Did you know that infants are ready to learn sign language?
Two-year-olds are ready to learn the basics of science and three-year-olds are ready to learn coding.
Your child is ready to learn and at Primrose Schools, teachers make the most of this time by creating a joyful, purposeful learning experience unlike any other.
For instance, have you heard of the Primrose Friends?
In every Primrose school classroom, teachers use these 12 lovable puppets to make character development joyful, meaningful and memorable.
From exploring generosity with Benjamin the Bear to practicing honesty with Peanut the Pony, every friend plays a special part in helping children learn important values while having plenty of fun along the way.
We could all use some friends like that.
You can learn more at primroseschools.com.
Now enrolling infants through children age five.
That's primroseschools.com for more information.
Elizabeth, when we're together for the holidays, we end up going to Whole Foods Market every day.
There's so many things that we need.
Like we're going to a party and one of us needs to bring a gift for the host.
They have these expert curated cheeses and crackers that everybody loves.
They have excellent limited-time seasonal desserts, like holiday rum cake, creamy bouche de Noël, which is one of our family's favorites, and more.
Plus, they have these show-stopping things for the table like bone-in spiral cut ham.
Well Gretchen, I love that they have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department, because you know that I am not much of a cook.
So heat and serve is something I can do.
And they have floral Gretchen so you can bring a nice bouquet of flowers if you're going to someone's house.
Shop for everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters.
We have a very confusing relationship with purpose.
The real question we all need to ask ourselves is what's the number one word associated with midlife?
The first thing that comes out is crisis.
That is such an ancient point of view that really needs to be rethought.
I'd sold Blue Zones.
I was trying to figure out, what do I do next?
Or maybe I just want to enjoy life.
And he said something that changed my life.
I have a huge treat for you today.
Arguably the commodity most missing in our lives today of network conveniences and cars, and busyness is purpose.
I'm going to bring you the greatest purpose expert in the world.
This is a guy where people spend $5,000 a week to spend a little bit of time with Chip.
You're going to get him for the next hour and he's going to unleash a tsunami of wisdom and, most importantly, Useful information.
What can you do right now if you're a little bit lost or you're trying to figure out your life?
What can you do right now to plan to make sure the next part of your life is the best it can possibly be?
Chip started a line of boutique hotels called joie de vivre.
He was the modern elder for airbnb, helped build that company and now he's got these great retreats called mea or modern elder academy.
People from all over the world come to spend five days with the chip to have him take them on a hero's journey to clarity.
He's going to do it for us right here and right now.
I sort of think the universe puts people together who are supposed to know each other.
Yeah.
Because we... And love each other.
And love each other.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a sort of love at first sight in the sense that we met in Miami at a YPO Young Presidents Organization conference.
We were both speaking there.
And I think I might have reached out to you and just said, like, let's chat.
And it was immediate like okay, we're sort of we're about the same age and we're both curious about this and this idea of longevity.
But I tend to focus a little bit more on the midlife piece of it.
And you're focused on the, like, longevity piece of it.
And all the time you spent getting to know people who lived to 100.
And, you know, the fact is this is a new roadmap that we didn't have 50 years ago.
Well, I think it's an incredibly important.
You know, before I knew we were going to sit down and talk, I thought about purpose.
And you're sort of a prince of purpose or a master of midlife, however you like to.
But it is arguably the most important commodity that we're missing.
You know, as our lives get more comfortable and more convenient and And we're hyper networked through electronics and we drive everywhere.
We're never more than 10 steps away from food.
You know, we don't have to work for it anymore.
This idea of life meaning has gone by the wayside.
I read a statistic that you know when you and I were little kids, about 50 of people went to church or temple every single week.
We're now down to 5%.
Yeah. faith was often a proxy for purpose.
For purpose, yeah.
And one of the things I found in the Blue Zones, you know in 2005, when vitamin E, running marathons and carbo-loading were the secrets to longevity.
I come back from Okinawa with Ikigai.
Yeah.
And people are like rolling their eyes.
What is this purposing?
Well, it turns out that people who have a sense of purpose, who know why they wake up in the morning and put it to work, live about eight years longer than people who are runnerless in life.
For me that's like you know there's no pill, there's no supplement, there's no stem cell snake oil.
That's going to give you eight years of life expectancy.
But we know it works from a ton of data from the National Institutes on Aging.
And here you come along with this story pass, which we're going to get into.
Yep.
And when people ask me who knows how to help me find purpose, I say Chip Conley.
You're a guy who've been focusing on it for years.
