Speaker 1: Hey friends, Eric here with some exciting news. I've been
Speaker 1: writing a book and it's about to be out in
Speaker 1: the world in April of twenty twenty six. The working
Speaker 1: title is How a Little Becomes a Lot, and it's
Speaker 1: all about how small, consistent actions, the kind that we
Speaker 1: talk about all the time on this show can lead
Speaker 1: to real meaningful change. Right now, the book is in
Speaker 1: the editing process and there's still some shaping to do,
Speaker 1: which is where you come in. I'd love your input
Speaker 1: on what to focus on, how to talk about the book,
Speaker 1: even what it should be called. If you've got a
Speaker 1: few minutes and a couple thoughts on what would make
Speaker 1: this book most helpful for you, I'd be really grateful
Speaker 1: to hear them. Just head to oneufeed dot net slash
Speaker 1: book survey. You'll also get early updates, fun giveaways, and
Speaker 1: to behind the scenes look at what it actually takes
Speaker 1: to make a book. Editing marathons, title debates, existential spirals,
Speaker 1: and me questioning all of my life choices at two
Speaker 1: am over one stubborn sentence. Again, that's one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash book survey. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being part of this. Your feedback really means a lot
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: Truly.
Speaker 3: Back to Socrates times, he laughed when people said you
Speaker 3: know everything, It's like, no, I'm still learning. And it's
Speaker 3: that learning perspective that really makes the most difference. Being
Speaker 3: willing to become a beginner at something in your life
Speaker 3: at every time of your life.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 4: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 4: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 4: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 4: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 4: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 4: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 4: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 4: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 4: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 4: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 4: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Midlife has a way of sneaking up on you. I
Speaker 1: know because I'm in it, and it's not without its challenges.
Speaker 1: But talking with Chip Conley shifted something in me. In
Speaker 1: this conversation, he shares how the hardest stretch of his life, burnout,
Speaker 1: personal loss, a near death experience, ended up being the
Speaker 1: start of something completely new. We talk about the pull
Speaker 1: of ego, the search for identity, and how letting go
Speaker 1: of traditional success opened the door to something more meaningful.
Speaker 1: His idea of moving from return on investment to ripples
Speaker 1: of impact especially struck me. If you're in a season
Speaker 1: where things feel uncertain or you're wondering what this phase
Speaker 1: of life is really for, I think you'll hear something
Speaker 1: in this episode that helps you feel a little more hopeful.
Speaker 1: I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Chip,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: It's great to be here, Eric.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk with you. Your book is called
Speaker 1: Learning to Love Midlife Twelve Reasons Why Life gets Better
Speaker 1: with age, and what a great topic and to somebody
Speaker 1: who's squarely in the middle of midlife, I'm your target audience.
Speaker 2: We'll get to the book though in a.
Speaker 1: Minute after we start in the way that we always do,
Speaker 1: which is with the parable. And in the parable, there's
Speaker 1: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle.
Speaker 2: One is a good wolf, which.
Speaker 1: Represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think
Speaker 1: about it for a second, and they look up at
Speaker 1: their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandparents as the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 3: As is true for so many things in life, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure it's binary. There's nothing that says we can't
Speaker 3: feed both, and it doesn't necessarily mean you want to
Speaker 3: feed both, but it does mean that we do possibly
Speaker 3: feed both. And there's certain parts of our life. In
Speaker 3: my life, I'll just speak for myself, certain parts of
Speaker 3: my life are that have a voracious appetite. So there's
Speaker 3: certain times in your life where your ego wants to
Speaker 3: be fed incessantly and frankly. As is true with the
Speaker 3: hedonic treadmill, the psychology theory that just when you thought
Speaker 3: the thing you wanted was good enough, once you get it,
Speaker 3: you want something more. I think that that is very
Speaker 3: true of the ego, as it's true for many things.
Speaker 3: The ego in moderation is wonderful. Feeding your sense of accomplishment,
Speaker 3: feeding your sense of having an identity in the world
Speaker 3: that differentiates you is very important. But it's when it
Speaker 3: gets out of balance and you realize that there's never enough,
Speaker 3: that's when you've got to be very careful with feeding
Speaker 3: that wolf. The other wolf you know, often isn't asking
Speaker 3: for anything. It can get along on a steady, small diet.
Speaker 3: It's quieter, it's not demanding, and that wolf, though in
Speaker 3: the long run, is what nourishes you the most. And
Speaker 3: so for me in my life, just to sum up,
Speaker 3: I was very very focused on ROI, the return on
Speaker 3: investment as an entrepreneur for much of my life. But
Speaker 3: I have come to see that the ROI that I
Speaker 3: really appreciate these days is ripples of impact and the
Speaker 3: return on investment mindset I had sometimes meant that I
Speaker 3: was feeding the ego and feeding the greed. I've never
Speaker 3: been very greedy, but but certainly feeding the desire for accomplishment.
Speaker 3: And today what I want to feed is that part
Speaker 3: of me that really is giving back and having a
Speaker 3: profound impact on other humans as my primary way of
Speaker 3: feeling success in life wonderful.
Speaker 1: Let's start with maybe setting up how you got to
Speaker 1: the place where you wrote a book about midlife. You
Speaker 1: have the modern Ellers Academy. Let's talk about how you
Speaker 1: got there, and you describe it in the book as
Speaker 1: the tale of two midlives, one very bad followed by
Speaker 1: one very good.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went to college and graduate school at Stanford.
Speaker 3: A couple of years out of Stanford Business School, I
Speaker 3: started a boutique hotel company at age twenty six, called
Speaker 3: it Juan.
Speaker 5: A Vive Joy of Life in French.
