The Rich Roll Podcast - Midlife is a Chrysalis, Not A Crisis—Chip Conley On Why Life Gets Better With Age

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

What if we framed midlife not as a crisis but as a transformative chrysalis—a liminal period where profound awakenings unfold? What if we saw it as an opportunity to shed old layers, unfurl our wings, and share the pollen of our wisdom with the world? Guiding us from pupa to butterfly, we have the Monarch himself, Chip Conley.  Returning to the show for the second time (Chip first appeared on episode 681), Chip founded the Modern Elder Academy, the pioneering midlife wisdom school dedicated to transforming aging. He is also a New York Times bestselling author. In his latest book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, Chip retools conventional notions of life in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. Drawing from the latest social science research, moving anecdotes, and enduring wisdom, he unveils 12 compelling reasons why life becomes more prosperous and fulfilling as we age. Today’s conversation revolves around how we conceptualize and define life stages, the concept of Age Fluidity, the age curve of happiness, and the importance of cultivating regenerative communities. We also explore Chip’s personal journey with cancer, the distinction between showing up and showing off, the role of being a conduit for ideas and collaboration, the essence of being a Modern Elder, the concept of age apartheid, and the value of generational dinners. For individuals seeking to infuse greater purpose and satisfaction into their professional journey, especially those who have dedicated a significant portion of their career to a specific path and are now pondering fresh opportunities, this conversation is a must-listen. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: boncharge.com/RICHROLL  On: on.com/RICHROLL Whoop: join.whoop.com/roll.  Eight Sleep: EightSleep.com/RICHROLL  AG1: drinkAG1.com/richroll Peace + Plants, Rich

What if midlife is not a crisis? What if it's a chrysalis? What I've tried to do in the last few years is to really focus on a pro-aging message. We are growing our whole lives. It's just we're moving from the playing field of the body to the playing field of the soul. Today, the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, Chip Conley, returns to the podcast to continue our conversation about reframing aging. When I was younger, I might have been thinking like, okay, I got to show off. And I think as you get older, you start getting focused on not

showing off, but showing up. We talk about the importance of having a growth mindset, something called age fluidity. A person who's age fluid is somebody who's not defined by their age or by their generation. They see age as almost like a costume that you either don or shed. I just love this man. His wisdom truly is a gift. So without further ado, please enjoy. So good to see you. Yeah. Round two. Round two. Thanks for coming back. Yes, it's great to be here. A lot's happened in your life, professionally, personally. I think one of the things that we didn't get to talk about last time is your health journey,

because there's been a lot going on with that. Are you comfortable talking about that? Of course. Yeah, so what's going on? Cancer is a teacher. That's the way I like to think of it. I mean, some people think of cancer as an enemy and you've got to fight to death.

And I think of cancer as a teacher. I found out five and a half years ago that I had prostate cancer, early stage. So we did active surveillance. I changed my diet. I did a lot of things and everything was fine until two years ago when we found that it was starting to grow.

And so I did something called HIFU, which is like a very focused ultrasound that basically obliterated half of my prostate. And we thought that would be fine, but within 15 months it had spread and actually moved out of the prostate into my lymphs. And so I had my prostate taken out in June of this year and I started hormone depletion therapy and I've been on it most of this year,

which means I'm going through menopause. Yeah. So when you're going, when you're on hormone depletion, they're basically, they're trying to reduce the testosterone because it's feeding the cancer, the prostate cancer. And so,

so truly, the side effects are very much what happens to a woman during menopause. Hot flashes. Hot flashes, night sweats, a little bit of brain fog, a little bit of fatigue. And then I start radiation tomorrow. I mean, it's very interesting. I'm here, but I'll do seven and a half weeks of radiation in San Francisco. All of it focused on the pelvic lymph area. And then I finish here, I'll do seven and a half weeks of radiation in San Francisco. All of it focused on the pelvic lymph area. And then I finish that. And three days later, I am on Good Morning America.

And my book comes out and the Today Show. So I was like, okay, you know what? I just hope. Wow. Yeah. In the past, when I was younger, I might've been thinking like, okay, I gotta like perform. I gotta show off. And right now, you know, I think as you get older, you start getting focused on not showing off, but showing up. And just showing up with who you are is the ultimate form of showing off because it really allows you to just radiate something beyond trying to perform. Because it really allows you to just radiate something beyond trying to perform.

Well, there's a lot baked into what you just shared. I mean, first of all, what an extraordinary relationship you have with this thing that's trying to destroy you. I mean, the way that you just related what you're experiencing without any kind of overt emotional triggers. Like there's not that you're like in denial or at a distance from it, but to be able

to just talk about it with that level of equanimity is a reflection of your general disposition, I think. You know, it is. And I've had my bad days. I've had my days of like, my body is failing me, or am I failing my body? And I've had my point days. I've had my days of like my body is failing me or am I failing my body? And I've had my point of view, which at times is like, okay, I'll have nightmares at night around it. Cancer has been a teacher. I thought I graduated after I'd had my Haifu surgery. But what I've been taught is like number one is I don't have to be a hero. I've been a hero all my life.

I can actually, instead of being the conduit hero, I can be the conduit. And how am I the conduit for all kinds of things? And then how do I coach others? How do I sort of slow down and spread out? And what I mean by that is not focus so much of my attention on my career part of my life. I've got two sons. Their birthday. Ethan's birthday is today. So we were on the call earlier today. But how got two sons. One of them's their birthday. Ethan's birthday is today,

so we were on the call earlier today. But how do I spend more time with them? And then thirdly, is how do I build a new kind of relationship with my body? If cancer is my teacher, how is my body my teacher? And my body, I've sort of thought of it as a rental vehicle. My body, I've sort of thought of it as a rental vehicle. You know, I was issued this body at birth and my job is to maintain the exterior relatively well. But as you've been driving it longer and longer, it has a lot of dents in it. And I've started to come to realize

that like the most important thing about the rental vehicle is not the exterior, it's the interior. And, you know, what does it feel like? What does it smell like? And what kind of fuel am I putting into it? So I've recently just stopped drinking again. And I didn't drink from age 26 to 51

because I started my, I'm 26 to 41 because I started my boutique hotel company when I was 26. The hospitality business is not a good place for people who have a challenge, family, especially in my case, a family challenge with alcohol. Yeah. I've just recently, I haven't given up dark chocolate. I think you can get a pass on that one. Okay. But I'm just imagining like the early days of the Phoenix when that was such a hotspot and San Francisco and all the cool bands were staying there. And I was sober. Yeah, I was like, that would have been the time.

Well, you know, I learned. Here's the thing. So yeah, my first hotel was a Phoenix funky motel, pay-by-the-hour motel in the Tenderloin of San Francisco where all the bands stayed. And I quit drinking and quit doing any kind of drugs a month and a half after we opened because I'd thrown too many parties in a month and a half.

Yeah. That I was like, oh no, this is not gonna end well. Yeah, you could see the writing on the wall. Yeah, so for 15 years, none, none. So I just recently stopped again. And actually in the meantime, I did okay. I mean, yes, could I see it as a coping mechanism? For sure.

So it's just a hard one, especially talking with you about this, because when I stopped, my parents both ultimately stopped and so did my sister two years younger. In solidarity with you? No, because they- Or just independently?

Independently because they could see that they needed to stop as well. Oh, wow. So once all three of them had stopped, I started drinking again. Yeah, so there you go. That's funny. You mentioned this idea of being a conduit. Can you explain that a little bit more? Yeah. So in your natural state, one of the things I write about in this new book we'll talk about is what comes through you.

You know, in a natural state, we all have a certain kind of quality about ourselves. And for me, I am someone who somehow channels things through me. And I'm not a channel of spirits or anything like that, but I'm a channel of ideas. And so when I'm in the conduit state, I feel attuned. And so I feel at one. But what happens to me often is I will then come up with a new idea and a passion and a purpose and say, oh, I'm going to sacrifice and I'm going to go jump on that. I'm going to, you know, I become one dimensional. And all of a sudden I go from the conduit to the conduit. And I'm the conduit hero. And what I'm learning as I get older is I don't have to do it all myself.

There's a great African proverb, which if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I have been a go it alone kind of person in my life. And I'm learning, especially with my two co-founders of MEA. They've been good teachers for me, Christine and Jeff. I've been learning how to play well with others and collaborate. I get along with people pretty well,

but I tend to like be speeding ahead. And then I end up in this mind loop of like, oh, I am resenting people because they're not keeping up. So I'm trying to move back to the conduit part of chip because that's where my gift is. That implies collaboration, of course,

but also this notion that every new great idea that pops into your head doesn't necessarily fall upon you to execute. Like you can, in this role, this expanding role of being a mentor to so many people, you could share that with someone else and say, here's a great idea for you. Like, I don't have to like pursue every good idea that I have. No. I mean, one of the

beauties of having started the world's first midlife wisdom school, MEA, the Modern Elder Academy, is that I have every week that I just, we had a group graduate yesterday, 22 people, and I can just give my ideas away. And then also brainstorm them with other people, and I can just give my ideas away. And then also brainstorm them with other people because I don't necessarily have to have my fingerprints on them, but I do have to be the conduit because if actually, if I'm not the conduit, then that plumbing gets blocked up.

And the key is for me to have an avenue for me to share it. You mentioned showing up versus showing off. Yeah. And I think there's something, this gets into a broader discussion around how we frame aging and how we think about it in our own lives. But this idea of just being comfortable with who you are,

not feeling like you have anything to prove, on some level, like not giving a fuck, which you talk about in the book. But you do give a fuck, but you just do it in a way where it's not tethered in an unhealthy way to expectations and results. There's that, and there's more discernment. You give a fuck about the things

that really matter to you as opposed to sort of like across the board. I mean, one of the things that we tend to get focused on as we're younger is wanting to have people like you and wanting to have people admire you. And I was a bit of an admiration addict. I still am, but I've actually now been able to have some objectivity to it and say like, oh, okay, that's me and my ego. I like to think of the ego and the soul. So Richard Rohr, who's a student at MEA and is actually teaching with us in Santa Fe in July, at our new Santa Fe campus, he has said, as has Carl Jung, that the first half of your life, your primary operating system is your ego. And it's around midlife that your operating system shifts to your soul. And yet no one gives you

operating instructions. And for me, I guess I would look at it and I'd say like, maybe this is like ballroom dancing. And so early in your life, it's the ego leading the dance. And it's the soul that is in high heels and doing it backwards. And then it's around midlife that all of a sudden, partly because you start to get comfortable with yourself and less caring of what other people say about you. And partly because you get more comfortable with the interiority of your life and that soul, you, the soul actually takes the lead. and that soul, the soul actually takes the lead. And it's the ego that is actually doing the in heels, going backwards.