You've created institutes around purpose, the Modern Elder Academy or MEA as it's been rebranded.
You write books on it.
You have a compassionate heart.
I know you as an individual.
You're not just one of these chunky pinky ring kind of sales guys who's selling a bunch of facile crap.
You've really tapped into the best experts in the world.
Yeah.
Including you.
That was very low grade.
But you've tapped into it and you've put it together in a way where people can actually understand their values, understand their roadmap, using sort of a hero's journey understanding what they're good at and a place for an outlet for that.
Yeah.
Just launch with that.
You can just say thank you and we can leave.
You know, I think we have a very confusing relationship with purpose.
So I completely agree with you that purpose is a means of longevity that doesn't require any cold plunges or biohacking.
But I think one of the things I want to start with is to say that we have almost performance anxiety when it comes to purpose, because sometimes we feel like it's a possession.
We focus on the noun part of it, which is I have one or I don't have one, as if it's a BMW in the driveway.
And so people compare purposes like all my friends have a purpose and I don't have one.
Now, in some ways that can help a person get focused on finding theirs, which is there's not a bad thing there.
But I think the negative side of that mentality is people want to show off their purpose.
And really, to me, you can't have the noun if you don't do the verb.
And learning how to be purposeful is the step or maybe the breadcrumbs that take you to purpose.
And so the real question we all need to ask ourselves is at what things in my life do I feel purposeful?
Because that action, as opposed to the possession, helps you.
And at MEA, the Modern Elderly Academy, we have this shortcut for pathways to purpose.
And it's either something that excites you, something that agitates you.
I love that one.
And, in fact, that's why Reed Hastings created Netflix.
Because of that, because he hated the late fees at Blockbuster Video.
Thirdly, something that makes you curious.
And then fourthly, something that is neglected from earlier in your life.
We had a litigator, a woman who's 60, who said I'm not going to retire until I'm 70, but I hate being a litigator.
I have no purpose in being a Interesting.
And she said, I think I should become a litigation consultant.
And everybody at the start of this workshop.
This is at our Baja campus, a cultivating purpose workshop.
Everybody said to her like a litigation consultant.
Isn't that like being a litigator?
She says, well, it's different.
I don't have to be in the courtroom.
It's not as stressful.
I was like, okay.
But by the end of the week, she had these dreams.
And you've been to our Baja campus.
You've taught there.
She was going on walks on the beach and she had these dreams and sort of almost visions from her childhood where she was cooking pies with her grandmother.
And she realized over the course of the week that being a pastry chef is something she wanted to do in high school.
But her father, who was a lawyer... had convinced her to go to law school.
And then, you know, she was off to the races being a litigator.
By the end of the week, she realized my purpose.
Today, my sense of purposefulness is having friends over for a meal and having them stay for dessert.
And I'm going to go and learn how to become a pastry chef.
Make them happy.
So, yeah.
So I think long story short is.
I think number one is we have to be careful about having purpose be a possession and have it be an action.
Number two is there are shortcut ways to understand purpose.
And you can have multiple purposes in your life.
And multiple purposes at one time.
There's a guy named Richard Leiter who has written a lot.
A fellow Minnesotan.
Yep, a fellow Minnesotan who's written a lot about purpose.
And he talks about big P and small P purpose.
And he's also an MEA faculty member.
And big P purpose tends to be the thing that you have on a resume.
And small P purpose is the thing they say at your eulogy.
And it often has to do with, it's the purposefulness around being a human.
I love that.
And so, yeah, so I think that's a lot.
Well, you know, I think you're part of a very small cabal who's actually putting a finger on it because, purpose to your point, people kind of vaguely understand it, but they don't exactly know how to find it and how to make that noun into a verb.
And I'm going to ride you hard today because people are listening right now and watching us.
This is a promise I'm going to make to you.
After we're done talking to Chip, you're going to know how to find your purpose and you're going to know how to put it to work.
Yeah.
So we're going to get to that.
I think this Modern Elder Academy, you invited me there.
You know, I kind of rolled my eyes at it.
First of all, I don't think of myself as an elder.
And secondly, you know, just I couldn't really, you know, it's on the beach.
But then I got there, I was blown away.
Thank you.
30 people disparate smart, soulful people, all of whom and this is important we're going through some sort of transition.
And we all go through transition.
I think this is really an important point in midlife and the point you make in the midlife manifesto that midlife is when most of the divorces happen.
You know, we've been married forever and we've just been on autopilot and boom, we hit a road bump and all of a sudden we're sad and alone.
