Soul Boom - Life Lessons for Gen Z & Millennials (w/ Chip Conley)

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Why do we feel so anxious & alone in the modern world? Chip Conley unpacks how wisdom, meaning, and emotional insight can transform suffering into growth. SPONSORS! 👇 Nutrafol 👉 (Code: SOULBOOM for $10 off!) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://nutrafol.com⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can you speak specifically to this generation? Talk to Gen Z and Gen X, the mental health crisis, this dearth of hope, this hopelessness epidemic, this absence of meaning. From where you sit and the work that you've done, what can you say to the folks in their teens, in their 20s and early 30s especially? They see so much pain and chaos in the world. Over 50% of people do not believe that a positive change is possible in their life. lifetime. What advice in your wisdom tradition can you offer to that generation? So, hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends,

and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Interestingly, a quarter of the people who come to a place called the Modern Elder Academy are millennials or Gen Z. So why are they coming? They're coming because they want wisdom and they're missing wisdom and they're feeling like they're in a world that's extremely complicated. And the world, you know, the way we've thought of, you know, accumulating knowledge is it's a math equation, like a plus sign. But wisdom is like a division sign. It's the square root of something. It's the essence of something. And the more complicated the world, the more you want to figure out the essence of something. And so I think that's one thing I'd say. Number two is I'd say this idea of

TQ, how do you understand the three stages of any transition, no matter what age you are? The first stage is the ending of something. The second stage is the messy middle. And the third stage is the beginning of something. Oh, that's beautiful. And once you understand that is the framework for understanding transitions, no matter what your age is, you need to know that when you're ending something, you have to ritualize it. It can be with other people or by yourself. Ritualizing it allows you to market and say... So what does that mean?

Well, I want to talk a little bit about this three-headed monster of transition. I love that, that we are in the death throes of the way that modern Western material civilization is dying. Yes. Literally, like that fish being pulled out of the river. And we're in this messy middle right. now, but what hope, how do we see a hope or a vision for the next phase? Well, that's the macro side, which is great. I mean, but I think for someone who's feeling the anxiety or the, you know, the sense of hopelessness, it's really, you got to focus on yourself to start with. And in my

opinion, because if you actually don't focus yourself, it's really hard to move the needle on the societal issues. Sure. It's putting the oxygen mask on yourself first. That's right. So the starting point is to say, what is it in your life that you are holding onto that you're supposed to let go of? What is it that's really supposed to end? Is it a relationship? Is it a job you're in? Is it a mindset? Yeah, way of thinking. Isn't serving you, etc. And then you memorialize it. You ritualize it. It could be you and your best friend both doing this together and saying, I'm going to write on a piece of paper, the things I'm ready to let go of, and you're going to do the same, and we're going to burn them in a little bowl, and then we're going to have a glass.

Then we're going to go out and go for a walk on the beach. And we're going to remember that. And we're going to be witnesses for each other. So the idea of ritualizing something at the end is critical. Then you go into the messy middle. And in the messy middle, you need social support. Because when you're in the messy middle, you need to feel like, okay, well, I'm going through something difficult and bewildered.

I'm stuck. I'm feeling anxious. I need somebody to help me through that. But you also need to look at the through line, Victor, You know, being in a concentration camp was able to say that the people who actually lived were often the people who actually didn't lose sense of hope or a sense of meaning in what they felt. And so feeling that's important.

And then the third stage, the beginning, you really need to have a growth mindset. And that means you have to be willing to be a beginner, willing to try something for the first time and laugh at yourself. And for a lot of people, if you're at a stage in your life where you're feeling like, I don't want to screw up and you're being a perfectionist, it keeps you in that crystallis, in that messy middle, because you're not willing to try something. So those are the three stages. In terms of how we do it on a global level, yes, we probably need a ritual to say,

okay, that era is over. The pandemic could have been that. I sort of felt like the pandemic was our opportunity. That we wasted. And we did waste it. Because we've come out of the pandemic. We fought about masks on airplanes. More polarized than ever.

That's beautiful. That's a great perspective. One of the things I do do as a basic practice or ritual every morning is when I'm taking, I stack a habit. I will do my morning shower. And during the shower, I say three prayers and six mantras. The six mantras I say three times each. Okay.

Okay. So this is great. Slow this down. I need to hear the prayers and the mantras. Can you help? Help us. Well, let me start by saying in where I do most of my showering, there's about a four-minute delay between when the hot water comes in.