And then occasionally you have to sort of laugh at the ego. And that's what I love most about aging for me. I think being able to laugh at your ego and say like, oh my God, I've seen this movie before. Who is this person, Chip Conley? Who are you getting all worked up about that? The great irony in that, of course, is that that's what's most attractive about it. We all know that feeling that we experience

when somebody, an older person walks into the room who exudes that level of appropriate, like I don't give a fuck, who's comfortable with who they are and doesn't need attention or whatever, but actually is a vessel of all kinds of wisdom. Like that is an individual who's emitting a tractor beam that brings people towards them.

And yet that sensibility that we all know we're attracted to is it cross-purposes with all of our social imperatives that are telling people they need to look younger, that's informing all of these decisions around health span extension and longevity, which, you know, listen, there's a lot of, we should all be looking into how we can live more vitally for as long as possible. But there's an unhealthy bent to that, which is people getting surgical interventions and all kinds of, doing all kinds of things

to appear much younger than they are. And that like reeks of insecurity. Yeah. And that's actually repellent as opposed to attractive. As we invest in our body, whether it's our beauty or our longevity, whatever it is, the question we need to ask is, is it short-term vanity or is it long-term health span? That's really what's at play here. And unfortunately, a lot of the anti-aging industrial complex out there, which is really an anti-women complex because most anti-aging products are toward women. That is oriented toward making you feel like you look younger and showing off in

that way. And then the biohacking world, which is mostly a men's thing, is about living forever. There's an element of cheating death. There's a lot of ego sometimes attached to it and some vanity. So what I, I'm a big believer in is I'm, Becca Levy at Yale has shown that when someone actually shifts their mindset from a negative to a positive around aging, they gain seven and a half years of additional life, which is more additional life than if they actually stopped smoking at 50 or started exercising at 50. Wow. So just the mindset shift. So what I've tried to do in the last few years is to really focus on a pro-aging message,

which sounds weird because if aging is a disease, which I don't believe it is, I think it's just a life circumstance. I think things do age and get worse and die for sure. But we're aging and growing at the same time. We don't talk about old growth humans like we do old growth redwoods. But I think we're aging and growing at the same time. It's just that when you talk to a 15-year-old and say, my, how you've grown,

you're talking about their height. And when you talk to a 55-year-old, my, how you've grown, you're talking about their waistline. But the reality is we are growing our whole lives. It's just we're moving from the playing field of the body to the playing field of the soul or the heart or the cultural intellect or the relational playing field of life. I want to tease that out in more detail, but I think it would be helpful to kind of set the stage in terms of how we define and think about the various stages of life, because you've unearthed kind of a historical analysis of how we as a culture have thought about these various stages, what we've overlooked, what we've defined, and how it's only in recent decades that we've even begun to consider certain transitions and phases of life. And there

are so many more transitions that we have yet to really even define, let alone educate people about in a way that could be helpful in how we reflect upon our own lives. Yeah. Well, let's look at the 20th century. So in the 20th century, there were three life stages that sort of got, I'll also they emerged or they got founded. The first one was adolescence, 1904, started because a psychologist who ran the American Psychological Association wrote a book called Adolescence in 1904.

Prior to that point, the word did exist, but it was not popularized. And you didn't think of teenagers as sort of in this liminal phase between childhood and adulthood. Once you hit puberty at age in 1900, you were an adult. And so that's why you worked in the mines or you had babies when you were 15 and that was perfectly fine and et cetera. So adolescence became a thing. And then we decided to say, okay, well, let's create child labor laws and let's create public junior high schools and high schools.

well, let's create child labor laws and let's create public junior high schools and high schools. And let's do all kinds of things to provide support to these people in this transitional stage of adolescence. The second life stage that actually got created in the 20th century was retirement. That was in the 1930s. Now it doesn't mean people didn't retire before,

but it became popularized in the 1930s due to social security, pensions. And frankly, the reason social security came along was because FDR wanted to get the old people out of the workforce with 25% unemployment. And then later retirement communities and AARP. And so retirement, just like adolescence, has gotten a lot of love.

And then the third life stage that actually got emerged in the 20th century, partly emerged because the longevity in the United States in the year 1900 was 47, and in the year 2000, it was 77. So we gained 30 years, three decades in one century. And so a new life stage that came about was called midlife. And it got popularized because a Canadian psychologist in 1965 called it the midlife crisis. And that became the number one way we think of the brand of midlife. So while the first two, adolescence and retirement, have gotten a lot of love, midlife, or what some academics called middle essence,

has gotten very little love. And middle essence is sort of like the adult corollary to adolescence in that you're going through hormonal, physical, emotional, and identity transitions, often between about 40 and 65. And during that period, a lot's going on in your life, but you're doing it privately. Generally, you don't, in school, in your teens, you have junior high school and high school,

you have counselors, you have junior high school and high school. You have counselors. You have college you're going to go into. You have parents. You have all these different resources. If you're going through something at 50, who do you turn to? And especially if you're a man, women are so much better and so much better socialized

to actually look for help from friends and family when they're going through something difficult. Men suffer silently. For sure. When we talk about middle essence, what age bracket are you defining that by? Well, I would define middle essence when the most transitions are happening

are typically about say 42 to 62, but midlife, some sociologists now say is 35 to 75 because on the back end, 75, because people are living to 100 and many more times than they used to. I mean, a larger percentage of the population is living to 100 than they used to. And then on the front end,

there are a lot of people in their mid thirties who are feeling obsolescent in the workplace because of technology and now AI. And so there's people going through the kinds of transitions you might be thinking about in your 40s in mid-30s. And so midlife is a marathon. So you better not be carrying a lot of baggage. You got to figure out how to edit your life. Otherwise, it's a tough period of life.

Yeah. I mean, I can't help but reflect upon my own experience trying to navigate that and definitely suffering in silence. You know, I'm sort of considered a late bloomer in a lot of ways. Like I've, you know, I found my career late in life and I feel like I'm just getting-

Well, you found your calling. You had a career. Yeah, I had a career, but I found the thing that I love doing much later than most people, I would say. And so now I'm 57, but I feel like I'm still very much vibrant in what I'm trying to do and learn and achieve

and all of that. My midlife crisis, if you wanna use the pejorative, occurred at 40, like it does for a lot of people, I suppose. And it wasn't something that resolved quickly. It was a number of years of confusion before I was able to sort it out. And I found my own way of doing it, but that way was very much in isolation

and without any kind of real mentorship or guidance or resources or resources or Chip Conley's like in my orbit to like, you know, catch me when I fell or, you know, point me in the right direction. Yeah, well, your story is not unusual. And so, Rich, what kind of emotions were you feeling back then? I was feeling depression for sure, confusion.

I felt disassociated from my own life. I felt more or less purposeless. I had a lot of good things in my life. I had met my wife and was building a family. I had good things, but I was very detached from this career path that I had chosen as a lawyer. And I felt trapped and I couldn't find an escape hatch. I didn't know how I would ever get out of it

and was feeling emotions of resignation, of defeat. And at times in my lower moments, like hopelessness, like just, I guess this is what my life is gonna be like. Like I have AA and I have friends, like I have people that I could talk to, but they're not like sort of life counselors. That's more like addiction and recovery. So I just didn't know, I didn't know what to do about it.

I didn't know where to put all of those emotions. And even therapy wasn't really even helping me very much with that. It's like you need a container store to fit all those emotions in there. And for a lot of men, as well as women, there aren't a lot of resources. Yes, there are self-help books, but there are not schools or tools for people in midlife. Carl Jung said this long ago. He said, you know, the afternoon light of your life, which is midlife, is very different than the morning.

But no one teaches you how to go through the afternoon of life. And so the predominant emotions that we see at MEA are the following. People feel a sense of irrelevance, especially men. They can start feeling, especially in certain kinds of careers, like maybe they're plateauing and they can see the future. And especially for straight white men in your later forties or early fifties, maybe the first time you start to actually come face to face with ageism. And in certain industries you're coming to, Tom Brady had to deal with that in his late 30s.

But bottom line is, people start to feel that and they feel irrelevant. Women feel invisible. And so a lot of what men and women are doing in their 40s is to sort of figure out a way not to feel irrelevant, not invisible, whether that's work you do to your body or work you do that to your career, that's part of what's going on. What else is going on for a lot of people is the spinning plate phenomena. In your 40s, you have the kids, you may have your parents, you have that sandwich generation kind of thing going on. You have

disappointment equals expectations minus reality. Brene Brown, my friend says, the thing that happens in midlife is you have an unraveling and it's an unraveling of expectations. And I was like, oh, that sounds terrible, Brene. Unraveling sounds like if someone's unraveling, you sort of think like they're losing their mind. She says, no.

Have you ever looked at the dictionary under the word ravel? I said, no. And she says to ravel, something that is raveled is something that's so tightly wound, you can't get it undone. Sort of like your shoulders on a bad day. And so to unravel something is good. It's actually allowing some space to come in. And so for a person who's unraveling, it just means you're actually saying, my expectations that I have in my life need to be moderated, or I'm not going to become president of the United

States, or I'm not going to climb Mount Everest, or whatever it is, I'm not going to be the great American novelist. So there's an element. Now, all those things you could still try to do. I mean, it's not to say you shouldn't, but there's a point at which in your 40s, you start to see that successism, just like consumerism, successism is the idea that a construct of society or community or family has sort of defined for you how you're supposed to live your life. And for a lot of people, it's their 40s when they actually sort of rebel against that. And yes, it can go in the direction of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. You buy the red car,

you have an affair with your daughter's best friend in high school, et cetera. That does happen. But that's when someone's going, trying to go from middle-essence to adolescence. Right. Because actually middle-essence is full of the same things

that adolescence had, you know, hormonal, physical, emotional, and identity transitions. I think it's probably a common experience to, you know, in that trap of successism for people to also discover a crisis of meaning in their lives. Like, yes, I was successful or I climbed the corporate ladder and I got to this point and maybe it's not as fulfilling as I thought it would be

or it didn't make me feel like I thought it would. But in lockstep with that, like, am I actually contributing to the world? Or like, what am I doing with my life? There's that reflective period where you're taking stock and inventory of these decisions that you've made and realizing perhaps,

and perhaps making peace with the fact like, oh, I'm not gonna be the great American novelist. But at the same time, like, do I feel good about what I'm doing, how I'm spending gonna be the great American novelist, but at the same time, like, do I feel good about what I'm doing, how I'm spending my time? And I think that's a question mark that can lead to greater unraveling, but also an unmooring for a lot of people.