It's the only form of divorce in the US, age-wise, where we're seeing a growth in divorce.
Every other age group other than midlife is, you know, is going down.
But actually midlifers, what's called gray divorces are going up.
Boom.
That good example.
We lose our jobs.
We retire.
We age out.
There's still ageism.
So, all of a sudden, you've been putting your purpose to work every single day at work and boom, all of a sudden, you get a pink slip.
What do you do?
Or you quit.
You just get to an age, you have a health issue, and you can't do what you used to do.
Well, you're going through menopause and men going through andropause.
Yes.
So there's a physical side to transition as well.
And your big effort right now is rebranding midlife, which I love.
And, you know, life expectancy has gone up.
Since...
1900.
You know, life expectancy for men in 1900 was at 40.
And now we're up to 73 or 74, almost double.
So naturally, middle age when you're supposed to live to 40 is 25.
You know now we can expect.
And, by the way, if you've made it to 60, your life expectancy is more like 80 or something or 90.
So really middle age is probably, well, what would you say?
Middle age, what years is middle age?
Middle age to my mind is 35 to 75.
Okay.
That's a big one.
It's a big one.
But it's sort of proactively thinking about the future.
If we're going to have more and more people living to 100 and midlife is the life stage between early adulthood and later adulthood.
So it's a bridge.
Think early adulthood ends at 30, 35.
And later adulthood, depending upon your health – could start around 75.
I love it.
And a lot of people actually are not planning on retiring until about 75.
So midlife is a bridge that used to be a relatively short bridge.
And now it's a really long marathon bridge.
And so because of that, it's also a stage of life that we don't understand.
The way we think of midlife goes back to Elliot Jakes, a psychotherapist from Canada, who in 1965 said that he did a study on the midlife crisis.
And so if I give a speech to a thousand people and I say what's the number one word associated with midlife?
The first thing that comes out is crisis.
That's so interesting.
And so the way we think of midlife is as if it's a crisis, and And if you can survive the crisis, on the other side of that, you have disease.
You die.
You have disease, decrepitude, and death.
And so that is such an ancient 50-year-old, 60-year-old point of view that really needs to be rethought.
And so yeah, I'm a midlife activist whose basic premise is to help people see that it's not a crisis, it's a chrysalis.
Midlife is a transformative time.
And the U-curve of happiness.
Research is very clear on this that yes, there's a dip in life satisfaction around 45 to 52, but after 50 we get happier with each decade.
As long as we keep our health.
Yeah, as long as we keep our health, which most people do after 50.
You know, in the 70s you can start to see for some people a little bit of a plateauing and a dropping off of happiness.
But on average, it's still going up.
100-year-olds are actually happier than 20-year-olds as a cohort.
Is that interesting?
Wow, wow, wow.
Yeah, they've made peace.
It was less about getting what they want, but being satisfied with what they have.
That's what older people become masters at.
Yeah.
Being satisfied with what they have.
I think, you know, you said a midlife crisis and what jumped into my mind was midlife opportunity.
Yeah.
And I think the MEA in your work, you help show people it's an opportunity.
But in order to kind of transform that your life on autopilot to the life you want to have, it takes some work, doesn't it?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, if you live sort of in the normal default kind of way, the ageist societal point of view, Hallmark cards point of view will wear off on you.
I mean, meaning you will actually feel like, oh, my best years are behind me.
Or I'm too old to fill in the blank.
When I first moved to Mexico part-time, I was 56 years old.
So this was about eight years ago.
And I had a mindset, which was I'm too old to learn Spanish.
I'm too old to learn to surf.
But the shift that I made in my own thinking was I asked the question 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now?
Because anticipated regret of something you might regret, like me at 66, regretting I didn't learn Spanish and I'm still living in Mexico.
I didn't learn how to surf and I'm still living in Mexico next to a surf break.
If I'm doing that, then I by thinking about what I'm going to regret.
Anticipated regret is a form of wisdom.
And so it's my way of actually having a catalyst to say, I need to take action.
And so for me, I started learning Spanish.
Mi Español es muy malo, pero estoy mejorando un poco, un poco, un poco.
But I've gotten a little bit better in surfing.
I've gotten a little bit better.
Our friend Jim Flaherty at 87, he was in our workshop.
The average age of the person who comes to an MEA workshop is about 54.
So Jim was way older, but he...
He went surfing down in Baja.
Yeah, I saw it.
When we were there.