So I first do four minutes of meditation. Then I go into the shower and I say the St. Francis prayer, the Serenity Prayer, and the 12-step, I'm sorry, the seventh-step prayer from the 12-step program. Okay. And then I say six mantras three times each. So what are some examples of mantras? These are personal to me. A mantra could be, I'm lovable.

for who I am, not what I do. So it's like an affirmation. It's an affirmation. And I say that three times each. Or I might say, as I surrender, more love comes to me. Or because I have cancer, I have a mantra of my tiny cancer cells are dying. And so I'll say those three times each. And then I'll finish my shower and then I'll do a four-minute meditation after that.

So basically, my morning is get up, write. If I'm writing a book, that could be three hours of writing. I have a daily blog. If I'm doing that, then it's a short write. Go turn on the shower. Meditate. You know, do prayers and mantras in the shower. Meditate after the shower.

And then I go for a long hike. At that point, I mean, I'm usually taking my hike at sunrise, but sometimes it's even before sunrise. And so by the time most people get up, I've done all that. And you're, yeah, you've. But I go to bed early too. Nine? 8.30.

8.30. Yeah. Wow. I'm headed in that direction. I find my, my natural bedtime is just drifting. Yeah. War now towards like 10 o'clock.

I'm like, let's go to the early bird special at the buffet. Yeah. 4.30. We get a senior, senior meal. Exactly. Exactly.

Now, there was a little detail there that you let slip. And in all of my research, I seem to have missed the part about the cancer. Oh, okay. Can you just tell me a little bit about what's going on with that? Yeah. So I, for almost eight years now, have known I had prostate cancer, which a lot of men have, just stage one, eight years ago.

Then I went to stage two, about three and a half years ago. And that's when I ended up having a surgery, not the radical prostate activity, but something else, that actually burned the prostate where the cancer was. But that didn't work. And so three years ago, I went to stage three, which means it had metastasized and was no longer just in the prostate. And so I have metastatic, stage three prostate cancer. I've no longer have a prostate. So I had another surgery on that at 36 radiation sessions, 19 months of no testosterone, in essence, what they call pharmaceutical castration.

It's a terrible, terrible term. And as of this Monday, I just had another scan because my PSA blood tests are skyrocketing, which means that it's spreading. But my scans actually look like they're pretty good. So we're a little confused right now. But the beautiful thing about cancer, if you think of cancer not as, you know, a lot of people say, you know, F cancer. But for me, I look at cancer as a teacher. And I do this from the point of view of like, okay, cancer, you are coming back into my life. You're not letting me let you go.

You're still squatting. I'm ready to evict you. But clearly I'm supposed to learn something here. And I've learned that I don't have to be the hero all the time. I've learned that, you know, when you're faced with a terminal illness, you're, you focus on what's important. And I get really clear on what's important. And I focus on this idea of 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? And right now, what I would regret is I have two sons who are 14 and 11 with a lesbian couple.

And I'm the sperm donor, but also dad. And they're, Eli and Ethan are right at that age where I want to spend as much time with them as I can, whether I am going to live another 30 years or just another 10 years. and then I'm listening to my body a little more. You know, I've always been pretty athletic. I played water polo at Stanford, which is a tough sport, and we were the national champions. But long story short, is I, because I'm such an ambitious dude, I will not listen to my body when it's screaming. And so cancer is a form of screaming. And so, yeah, it means that I am just listening to my body a little bit more.

Yeah. And taking action accordingly. Yeah. And just my heart goes out to you. What a tremendous struggle and how difficult this must be on a daily basis. How is it possible to find peace and serenity in the moment knowing that something nefarious might be going on in yourselves? Yeah, screw the peace and serenity. But I don't mean screw it.

I was like, I have that. What I am challenged by, the peace and serenity, my morning practice has helped me with that. And the fact I do a Sunday Sabbath where I am pretty much offline, I don't talk to people on Sundays. I spend it, you know, in long meditation sessions. I go hiking for hours of the time. I have a beautiful, a fortunately beautiful sense of tranquility that I can bring in my life. Where it's challenging is I, using that ambition piece of myself, I, you know, I have a lot on my plate. And so to sometimes look at my cancer as inconvenient.