Speaker 3: Ran that company for twenty four years, based in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: We had fifty two boutique hotels around California, given the
Speaker 3: second largest boutiquo Tell You're in the US. But I
Speaker 3: really was struggling in my late forties.
Speaker 5: At the time.
Speaker 3: I had never heard of the U Curve of happiness,
Speaker 3: which shows that the low point on the U curve
Speaker 3: is around forty five to fifty. And yes, that was
Speaker 3: the era I was in, but I didn't know anything
Speaker 3: about that. What I thought was, oh, man, I've hit
Speaker 3: my midlife and I'm having my crisis. But it was
Speaker 3: not just the internal feeling like something wasn't right, but
Speaker 3: it was also externally. I had I had friends committing suicide.
Speaker 3: I had a adult foster sign going to prison wrongfully
Speaker 3: at a long term relationship ending. I was running out
Speaker 3: of cash during the Great Recession with my boutique hotel company.
Speaker 3: So it was both internal and external. And then I
Speaker 3: had an NDE near death experience due to an allergic
Speaker 3: reaction to an antibiotic and that was the hotel your
Speaker 3: wake up call. That was when I finally said, like,
Speaker 3: I've got to make a transition in my life, but
Speaker 3: I just don't know how to do it, you know.
Speaker 3: I felt now a deep sense of a catalyst from
Speaker 3: that nd Over the next two years, with some help
Speaker 3: from one of my best friends who was a coach,
Speaker 3: I between age forty seven and fifty pretty much changed
Speaker 3: everything in my life.
Speaker 5: Some of it was not all easy.
Speaker 3: It was in fact very difficult, but by age fifty
Speaker 3: I sort of hit the reset button and I was
Speaker 3: ready for something new. And then my fifties were spectacular.
Speaker 3: So the tale of two midlifs. Were late forties was rough.
Speaker 3: My fifties were spectacular. And you know, I spent from
Speaker 3: age fifty two to fifty nine helping the founders of
Speaker 3: Airbnb take their little tech startup and turn it into
Speaker 3: the world's most valuable hospitality company, which is where I
Speaker 3: earned the title modern Elder. I didn't like it at first,
Speaker 3: but then they said, Chip, you're as curious as you
Speaker 3: are wise, and that's a modern elder and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I like that, And next thing I knew, I was
Speaker 3: ready to create the Modern Elder Academy, the world's first
Speaker 3: midlife wisdom school. So I would just say midlife is
Speaker 3: a complex time. It's a time that hasn't been given
Speaker 3: a lot of attention. Part of what I've been doing
Speaker 3: as a midlife activist now is to help to demystify
Speaker 3: and elevate and and maybe operationalize how do you go
Speaker 3: through midlife differently? And what are the tools that are
Speaker 3: available to you and the key themes that are often
Speaker 3: going on in people's lives during this time. And that's
Speaker 3: why we have seven thousand graduates from sixty countries who
Speaker 3: are part of the MAA Alumni crew.
Speaker 1: So let's define midlife real quick, Like, what are we
Speaker 1: talking about here? What years, what characteristics, How do you
Speaker 1: think about determining Yep, somebody's in midlife or they're not
Speaker 1: in midlife.
Speaker 3: Well, technically midlife is the life stage that is a bridge.
Speaker 3: So think of it as a bridge between early adulthood
Speaker 3: and later adulthood. Makes sense, right, I mean the middle
Speaker 3: age is between early and late So early adulthood was
Speaker 3: originally conceived as eighteen to thirty and now is eighteen
Speaker 3: to thirty five by some sociologists. So you could say
Speaker 3: that maybe midlife, early midlife starts around mid thirties. Let
Speaker 3: me be clear that my definition of midlife, which is
Speaker 3: defined by a lot of sociologists, is at odds with
Speaker 3: the history vidorical definition, which has been forty to sixty
Speaker 3: or forty five to sixty five. But I'm saying maybe
Speaker 3: mid thirties it starts to creep up on you, and
Speaker 3: then you have this very long bridge because later adulthood,
Speaker 3: if you're going to live till ninety or one hundred
Speaker 3: later adult, it might start around seventy five. It's when
Speaker 3: at that point probably retired, although a lot of people
Speaker 3: are still working in their late seventies still, so it's
Speaker 3: possible that the bridge of midlife lasts forty years from
Speaker 3: thirty five to seventy five, with three stages in it,
Speaker 3: early midlife thirty five to fifty, the core of midlife
Speaker 3: fifty to sixty, and then later midlife sixty to seventy five.
Speaker 3: And each of those three stages has a different flavor
Speaker 3: to it. But we didn't have this worry and the
Speaker 3: year nineteen hundred because life expectancy in nineteen hundred was
Speaker 3: forty seven, so midlife really didn't exist.
Speaker 1: That's amazing when we think about that. Let's first talk
Speaker 1: about what our perspective on aging is and why it's important.
Speaker 1: Differenced just a second ago, nineteen hundred, age of forty seven, right,
Speaker 1: And I think many of us of my age, I've
Speaker 1: noticed recently we're looking at pictures of our parents at
Speaker 1: our age, or are even more our grandparents at our age,
Speaker 1: and we're like, goodness, gracious, I seem very different than that.
Speaker 1: And I think some of that is we've begun to
Speaker 1: have a different perspective on what it is to age.
Speaker 1: But talk to me about why our beliefs about aging
Speaker 1: are so important.
Speaker 3: Well, our beliefs about aging are in the US cultures
Speaker 3: just pretty toxic.
Speaker 5: Let's just be honest.
Speaker 3: If there was a bumper sticker that defined our belief
Speaker 3: of aging, it would be just don't do it. And yet,
Speaker 3: if you don't age, you're probably dying or dead. So,
Speaker 3: long story short is, because US culture has defined aging
Speaker 3: often by the physical side of aging, which does, over
Speaker 3: the course of your life you show physical deterioration, people
Speaker 3: are scared of it. And yet our emotional aging process,
Speaker 3: we actually get better at emotional intelligence as we age.