So long story short is a lot of this is breaking out of the default way of thinking about aging and really moving from chasing to embracing.
And the chasing is what we've done often in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and maybe 50s.
Chasing on that treadmill of success.
And learning after age 50 that maybe it's time to start embracing some things and having some gratitude and appreciation around it.
Are you a trailblazer, a risk taker, someone with countless tales of epic adventure?
Well, I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working on it.
Even the boldest among us started small, daring themselves to reach greater goals each day.
If you're looking to take on a challenge like that, the Defender is too.
It's a vehicle built for those, capable of great things, whether you're charting new territory or just escaping the city for the weekend.
The Defender, engineered to meet challenges head-on so you can explore with confidence.
An icon reimagined, designed for a new generation of explorers.
Choose from the Defender 90, 110, or 130, seating up to eight adventurers.
With a tough-tested exterior, a modern and functional interior and intelligent tech Like 3D surround cameras and the PIVI Pro infotainment system, every journey feels limitless.
Because like you, the Defender is capable of great things.
Build your Defender today at LandRoverUSA.com.
As a business owner myself, I know that owning a business means long days and lots of hard work.
You need to be able to adapt to new challenges as they pop up, and you certainly need the right technology to help you do that.
Spectrum Business keeps businesses of all sizes connected seamlessly with internet, advanced Wi-Fi phone, TV and mobile services.
Spectrum Business has tailored connectivity solutions and packages built for your business's budget.
No contracts, no added fees.
And right now business owners can get free business internet advantage forever when you add four or more mobile lines.
Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever.
Restrictions apply.
Services not available in all areas.
You're ready for the holidays.
The turkey's been going since this morning.
The sides are perfectly seasoned.
The out-of-towners have a bed, couch or futon to crash on for the night.
All that's left to take care of is your peace of mind.
That's why ADT is here with their profound, When every second counts.
Count on ADT.
Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP.
When every second counts, count on ADT.
This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace.
You cannot even think of starting a business these days without having a website, and Squarespace makes it so easy.
I've noticed, Gretch, people don't even say, do you have a website?
They say, have you started your Squarespace?
It's so great because you have everything you need for your business right there.
You can sell things.
You can post things.
You can collect information.
It's just so easy and it's easy to set up, which is key to the whole enterprise.
Yes, they have cutting-edge design tools like their Blueprint AI Builder.
That just asks a few questions about what vibe you want and what you want to do.
And it'll generate a whole custom layout that actually looks like whatever you want.
You hardly have to tweak anything.
Plus, with Squarespace, their email campaigns are built right in.
So once people join your list, you can send newsletter or updates without leaving the platform.
Head to squarespace.com slash happy for a free trial.
And when you're ready to launch, use offer code happy to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain.
In service of getting towards.
How do our listeners find purpose?
I want to tell the story of Jim Flaherty.
I went to MEA and you know I was a teacher and I thought well, I'm not going to learn anything here.
And I actually started in university and actually the curriculum you have is phenomenal.
It takes you on a sort of hero's journey and helps you find that anticipated regret you know, before you're too old to realize it.
But in my case, the singular, most powerful moment, I was paired off with Jim, 88-year-old kind of dapper, bald guy.
You know, we're on the beach and he's wearing sort of a suit and a bow tie and round glasses.
And he started talking about his life and he's writing a TV show and a novel and a feature film at 88.
You know, he's obviously got money.
I go, Jim, why don't you just enjoy your life?
And he said something that changed my life.
And it was, at a certain point, I realized that work is more fun than fun.
And it was like the diamond bullet through the forehead.
Because I was trying, you know, I'd sold Blue Zones.
I was trying to figure out what do I do next?
Or maybe I just want to enjoy life.
And I realized, fuck.
I like to work.
I love going far away parts of the world and discovering things and bringing them back and making them meaningful.
And I went out and did the Netflix Living to 100 documentary, which I might not have done if I hadn't gone to MEA and met Jim.
But let me ask you just a few concrete.
So this is going to be hard.
Yeah.
Concrete.
I like it.
Okay.
First example.
I am a 60 year old woman and my husband just left me.
Yeah.
Told me about it last week.
I'm not working.
My children are out of the house.
What do I do this week that gets me on a road so I'm going to enjoy my middle, my midlife?
Well, let's start by helping this woman and anyone increase their TQ, a trademark term from MEA, which speaks to transitional intelligence.
So if you look at the history of time, whether it's Joseph Campbell or it's the wisdom traditions, or it's William Bridges in his book Transitions, they all have the same mentality around and the framework for thinking about transitions.