That's where some of my learning is. Some of my learning is to see like, okay, this wasn't on my schedule. And to be able to say, okay, yeah, I've got to do radiation. Or 19 months of no testosterone meant during that time when I was launching our Modern Alder Academy, MIA campus in Santa Fe, after we first opened in Baja eight years ago, I didn't have the energy to open it. And I had to. I was sort of obligated.

And it was a really hard time. And so what I'm seeing now in terms of a lesson just three years later, or really two years later, because we opened two years ago. And three years ago is when we rediscovered that it was growing again. I've had to just say, okay, I've really got to pare down my schedule and not think that my sense of self-worth is defined by having a full calendar, which is. sort of how I was grown at how I was brought up. When I was going through my really rough time in my late 40s,

and I sort of had this belief that I was stuck and I was going to be stuck in this place the rest of my life, as if I am the caterpillar who's gone into the chrysalis, and there's no butterfly coming out. And ultimately, I did come out the other side, and my 50s were flourishing. I loved my 50s. But what I didn't know in the social science research at that time

was there was this thing called the U-Curve of Happiness, which across the globe showed that between 45 and 52, the low point of adult life satisfaction is during that time. And then we start getting happier in our 50s and beyond. And I had never also heard of Becca Levy's work from Yale, who has shown that when you shift your mindset on aging from a negative to a positive, you know, most of us are negative about aging, and Hallmark cards will remind us of that on our birthday because they will remind us what gets worse with age. But if you can actually shift that mindset from a negative to a positive, you gain seven and a half years of additional longevity, which is more than any ice bath. So the

bottom line is I started to get really curious about this idea of what if midlife is just this difficult, the core of midlife is a difficult time, but on the other side of it, there's a really amazing time. And we need to help people to see what gets better with age, which is why I wrote a book called learning to love midlife, 12 reasons why life gets better with age. We do have wisdom that actually grows with age. Now, if you're making the same mistakes over and over again, you don't have wisdom. I define wisdom as metabolized experience, which is like your life lessons, mindfully shared for the common good. And so wisdom is something that can grow with age. Emotional intelligence grows with age. IQ doesn't, but EQ does, primarily because

we are less reactive as we get older. We learn how to not give an F. not to give a fuck about things as much as we used to. This is particularly true for women. And so in midlife, you start to get clear on who and what is important in your life, and you edit the other things in your life. And then I'll say one last one, and that is that as Richard Rohr, who's a faculty member of ours at MEA, the famous Christian mystic, he says that the primary operating system for the first half of your life is your ego.

And then around midlife, it starts to shift. and it shifts toward the soul, but nobody gave you operating instructions or, you know, any clue that this was coming. And maybe it's the circumstances of your life that put you on your knees, or it's just something that's inside you that doesn't feel quite right, or, you know, is that all there is, keeps coming up in your mind. And so another thing that gets better with age, especially after 50, is spiritual curiosity. Change is often something that happens on the landscape outside you. So you might change your boss or your spouse, but two years later, you're complaining about the new boss or new spouse because you didn't change anything inside of yourself.

So change is often circumstantial and situational. But transition, something inside yourself is more psychological and spiritual. It's you've actually shifted something inside yourself. So you're not going to make the same mistake of having a spouse just like the last one or a boss just like the last one. And so that is what we help people with, is how do you do that internal such that it puts on a new pair of glasses so that you have enough wisdom to be able to say, like, okay, I am now wiser about my next mate. Right, because we all know people that change their external circumstances. I have a friend who has moved like 12 times in his adult life.

And guess what? The same problems and setbacks and challenges face him, no matter what city is in. It's a geographic, right? I mean, that's what it's called it. Geographic. And you do the geographic thinking that, you know, the cosmic bellhop in your life is not carrying your baggage along with you. Hey, I'll be honest. My hair and I haven't always gotten along.

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you change it. I'm a B. I'm a therapist, author. and creator of the siblinghood theory. And on This Feels Familiar, I explore how belonging, conflict, and relational patterns shape your mental health and relationships and how to change them. If you're ready to understand the why behind your patterns, you tuned into the right show. This is This Feels Familiar. Let's dive in. Questionable haircut choices in my time, but thanks to Neutrophol, my hair and I are reconnecting. I've been taking Neutrophol men's formula for several months now, and what I noticed,