Yeah, because you're, and this is the liminal, this is why midlife is a very liminal period, a transitional period. And that can feel very awkward. So Eric Erickson, the developmental psychologist said the following, he said, and I'm paraphrasing him here. He said, in the earlier part of our life, up to around 40 to 50,

the things that define you are, I am my job, based upon achievement. I am what others say about me, image. I am what I own, status. I am what I control, power. I am my body, you know. And so these are the kinds of things that people say. After 40 to 50, you start to say, I am what survives me.

And these are his words, I am what survives me. And these are his words, I am what survives me. And for some people that sounds like way too legacy driven, like a big capital L, I am what survives me. But what could survive you is just a mentee who's going to speak at your eulogy because quite frankly, you had a big effect on them and you didn't even realize you were the mentor. It could be your grandchildren who are able to go to college because you've been putting money in their 529 tax fund. It could be the dog park that actually exists in your community because you became an activist to get that created. So I Am What Survives Me doesn't have to be something that has your name on a building. For me, I think everybody needs to sort of reevaluate what their I am statement is in their 40s and 50s.

And mine is I am how I serve because I've spent, I know I've been spending time serving my whole life. I'm in the hospitality business. But on many levels, I've gotten to a place in my life where serving others is the essential thing. I don't care about the ego part of it. I don't care about the money part of it. What I care about is the impact. I love It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart. When Clarence the angel comes down,

when George is about to jump off the bridge and says, hey, George, this is what Bedford Falls would look like if you didn't exist. And I wish we all had that. I wish we all had that in our 40s, when we could see like, okay, we are having an impact. But it is in our 40s when we start to say, what's the impact that matters the most to me, not to my parents, not to my community. And what we desperately need is programs. We need midlife wisdom schools to help people mind the depths

of what is important to them and their mastery and their gift that they can offer in the world. There's a beautiful quote from David Viscott that says, the purpose of your life is to find your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give it away. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give it away. And that's what you're doing. You found your gift. Your gift was not being a lawyer.

Your gift was doing what you're doing now. The purpose of your life to find your gift. You've now been developing it. And as you age into your 60s and beyond, you will be giving it away. You give it away just by the nature of what a podcast does. But over time, you may have mentees and you may already have them who want to do what you're doing and you're gonna be actually giving that gift away. So that's really what I'm doing today in my life.

I mean, I already do that and I'm getting more and more joy from, they're not formal, like structured mentor, mentee relationships, but I'm constantly in contact with lots of young people who are creators or trying to do things in the world and who reach out for advice or to run things by me. And I really enjoy doing that.

And the service piece was introduced to me when I got sober. It's one of the steps, if not one of the most important steps and was a concept that was confusing to me that I didn't quite understand and have now come to really embrace as absolutely paramount in the construct of trying to pursue a life of meaning

that infuses you with a sense of purpose and fulfillment and as a result, fleeting moments of happiness. It's so contrary to the way our brains are wired and the way in which culture impulses us, which is all about me and serving the ego and luxury and comfort, et cetera. But I have found that when I'm in my low moments to reach out and be of service for someone disabuses me of the obsession

of the mind and the relentlessness of the ego. And then in my better moments to make myself available for that really is, it just, it makes me happy. It makes me happy. So I'm curious around how you arrived at that as like your kind of primary mission statement for yourself. Well, you stumble upon it. As Steve Jobs famously said at his Stanford commencement address, you find the breadcrumbs going backwards,

it's harder to find them going forward. And so, I was for 24 years a boutique hotelier. you find the breadcrumbs going backwards. It's harder to find them going forward. And so, you know, I was for 24 years a boutique hotelier. So I was in the service business, loved it until I hated it. I had my midlife crisis, what I now call my midlife chrysalis. We'll come back to that. And I didn't want to do it anymore. I had a flatline experience that sort of woke me up and said like, you know,

I don't have to do this rest of my life. I sold the business at the bottom of the Great Recession, joined Airbnb. And that's when I started seeing myself in service. I was no longer the CEO. I was the CEO whisperer. I was the person trying to help Brian Chesky, who still is the CEO.

I'm so proud for three years now as a public company, he has been the CEO. It's been a, it's been a, it's been a uphill, you know, lots of- Oh, it's challenging, it's challenging. Ups and downs in recent, in the last two years for him. Oh, for sure. But I'm proud that he still has the job. You know, I feel like he's 21 years younger than me.

And so I was in that company reporting to Brian as the head of global hospitality and strategy, but also the mentor to the three founders. And I loved it. And that's when I saw service. I saw, I don't have to be the sage on the stage. I can be the guide on the side. I can be the person who's helping other people live up to their dreams. I can be the permissionary, the person who gives people permission and then the confidant that helps give them confidence. And so that's what I was doing during my seven and a half years there,

four years full-time, three and a half years part-time. When I finished that time there, full-time, I went to write a book called Wisdom at Work, The Making of a Modern Elder down in Baja, where I had a home on the beach. And that's when I decided I wanna serve. I lost five friends to suicide during the Great Recession, and I want to serve. I really want to help people in midlife try to make sense of what this is all about, to reimagine and repurpose themselves, whether that's in their

professional life, their spiritual life, their personal life, their family life, whatever it is. And that's how the Modern Elder Academy came about. And the reason it was called the Modern Elder Academy or is called that is because they called me the Modern Elder at Airbnb. I didn't like that at first. I was like, okay, you're making fun of my age. Well, you were, cause how old were you?

I was 35 or something. No, I was 52. Oh, you were 52. I was 52 and the average age in the company was 26. So I was twice the age of the average person there. But they said, Chip, a Modern Elder is someone who's as curious as they are yeah. So I was twice the age of the average person there, but they said Chip, a modern elder, is someone who's as curious as they are wise. So we've shortened it now.

It's just really MEA now. But we're really dedicated to helping people navigate their transitions, cultivate purpose, own their wisdom, and reframe their relationship with aging. And we have 4,000 alumni now from 40 countries and 26 regional chapters around the world. So it's been, to feel the sense of joy that you can feel when you know you've had an impact. Some people say to me, like, don't you feel spent doing this like you'll be in the classroom in doing experiential

workshop with people who are going through intense kinds of things like i do feel spent at times but i feel more invested because i feel like i have those 4 000 people who are out there that's my george bailey moment that's my ability to feel wow i'm getting a little broken up here That's my ability to feel, wow, I'm getting a little broken up here. That's my ability to feel like my friend, Chip Hankins, who hung himself in his family tree. If I had been there, if I had known he was going through what he was going through at age 47, I would have been there for him. at age 47, I would have been there for him. And this has been my opportunity to say like, yeah, the vast majority of people who are coming are not coming in that kind of state of mind.

They're really more curious. They're really more stuck. But to be in a place where I can feel that I have helped create the crucible for life-changing conversations that have a transformative effect on people. That's beautiful. And last thought,

Dacher Keltner, who's one of our faculty members who started the Greater Good Science Center and he's a professor at Berkeley and he teaches for us once a year. He wrote a book called Awe. And when we think of awe in society we tend to think of nature that's the first thing i think of like awe is in nature and that's of course that's true but dacre found in studying awe globally um 26 different countries that nature was third place

in terms of the most common pathways to feeling awe. Number two and number one were pro-social, community oriented, and they were surprised, to him as well as anybody who reads his book. The number two on the list was collective effervescence. It's what we feel when we have our sense of ego separation dissolving and our sense of communal joy arising. I'm a founding board member of Burning Man

and that's what happens at Burning Man, but it doesn't happen just there. It happens in church with a gospel choir. It's what happens when you're at a birthday party with an intimate group of friends. Number one on the list is moral beauty. Moral beauty, when you are witnessing people at their best showing courage and kindness and equanimity. And I am so lucky that is what I experience every week at MEA.

I experience moral beauty and collective effervescence and a lot of beauty in nature as well. And that to me is like, okay, sign me up for that. So that's my form of service, but it's also my form of almost sacred, divine and intoxication to use a Rumi quote. I heard you talking to our friend, Jeff Krasnow, and you said something that struck me, which was illness starts with an I

and wellness starts with a we. Yeah. And that speaks to that collective effervescence aspect of the importance of community and connectivity in terms of how we, you know, kind of pursue our older years as people who, you know, in a culture in which, especially for men, we lose touch with our friends. We're so focused, we're in our successism or whatever it is, and whatever free time we have is devoted to our families. And then we find ourselves in our 50s,

completely out of touch with the people who meant so much to us when we were younger. And then we feel guilt or shame, and that phone is really heavy. And men being men in the traditional sense, don't pick up the phone. And then kind of end up in that state that Henry David Thoreau talks about

when he says, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is, I think it goes, what is considered resignation is confirmed desperation. And then there's something about going to the grave with the song still in them. And it's such a dispiriting quote. Yeah.

And what you're trying to do is provide the antidote to that malady. So one of my co-founders, Jeff, says friendship is a practice and you just have to practice again. And once you start to have some time affluence in your 40s, 50s, 60s, men in particular need to say, I'm going to practice this. And I'm going to have conversations from what we call the third vault.

Aaron Taylor, who's one of our faculty members who has two Super Bowl rings from the Green Bay Packards. He said that the first vault is our facts of our life. The second vault are our stories. And the third vault is essence. It's what's going through our spirit right now. And it's our soul. And it's what we don't talk about very much. So one of the things we do at MEA

is help people to speak from the third vault. And just this last week, we had someone at graduation say, I am going to seek out, and this guy's 61 years old. He's feeling like he doesn't have friends. I'm once a week gonna create a practice of seeking out a friend of mine from the past

that I haven't seen, and I'm gonna speak from the third vault with them. I'm gonna just talk about what's real. So the data on this is really conclusive. Dan Buettner, who teaches at MEA Blue Zones, he's, and he's been on your show, I think. Yeah, of course, a bunch of times. So Dan has shown with Blue Zones how important this is.