There's three stages to any transition the ending of something, the messy middle and the beginning of something.
And so what I would say to this 60-year-old woman is you are coming to the end of something.
And the most important thing to do when you're ending anything is to ritualize it and mark it so that you can say okay, that was the past.
Now, if this just happened a week ago and she's still in trauma around that, the last thing she wants to do is do a ritual.
But the first thing I would do for her is to say like, who can you talk to?
Who are the friends you can talk to who can be supportive?
But at some point, you want to do something that says like, that's over.
Because then you move into the messy middle, the chrysalis, in essence.
Between caterpillar and butterfly is chrysalis.
And it's in that stage that you start to actually see what's next.
Yes, messy middle means it's a little hard.
What goes on in the messy middle?
Messy middle, a person often is in an awkward space.
You've lost your job.
You've retired.
You've just gotten a cancer diagnosis.
You know, your husband's just left you.
You're in this place that's not familiar.
So there's a word called... Do you just have to sit through it?
No, no, you're liminal.
You're liminal, which means you're in between two things.
But you need to, number one, is start to actually get some social support.
That helps.
Because a lot of times when you're in that liminal state in transition, you feel scared.
And so and you feel awkward and maybe you feel like somehow shameful or guilty because something wrong happened.
The other thing you need to do is look for the through line.
Look at like, what are you supposed to learn from this?
Because our painful life lessons are the raw material for our future wisdom.
And so what does that mean?
It means that the experience you've had in this case this woman who she's been with her husband for many years, But she probably wasn't all that surprised that he was leaving or she wasn't all that happy.
In fact, 70% of the gray divorces, people getting divorced after 50 are being initiated by women.
Bottom line is she is going to have a new pair of glasses when she goes into the marketplace again to actually meet a new partner.
And so the reality is she's going to be a better judge of character because than she was when she met her husband.
And so that's part of what she has to start thinking through is like what are the filters, assuming that she wants to be in a relationship again?
The thing I would say to her if she was a friend of mine, is like what are the things that you've always wanted to do?
You didn't have time to do, or your husband dissuaded you from doing that you can do now that you have some freedom.
Because the first thing for her is not to go find another man.
The first thing for her, or a woman, I mean, like, who knows?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The first thing to do is literally to go and say, I have some freedom and space.
How do I want to spend that?
I like that.
And then I go to the third stage, which is the beginning of something new.
Ending, messy middle, beginning.
And the beginning of something new is frankly, when she's going to potentially go out and start dating again.
And the most important thing you can do in that stage is to have a growth mindset and a sense of humor.
Because if you are going to be self-critical and tough on yourself as you go out and make your matchcom profile, or you have your first date that you've had in 30 years with somebody, or the first time you're actually getting naked with a man in all of these years, you better have a sense of humor.
Yeah.
Otherwise, you're going to pretty much be critical.
And the more critical we are, the more self-defeating it is, because we end up tending to have a fixed mindset, which means we aren't –.
Fixed mindset means you're trying to prove yourself and you want to win.
A growth mindset means you want to improve yourself and you want to learn.
And so that's what I would do.
That's the technical way we look at it in the TQ method of transitions.
But I would of course try to at least spend more time with her and understand her specific situation.
Yeah, well, very few people are going to have the privilege of doing a one-on-one with Chip Conley.
But just to bottom line it a little bit, because you said a lot, there's a lot to remember.
Yeah.
But what I heard was the first thing you want to do is to take stock of your friends.
Yeah.
And probably identify the ones who will listen to you.
Second thing was a sort of a process of self-assessment.
Is there a book or... Actually, the second thing I do with the friend is to somehow ritualize this.
So what I would do is I would say... how could you go through some kind of process?
Maybe you write down all of the things on a piece of paper that pissed you off about your husband.
I like this.
I hate my husband because... And you write all of this down.
And what you do is then with your friend, say, I'm going to write all those things down.
I'm going to recite what those are to my friend.
I'm going to throw them in the fire.
And then I'm going to say, I'm replacing it with...
The following.
These are the things I am going to get as a result of actually being out of this marriage.
And that ritualization of it is really powerful, because you remember the day and the time when you did this thing.
We do that at MES.
If you recall the very first 24 hours into it, we are throwing something on a piece of paper and ultimately throwing it in the fire collectively.
So that is important because what it helps a person do is to move on.
And one other thing you know transitions.
Bruce Feiler, who wrote a book called Life is in the Transitions, a New York Times bestseller, has shown in his research that people can spend five years in that chrysalis on average.