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My first mentee 30 years ago, because his sister connected us, was a guy named Gavin Newsom. And I still am in that role with him. So 30 years ago, he was a hospitality entrepreneur, not a politician yet, who was pretty clueless about his company Plumpjack. And so he, so Hillary, his sister, said Chip, you know, is seven years older than Gavin. and she said Chip knows something about hospitality, you know, he's going to be your mentor. So long story short is I started mentoring Gavin every Friday afternoon at my office down Union Square. Then ultimately he joined the board of supervisors and then he became mayor. And so I would go to his office every Friday at City Hall in San Francisco to not just mentor him,

but I was really more to be a guide and to be somebody he bounces ideas off of. And so that's been my role with him ever since then. And so in his second marriage, he was getting married not to Kimberly, but to Jennifer, Jen. And he was the mayor of San Francisco, and he took over what's now called Oracle Park, which is where the San Francisco Giants play. And we were playing baseball, you know, under the lights at nighttime. And I broke my ankle sliding into third base. And I didn't realize I'd gotten a cut on my leg and I had fertilizer in my leg.

And so it went septic. and then I was on an antibiotic that wasn't strong enough. So they put me on a stronger antibiotic. And so I should have been just at home staying under the covers, but that ambitious chip was going out and giving a speech on crutches, on antibiotics. And at the end of my speech, when I was signing books, I felt really nauseous. And all of a sudden, I slumped in my chair and I went unconscious. They put me on the ground.

The paramedic showed up pretty quickly. And they put me on a gurney. And they put heart monitors on me. and I went flatline. And that was the first of nine times over 90 minutes that my heart stopped for as short as 15 seconds and as long as one time as long as almost a minute and a half. The experience was I was floating. I was actually I was like a bird in a big second floor living room like 40 foot tall ceilings, maybe in the Swiss Alps. and there was a skylight and light was coming in beautiful sunlight luminescent kaleidoscope

of rainbow colors on the on the wall from that there was harp music playing very cliche um couldn't you come up with something more original no and it's true i mean it was like it was like there was i don't know where it was coming from but it was there okay and so i was and I was floating, you know, and I was, there was a frongia poni-scented tropical oil going across this dark wood floor and then starting to go down the stairs. And so everything was very sensual. So all the senses were at work. Yeah.

But the key thing was this. I was surrounded by birds. So I was a bird, but I was a human and a bird. And I was wearing these two slippers. I started a hotel in San Francisco that no long. there. It's now Barry Sterling made at a one hotel, but it used to be called the Hotel Vatali. And it had slippers in this luxury hotel with one slippers saying slow and the other one saying down. So I was naked, but I had these slow down slippers on. And I was with the birds and I

could understand bird talk. So the birds were talking to me as they were singing. And I was talking back and they understood me. And they said to me, Chip, you have to slow down in order to experience awe or beauty. And so that's what I was hearing. Wow. Then all of a sudden, and I was, you know, so I was sensing everything, all of a sudden, were they all different kinds of birds? Yeah, they were all smallish, you know, they were sparrows, sparrows or doves and, you know, like just little birds. And so today, whenever I'm in a place and birds are singing, I just go into an ethereal space. But what the, the, the crescendo was, all of a sudden, windows, very large windows, opened to the outside, and the birds said it's time.

And so the birds all went outside and flew outside, and my job was to now fly outside with the birds. And every time I would do that, as soon as I got to the window, I would come back to life. And I would say to whoever was holding my hand at the time, a nurse or a paramedic or whomever, you know, depending upon when it was in that 90 minutes, I would say, this is what I just saw. And if the person was there three minutes earlier when I'd done it again, I'd done it before, they would say, well, that's what you said three minutes ago. So it was repeating. It was repeating. It was repeating.

It was repeating. And it was, so for me, you know, one of the messages is slow down, which is a message I still need. And I, you know, the cancer is the newest, you know, knock on the door to just say, okay, chip, it's time to slow down. And I think the biggest thing for me was just this idea of awe and beauty. There's a name, Dachry Keltner. Yes, yes.

I love him. We're trying to get him for the podcast. Oh, if you need help to tell me. His book, Awe's. His book, Awe's spectacular. And he is a longtime friend. And for eight years now, he's been teaching at M.A. At the Modern Elder Academy every December because he has a home, a half mile from our campus.