The folks at Harvard have shown this with their adult longitudinal study. Phil Pizzo at Stanford Medical School has shown it, that the number one variable for living a longer, happier, healthy life is how invested are you and were you in your social relations, often in your 50s. And in fact, that's what the Harvard study shows is that

for people who are happier, healthier, and living longer in their eighties and nineties, the question was, what were they investing in in their fifties? And the number one variable was their social relations. And this is certainly not unique or exclusive to people in their older decades. I had the surgeon general in here talking about the loneliness epidemic, and this is his main thing.

Like of all of his initiatives and the things that he has to pay attention to and care about, this is primary for him. And when he recounts the data and the statistics, it's really, you know, it's another quite dispiriting adventure down the rabbit hole of what's actually going on in our culture right now. And he has all of these proposed solutions or how are we going to combat this? But you have this idea around the ICU campaign.

Yeah. So explain what that is. Well, to keep people out of the ICU at the emergency, after being in the emergency room, we need to see each other more. One of the exercises we do, it's an exercise where when we're helping people let go of the identities that no longer serve them or the mindsets or the ways of being,

we have a bunch of name tags on the table with printed mindsets. Like my best years are behind me or I'll never meet my soulmate or I'm terrible with technology. And there's some blank ones. And people write down or they take a name tag and they put them on themselves.

And then we have them stand in front of each other, staring into each other's eyes. So I see you. And Mark Nepo, who's a great poet and one of our teachers, says, you see so much into the other person's eyes, you start to see yourself. And so I see you is about I see you in the eyes, and then I go to your chest, and I see these mindsets. And sometimes they're not good.

Like, you know, I'm lonely or I'm an imposter or whatever. And you see what are the mindsets the person is ready to let go of. And then you go back to the eyes. You start seeing them in a different way and then you give them a hug and you go to the next person. And it's powerful. Then we go out to the fire

and throw the mindsets into the fire. And it's a collective ritual. And rituals are really important if we wanna end things. Like how do you go through a collective ritual to say this era is over? I no longer have the point of view that I will not meet my soulmate or I'm a terrible mother or whatever it is.

And then we say, what are we replacing it with? So to be able to see another person and to, who's David Brooks has a new book exactly about this topic. That's what we need. We need it deeply because learning how to get to know each other from the inside out, as opposed to from the outside in, which is how we all get to know each other. But when we get to know each other from the outside in, there's judgment typically involved,

whether it's demographic judgment, your age, your color, your skin, your gender, you know, what you're wearing, your wealth, it's obvious or not. It's often that the judgment of someone, but when you actually get to know people from the inside out, you're really getting to know them from the essence and soul of who they are. And that's when, if you can be seen in that way,

then you can never be an imposter because a person's seeing you for who you really are. That's a very different, very tactile experience in comparison with just telling somebody that they should change their mindset. Read this book, no, you should have a growth mindset. Here's how to do it. Versus like, I actually see you and I'm telling you

that what you know, what you say about yourself isn't true based upon what I'm feeling, seeing and experiencing. And that, you know, kind of mirror work with another human being is a very powerful thing. You could just sit at, I've done this, where you just sit and stare at somebody and then, you know, it isn't long before both people are crying.

You know, like, I don't know what's happening exactly, but there is like that, you can't run away from yourself and that other person when you're fully locked in and something is transmitted in that experience that is very palpable. Yeah, no doubt. You know, the eyes are the window to the soul.

And if you have the right conversations going on with people looking at each other, wow, Arthur Aaron's work on this around love and romance, the 34 questions that you would ask that actually would immediately take you to, like falling in love with someone, not necessarily just romantically, but also just who they are. We need more of that.

We are living in a society that has done the opposite. We have learned how to judge each other and how to often anonymously, you know, in social media, shit on each other. Yeah. And God, do we need this kind of moral beauty? And I'm, you know, that's, I was lucky enough recently to be with Maria Shriver and Hoda Kotbi from the Today Show.

And they're in Cabo. And we're an hour north of Cabo, our campus. And so I went and had brunch with them for two hours. And I'd never met either one of them. I'd spoken with them before by email or by text, but never met them. spoken with them before by email or by text, but never met them. And after two hours with them, I just looked at Maria in the eyes and I just said, and Maria's in her, and you know Maria, I think. I only met her recently, but go ahead, I'll share my experience after you share yours. You know, obviously she had a long-term marriage with Arnold, and Arnold was on the show recently.

And she's single, and she's in a place in her life where she'd like to be coupled again. But of course, when you're famous and all that, and when you have your own sort of antenna of like, ooh, you know. And I just had to say to her at the end of our two hours, I stared her in the eyes and I just said, you are a moral beauty. You are a moral beauty. And Hoda just started crying. And Maria was like pretty broken up a little bit too. And guy, I feel weird saying this because it was a private conversation,

but what I'm saying is a very positive thing. To be able to see someone and to know that that person needs to see whatever it is you need to say to them. In my case, moral beauty felt just right for where Maria is and what she does. But it could be, you are a joyous soul. Or it could be, you are such a role model. You don't even know it. Or whatever it is. That, you know, someone said to me,

I was a social alchemist. And I now, I hold onto that because I am a mixologist of people to create something potent. And that's, thank God, my friend Ben said that to me. You are a social alchemist. So we need more of that. That's a really beautiful story.

Thank you for sharing that. What I heard was somebody who felt that moral imperative to pay forward the gift that was given to you, but also somebody who has that kind of elder wisdom where they don't care, like you're detached from how it's going to be. You wanted to give this woman a gift. Most people would be too afraid,

like, oh, this is a famous person, whatever. You know, like, it's inappropriate. I just met this person. But with that kind of crystallized wisdom that comes with age and having a command over this space over which you Lord, you felt this imperative to share that. And seize the day, you know, and to not give a fuck, so to speak,

of like, is this appropriate? I was doing something that was a gift, so to speak, of like, is this appropriate? I was doing something that was a gift. So let's be clear. If I was saying something, it'd be a harder thing to do if it had been a negative thing. But sometimes that needs to be said too. But when Maria, after that two hours, nothing negative needed to be said. She's an angel.

So I needed to say that, especially in the context of being single and being someone who at her age, I think she's 70 maybe, who can feel invisible. Yeah, yeah. And because of her stature and privilege and kind of fame, I'm sure that's something she keeps private because who wants to hear the sob story

of the lonely person who has everything? Yeah. And that becomes like a private pain. That's right. Yeah. And I don't think she's lonely. I think what she's looking for in her life is this is a part of her life that feels like the thing that is ready to blossom.

And one of the questions we ask at MEA is, that feels like the thing that is ready to blossom. And one of the questions we ask at MEA is, what do you know or have you learned now that you wish you'd known or learned 10 years ago? Get that in your mind. And then 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now? And we all need to ask that. And I think Maria is asking that.

I think Hoda is asking that, you know, you're asking that, I'm asking that, but this is what we need as a gift. We need these kinds of questions offered because these are the kinds of questions that prompt you as a catalyst to get off your butt and say, okay, what am I gonna do? I anticipated regret of what I will regret 10 years from now is a form of wisdom.

And so, yeah, let's help people with that. Well, the good news is when you go to the MEA website, there's a quiz and you will be prompted with some of those questions, which will force you to reflect upon where you're at and you'll get a result. I think it's actually on my website. Explain, oh, that's on your website.

Yeah, it's on the Chip Conley website. We'll link that up in the show notes. I took the quiz, but it's a great way to kind of shake things up and get you to think about what your priorities actually are. And I found myself, kind of knowing what the right answer is

and then going, okay, but like, where are you really at with that? Yeah, it's like a midlife checkup, you know, because I have a new book out that's called Learning to Love Midlife, 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age. And I really wanted to help people to realize there's some of these 12 reasons

of like life gets better with age that may resonate with you and some may not resonate with you. If something doesn't resonate with you, then the question is, what can you do? And there's a chapter in the book for each of these. What can you do to have it resonate more? Well, one of the chapters is about story.

And when you were talking about people who come to MEA and you have your name tag and it says, I am unlovable or I'm an imposter or whatever it is, mindset drives story, story drives mindset. It's sort of this loop, right? And you have this whole chapter about how to rethink your own story.

I mean, you mentioned earlier, like we make sense of it in the rear view and it's hard to forecast forward, but you contextualize it in this hero's journey format with the kind of call to action to become the screenwriter of your own life. So elaborate a little bit on that. Yeah, you know, when you're reading a novel

and you're a quarter of the way through it, you don't necessarily see the plot line completely. There's a bunch of different things happening. But when you're halfway through a novel, you can see the pattern, you have pattern recognition and you can see where it's going. You can see the themes and the through line. That's true in our life. So in midlife, you have better pattern recognition. You're able to see where you're going. And I'm a big believer in Joseph Campbell's work and the hero's journey. And so in this particular chapter, which is called, I know how my story serves me. It's about designing your own hero's journey and, you know,

what's the default state you're in and then what, you know, and when what's going on in your life, and then what takes you into that call to adventure. And when you're in the call to adventure, which is the second of the three stages, you're often in the messy middle. You're in a liminal period. And some of your shadow side comes out. Some of the parts of your personality. And for me, that desire to just go and run as fast as possible with people trying to catch up with me, getting very one-dimensional. And then going from the conduit to the conduit hero. one-dimensional and then, and because going from the conduit to the conduit hero, and then getting to a place where I get resentful. So I get resentful because people haven't kept up with me. I get resentful because they don't understand where my mind's going. And, and so what that chapter is about and what this chapter of our life is about is to be able to foreshadow that I'm going into that darker place,

that shadow place, that place where I don't really like how I act in that place. I'm trying to figure out how to take steps that mean that I won't get to resentment. So being able to see how your story serves you allows you to see the through line of your life. Viktor Frankl, you know, Man's Search for Meaning really spoke to the idea that the folks in the concentration camp who lived were those who could see how this experience was going to serve them later, or they were hoping for what's going to happen in the future. They were able to find some meaning in the worst of times. And that's what happens when you can actually look at your story and being able to say like, okay, it's really messy right now. I'm not sure where it's going, but what's the through line? And so for me, when I was having my midlife crisis in my late forties,

all I could see was the idea that hospitality had served me up to that point and being CEO of a company, I'd enjoyed it, but I didn't want to do it anymore. But it's not like I had to disavow it. It meant like, I'm going to take it moving forward. I have no idea what I'll do when I sell this company, but I'm going to use it moving forward and it's going to have some value. And it did ultimately with my time at Airbnb,

but I had to create some space for that to happen. So as we've talked about, midlife crisis is the brand. That is the brand for people in midlife. But the U-curve of happiness research is really interesting that's been popularized by social scientists. What it shows is that from about age 22 to 25

till around 45 to 50, your mileage may vary. You have a long, slow decline in life satisfaction. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And then around 45 to 50, it bottoms out. And then starting around 50, you get happier with each decade from that point forward. And you're happier in your 50s than 40s,

happier in 60s than 50s, happier in 70s than 60s, and women happier in their 80s than their 70s. So it's like a U-curve. It's like a smile going from 22 when you're happy to 45 to 50 bottoming out and then going back up again. So what if midlife is not a crisis? What if it's a chrysalis? And what do I mean by that?