They're going through a transition and it can take a long time.
The value of a program like MEA or any kind of coaching or therapy or whatever it is, is it can accelerate your time in that messy middle.
So you're not spending as much time there.
You're not feeling stuck or bewildered as much as you would otherwise.
I want to tell you a messy middle story of my own.
Oh, please.
It requires a little vulnerability on my part.
In earlier career, I invented a way of exploration that harnessed the intuitive power of a huge online audience, had a million followers.
And we discovered why the Maya civilization disappeared and did another expedition across China and proved that Marco Polo didn't go to China.
We did 15 of them.
I sold this company and the company I sold it to fired me.
Fire me.
I got fired.
It was the most... What?
I invented this.
At what age?
What age?
I was 40, you know, right in the sort of midlife-y area.
Yeah.
And it was humiliating.
And, you know, I went in kind of a depression and, you know, was there for a while.
But then I started... I used to go to the library in the afternoons.
I started... studying up on other things and stumbled upon all these articles about longevity.
And I got really interested in it.
And two years later, two years, I found myself at National Geographic with a great idea.
The idea I had was I had profiled all these young kids doing my expeditions.
I wanted to go back now 10 years later and try to find them and see what happened to them.
And I pitched this, I'm at National Geographic's headquarter.
I'm pitching this with great exuberance.
And my editor is looking at his watch, and I go, oh, my God.
So in an act of desperation, a Hail Mary pass, I said to him, and I also have this other idea.
I found these areas in the world where people live the longest and I'll bet you they could give us some secrets on how to live longer.
And he was tapping his pencil at the time, and he quit tapping his pencil.
He thought about it for a while, and he said, that idea's got hair on it.
But I would have never gotten there if I didn't have the messy middle, if I didn't just endure that time and use it to explore, to get out of what I was doing all the time, which was, you know this, basically interactive education and think about something else.
And if I hadn't had the messy middle, there'd be no blue zones and I wouldn't be sitting across from Chip Conley right now.
So there.
That led to your butterfly.
I mean, the truth is a chrysalis...
If it is true that we're talking a lot about AI these days and about the value of AI, but I heard someone say last week well, AI will never be wise because it doesn't know how to suffer.
Because there's a certain amount of wisdom that comes from suffering.
There's a certain amount of wisdom that comes from that chrysalis.
And in the chrysalis, it can feel dark and gooey and solitary.
But it's also where the transformation happens.
And so I'm not saying that we should seek suffering.
What I'm saying is that we should turn suffering into something.
Because suffering, you know classic Buddhist first tenet of Buddhism is that suffering is ever-present.
So the key thing to understand is how do you turn suffering because life circumstances are always going to be not what we want them to be.
How do you turn that into something that has long-term value?
And that's what wisdom is.
Wisdom is also, you pointed out, this anticipatory suffering.
You had a better word for it.
What was it?
Well, what I said was our anticipated regret is a form of wisdom.
And what I mean by that is, first of all, wisdom is something, it's a raw material.
So the more life experience you have, the more potential wisdom you have.
I like that.
But the truth is, we all know people who are 70 years old who are not as wise as a 30-year-old.
And the way I like to think of that is the following is you put two people in a kitchen one's 70, one's 30?
The 70-year-old has 70 ingredients to potentially cook a meal.
The 30-year-old has 30 ingredients to cook a meal.
So less raw material.
But the 30-year-old might be a better cook.
And if you're a better cook when it comes to wisdom, you know what to do with the raw material.
Yeah.
You learn from your life experience.
Something I've done ever since I was 28 years old, because I was just an idiot at a CEO of a boutique hotel company that I'd started when I was 26.
Joie de vivre.
Joie de vivre, exactly.
At 28, I was lost.
And so I started a practice where every weekend I would sit down with a journal and I called it my wisdom book.
And I would write down what did I learn that week relationship-wise physically spiritually, but especially professionally.
What was I learning along the way?
I would say, what did I learn this week?
And the lessons were usually painful.
And how will it serve me in the future?
That's a wise 28-year-old.
Well, it was.
I mean to be honest with you.
I got to say I stumbled upon it, that idea, and I've been doing it now for 36 years.
But the bottom line, and I do it in Google Docs as opposed to in journals, but I have nine journals of these wisdom books.
But in Google Docs, the nice thing is that if I'm looking at...
I want to look at the history of my relationship with betrayal or anxiety.
I can just do a keyword search and like okay yes, seven years ago I had an experience of betrayal and here's the lesson I got from it.