So when the world's leading expert on Awe has a second home, right near your campus, you know you're living in the right place because he loves awe. And so what he's shown in his work around awe is that nature is the third most prevalent way people experience awe, which is surprising. You'd sort of think it would be number one. But number one and number two on the list are really interesting. Number two on the list is collective effervescence. And what that means, it's what happens at Burning Man, you know, out on the playa when people

are dancing and you just sort of your sense of ego separation starts to decline. and your sense of communal joy grows at the whirling dervish festival. Yeah. I talk about my most spiritual experience being at a radio head concert. Oh, yeah. No, exactly. It's a similar. There's a, there's this, there's an energy that is bringing people together. You know, there's a place called Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, gospel choir. I was on the board for 10 years. And just Sunday morning, I would go there for the experience of having the electricity come through me from the gospel choir and from everybody else they're singing. And we do it at a sports event. And there's lots of ways we have collective effervescence.

But number one on the list is my favorite. And it happens to be the number one most common pathway to feeling awe. And it is moral beauty. And it's the experience of seeing the best humans have to offer, whether it's courage or compassion or a baby being born, you know, through the grit and pain of, you know, a woman going through labor, it's tenacity, it's grace. Courage. It's courage. Self-sacrifice.

Self-sacrifice. Equanimity. Yeah. All of these qualities that when we witness them, we are elevated by them and we are enlightened witnesses, but we're also called upon to potentially. see that in ourselves. And so Dacre has said to me, Chip, like, that's why, I think part of the reason why you loved, you loved creating MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, was because those two qualities, the idea of moral beauty and collective effervescence are sort of at the heart of what we try

to create in a week's program. Yeah. So you should, Dacker would be great for the program here. And I think the point of this related to the NDE is how are we nourishing ourselves on awe? The birds told you to nourish yourself on awe and beauty. And so that has- So you dove into this research. And the- Moral beauty. The fact that I take a Sunday Sabbath is part of that, whether it's through meditation or whether it's through going out for a long hike, whether it's writing and using the act of writing and getting lost in my writing as an act of connecting with something much bigger

and deeper than myself. So all of those things, you know, are part of the reason I am, you know, and I just, I love awe. But I also have the recognition that, you know, if you think that you are supposed to live a life completely full of awe all the time, you'll probably be on psychedelics all the time. So, you know, I think the beauty of awe is in its scarcity. It doesn't mean you can't find it anywhere. Yeah. But it does mean that it's, for most people that I know, it's not a default condition.

We have an exercise in the Soul Boom Workbook. Do we have a copy here? Hold on a second. Ah, there you go. Of course you do. Look at that. We have an exercise in the Soul Boom Workbook that I love. and I don't know where it is right now.

It's called beauty emergency. And it's how can we cultivate awe in smaller doses? And it's starting a text thread and finding beauty in an unexpected place. Like next door you saw that there was a Rumi Institute. And you take a picture and you send it to your text thread of unexpected beauty. It could be a blade of grass shooting up through a sidewalk or the way a shadow plays the side of a wall or something like that. And I just love that as a simple exercise you can do with friends because part of it is

training your eye and your senses to see beauty. And the more you are cultivating, seeing beauty, even in places where it doesn't seem like there would be much beauty, you can hone in on those moments of all. Well, life is how you frame it. And we talk about reframes when something goes badly, and so it's a mental reframe. But there's the visual reframe, the visual reframe of being able to see the thing underneath maybe the agony or the see the thing underneath something that looks really awful. It's interesting when we look at going out into nature, sometimes the pieces of nature, that we're most entranced by

are the things that are the most aberrant. It's this cactus that has got weird, it's got these weird arms, or it's a redwood tree that has, you know, gotten hit by lightning, and therefore it started a whole new branch of the tree that you can see that it got burned. If we applied those standards to humans,

we would think of them as ugly. Right. But when we apply them in nature, and, you know, not necessarily in animals, because animals are close enough to humans that we probably take it too personally. But when you see it in, you know, a tree or a plant or something that's just a bit of an aberration,

but you can see that is in its full glory authentic, we love it. And I think being able to actually see that in nature and then apply it to ourselves, which allows us to not feel like we have to fit in. And to not feel like we have to look a certain way. But isn't it wonderful? Isn't that what Jesus did so beautifully, is see what's broken in everyone and love what's broken about each one of us?

And what's broken is where the light comes in, as Rumi says, and Leonard Cohen. That's right. Yeah, no, I mean, listen, I... We're all that cactus. In our wounds. We're the broken cactus and we're the broken redwood. In our wounds are our wisdom, is our wisdom. And, you know, I just, I deeply believe that our painful life lessons are the raw material for our future wisdom. And it is in those times when we're most challenged that we are building through what Liz Gilbert says Earth School or others call it the School of Hard Knocks.