You have the caterpillar that is actually consuming and consuming and consuming like we do in our 30s and our 40s, eating, just getting plumper, actually. That's what happens to a caterpillar before it spins its chrysalis. It's getting plump, like a lot of Americans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And they're consuming it. And then all of a sudden, inexplicably, this caterpillar spins a chrysalis and it goes in there to liquefy itself. Now it's dark and gooey and solitary, but it's also where the transformation happens,

the metamorphosis. And then on the other side of that, the butterfly comes out colorful, beautiful, but when it first comes out, it can't fly. Its wings are a little bit wet. It's never flown before. It has to be a beginner. So the way I look at the life stages now is the caterpillar consumes, which is our 20s, 30s, and 40s. The chrysalis transforms off in our mid 40s to maybe around 60. That midlife period is a chrysalis, not a crisis.

And then the butterfly pollinates, maybe pollinating its wisdom in the world. And that is it, consuming, transforming, pollinating. And so midlife may not be a crisis. It may be a chrysalis, especially based upon the U-curve of happiness research. Right, an opportunity. That's so interesting.

And I wanna focus on one aspect of that, which is the liquefication part of it. Like there's this idea that you go from caterpillar to butterfly, like in a very graceful, seamless overnight way. And we just put up a podcast today, as a matter of fact, with this beautiful person called Alexi Pappas. Yes. And she refers to this as the glop phase.

You can't go from the caterpillar to the butterfly without embracing the glop, which is the liquefication. You have to dissolve everything in order to rebuild and become something new. So there's two parts to this. That is true in the sense that you have to let go. It's letting go, it's learning how to edit. And if you look at the biology

of the caterpillar to the butterfly, there's something called the imaginal disks in the caterpillar. So within the caterpillar, this is all stuff I've only learned in the last few years, in the caterpillar is the DNA of the butterfly in the form of something called an imaginal disk. The imaginal disk is something that actually is the cells of what will ultimately become the butterfly.

And so what happens in the chrysalis is the imaginal discs start to take form. So they had been dormant in the caterpillar. They take form in the chrysalis. And then on the other side of that, you're there. There's a guy named Michael Mead who has a podcast called Living Myth, and I listen to it occasionally. And recently he had a podcast called The Wisdom of the Butterfly. And he says, okay, the imaginal discs are like imagination. So it is in your chrysalis. Yes, it feels as if you have to liquefy and let go of that. But you also have to have some of what you

had before and have to have the imagination of how it's going to be valuable in the future. Because if it was just completely liquefying with no connection to the past, then wisdom would be of no use to you. Because all your life experiences would, in essence, almost be vanished from your mind. But there's value in it. And in my experience, I call it same seed, different soil. When I went to Airbnb, I had a seed of what I'd learned along the way up to age 52. But I'd never been in a tech company before.

Yes, the tech company was in the hospitality industry, but it was more of a tech company than a hospitality company. And what I needed to do was say like, okay, how do I plant the seed And what I needed to do was say like, okay, how do I plant the seed of what I've learned in new soil? That's sort of what's happening for a person with these imaginal discs. Yes, you come out the other side

and it looks very different. For you, you went from being an attorney to a podcaster and a thought leader and an MC on the stage in Miami, which is where we first met in 2022. But you've carried with you some of what you had. Sure. So the example of the visual example of Caterpillar That's the whole story. I'm imagining somebody who's listening to this, who maybe is in the later years of this middle essence phase, maybe they're 65, maybe they're 70.

And they're thinking, that's great Chip, I get what you're saying. Maybe if I was 35 up to 45, I could get on board with this. But for me, the ship has kind of sailed. You're asking me to change my mindset. I've lived with this mindset my entire life. And I'm just not, I am who I am at this point.

Like there's a calcification that does occur. And I don't know how much of that is neurochemical or social, but there is a sense of resistance to new ideas and to a growth-oriented mindset the older we get. Yeah, let me take that in two ways. Number one is the average age of the person coming to MEA is 54. The average age that they think they're going to live till is 90.

And the beautiful reveal that we give them on the very first night is we do a little math exercise to understand what percentage of your adult life is still ahead of you. And if you're 54 and you start counting at age 18, when adulthood starts, and you're gonna live till 90, you're exactly halfway through your adult life if you consider adulthood 18 till when you die. So when someone starts to realize, oh my God, I did not have longevity literacy.

I didn't realize that I had that much life ahead of me. Similarly, when people see, okay, a male in the United States lives till on average age 76 and I'm 65, like I only have 11 years left. But actually, if you've lived to 65, the longevity, that's including 76 includes everybody who died at 10 or 12 or 17 or whatever, had some congenital heart disease. If you've gotten to 65 and you're a man, you're likely to live to 82 or 83. So you have a lot more life ahead of you.

So what I would say to the person you mentioned, the 65 or 70-year-old person, is I would first ask them, how long do you think you'll live? And then if they think they're going to live only five more years, then I would probably say that I'm not going to try to change their mind and change their mindset because unless they want to do it themselves, it's not going to happen. But if they've got 20 years left or 30 years left, the thing I try to help them to see is how they can become a beginner again. Because actually the number one thing we should be asking ourselves, the first question we should ask at a cocktail party when you're meeting someone for the first time is, oh,

at what part of your life are you a beginner right now? Now that person is going to run to the bar probably or say like, who is this kook? But that is a question I occasionally ask because it opens up an interesting conversation because actually having something in your life that you're a beginner at is like the fountain of youth. Peter Drucker, famous management theorist, every two years, he would study a new topic that he knew nothing about that had nothing to do with being a business school professor. It could be Japanese Ikebana or flower arranging or medieval war strategy because what he said is it lubricated his mind

until he died at 94 but he wrote two thirds of his 40 books after the age of 65 oh is that right? yeah I didn't know that yeah so we have capacity that if we don't use it

if we don't practice with it it does atrophy. And some of it atrophies faster as we get older, because our body and our mind start to atrophy. But Arthur Brooks, who's been on it, Arthur and I are sort of like Chip and Dale, talking about this kind of stuff. He's very clear that crystallized intelligence is a thing. And it goes till, you know, it peaks around 70-ish.

is a thing. Sure. And it goes till, you know, it peaks around 70-ish. And so that crystallized intelligence of thinking holistically and systemically and intuitively is something that gets better with age. So the key is to figure out, okay, if you're 65 or 70,

what's the kind of work or kind of purpose you could be living that taps into that crystallized intelligence? Being better at pattern recognition, crystallized intelligence, we talked about that last time, I've talked about that with Arthur. These become superpowers in our older years.

What else do we know or understand about what's going on with the neurochemistry of our brains as we get older? Obviously, short-term memory declines. What else is happening? Our vocabulary gets better with age. So there's a point at which it doesn't. So if you wanna play Wordle or something like that on New York Times,

yeah, if you're in your 70s, you're gonna be really good at it. And that's partly because you've accumulated that. But also part of it's just the brain chemistry. Our brain does four-wheel drive of the brain as we get older. So that means we can go from lyrical to logical in the same sentence.

The young brain tends to be very, very focused and the older brain is a little bit less focused. So try to take an SAT test in your 70s, even if you've trained for it, it's gonna be harder. And it's not just because your brain is not as good as it used to be. It's not as good at being focused.

It's much better at thinking systemically. Take that same 70-year-old and have them write an essay that's gotta be both lyrical and logical. They'll do a better job of it than someone who's 18 years old or 17 years old. So what that means is that frankly, we get to see maybe the beauty and aesthetic of life a little bit more clearly as we get older.

We are able to see things with our brain, make connections that allow us to use not just the brain, but the intuition, the gut instinct much better. So these are things that get better with age. And also the ability to read people better and to be non-reactive, to have a much broader developed emotional intelligence. So imagine the person,

the older person who walks into a corporation or a board room or is walking the hallways of a company, that person's pretty good at taking a beat on who everybody is, what their motivations are, what their strengths and weaknesses are just by looking at them and brings with them a level of this capacity to synthesize all of that information and be a real value add to an organization, right? Unfortunately, we live in a society that doesn't really value that. You had your experience at Airbnb. It was nourishing for you, but also incredibly beneficial to the organization. What do we need to change systemically in order to create greater, an imperative,

or if not an imperative, more permissiveness around corporate culture in the workplace to allow space for our elders to contribute the gifts that they have the ability to offer. Quick story from the movie, The Intern, with Robert De Niro, who you look a little bit like. I mean, like in some weird way.

Is that a good thing? No, I know, much younger, more handsome, leaner, et cetera. He's a jowly guy. Robert De Niro in The Intern is gonna be the senior intern and Anne Hathaway doesn't wanna hire him. She's early in the movie, she's in the back of a limo and her assistant's talking with her about why doesn't she want to hire him? And she says, I don't like him. He's a little too observant.

To be a first-class noticer is something we get better at as we age. Most companies need to look at age as a diversity metric, a demographic metric that they use just like race and sexual orientation and gender and whatever else they're using. But only about 8% of Fortune 1000 companies use age as a diversity metric. It needs to be a diversity metric on both sides. Ageism happens in both directions. It can happen toward young people when you have a very stodgy old school company and you have to pay your dues and we don't listen to the young people, etc. But more and more it's happening in companies where it's the older people. And especially in technology companies or in companies that – frankly, every company wants to be a technology company. In fact, Peter Drucker in 1959 coined the term knowledge worker.