Speaker 3: We get better at social relationships as we age, so
Speaker 3: the social side of aging can be better. Culturally, not everybody,
Speaker 3: but a lot of people actually get more interested in
Speaker 3: culture as they age. They get more interested in spirituality
Speaker 3: in certain pursuits. Intellectually, they are more adept as they
Speaker 3: age because of crystallized intelligence as opposed to fluid intelligence. So,
Speaker 3: long story short is, the society perspective on aging is
Speaker 3: pretty negative, and yet the U curve of happiness research
Speaker 3: shows that after age fifty people get happier with time,
Speaker 3: and Becca Levi's work from Yale has shown that when
Speaker 3: you shift your mindset on aging from a negative to
Speaker 3: a positive around midlife, you add seven and a half
Speaker 3: years of extended longevity so part of my role and
Speaker 3: part of NEA's mission is to help people own their age,
Speaker 3: feel good about the upside of aging and what gets
Speaker 3: better with age, and then look at how you cannot
Speaker 3: just be youthful but useful as you get older.
Speaker 1: Well, being useful is one of my favorite ideas and
Speaker 1: core values. Have you ever read The Cider House Rules
Speaker 1: by John Oyah? Of course, yeah, doctor Wilbur Larch and
Speaker 1: you know, always be useful, very influential on me when
Speaker 1: I was a teenager. So as we look at people aging,
Speaker 1: I think many of us will see people who have
Speaker 1: become what you're describing as wiser, kinder, better people as
Speaker 1: they've gotten old.
Speaker 2: And then there's the.
Speaker 1: Stereotype of the grumpy old man who doesn't want a
Speaker 1: kit on his lawn and hardens and ossifies in some
Speaker 1: way what to you shapes the trajectory from one of
Speaker 1: those outcomes to the other.
Speaker 3: It's really the difference between a fixed and the growth mindset.
Speaker 3: So Carol Dweck at Stanford popularized this idea of mindset.
Speaker 3: So is the way you see yourself and the world.
Speaker 3: And if you have a fixed mindset, you tend to
Speaker 3: think you have a fixed amount of luck or money
Speaker 3: or time, and you optimize that and you define success
Speaker 3: as winning and you're trying to prove yourself. But if
Speaker 3: you have a growth mindset, you're open to something growing
Speaker 3: with time, whether that's time or money or luck or
Speaker 3: knowledge or skill. And so your job is to actually
Speaker 3: not win and optimize, but it's to actually learn and
Speaker 3: get better at something. And therefore it's not about proving yourself,
Speaker 3: it's about improving yourself. Often, when someone only wants to
Speaker 3: play games that they can win, their sandbucks get smaller
Speaker 3: and smaller and they get more bored. And when you
Speaker 3: get bored, you can get cranky. And the reason you
Speaker 3: get cranky is because the world is passing you by
Speaker 3: and you don't understand things anymore because you haven't really
Speaker 3: been open to learning something new.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of people who fit this profile.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's be just honest, it's a profile that
Speaker 3: defines a lot of people who are older. So the
Speaker 3: growth mindset's really important because it helps you to realize
Speaker 3: you're open to learning something new.
Speaker 5: When I joined.
Speaker 3: Airbnb at fifty two years old, average age in the
Speaker 3: company was twenty six.
Speaker 5: I had never been in a tech company before and
Speaker 5: I was supposed to be the modern elder.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to be the one who's like helping
Speaker 3: the founders figure out what to do with this business,
Speaker 3: this little growing tech startup. And yet at times I
Speaker 3: felt like I was the dumbest person in the room.
Speaker 3: So I had to be open to not just being
Speaker 3: the oldest, but being the most clueless. And that wasn't easy.
Speaker 3: But that required me to have a growth mindset. Say,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going to get better. I'm going
Speaker 3: to learn about tech. I'm going to learn about you know, DQ,
Speaker 3: digital intelligence. I had a lot of EQ to offer,
Speaker 3: but I had to learn some DQ. So long story
Speaker 3: short is the people who tend to get ossified and
Speaker 3: calcified and get cranky are often people who have gotten
Speaker 3: very fixed in their perspective of the world and themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting because I observe this in myself.
Speaker 1: The desire to become more certain that I know the
Speaker 1: way things are, you know, a certain skepticism of the
Speaker 1: way things are being done today versus when they were
Speaker 1: done before, a certain amount of less openness to new experiences,
Speaker 1: Like I feel some of that happen, and I'm very
Speaker 1: committed to actively countering those things, you know, actively making
Speaker 1: myself take on new things, new challenges. I found myself
Speaker 1: really trying to any time my brain is like, well
Speaker 1: it was better back when? Is to really take that
Speaker 1: as like a chance to stop and pause and go
Speaker 1: hang on a second, like that's a reactionary way of thinking,
Speaker 1: not that it may not be true in certain cases,
Speaker 1: but it's also true that some other things are better.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it's this openness.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there's a couple of things. Number one
Speaker 3: is in our forties in particular, we are so busy
Speaker 3: that it's really hard sometimes to have the time and
Speaker 3: space to be curious. Curiosity is the opposite side of judgment,
Speaker 3: and so in many ways, learning how to judge things
Speaker 3: quickly it's a super skill because when you're really busy,
Speaker 3: being able to make a quick judgment on something allows
Speaker 3: you to sort of say no to something or to
Speaker 3: edit your life accordingly. You know, that's a coping skill
Speaker 3: during a busy time. So let's know that there's an
Speaker 3: upside to that. The other thing is you can say, well, gosh,
Speaker 3: you know, as I get older, I'm more discerning, I
Speaker 3: have more wisdom, and that's probably true as well. But
Speaker 3: wisdom is not about just what you can say no to.