We are building the wisdom that will serve us later in life. One of the things that I'm learning around soul and around this idea of ego and soul is, and we talked about this on my podcast, that when I was a... Before you go there, what is this idea of ego and soul that you're referencing? So... Hey, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our spiritual partners at the Fetzer Institute.

They have just launched a brand new shiny website over at Fetzer.org. That's Fetzer.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at Soul Boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual at the root, and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions.

So I urge you to go poke around their new website, check out fetzer.org. Thank you, Fetzer Institute, for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. Fetzer.org. That's FetZER.org. The ego is an organizing principle for ourselves in the first half of our life. and it is something that is formed at a very young age to individuate us from our parents and to help us to see our place in the world. And what we then get used to is this idea that we are that center of that universe.

And we, everything else is an object, including people and things. And it's a healthy thing. The ego can be very healthy because it helps us to understand who we are. But as Richard Rour says, we overuse this tool. Sure. Of the ego. And then by our 40s, often, you know, we are so egocentric. We too deeply identify with it.

That's right. Everybody's a tool. You know, everybody's an object around us. So, and then the soul is this, I believe that we are stewards of the soul. It has incarnated in us at birth. and our job is to actually be the Uber for the for the for the for the for the for the for a lifetime we aren't a body and we have a soul we are a soul and we have a body so we are a soul and we have a body but having said that most of us in our younger years

even if we might say that we don't aren't necessarily living that but that's partly because I I went to sixth grade ballroom dancing class and in sixth grade ballroom I'm so sorry. Yeah, it was. So it was tragic, although it was more tragic for the girls because the girls were having to go backwards and heels. And as a boy, I got to lead. But what I believe today is that the ego's soul balance is the following. Is it the first half of our life, the ego is the boy leading the dance.

And then around midlife, there's a shift. And the soul is supposed to lead the dance. And the ego is supposed to be going backwards and heels. And this is why an ego needs a sense of humor. Because if you take it too seriously, going backwards and heels will make you look foolish. And as again Richard Rour, a humiliation a day, hopefully mild. And the idea that the ego is able to laugh at itself is the doorway to the second half of life. And it's the doorway to get.

getting to a place where the soul is leading the dance. Yeah. And the dance is the rest of your life. I always say that you meet old, you'll meet a 90 year old. Are those dancers over there? No, those are monkeys. They're monkeys. They're monkeys holding asparagus chip.

Come on. Get your shit together. For Christ's sake. I would say like you meet a 90 year old and they're either the most luminous, radiant, kind person. They're like, hello, and they see you in the eyes and they have pools of wisdom. their eyes or else they're like flinty and coiled and tense and like, you know, stuck in habits and patterns. And it's like, I always am like, oh, I want to be the, I want to be the wise old

90-year-old with luminous eyes. I don't want to be the tense, surly, crotchety, crispy 90-year-old. Well, that, what you've just described is the eighth stage of what Eric Erickson, the famous developmental psychologist called the eight stages of life. The eighth stage of life, the eighth stage of life is integrity versus despair. And the stage right before that is midlife, which is generativity versus stagnation. Generativity is to be in service of future generations and be like that conduit of having things come through you. So integrity versus despair, what you just described, I mean, you described it the way I do, which is, I think of it as an 85-year-old, steely gray-haired woman with blue eyes that almost look like they're translucent, like the windows to the soul.

and she has integrity. Now, I don't mean that she's ethical. She probably is. But integrity as in integrating all of the parts of who she is. We are not growing old, we're growing whole. And when we're growing whole, we are learning how to alchemize the polarities of ourselves. We are both an introvert and an extrovert. We're masculine and feminine.

We have curiosity and wisdom. We have gravitas, depth and levity, laughter. We have yin-yang. We have secular, spiritual. When we're young, we're compartmentalized. And when we're young, we're polarized. But as we get older, we learn how to fuse those polarities in ourselves into an integrated whole. So when you see that person at 85 or 90, and you can feel that person is whole, they are integrated.

They are all of the, they're all of themselves. That's what you're experiencing. And that to me is the gift of growing older. This is part of what one of the gifts is to not just grow old, but we grow whole. So let me tell you something I've been doing for 37 years. 37 years ago, I was two years into running my boutique hotel company and I was an idiot. At 26, when I started the company, I thought I knew it all. At 28, I realized how little I knew.