So long story short is being able to back to the metaphor of the kitchen, being able to know what to do with the ingredients of your life.
Yeah. is maybe one of the most important skills that we can learn.
And frankly, the faster we learn wisdom, the earlier we learn wisdom, the longer we have to use it.
How does one learn wisdom?
Well, this example I've just given.
The journal.
The journal.
That's one way to learn wisdom.
So one of the best ways to learn wisdom is to be able to look at your life and to say when did my intuition work?
Or what happened and how did I learn something from that?
So wisdom is different than knowledge.
So knowledge.
I love the quote knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit and wisdom is knowing to not put it in a fruit salad.
So the reality is a fruit salad.
You don't put a tomato in a fruit salad, even though tomatoes are fruit.
And that's something you know from life experience.
But the fact that a tomato is a fruit is something you learn on Google.
But all of the world's knowledge today is in your pocket.
It's on your phone.
And so that's why, in an era in which artificial intelligence has commodified knowledge, we need more wisdom.
Wisdom is personal.
It's based upon your personal experience.
I want to sort of riff on this just a second, wisdom based on personal experience.
So I do these 10-day silent meditations, vipassanas.
Yeah, I love them.
And essentially, you're told, the Buddhist adage is that all pain comes from aversion, Or desire.
Attachment, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Desire, hell, I love desire, but no.
You're pretty good at that desire thing.
When you give in to it, you get in trouble.
And it turns out.
You know, Christianity says there's 10 commandments.
You follow the 10 commandments.
But Vipassana says, no, just sit quietly for 10 days.
And it sounds like an absurdly long amount of time, but it's actually beautiful and wonderful.
But that most of the things that you've done in your past, that you're trying to run away from or you're trying to get to, you can feel when you close your eyes.
You can feel that lie you told because it creates sort of a disharmony within you.
You can feel that, well, I'm going after that lust too much.
And when you sit with that feeling, you realize that it's not a great feeling.
And another way to define wisdom, it's the experience plus knowledge.
So you experience this dukkha, this disharmony, when you're going after desire or getting away from aversion.
You know what it feels like enough.
That in the real world, when that comes up again, you're able to say oh, that's that thing I shouldn't do.
I don't have to read the Ten Commandments.
I know it within me.
And for me that's a type of visceral wisdom accessible to anybody who will sit down on a mat, close their eyes and quiet their mind.
Yeah.
Well, there's a lot to consider there.
I think, the idea of being able to be with yourself and your thoughts, I mean, we live in an era of the age of distraction
We are doing everything we can with our phones and with our entertainment and with all kinds of things that we do.
We have sort of an addiction economy, which is really a distraction economy.
And so I think it's part of the reason why a silent meditation retreat can be so valuable and harder than people think it might be.
It's sort of like going on a fast.
The first day or two of a fast is particularly hard.
And then, once you get past the first two or three days, somehow you get into a rhythm and you really feel free from the need to eat as much.
And similarly on a meditation retreat, that first day or two.
Frankly, for a person who's not meditating much, the first hour, maybe even the first 10 minutes, are hard because you're actually breaking a habit.
But the beauty is when you can actually feel the liberation from, from that habit.
I want to move on to vulnerability.
On this show, you get extra credit for vulnerability.
Okay.
And there's two topics.
The first one's cancer.
Yeah.
You've battled with it.
I don't know how deep you want to get into the details of what your journey has been.
But what I'm most interested in are what are the lessons that life-threatening cancer diagnosis teach us?
And how do you get to those lessons?
Yeah, so I just background is that age 57, I'm 64 now I found out that I had stage one prostate cancer.
Not a big worry.
You know, prostate cancer moves slowly.
A lot of men have it.
And it's like, okay, yeah.
I mean, and it was right, as we were launching MEA and I had a book coming out called Wisdom at Work The Making of a Modern Elder, based upon my experience of being the modern elder at Airbnb.
Yeah.
Okay, I changed my diet a little bit, but I didn't really think about it much.
Three years later they had gone to stage two, and then I had a sort of specialized surgery to see if they could actually basically burn those parts of the prostate where the cancer was the most prevalent.
But by a year and a half after that, I went to stage three.
And that means the cancer had actually spread beyond the prostate.
And it was now in my pelvic lymphs and my lymph system.
And so that's when I went through two years of what now I've been told is pharmaceutical castration.
That's a terrible term.
But what it is is it's taking your testosterone down to zero.
And so I did that in 2023 and 2024.