Speaker 3: It's also what you can say yes to. It's also
Speaker 3: what you can learn. Wisdom is not about knowing everything,
Speaker 3: it's about learning everything. Back to Socrates times, he laughed
Speaker 3: when people said you know everything, It's like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: still learning. And it's that learning perspective that really makes
Speaker 3: the most difference, being willing to become a beginner at
Speaker 3: something in your life at every time of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you, I have taken up surfing later in life.
Speaker 1: Unlike you, I don't live anywhere near where that's a
Speaker 1: reasonable hob. It's a stupid hobby for me to the Ohio.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it is a dumb place to take up surfing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just doesn't make sense. But you know,
Speaker 1: I do it as often as I'm able. But I've
Speaker 1: also taken up like rock climbing and just different things
Speaker 1: that keep me a little bit more limber. You say
Speaker 1: in the book, You've got a line that I really like.
Speaker 1: You say, time can be a dictator, but it can
Speaker 1: also be a liberator. Say more about that.
Speaker 3: How we look at our calendar has a lot to
Speaker 3: do with how we live our life. I mean makes sense.
Speaker 3: How we spend our days is how we spend our life.
Speaker 3: That's a wonderful quote. And so for me, it's a
Speaker 3: really interesting part of my life. I am very focused
Speaker 3: on my calendar, and so in some ways it dictates
Speaker 3: my life. It dictates, you know, how I'm spending my
Speaker 3: time with you today. You know, I got ten minutes
Speaker 3: extra time at the start of our what was supposed
Speaker 3: to be our meeting, which was nice because I needed
Speaker 3: it and I appreciated the fact that you needed to
Speaker 3: start ten minutes later, and that was But when I
Speaker 3: say that, there's like, oh my god. The time defines
Speaker 3: and dictates my life. Similarly, during COVID, when my life
Speaker 3: got really spacious, because you know, I spend most of
Speaker 3: my time running MAA, teaching classes, et cetera. And all
Speaker 3: of a sudden we were closed for a period of
Speaker 3: time because of the pandemic. I put on my calendar
Speaker 3: three hours a day on Monday and Wednesday and Friday
Speaker 3: afternoons spying on the divine and that was my opportunity
Speaker 3: to go into nature with my dog Jamie and to
Speaker 3: just be offline, not listening to a podcast, which is
Speaker 3: what I usually do when I hike and just noticing things,
Speaker 3: being curious. I was doing what's called an awe walk
Speaker 3: or what sometimes people call forest bathing, and it was
Speaker 3: just really beautiful. So in that way, my calendar could
Speaker 3: be a liberation. Yesterday, I thought I was going to
Speaker 3: go spend three hours with somebody who's a healer here
Speaker 3: in Santa Fe, just for fun, not necessarily even healing session.
Speaker 3: But it didn't turn out that I did. But I
Speaker 3: blocked four hours of my afternoon yesterday for that, and
Speaker 3: the reality was I wasn't feeling very well yesterday, so
Speaker 3: that was fine ultimately, and I got to spend that
Speaker 3: time just relaxing, taking a bath and taking a nap,
Speaker 3: and that's what I needed. So we have more control
Speaker 3: and volition over our calendar than we think we do.
Speaker 3: But the language we use around time and calendar is
Speaker 3: like it's almost as if we're in prison.
Speaker 1: I think it's some version of what you just said,
Speaker 1: which is like, I'm just so busy, I'm overwhelmed, I
Speaker 1: have no free time. You know, there's different ways of
Speaker 1: talking about it. I think it's an interesting concept of
Speaker 1: time being potentially a liberator. You mentioned like being really
Speaker 1: busy in your forties, and then maybe in your fifties
Speaker 1: a little bit less busy, and as time goes on,
Speaker 1: and I think time can be a liberator if we
Speaker 1: learn to use little bits of it better. I can
Speaker 1: say I don't have time to do X, Y or Z,
Speaker 1: But if I examine my life, then I'm like, but
Speaker 1: I spent an hour doing that and thirty five minutes
Speaker 1: doing that, and there are little chunks there. Even in
Speaker 1: a very busy, dynamic life for me, there are places
Speaker 1: that without making radical changes, I can begin to claim
Speaker 1: some more autonomy.
Speaker 5: No doubt about it.
Speaker 3: Just being able to sit for a moment, maybe even
Speaker 3: five minutes and close your eyes and meditate and lose
Speaker 3: track of time is really valuable. I mean, there's lots
Speaker 3: of social science research that shows that. I think, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things that I find interesting is when
Speaker 3: you can get into a flow state. I was lucky
Speaker 3: enough to spend some good quality time with Mahaly Chick
Speaker 3: something high who popularize the idea of flow. And what's
Speaker 3: interesting about being in a flow state when you're doing
Speaker 3: something that has timeless awareness, meaning you're so engaged in
Speaker 3: it that you lose track of time. There's starting to
Speaker 3: be some research that shows that when you lose track
Speaker 3: of time in a state of flow, it is possible
Speaker 3: that you're not aging during that time. So finding time
Speaker 3: in your life where you can lose track of time
Speaker 3: is not just joyful and make you feel nourished, but
Speaker 3: it also may extend your longevity.