And he said the world's going to be ruled by knowledge workers someday. And that's true. Seven of the 10 most valuable companies in the world today are tech companies, which is the ultimate place for knowledge workers. So what companies need to do is they realize intergenerational collaboration is a thing. There's a lot of value in it. BMW has shown in their research that you put together teams that are just young people or just old people. They do not perform as well as a team that is a combination of an older and younger people. And Google's research, when they looked

at what were the number one ways that teams are effective in the Google organization, psychological safety was number one. And that has improved. Psychological safety has improved when you have some older people on a team. We need to get better at this. But there's a term that I introduced in my book that I mentioned to you, and we talked about for a second before we got started here,

that I'd like to bring up now, which is age fluidity. So we know about gender fluidity. When somebody is gender fluidity is so when somebody is gender fluid they're not defined by their uh birth gen uh gender or by you know the society restrictions on who they are i think age fluidity is a is a thing that we need to focus on and that's somebody a person who's age fluid is somebody who's not defined by their age or by their generation. They are all the ages they've ever been.

And they are fluidly confident in having people think that they're older or younger. They are not defined by having to operate or act to their age based upon what their age is. And they see age as almost like a costume that you either don or shed. And so I think we are gonna see more and more people being perceived as age fluid. And I love this term. Now, the first time I read this term, I was giving a speech and out of the blue, I just used the term age fluid.

And the crowd went wild. I was like, oh, wow, that's good. I'm gonna use that. So I went off stage and I Googled age fluid and I didn't find it except for the urban dictionary where it says, this is what pedophiles call themselves. Oh no. So I was like, okay, not using that again.

But then I use it again in a workshop, in an MEA workshop and people are like, oh my God, that age fluid sounds so good. I want to be that when I grow up. So I'm now of the mindset, since nobody's heard of age fluid before, I don't think it's used as a term very often, I'm going to start using it and just say age fluid is a thing. And we can see people in society, we were talking about Ryan Holiday. We were talking about Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday is age fluid.

He seems a lot older than age 36. Kevin Kelly, who's a technologist, who's around 70, I saw the two of them on stage together. It's like Kevin was talking about technology and Ryan was talking about wisdom. They were not their ages in terms of how you normally think of them. Yeah, that's a flip on what you would expect. Oh my God.

So I think the idea of, especially as people are living longer and as we are trying to help people to break out of the costumes and identities, the straitjackets that have been holding them in, how do we help create a more age-fluid culture? Because if we do that, then ageism in the workplace will be less of a thing. If you show up in the workplace or in any place with curiosity and a passionate engagement for life, what people will notice are not your wrinkles. They'll notice your energy.

And when people notice your energy, they lose track of your age. 100%. What I was gonna say was, so when somebody asks you how old you are, what is like the kind of equivalent, like the they, them answer to that question? You know what I mean?

Like the sort of vague, like I don't define myself by that rubric that you're imposing upon me. I don't know that. We're just figuring this out right now. You can say I'm in my forties. I mean, I'm 63 now, so I can say I'm in my sixties. So I don't know.

You know, I have a friend who, when they get asked that question, she says, why do you want to know? And it's like, whoa, okay. And she says it in a friendly manner. But there's a sense that what she's trying to help the person see is you're trying to judge me based upon my age.

And what I've helped her to see is like, no, actually, because you are so ageless. I said like- It creates a curiosity. It makes a curiosity. And then she said to me like, well, but someone who's ageless, the reason ageless is not a good term is because it suggests that age is a bad thing like ageless means oh you're ageless it's like you know it's it's basically

saying age is a bad thing aging is a bad thing so that's why she likes age fluidity because it means like, okay, I am whatever age you want me to be. That's how she answers it now. I am whatever age you want me to be because quite frankly, I don't really, I mean, it's sort of like age is a number, like that thing, but I don't love age is a number because it feels like a Hallmark card. because it feels like a Hallmark card. And I think saying that you're age fluid is a proactive way of saying to the world, I don't feel, I'm confident that some people will see me older or younger than I am, and I don't really care. What I really care about is that I can be all of the ages I've ever been or ever will be.

I love that. And that kind of perfectly captures how I feel about how I'm pursuing my life. Like I, as I mentioned earlier, like I'm 57. Like it freaks me out sometimes because I don't think of myself, like if I was to, like 20 years ago, if you said, what does a 57 year old look like?

Like I would, that's somebody who's out to pasture, you know? And I feel very vital and engaged and energized by the work that I do. And I'm surrounded by, for the most part, most of the time, people that are quite a bit younger than me. And I would consider most of my friends

as people who are, you know, if not 10 years, 15, you know, sometimes 20 years younger than me. And I never think of age when I'm engaging with those people, although they may be looking at me as somebody, you know, I'm not aware of how I'm being perceived. Yeah. But I'm also not trying to hide my age. Like I'm not, you know, I have a white beard.

I'm not dying my hair or anything like that. I'm not trying to pretend I'm younger than I am, but I definitely am energized by the more youthful people that I choose to surround myself with. And then I also can impart whatever crystallized wisdom that I have onto them, which feels great. And then I'll be like, oh, when somebody, oh, how old is that? Oh, I'll be with all these young people. And I'll say, oh, they're like our age. You know, and I'm like, wait, they're looking at me like you're way older than me.

You know what I mean? Like, and I forget that, or I don't, you know, I don't connect those dots all the time. Well, good for you. I mean, honestly connecting the dots on, so you were saying earlier, like you're a late bloomer and that's based upon the premise that there's a certain way you're supposed to be at 57 or at 35 or at 72.

So when we can disconnect ourselves from what we're supposed to be at that age, we have so much more choice, so much more optionality. And yeah, I just think, and frankly, probably a little happier. So I, you know, I think- I'm definitely the happiest I've ever been. Yeah. Well, that's the U-curve of happiness suggests that. And so age fluidity, I think, is going to become a thing. And yes, there was this guy in, I think the Netherlands who was saying, if we can have gender fluidity, we can have age fluidity.

And he was basically saying, I'm 45 when he was really 65 and he wanted them to change his birth certificate and they wouldn't allow him to do that. And I'm not suggesting that because I'm not trying to play with, but you know, here's the other thing. And this goes back to the longevity.

There's more and more talk about there's different ages. There's your chronological age. Like how many years have you been, there's your biological age, which actually is this marker of like, okay, we're looking at your genes and, and, and you, your biological age could be 10 years younger than your chronological age. I mean, the biohackers really focus on that. There could be a psychological age of where you are. There could be a spiritual age where, who knows? In the future, we may have- I see an app. Yeah, there's an app. Dashboard.

Yeah, a dashboard that says, here's where you are. Exactly. You have a various age, and that would be age fluid. Uh-huh. Yeah. Here's where you're like just graphs for each one of those buckets. Yeah, it's spiritually, you're an infant, dude.

You need to get on that. With optionality and choice, which you referenced a moment ago, there's also this idea of time affluence. So explain what that means. also this idea of time affluence. So explain what that means. So time affluence is a concept. It's not my language. I love the language because we don't tend to think of affluence when it comes to time, but we talk about time and money as being two of the ways we sort of evaluate our lives. And as we get older,

we start to have a little bit more time affluence. And that's partly because we learn how to edit, partly because some of the obligations we had as parents or as taking care of our older parents or our career, we've sort of gotten off the career treadmill and we're having a portfolio life. So we're trying two or three things or four things, but none of them, you know, full-time. All that creates the space for people to actually have time affluence. And why is time affluence valuable? Well, first of all, it allows you to be a little

more spontaneous, allows you to say, take, okay, I'm going to go take a month in France and during the summer and wow, and I'm going to learn something. So that's the key is the time affluence gives you the space to try new things. And, you know, curiosity and having an openness to new experience are two of the top variables with living a longer, happier, healthier life.

So when you have time affluence, what time affluence could do for some people is it means you watch TV more. And the average American retiree watches 47 hours a week of TV. And we wonder why- 47 hours a week? 47 hours a week. Wow. Yeah. So we wonder why they're not doing very well with their physical health. So time affluence gives you the opportunity to try something new and to become a beginner again. But you're not going to leverage that unless you have the growth mindset to put it into action.

That's right. And the growth mindset means you're open to being a beginner again and you improve and learn as opposed to feel like you're a fixed mindset, which is proving yourself and feeling like you only play the games that you will win. The problem with a fixed mindset as we get older is if you only play the games you will win, your sandbox gets smaller and smaller. talking about middle essence and this chrysalis, you know, kind of phase, a transition phase between one thing and the other, kind of puts the lie to the test in terms of the narrative that we have around the midlife crisis,

where you have to like explode your life and create a brand new one. There's the before and the after, like this isn't working for me, I'm quitting my job and I'm gonna move to the Philippines or whatever it is, like these broad kind of dramatic acts that we think of in terms of that transition process. When in reality, it's a kind of protracted,

long, thoughtful- It's an evolution. It is not a reinvention necessarily. I mean, it could be, and I'm perfectly fine with that language, but the problem with that language for some people is a reinvention sounds really hard. It sounds like, oh my God, I have to reinvent myself.

And an evolution, which is really what the caterpillar is doing in the chrysalis to the butterfly, an evolution feels like it is a bunch of tiny habits that I have to change and work on that actually is easier to accomplish. And so B.J. Fogg, who wrote the book Tiny Habits, is teaching with us this year. And what a great thinker he is on this topic. It's when it comes to habit theory, it's often somewhat mechanical. It's like you just have to stack something on something else.

But when you feel like you have to reinvent yourself, it's easier to sit on the couch. It also reminds me of the geographic that the alcoholic and the addict are so good at, which is I'm really unhappy in my life. The solution is to pick up and go somewhere else only to realize that you brought yourself with you. So in the context of middle essence

or making that transition, it would be, the problem is my job, I'm quitting my job, I'll get a new job, or, you know, I just need to, you know, burn everything down without doing the internal work of trying to understand what's driving the confusion and the detachment or whatever those experiences are. And like really working on that

so that you can change your perspective, you can change your mindset, and then you can begin to alter your habits. We are big believers in William Bridge's work. He wrote a book called Transitions and the Way of Transition long ago. And change, he defines change as circumstantial and situational.

