored to actually say no, I am, I am
Speaker 1: gonna fully do something new.
Speaker 3: I love it. Well, Chip, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: You've been so enlightening so I so appreciate it, and
Speaker 2: everyone please go grab his book Learning to Love mid
Speaker 2: Life Twelve reasons why life gets better with age.
Speaker 3: Chip, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you.
Speaker 2: Thank You're a sweetheart. Appreciate you here too. Goodbye,