Speaker 1: I want to change directions here for a second and
Speaker 1: talk about one of the things that we all know
Speaker 1: about aging is that your body changes in often ways
Speaker 1: that are less than desirable. And you say men are
Speaker 1: not spared the bodily indignities of aging, and that women
Speaker 1: talk a lot more about it. We talk about menopause,
Speaker 1: we talk about pair of menopause, and we could argue
Speaker 1: whether we talk about it enough.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not a woman.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to weigh in on that, but I
Speaker 1: certainly hear people talk about that way more than I
Speaker 1: ever hear people talking about men in aging outside the
Speaker 1: context of you know, an ed commercial, right like, outside
Speaker 1: of that, it never gets mentioned.
Speaker 5: Bob Dole some viagra.
Speaker 2: Talk to me.
Speaker 1: About this and how might we as men better support
Speaker 1: each other in this.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, it's beauty or braun when it comes
Speaker 3: to women, it's beauty and the fear that you lose
Speaker 3: your beauty with time. Just as you get comfortable in
Speaker 3: your own skin, it starts to sag. With men can
Speaker 3: be braun, you know, the physical viral being feeling virile.
Speaker 3: There's a word to describe the men's version of menopause,
Speaker 3: and it's called andropause. What's different versus menopause is menopause
Speaker 3: obviously has a huge fertility element to it in terms
Speaker 3: of you no longer having menstruation and therefore no longer
Speaker 3: able to have children.
Speaker 5: And it's huge.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a very important part of a woman's life.
Speaker 3: For men that you don't have that kind of sort
Speaker 3: of functional change, but you have a lot of things
Speaker 3: that are happening.
Speaker 5: One of them is the gut.
Speaker 3: You are actually gaining of fat, and your gut can
Speaker 3: be actually very dangerous and.
Speaker 1: You're remarkably stubborn.
Speaker 5: It is. It's really hard. It's very hard to get
Speaker 5: rid of.
Speaker 3: I gatined a bunch of pounds when I was doing
Speaker 3: some cancer treatments the last two years and cannot get
Speaker 3: rid of that gut. You know, my gut's that huge,
Speaker 3: But it's it's something so there's that there's the reduction
Speaker 3: in testosterone that really starts in your thirties and it
Speaker 3: actually declines over time, and it can really accelerate for
Speaker 3: many men in their fifties and be more noticeable in
Speaker 3: terms of the lack of both appetite for being sexual
Speaker 3: or even capacity.
Speaker 5: So that's happening.
Speaker 3: Obviously, you're losing hair, maybe losing your energy. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of elements to this. Many of them sort of
Speaker 3: relate to men feeling a little bit less masculine, and
Speaker 3: that can be interesting. That's some of the crankiness that
Speaker 3: some men get into in their fifties and beyond is
Speaker 3: just trying to mask the lack of masculinity that they're
Speaker 3: feeling internally. My father's an interesting example of this. My
Speaker 3: father's eighty seven years old. Both my parents are eighty seven,
Speaker 3: and my dad was a marine captain and a real hardcore,
Speaker 3: you know, masculine dude, and when he got into his fifties,
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies, he all of a sudden started to
Speaker 3: soften a little bit. And I don't know how much
Speaker 3: of it was really the physical or hormonal side, but
Speaker 3: emotionally you started to you know, read poetry occasionally, or
Speaker 3: just be open to having an emotional conversation. And so
Speaker 3: I do think, you know, there's a real beauty in
Speaker 3: seeing men start to become a little bit more soft,
Speaker 3: seeing women become a little bit more vocal and strong
Speaker 3: willed in their opinions as opposed to just a people pleaser.
Speaker 3: This is one of the reasons why I say that
Speaker 3: as we're growing old, we're also growing whole. And what
Speaker 3: that means is we're learning to alchemize the polarities inside
Speaker 3: of ourselves, you know, whether it's wisdom and curiosity, introvert extrovert, masculine,
Speaker 3: feminine gravitas, depth and levity, humor. I think that one
Speaker 3: of the things that I really admire about an eighty
Speaker 3: five year old person is when I spend time with them,
Speaker 3: there so present, they're not compartmentalized in any way. They
Speaker 3: have alchemized their polarities into this sort of integrated whole,
Speaker 3: and I think that's really what we maybe should aspire to.
Speaker 1: Going to take a moment and ask a more personal
Speaker 1: type question here of my own interest, which is you
Speaker 1: mentioned energy dropping in people as they age, and one
Speaker 1: of the things I've talked to a number of men
Speaker 1: in their forties and fifties about this, and it is
Speaker 1: a drop in energy and trying to figure out.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: Is it, you know, lack of engagement with something that
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 2: Is it diet? Is it this?
Speaker 1: And one of the questions I sort of asked myself
Speaker 1: is like, what is a reasonable amount of energy for
Speaker 1: a fifty five year old person? How have you thought
Speaker 1: about that question? You know, have you noticed an energy
Speaker 1: decrease and how have you thought about it and contextualized it?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, just on a personal level.
Speaker 3: For two years, I had to take hormone depletion therapy
Speaker 3: because I was dealing with prostate cancer. Okay, that went
Speaker 3: from stage one to stage two to stage three, and
Speaker 3: so to actually in essence inhibit my testosteron so that
Speaker 3: it was running around eight or ten instead of five
Speaker 3: hundred meant that I was struggling with not a lot
Speaker 3: of energy at a time when I had a book
Speaker 3: tour and I was launching our second MAA campus and
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuff, so dark chocolate.
Speaker 5: I was feeding on that. I think that you can feel.
Speaker 3: The lack of energy inside you, and you need to
Speaker 3: respect that and look at what are some of the
Speaker 3: root causes. Are you getting enough sleep, are you eating well?