It's your landscape. It's doing a geographic. So transition on the other hand is psychological and spiritual so if you're changing something uh if you're changing your your marriage you're getting married to somebody else you're changing your job you'll have a new boss two years later if you just change things all you did was know, you're complaining about the same thing with the new spouse or the new boss. When you do a transition, you've done interior decorating. You've done an interior redesign of what's going on inside and you're wearing a different pair of glasses.

And therefore, you have some wisdom that you're taking to the new situations in your life and you make better decisions as a result. So, I use the words change and transition pretty interchangeably, but I like that frame because the question I would often ask someone when they think they're making a transition in their life, but they're really just making a change is let's look at what's changing inside of you. Are you really, how have you shifted?

How have you made some foundational changes in yourself? Because if you haven't, you're probably just gonna get complaint, you're gonna be complaining about the new landscape. Sure. And the new place you're living. Yeah, or whatever change you are able to execute on, you're probably gonna at some point regress.

It's not gonna sustain itself. Yeah, yeah. So when somebody comes to one of your campuses, the Modern Elder Academy, what is the curriculum? Like how do you introduce people to these ideas and kind of guide them through this process of re-education? Sure. So we've got two campuses and then we also have online programs.

We have Baja. There's a lot of people who don't know that Baja is in Mexico. They think you're Baja, California. And they're like, oh. But again, we're sort of LA-based guys. I'm here part of the time. But Baja, California is a narrow north of Cabas and Lucas. It is almost at the tip of the long Baja Peninsula, which by the way, for those who

don't know it, Baja, the peninsula has as much coastline as California and Florida combined. So it's a long way down and it's a beautiful place. And we're on the beach. And then we have a 2,600 acre regenerative horse ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Which is what you were just about to open the last time you were here, I believe. We were opening the regenerative community in Baja, but we had not opened the Santa Fe campus yet, which is opening in early 2024.

So what do you learn? Well, again, the key things, the key curriculum pillars are how do we navigate transitions? Secondly, how do we cultivate purpose? And thirdly, how do we own our wisdom and then reframe our relationship with aging? So it's a five-night program typically.

And we have some great faculty members who join us, but we also have our own in-house faculty and facilitators. So we're sort of different than a retreat center like an Esalen Institute where I was on the board for 10 years. They're a great program, but it's all the faculty that come to the campus. They don't have their own curriculum, similar to Omega in New York. So we actually have a curriculum. And so people go through that curriculum. It's part of the reason why our alumni community is so connected. And so you can meet somebody who's gone to MEA and you have some commonality of the experience. But you're basically going through an experiential program, some of it

in nature, some of it in the classroom. The idea is to help people strip away what isn't serving them anymore and open them up to what is maybe the gift that they are meant to actually start integrating in their life more and understand how are they in service. How are they moving into a different era of their life? How are they moving into a different era of their life? But I would say the number one thing people actually are needing to focus on and the number one reason people come is because they're going through some kind of transition in their life. Whether that's their marriage or having parents pass away, empty nest, wanting to change their career, wanting to start a business. They're going through a health diagnosis similar to what I've gone through recently

the last few years. And they're not sure how to navigate those midlife transitions. They don't know how to get a master's in TQ, transitional intelligence, which is really what we try to offer. There is some level of self-selection here because you have to have a baseline growth mindset

in order to even think of signing up to go do this. Unless your wife requires it. I'm sure there's some of those people too. But what's interesting is some of the people that go are like in their thirties, right? Oh my God. I mean, you have some young people.

Rich, the big surprise has been when you call yourself the Modern Elder Academy, you know, it's a dangerous name in the sense like, oh, it's elderly people. No, it's not. You can be an elder at any age. Again, it's being as curious as you are wise. But what we've had is we've had one sixth of the people

who come are millennials, partly because they're really interested in wisdom. I would say that wisdom is a trending topic amongst millennials to understand that, because in the era of artificial intelligence, human wisdom maybe becomes the balance. Oh, that's super interesting. And so ingenuity and creativity and intuition

and understanding how to metabolize your life lessons. But the average age is 54, and we've had people as young as 25 and as old as 88. 25. In 2023, we had this guy, Jim Flaherty come twice, once as an 87 year old and once as an 88 year old. And both times because people, we help people to have experiences that are new to them during the week too. So it's not all just like feeding your head. And one of the things we give as an option in Baja

is the ability to go surfing. And so as an 87 year old, he didn't do it when he was 88. As an 87 year old, he went out and did a surfing lesson and was surfing waves. He was mostly holding onto a board, but it was beautiful.

So I'd say the commonality is navigating transitions He was mostly holding onto a board, but it was beautiful. So I'd say the commonality is navigating transitions and people who realize the way they're currently operating isn't working for them anymore, but they're not sure what's another alternative. Right. So it's really detached from age on some level. It's about how to weather transition in your life. I'd say it's that for sure. And we have financial aid. So over half the people who've come to our Baja campus have been on some kind of financial aid we've given them.

Wisdom is not taught, it's shared. Being in a workshop with 20 or 25 other people, some of whom are very different than you demographically. I'll never forget when there was a six foot four white investment banker, 45 years old, who was retiring and had a lot of money, but not a lot of purpose, met a four foot 11 social worker, black from Atlanta,

who had 62 years old, had a lot of purpose, but not a lot of money. And every day we didn't script it. It just happened. They'd go for a walk on the beach. And so that's the beauty of the program. And it's, and the value of it, it goes way beyond just the five or six days you're with the cohort. The cohort does Zoom calls for months, sometimes years to come. We have alumni reunions. We have affinity groups. You have a regional chapter that you're gonna be a part of. So it's like sort of the alma mater

for your college of midlife. And it's a model that can be scaled too. I mean, I think this is very disruptive from an educational perspective, but also, and we talked a little bit about this last time, it's very disruptive in how we think about retirement communities. Oh my God, yeah.

Which is just, I mean, this is a disaster, right? The way that we treat people who are aging and house them and pull the blinders down and pretend this isn't happening. I mean, it's just, it's horrific, right? So the opportunity to create this regenerative community. I mean, like when I'm ready, I wanna move down to Cabo and hang out with you guys

and sit around and talk about wisdom and go surfing. Well, so regeneration, you've had Paul Hawken here on the show and he's an MEA faculty member who literally has land within walking distance. Chip, I am the pipeline to the MEA. You are. You know, like a professorial.

It is interesting. This is my job. This is how I'm just sourcing all of these people to go teach at MEA. Well, so Paul had a book and it's right here in the studio called Regeneration. And so we've learned a lot from him. And the idea of regeneration is different than retirement. Retirement, the word speaks to going into seclusion. And in regeneration, the word means to actually give vitality to something, bring something back to life. Paul's perspective was the soil. And so that's part of the reason why we have a regenerative farm in Baja and we have a regenerative ranch in Santa Fe. So how do you regenerate the soil? But how do you regenerate the soul as well?

And my partners and founders, Jeff and Christine, have taught me a lot about this too. Regenerating the soil, if you think about it, the soil and the soul have the same kind of biome thing going. You have a microbiome in the soil. And in order for the soil and the soul have the same kind of biome thing going. You have a microbiome in the soil. And in order for the soil to come back, and this is one of the top ways to actually address climate change, is regenerative agriculture. You're trying to actually bring the soil back to life.

And the soil back to life means it starts having little bugs in it. It has all the little microbiomes. And the same thing with our gut. and it has all the little microbiomes. And the same thing with our gut. Our gut is about bringing the gut back to life is to bring the microbiome in our gut back to life. So we talk about regenerating soil, regenerating our soul and our gut,

regenerating a community. So how do we invest in the community by buying from the community? Not buying from Amazon, but buying locally and create a sense of purpose in the community, the people who live in the community, not buying from Amazon, but buying locally and create a sense of purpose in the community, the people who live in the community. How do they have a renewed sense of purpose? So regeneration has many different forms.

And gosh, when this comes out, this particular episode, it'll be right as we're opening the regenerative community in Baja, 26 homes around a regenerative farm. And then we will be creating a series of regenerative communities in Santa Fe. That's so cool.

Yeah. It's amazing how these patterns in nature recur and hold truths that are applicable to, you know, all facets of life that we blindly ignore. Yeah. You know, you mentioned the reverence for the redwoods or the old trees that stand tall. And within that microbiome is this whole network of roots

that are all interconnected that speaks to the we versus the I, like they survive and thrive longer than any other, they live so long because of that, they nourish each other. You know, there is a communal aspect of that, that speaks to the microbiome of what's exchanged between human beings energetically to elevate our soul. And if we could only see that,

if we could only see how connected we are. Unfortunately, the rugged individualist sort of mythos that we have in American culture has given us the sense that we're all just standing alone in a forest. And so I think helping people to see that communitarian perspective, the idea that we are only as strong as each other is essential. So you're doing what you're doing entrepreneurially.

that we face as a society, how do you think about the changes that we need legislatively, policy-wise, like, you know, in the workplace, like if you were the grand poobah lording over, like how we, you know, how we think about this, if there was like a cabinet position for wisdom workers. For age for unity. For age for unity.

Yes, there you are. You are the department head. for wisdom workers. For age for unity. Age for unity. Yes, there you are. You are the department head. Like what are you enacting? What's the agenda? I would start with looking at forced retirement ages in certain professions. I think, you know, I would look at the current, some of them like pilots probably make sense because of, of being able to see well,

but I would actually do it not based upon age, but based upon, you know, taking a test and making sure that your eyes, what's so weird to me is that the, the big four accounting and consulting firms that, you know, I don't want to call them out here, but they're sort of famous out there. If you do big four, you'll see them. They require partners to retire at 60 and 62. You actually have to retire. Right when they have all this experience

and they're still completely mentally sharp. So I would start by saying, let's start looking at, we are in a country that does not have much immigration. We need to look at how are we keeping people in the workplace longer because we have a very low unemployment rate. I'd start with that. I would also look at things like, how do we, and this is, I call out Mark Friedman who started Encore.org and now is Cogenerate.org. How do we relocate, how do we locate senior centers next to daycare centers?