And so I started a practice where every weekend I would sit down with a diary, a journal that I wrote on the cover, my wisdom book. And I would start a practice where I would write three, five, six different things I'd learn that week. What was the lesson? What was the specific thing that happened? And then how's it going to serve me in the future? So in essence, whether this is in my relationship life, my family life, my career, my, you know, my spiritual life, I was really, what I was trying to do was accelerate my process of making sense of what I was learning. Do you still keep this journal? do this. I've been doing this now for 37 years. I do it every weekend. It's now in Google Docs, which is great because if I had a lesson this

week where betrayal was a part of it, I was like, okay, let me go, let me do a word search for betrayal in the Google Doc. Feeling betrayed by your body. Well, by body or whatever. I mean, betrayed by a friend, by a business partner. Okay. Right now, yeah, right now I don't feel betrayal. I mean, I actually feel like I'm in, I'm in relationship with my body. So I don't feel betrayed by my body exactly. I sometimes feel like I'm betraying my body. But I've done this and I now, like with my leadership teams and my companies I've led, but also with other teams, I do a practice where once a quarter we sit down as a team

and we say, what was each of our biggest lesson of the quarter? What was one lesson you learned this quarter? And how's it going to serve you in the future? And it's a beautiful exercise and vulnerability and growth mindset for a group people to come together and just say like, okay, here are our lessons. I also do this with kids and with my kids. I have, you know, 11 and 14 year old boys and their moms. And the beauty of there is to say like, okay, what was our biggest lesson of the quarter? Because if you could actually teach a young person how to distill their wisdom at a young age, they get to use that wisdom

for a lot longer than I did. Because I didn't go to a wisdom school. I went to a school of knowledge. And my job was to, was to memorize facts so I could do well on my SAT scores. But actually teaching wisdom practices that help people to understand how to make sense of what they've learned and then to hear it from other people. So you're not just, you know, wisdom is not taught. It's shared. So that's a beautiful practice. And I think this kind of thinking of how do we create wisdom management practices is our future.

My experience started with when I, soon after I had my flatline experience, when before I was even had sold the company, I started, I was reading Man Search for Meaning, the quite famous Victor Frankl book about being in the concentration camp in World War II. And I was trying to distill the lesson of that book down to an equation, not because anybody told me to, but I was, and this is way before I was thinking it would be a book. And I came up with despair equals suffering minus meaning. despair equals suffering minus meaning. And I was like, wow, suffering if you believe in Buddhism,

is the first noble truth of Buddhism. And so meaning and despair are almost inversely proportional. The more meaning you have, the less despair you have. So that started serving me well during a time in my late 40s when I was struggling. But then I started to actually study other emotions. And anxiety was one of the first ones I studied. Actually, the first one I studied was happiness. And to your point, and I'll say that one, and then we'll go to anxiety.

Happiness equals wanting what you have, gratitude, divided by having what you want, gratification, the act of going out and pursuing something to gratify yourself. And I learned that from going to Bhutan. I studied the Gross National Happiness Index in Bhutan. Tell us about that for people who don't know. So Bhutan is the country in the world that, you know, back in the 20th century, the young prince of Bhutan said, why is gross national? national product important, why shouldn't gross national happiness be the most important thing,

the GNH? And so Bhutan started studying this idea of a national, how do you measure happiness? So happiness, it basically equals gratitude divided by gratification and wanting what you have divided by having what you want. But the anxiety one was on my mind because I, while I have not had a lot of anxiety in my life, I have been in relationships with people who have had lots of anxiety. And so what I found was that 98% of anxiety tends to come from one of two different sources. It's what you don't know and what you can't control. And so it's uncertainty and powerlessness. And so anxiety equals uncertainty times powerlessness. And the reason it's times is because if you can take one of those two down to zero, if you take an equation down to zero,

you actually almost negate the other one. Yeah. Yeah. So the key. you is to understand like, okay, well, so what is uncertainty? And it's often, when we're anxious, we tend to fixate on what we don't know. And so, and similarly, when we're anxious, we tend to focus on what we can't control. So one of the methods to deal with anxiety that I wrote about in emotional equations was creating an anxiety balance sheet. So think about something you're anxious about. Okay, imagine what that is. And then create four columns. The first column, the first column, is related to that thing, what is it that I do know and what is it that I don't know? And then when it comes to that thing, what is it that I can influence and what is it that I can't

influence? And in these four columns, am I writing these down? You're taking the free-floating anxiety that you're feeling and you're making it tangible. You're actually sort of saying, okay, there are what people often are surprised by is they know more things and they can control or influence more things than they thought they could. They were so fixated on the liabilities side of... Yeah. But it's funny because as an anxiety sufferer, there'll be 10 things.