Speaker 3: Are you drinking too much alcohol? For a lot of people,
Speaker 3: a lot of men, they're drinking more in their fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties than they did when they were younger. And
Speaker 3: the truth is that, you know, alcohol is problematic and
Speaker 3: actually even more problematic for older women in terms of
Speaker 3: how you metabolize it. It can mess with your sleep
Speaker 3: as well. So some of the reason that there's a
Speaker 3: lack of energy could be just physical issues, but sometimes
Speaker 3: it's also not feeling the sense of purpose. And when
Speaker 3: you have a sense of purpose, it's like a north
Speaker 3: star that you are aspiring to get to, and you know,
Speaker 3: you keep walking in the desert to.
Speaker 5: See that north star.
Speaker 3: You're never going to catch the north star because it's
Speaker 3: just like a rainbow. You're never going to catch the rainbow.
Speaker 3: But it is what drives you forward. So I think
Speaker 3: for some men there's that. I actually think the physical
Speaker 3: side also of when you start getting some weight and
Speaker 3: you're not exercising as much, there's that going on as well.
Speaker 5: You're carrying around a little bit more of a load.
Speaker 3: You don't have the cardiovascular program that you used to have.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's multifaceted. I will also say
Speaker 3: that as someone who is running on a treadmill in
Speaker 3: my career, that actually getting off the treadmill allowed me
Speaker 3: to slow down a little bit and realize how completely
Speaker 3: fatigued I was. And sometimes you just need that space
Speaker 3: to get some sleep and to just slow down a
Speaker 3: little bit. And that's okay as long as in the
Speaker 3: long run you feel like you're regenerating yourself. Yeah, there'll
Speaker 3: be a renewal as a result of that. Yesterday, I
Speaker 3: was not feeling well. Last night. I went to bed early.
Speaker 3: I had no alcohol, and the night before I had
Speaker 3: had small alcohol. I fasted last night, I didn't have dinner,
Speaker 3: and I took a bath last night, and I just
Speaker 3: felt so good. When I cut up this morning, I
Speaker 3: felt very different than I did yesterday, and I have
Speaker 3: a lot more energy. So I just on a personal level,
Speaker 3: I can say like that is just two days for
Speaker 3: me of very different feelings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk for a moment about gratitude or being
Speaker 1: grateful for our lives. And you have a line in
Speaker 1: the book that I think is really interesting. And I
Speaker 1: don't remember who you were talking to or who said
Speaker 1: this to you. But here's the line that you wrote.
Speaker 1: It was the particularness of his gratitude that shield him
Speaker 1: from either envy or pride. Talk to me about gratitude
Speaker 1: and particularness of it.
Speaker 2: What does that mean.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of social science evidence showing
Speaker 3: gratitude and happiness have a lot They're like kissing cousins.
Speaker 3: If you're struggling, the best thing you can do is
Speaker 3: to find gratitude. If you want to feel happy, go
Speaker 3: write a gratitude list. But what's been found is that
Speaker 3: just a generic gratitude list is not necessarily as helpful
Speaker 3: as being quite specific about what you're feeling gratitude toward.
Speaker 3: And so the specificity if someone wants to do a
Speaker 3: gratitude journal or a daily gratitude list, the specificity is
Speaker 3: what's important, you know, And because what it does is
Speaker 3: from a neurological perspective, it's like there's a precision that
Speaker 3: you're sort of saying, honing in on.
Speaker 5: That's what I want to feed, you know. It is
Speaker 5: back to you know, the one you feed. I want
Speaker 5: to feed that.
Speaker 3: If you said, you know, like I'm feeling gratitude because
Speaker 3: I feel, you know, love, for my family. Well that's great, Okay,
Speaker 3: what's specific about that today? Could you say I feel
Speaker 3: love for my family because my daughter today just told
Speaker 3: me how much she loved me and I could see
Speaker 3: a twinkle in her eye. That's much better than just
Speaker 3: saying I feel love for my family, because the love
Speaker 3: for you family could be generic across any day. But actually,
Speaker 3: when you say because my daughter said she loved me
Speaker 3: and I could see that twinkle in her eye, it's
Speaker 3: almost you can visualize it, and your brain is sort
Speaker 3: of saying, like, ooh, more of that, please, And when
Speaker 3: something's generic.
Speaker 5: It has less visceral impact on you.
Speaker 3: And I think when it comes to gratitude, feeling the
Speaker 3: gratitude and visualizing it is really important.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. I know for me,
Speaker 1: if you're just listing the things that you intellectually know
Speaker 1: you should be grateful for my family, my health, those
Speaker 1: things tend to if you're doing gratitude as a regular practice,
Speaker 1: it becomes the gratitude version of the Hadonic treadmill. Right.
Speaker 1: It no longer does anything, but the specificity that you're
Speaker 1: talking about does. I also think it tunes into the
Speaker 1: granularity of our experience more which is a really positive thing.
Speaker 1: For a while, I used to do a gratitude list
Speaker 1: and have a couple of pictures with it, and my
Speaker 1: dogs were always on it. Like, when I looked back,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I appear to be ten times
Speaker 1: more grateful for my dogs than any other person in
Speaker 1: the world, which seems funny in retrospect, but taking a
Speaker 1: picture of what they were doing that I found so
Speaker 1: adorable was a way of getting that specificity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. And
Speaker 3: you don't want to get bored with a gratitude list. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's just be really blunt.
Speaker 5: It will be boring if it's generic.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people talk about here are the
Speaker 1: things I'm not going to do, And as a recovering
Speaker 1: alcoholic and drug addict, I think that there have been
Speaker 1: some very clear things for me that it's like I'm.
Speaker 2: Not doing that. I'm not doing that.
Speaker 1: But you talk about creating something you called the Ten Commitments, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a play on the Ten Commandments.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I grew up learning the ten and
Speaker 3: I remember saying to my parents, you know.
Speaker 5: Like it's all about do not, do not, do not.
Speaker 5: I think eight of the ten or do not?