I mean, why don't you, how does a planning department in a city create the symbiotic relationship between seniors who are going to a senior center and people who are going to a daycare center who are people being young people, like infants, because there's something to be learned from each other. And there's love to

be cared for there together. If I was the czar of age fluidity, I would take something that we've done as a premise called Generations Over Dinner, and I would blow it up and take it globally. There's a guy named Michael Hebb who started Death Over Dinner, and he's a faculty member. And we conversed and said, well, let's create something called Generations Over Dinner. Let's get people to come to a dinner table and in sort of a Jeffersonian dinner kind of way where you have four to six questions around purpose or how we solve society's problems or love and relationships. We bring together four, five, six, maybe even seven generations at a table to actually talk about these things.

And so we have, it's called generationsoverdinner.com. It's a free thing. Anybody can go do it, but we give you the curation tools of how to do that. How could that become part of how we see ourselves, how we see ourselves as a society is like, how can see ourselves as a society is like, how can we ask the following question that everybody has to ask themselves

once a year. When you think of the five people you're closest to in your life, how many of those five are at least 10 years older than you, or at least 10 years younger than you. And you actually have to take the quiz and somehow like put it out there on social media or i don't know but you have to actually sort of show that in fact when most people take that quiz 80 of the people who they are close with who are intimate with and you can't count your family

or your spouse or your children don't include any of them but but just anybody else, 80% are within 10 years of you. So we don't have, we have an age apartheid problem. So, you know, I would do all those things. I would also look to other examples. Singapore is a good example of a country that is creating age diversity, is helping create wisdom in their society, value wisdom. So I would look to them. I would look at other societies that I think Australia has done some really interesting things.

I think Australia has done a great thing that we all need to have, which is the idea of a new map of life where we're not just learning until we're 20 or 25 and then earning, you know, like working like a dog till we're 60 or 65 and then hanging out on our sofa watching 47 hours of TV after that. How do we help give people the incentive to go out and take a sabbatical, you know, or a gap year in their 40s or 50s? Mary Catherine Bateson said, you know, the midlife atrium is the opportunity for you to actually create space and reflection time in the middle of your life, so you can consciously curate the second half of your life. So I would do all those things. And I would, if I'm, I'm really going, aren't I?

Yeah, no, this is great. I would take these, so Clay Christensen- We need to create this position, by the way, because you've got a handle on this. Yeah, Clay Christensen said, he's the guy who created the term disruptive innovation. He said in 2013, that in 10 years, 10 to 15 years, half of the colleges and universities in the US will actually go out of business. Now he was wrong in terms of his numbers, but he's not wrong in terms of the trajectory. In the next 10 years,

I would say at least 25% of the colleges and universities in the United States will go out of business because of the demographics, because of people actually not wanting the debt anymore, starting to actually question the value of higher education. a lot of things happening. And how are we going to take those beautiful campuses in Ohio and Vermont and these places that have a lot of college campuses and reconstitute them as a midlife gap year academy? And how do we give people, how do we create a GI bill? The GI bill was people coming back and being able to go to college because the government paid for it. How do we create a GI Bill for midlife so that people can actually use their 529 funds that they've given for their kids? They may still have some left over. But also take funds from the government to say,

you're going to be working in the workplace until you're 70 or 75. At age 50 or 55, we want you to take nine months off, like a school year period of time off, and go to a midlife wisdom school that has taken over that beautiful campus that's 100 years old in rural Ohio, and go there and reconstitute yourself. And if we're going to do that, guess what? Now I get really controversial. We are going to increase the social security age that some people are talking about,

such that if you're younger now, you may not actually get social security till you're 70. Because if we have, now, US is going through a longevity challenge right now. The rest of the developing world is not. But we have to do all these things. Okay, I'm tired. Yeah, that was good.

Like you had a really thorough answer to a question that you initially, you know, kind of came off as sounding like you hadn't thought about it. I have thought about it. I mean, did that- Well, I've never articulated it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, those are all beautiful initiatives.

I mean, I think it would be great. You know, and I was wondering when you were sharing I mean, I think it would be great. And I was wondering when you were sharing about what will be different with Gen Z and millennials versus the generation of people who are in this cohort now, because these people were all raised in a time in which you went to college and then you get your career and that's where you work.

And you sort of spend the next 30, 40 years or whatever at that place or some version of that place. And then you reach your retirement and you cash your chips and then you're supposed to, you know, be on a boat or play golf or whatnot. But young people now have a very different relationship with career and work. They're much more interested and focused

on meaning and work. They're much more interested and focused on meaning and purpose. They're untethered from this corporation or that. They're gig workers, they're remote workers. They're not coming into the office. It's like a whole different thing, right? So, you know, add 40 years to these people and how are they thinking about, I would imagine they're gonna be in a much healthier place

in terms of how they- Totally agree. Because they're thinking about their lives way earlier than you and I were doing this. That's assuming that the earth still exists. Yes, true. So let's not- This is true. There's other things that are coming in play. Recognize that there are existential issues involved here,

but there were existential, for baby boomers, with Khrushchev and Russia and bombs and all that. And then with AI, how do you think about meaning? You know, what is the meaning of knowledge worker versus wisdom worker in an era in which, you know, many jobs are going to become obsolete? I would say that the beauty of the younger generations, and I think it started with boomers, but I think it's just gotten better and better and better with time, is that they are less affected by the successism, the fact that they were handed a success script at age 15, and they were going to dutifully live to it until they were 45 and had their midlife crisis. So I think- Or at least until their parents died. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And truthfully, with people living longer, the inheritance thing doesn't happen as earlier

as it used to. So I think what's going to happen is that, you know, there's a thing called the quarter life crisis. And that's, I think, a little bit of what's happening at that point is people just saying, oh, okay, I don't know that I'm going to live a better lifestyle than my parents did in terms of wealth. So maybe I'm going to take a different path. But also that doesn't seem to be the imperative that it once was. That's right. Exactly. So they're going to take a different path. Therefore, they're gonna actually maybe take a gap year in their 30s

and live very austerely because they're not trying to keep up with the Joneses. So I do think the U-curve of happiness, which has had a dip for, you know, since they started studying it 20 years ago, it may start to flatten out a little bit. Yeah, there'll be some dance. It'll be, that'll be super interesting to see how that plays out.

Before I let you go, I do want to say that you are definitely a change agent. You have impacted many lives. You've catalyzed a change in life trajectory for a lot of people and what you make available to people is really a a lot of people. And what you make available to people is really a beautiful offering of service. And so I like to ask change agents how they think about the nature of change because that's such a predominant theme in this podcast.

How does somebody who's up against it and knows they need to make a change or is flirting with the idea of making a change actually execute on that change in a way that it creates a meaningful and sustainable positive impact on their life? if you want to make change in your life whether it's personal change or societal change community change, activism find the collection of people that are going to be there for you create that social safety net

that emotional insurance of people who are on the same path as you and are just as committed as you are and do it together. And I'm learning my own lessons because- We teach what we need to learn ourselves and what we need to master, right? That is exactly right. So I am, pioneers tend to want to do it alone and yet, and there's some value in that too, but it can, you know,

the ability to actually do something with others and to feel like we've done this together is such a better feeling than standing on the mountain top alone, looking at the view with nobody else with you. Yeah, beautiful. That was great, thank you. I really appreciate you and the work that you do.

You just did that Maria Shriver thing. That I did? I did. What was that? You said, that was like your form of saying I was a moral beauty. You are an example of moral beauty. No, you said that I was a change agent. That was good, that's good.

You could be more than one thing. No, no, no, no, no, I'm moral beauty too, that's fine. But I was just saying, I appreciate that you saw me. Oh yes, yeah, for sure. The new book is called "'Learning to Love Midlife, 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age," available everywhere. And if people wanna learn more

about the Modern Elder Academy, it is mea.com. It's meawisdom.com's meawisdom.com. meawisdom.com. And are we, we talked about, are we gonna, are you gonna talk about a little offer? Oh yeah, let's do that. Okay, wait, gosh,

for those who waited to the end, wait till you get. Well, I think it's appropriate. Yeah. Cause anybody who's worthy of what you're about to share. That is true. Is somebody who needs to have listened to this

all the way to the end. Good point, good point. Okay, so here we go. But let me say just on the URLs, meawisdom.com, chipconley.com. And I have a blog, a daily blog called Wisdom Well, which is on both sites. And so if you like daily blogs, check it out.

And if you like quizzes, you go to Chip's website. You go to chipcardly.com, yeah. Okay, so here we go. Because we're opening our Santa Fe campus, we're gonna do something special for Rich Roll listeners and watchers. We want you, since midlife, I believe that life begins at 50

and midlife is really the best of midlife starts in your 50s. We're going to do an offer that is the following. If you write us an essay and send it to stories at chipconley.com, C-O-N-L-E-Y, stories at chipconley.com. If you write us an essay of why life is getting better for you at 50 and you're turning 50 this year in 2024 um and you tell us what your birthday is we are going to choose one person to have a free mea week it'll be a three night week with seven of your friends, you and seven of your friends for free at our Santa Fe campus. And no questions asked. I mean, we basically, you have to get yourself to Santa Fe,

but our program is three meals, three gourmet healthy meals a day for people who want alcohol at night. They've got that. All of our programming, all of the hiking, the mountain biking, the, gosh, we have horseback riding there. We have equine assisted learning. All of that, and we're programming it for you for your ultimate 50th birthday party. So this is only for people who are 50. Now, we're going to expand this in the future,

but it's called our Life Begins at 50 program. But the way you actually can qualify We're going to expand this in the future, but it's called our Life Begins at 50 program. The way you actually can qualify is you'll write stories at chipcomly.com. I promise you I'm going to read every single one of those stories. With a group of us, we are going to select one person who will win. Tell us why you're deserving, why you think life gets better with age, why you could use this at this particular time in your life. And eight people, you and seven others, will get a free three-night program with us. That is unbelievable.

Yeah, I love it. That is incredibly generous. I just love it. I can't wait to meet these people. Tuition for eight people at the Modern Elder Academy, the ultimate 50th birthday party, calling all 49-year-olds out there, I can't wait to meet these people. Tuition for eight people at the Modern Elder Academy, the ultimate 50th birthday party, calling all 49 year olds out there.

You better get your pens ready and your pencils sharpened because that essay is gonna have to be a barn burner. Stories at ChipConley.com. Very cool. Thanks, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Always good to see you. Yeah, you too.

Peace. What? It was good to see you. Yeah, you too. Peace. Peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our

newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you, Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Thank you.