Nine things I'll have certainty about. And it's the one thing. I know. And then that, I'm just like... And I'm just... Now, there's childhood trauma. It has a lot to do with that. Oh, for sure.

You know, there's wiring that is put into place. in childhood that kind of directs you to look. Well, and our human brain is such that, you know, from caveman times, you know, we don't want to get eaten by the saber-tooth tiger. I mean, so, you know, our tendency is to be anxious for the sake of sustaining our life. Yeah. But we overuse it, just like we overuse the ego. And so helping people to see that there are things that you do know and things that you can influence.

And then, okay, what are you going to do about the others? So a good example would be someone's worried that they're going to lose their job. Okay, so what do you know about it? Well, I know that the company's not doing well. Our business is down 5% compared to last year. I know that my boss seems nervous about this. I know that I'm doing a good job, though, you know? And I know that.

What don't I know? I don't I know? I don't know what my boss is thinking about me. Okay. Now, on the other side, what can I influence? Well, I can influence by just showing up and doing a good job. I can influence by being a positive influence to the culture of the company. What can't I influence? I can't influence, you know, if someone's going to fire me.

So looking at this, I would say to the person, here's the thing I think I want you to do to address the thing you can't control and can't influence. I want you to go to your boss and say, I'd love to sit down and talk with you about how I'm doing and how the company's doing. Are you open to that? And then go and have a half hour conversation with your boss. And toward the end of that conversation, say to him, is my job on the line here? Am I at risk? And what can I do to reduce that risk?

It's the serenity prayer. It's the courage to do the things we can. That's right. And that takes courage to go into the boss's office and have that conversation. prayer, by the way. So the serenity prayer, it's surrendering and wisdom is really what tells you the difference between the two. But yes, it is that. It is exactly that, reign. And once you know, so if your boss says to you, you're doing fine, you're not at risk. If you trust your boss and you feel like you've had a good conversation, you're going to feel better. If, in fact, your boss says,

yes, you are at risk and so am I. We are all at risk right now. Then you have a lot. Then you have gotten the information you need to actually maybe not see it as anxiety, but see it as I'm taking action now. It's possibly time for me to look for another job. And then when you take action, you get a little dopamine hit of self-esteem. That's right. Right. And that might coax you toward another estimable act and another estimable act. And you don't feel victimized by the situation. You can move forward. Yeah. anxiety can be paralyzing. Yeah. And so what we want to do is help people to to move out of the paralysis and into action if need be. But also if it turns out, your boss says like, hey, I think you're fine and I think I'm fine.

But, you know, and we've done some layoffs already. And if things don't get better, it may come back. But you're like for the next year, I think we're fine. Then you can have that comfort to say, okay, I'm going to. And the boss may say, I have no idea. That's right. The boss may say that. He might have more uncertainty.

I don't know if I'm going to lose. I don't know if our entire division is going to get shut down. Which is when you then have to decide, do I take action and start looking for another job? I love to say, give people a reputation to live up to. And I used to say that in my company to all my leaders. Like, you know, your job is not to find someone doing something wrong, but to find them doing something right. And in the process of doing that, help them feel they have been elevated by being in your company. Yeah.

And so the idea of beauty and awe is not exclusive to nature. It's human nature as well. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. In the Baha'i faith, there's a number of writings that have to do with not looking for the human and the human, but looking for the divine and the human. And if a person has 10 bad qualities and one good one, you focus on the one good one. You see that, what is that? Everyone has some kind of spark.

of beauty that can be observed. This has been an amazing conversation, Chip. I hope we get parts two, three, and four. Not five. That would be too much. How can people find you online and find your podcast? Yeah. So my podcast is called The Midlife Crystallus, and if you go to it, you'll see Rain and I

released an episode in the fall. I have a daily blog called Wisdom Well. You can search for that. It's also on the MEEA website, which is MEEA Wisdom, com. And yeah, I'm on social. I post my daily blog on LinkedIn as well. Beautiful.

Chip, thank you so much for coming on Soul Boom. Yeah, it's great to be here. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.