Speaker 3: And so for me in my life today, and while
Speaker 3: I do have a spiritual practice and belief system, it's
Speaker 3: not so much the ten commandments, which I do feel
Speaker 3: are helpful, but it's really more about what are my proactive,
Speaker 3: positive commitments I can make in my life, and those
Speaker 3: are not going to be hard and fast and say like, okay,
Speaker 3: those are the only ten I'll ever have, But you know,
Speaker 3: having ten that makes sense to me and are working
Speaker 3: for me you know today are important and they become
Speaker 3: sort of the guardrails of my life.
Speaker 5: And so that's that's a that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: What are a couple of them? Can you share a
Speaker 1: couple of comments?
Speaker 5: I don't have them in front of me.
Speaker 3: They change, So I like in the book I had
Speaker 3: my ten, and I think one would be just being
Speaker 3: less focused on my resume and more focus on my
Speaker 3: eulogy and how do I show up and create the
Speaker 3: conditions in my life. Says that I am, after age fifty,
Speaker 3: more focused on my eulogy than on my resume, and
Speaker 3: I think that's one that.
Speaker 5: Has lots of catalytic effect in terms of what does
Speaker 5: that mean.
Speaker 3: It means I'm less egocentric. It means I'm less focused
Speaker 3: on my accomplishments. It means I'm more focused on the
Speaker 3: small things I do in life that are impacting other people.
Speaker 3: That's an example of a commitment as opposed to a commandment.
Speaker 1: That's back to the ROI the ripples of impact, which
Speaker 1: I absolutely love. I think that is such a great
Speaker 1: phrame is in a way of thinking of it, And
Speaker 1: I love the idea of ripple right because I think
Speaker 1: that's the way our impact generally is. Sometimes we get
Speaker 1: to see it directly, but most of the time I
Speaker 1: don't think we actually see the good that we put
Speaker 1: into the world. It ripples out in this very gentle way,
Speaker 1: and it takes a certain amount of faith and belief
Speaker 1: that indeed that is happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's got him Kip Tyndall, who I always thought
Speaker 3: of as a role model for me. He started the
Speaker 3: Container Store Company a long long time ago, and he
Speaker 3: talked about your wake. You know, in the context of
Speaker 3: your life, sometimes you don't know what the wake is
Speaker 3: that you're like in a boat, there's a wake behind
Speaker 3: you as you're focussing forward on the boat, especially if
Speaker 3: you're driving it. You don't necessarily know your wake behind you.
Speaker 3: And the truth is, the bigger you are in an organization,
Speaker 3: the higher you are in an organization, the more power
Speaker 3: you have, the larger you're wake. And as a water
Speaker 3: skier who knows what it's like to ski across the wake,
Speaker 3: I know that you know, having a huge weight can
Speaker 3: be hard, it can be very disruptive. So the ripples
Speaker 3: are sort of a form of wake.
Speaker 5: There's a wake.
Speaker 3: Also, what you really want to do in life is
Speaker 3: to have a really positive wake and recognize that the
Speaker 3: more senior you are, the more contagious your emotions, the
Speaker 3: more contagious your character, in essence, the bigger you're wake.
Speaker 3: I think metaphors are often very helpful for people to
Speaker 3: sort of visualize how the world works.
Speaker 1: You have a question in the book that you say
Speaker 1: to ask, am I frustrated or disappointed? What's the difference
Speaker 1: and why does it matter?
Speaker 3: So when you're frustrated, there's still the opportunity to change something,
Speaker 3: and so frustration can relate to anger, it can relate
Speaker 3: to a lot of sort of combustible emotions that can
Speaker 3: propel you forward to take action to make it different. Disappointment,
Speaker 3: which some people could say they're the same, but they're not.
Speaker 3: Disappointment is an energy that actually is a shrinking.
Speaker 5: Frustration is a growing. Disappointment is a.
Speaker 3: Shrinking partly because you're beyond frustration. Disappointment is when you
Speaker 3: come to realize that there's not much you can do
Speaker 3: to change something now, And regret is one step further,
Speaker 3: which is a sense of responsibility about that disappointment. So
Speaker 3: regret is actually more painful than disappointment because you actually
Speaker 3: feel like you had some fault in leading to the disappointment.
Speaker 3: But disappointment can happen in all kinds of ways, and
Speaker 3: often it's outside of your control. Therefore, there can be
Speaker 3: a sense of like, Okay, oh well, I'm going to
Speaker 3: have to live with that. When someone has too much
Speaker 3: frustration in their life, it can lead to anxiety and
Speaker 3: high blood pressure and a deep sense of urgency and stress.
Speaker 3: When someone has a lot of disappointment in their life,
Speaker 3: it can actually lead to learned helplessness and depression and
Speaker 3: a sense that a woe is me or there's nothing
Speaker 3: I can do. So they're very, very different in terms
Speaker 3: of emotional effect, and yet sometimes people talk about saying
Speaker 3: I'm frustrated and disappointed. It's like, well, which.
Speaker 5: One is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's another version of the serenity prayer, right
Speaker 1: to the things I can change, the things I can't change,
Speaker 1: and the wisdom to know the difference. And wisdom is
Speaker 1: a big word with you, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: really important thing to know, right, because the response is
Speaker 1: very different.
Speaker 2: You talk about.
Speaker 1: Expectation in the book, so you say, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're faced with disappointment, you can either improve your reality
Speaker 1: or lower your expectations. So improving my reality would sort
Speaker 1: of throw me back over on the maybe not frustrated
Speaker 1: side of the court, but that energy, right, the energy
Speaker 1: of change. If, on the other hand, I'm on the
Speaker 1: disappointment side, then lowering my expectations talk about how we
Speaker 1: do that in a wise way.
Speaker 3: So one of the reasons that people often feel not
Speaker 3: great about age forty five to fifty is because of
Speaker 3: disappointment equals expectations of myst reality. In your teams, your twenties,
Speaker 3: your thirties, you build these expectations, they sort of propel
Speaker 3: you forward, and then by the time you're getting starting
Speaker 3: to flirt with fifty, you're at a age where like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's ever going to happen. You
Speaker 3: could believe it's going to happen in your thirties still,
Speaker 3: but by the time you get to closer to fifty,
Speaker 3: maybe not.
Speaker 5: And that's really hard.
Speaker 3: And Brende Brown calls it the midlife unraveling, and the
Speaker 3: midlife unraveling is unraveling your expectations in such a way
Speaker 3: that you are no longer feeling so wrapped up in
Speaker 3: something that there's no space for anything else. So the key,
Speaker 3: the wise way to deal with that is to rejigger
Speaker 3: your expectations and get clear on what's important to you.
Speaker 5: For a lot of.
Speaker 3: People around forty five to fifty, they are in a
Speaker 3: stage in their life where they are running on a
Speaker 3: treadmill that was defined by their parents, or their spouse
Speaker 3: or their community, but not themselves. And so it's around
Speaker 3: that era of life that sometimes people wake up and say.
Speaker 5: Like I want to be a firefighter. I don't I
Speaker 5: don't want to be an accountant.
Speaker 3: We see those people come to mea or you know,
Speaker 3: a woman recently is like, I don't want to be
Speaker 3: a litigator. I want to be a pastry chef. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: you can do that. You know at twenty it was
Speaker 3: hard for you to do that because your parents were
Speaker 3: sort of saying you got to go to college, you
Speaker 3: got to make money, and then you end up getting
Speaker 3: on the treadmill and you say like, oh, I'm getting married,
Speaker 3: now I have kids. It's like and for some people
Speaker 3: they wake up around forty five to fifty and say,
Speaker 3: like that David Burns song, is this my wonderful life?
Speaker 3: And it's not their wonderful life. It's the life that
Speaker 3: you know somebody else wrote the script for. So finding
Speaker 3: the agency and then the autonomy and the clarity of
Speaker 3: vision is part of what we help people with ATMA.
Speaker 1: People coming to mea is this a guiding idea of
Speaker 1: what's bringing them? There are people coming there largely because
Speaker 1: they are feeling unmoored in middle age and they're not
Speaker 1: quite sure what to do.
Speaker 3: For some people, something abstract like that, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I feel sort of a little lost in middle age
Speaker 3: and am feeling not good about aging, and I want
Speaker 3: to improve on that. And sometimes it's like i feel
Speaker 3: like I've got to get clear on what my purpose
Speaker 3: is or what my wisdom is. I've built and that's
Speaker 3: also important. But the number one reason people come to
Speaker 3: MAA is because they're going through some kind of transition
Speaker 3: in their life. Maybe they're in the Sandwich generation, but
Speaker 3: they're about to lose a parent, or they're becoming an
Speaker 3: empty nester. The kids are leaving or are they're getting divorced.
Speaker 3: They're selling their business, they're changing their career, they have
Speaker 3: a cancer diagnosis, they've stopped drinking, they have decided that
Speaker 3: they're going to move to a new place. They have
Speaker 3: a new spiritual curiosity that's leading them back to Catholicism.
Speaker 3: There's lots of things that are happening for people in midlife.
Speaker 3: There's menopause, There's so much going on and so little
Speaker 3: in the way of social infrastructure to help support people
Speaker 3: during this time. So that's the number one reason people come.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we tend
Speaker 1: to seek out extra support and help when we are
Speaker 1: facing something that feels acute. You mentioned in the book
Speaker 1: Bruce Filer, who's been a guest for us a couple times,
Speaker 1: and wonderful guy who talks all about that sort of
Speaker 1: life quake idea.
Speaker 3: Bruce is taught in our online programs and I have
Speaker 3: a lot of respect for his work and his writing.
Speaker 3: In his book Life Is in the Transitions, he talks
Speaker 3: about when you're having multiple transitions at once. He calls
Speaker 3: that a life quake. And I think the thing that's
Speaker 3: really helpful to know about transitions is you can go
Speaker 3: through multiple of the ones, but each transition sort of
Speaker 3: has this anatomy or a framework, and it's usually the
Speaker 3: ending of something is the first stage. The second stage
Speaker 3: is the messy middle, and then the third stage is
Speaker 3: the beginning of something new, and there's coping mechanisms for each.
Speaker 3: And once you understand that three steps ending, messy middle, beginning,
Speaker 3: you can realize that in one part of your life
Speaker 3: you're having a transition, but you're at the ending of something,
Speaker 3: and another one you're in a transition, you're at the
Speaker 3: beginning of something, and another one you're at the messy middle,
Speaker 3: and so there's a different coping mechanism for each, and
Speaker 3: once you have that sense, it really helps wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a great place for us
Speaker 1: to wrap up, Chip, I've really enjoyed this conversation. You
Speaker 1: and I are going to continue for a little bit
Speaker 1: longer in the post show conversation because I want to
Speaker 1: talk about something that you write about, which is this
Speaker 1: idea of basically wanting what we have. You know, how
Speaker 1: do we get to that? Because that's a you know,
Speaker 1: what I have is all I need?
Speaker 5: Ye.
Speaker 1: So, listeners, if you'd like access to the post show
Speaker 1: conversation to hear Chip and I continue, as well as
Speaker 1: ad free episodes, a special episode I do for you
Speaker 1: each week called Teaching Song and a poem, and other benefits.
Speaker 1: We'd love to have you as part of the community
Speaker 1: and that's at oneufeed dot net slash join Chip. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Oh, thank you Eric, It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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