I also had my prostate taken out for the full-on surgery called a radical prostatectomy.
And then I had 36 radiation sessions.
So that's the background.
And so I still am at stage three because after all of that, I still have a small amount of cancer in my system, but it's dormant right now.
So...
Lessons.
First lesson is I like to sort of get.
If I'm going through a hard time, I tend to retreat and go to, you know, be by myself, even though I'm in a relationship and I have family and I have two sons.
I, you know, have a hard time taking, you know, other people's help.
But one of my lessons was I need to look for support.
I don't have to do this by myself.
And so that was, you know, certainly a good lesson for anybody in life, especially when I'm giving that advice to other people as they're going through transition.
Secondly was I don't have to be the hero in my company anymore, right?
So I've been sort of a hero a lot.
That's an archetype I like.
You know, strap on the cape and I'll solve everything.
And it's very egocentric as well.
But I ran the second largest boutique hotel company in the US.
Had 52 hotels.
Ran that for 24 years.
I helped the founders of the Airbnb take their tiny little startup and turn it into the world's largest and most valuable hospitality company.
And then I started this MEA thing that's a community with 59 regional chapters around the world.
So long story short is.
I'm used to being the hero, but this time I had to say, like you know, when you don't have any testosterone and you're going through all this stuff,
At a time when we were launching our Santa Fe campus, at a time when I was having a book coming out called Learning to Love Midlife, as a time when I was reorganizing the company, I really needed to say I don't have to be the hero.
I don't have to do this by myself.
I really need other people to step up.
And so that was another lesson.
A third lesson was what matters in my life?
You know, for me, death has been something that's been an organizing principle for life.
And when I say that what I mean is that I'm not seeking death, but when you know you have a limited amount of time.
That's why the whole don't die movement is sort of weird to me.
Brian Johnson here in Venice Beach.
And it's weird in the sense like if you didn't have death as an organizing principle for life, how might life change?
You know, how might the meaning of life change?
And so I, death for me... Yeah, it's like a marathon with no...
No ending.
No ending.
You just keep running.
What's the point?
Yeah.
So when I was during the Great Recession, when I was in my late 40s going through a really hard time, I lost five male friends to suicide.
And that was ages 42 to 52.
That was in two and a half years.
And they're all unrelated to each other.
So for me, that was my first time of like, I was dealing with death.
And then I had an NDE myself, an allergic reaction to an antibiotic.
And I went to the other side and I was brought back to life.
And long story short is death was right there again.
And this is right at the same time.
And then thirdly, I had the death of a dream.
And the dream was I thought I'd be running this joie de vivre boutique hotel company into my 80s, like Sam Walton or something.
And I realized with this death experience at 47, when I had my near-death experience, I didn't want to do this anymore.
And the revelation that I had to let that go and maybe this robe of the identity of being this founder and CEO of a very successful San Francisco based hospitality company was hard, but I let.
That all was a precursor to then, 10 years later, having my my experience of learning about cancer.
So I in some ways was lucky that I could sort of see that I, you know, had foreshadowed the idea of death and now I was facing it.
It's such an uncanny weird experience because you never expect it's going to happen to you.
So for me, the third lesson is I know what's important to me.
That question 10 years from now.
What will I regret if I don't learn it or do?
It now relates to that.
I mean, so for me, that is about my sons now.
In fact, right after this episode, I jumped to the airport on my way to Houston to see my sons, who are 10 and 13.
And because I asked myself the question, What will I regret 10 years from now in my life?
Even though there's lots of things in my professional life, I could put at the top of the list.
Number one on the list is I want to spend the teenage years with my sons.
And I happen to have two sons.
I was the sperm donor to a lesbian couple who are friends.
And so I don't live with the boys, but I'm with them.
I try to be with them at least every other month for a few days.
And we do long vacations as well.
And that's the most important thing in my life.
But death has helped me to see that because I might die.
And if I don't die and I'm not with them, I won't get their teenage years over again.
I just have to underscore that question because I think it's so incredibly powerful.
What am I likely to regret in 10 years if I don't do it now?
That's right.
Anybody listening should write that question down.
It's a great conversational question with some friends.
Yes, yeah.
And it keeps you from doing the stupid shit right now and making sure you're doing the things that are really important to you and getting clear.
Most of us, I don't think, are clear on the things that are really important to our soul.
I think a lot of us are just trying to pay the bills or trying to climb the status ladder or whatever you know, want a new thing and don't realize that if you don't pay attention to certain things, they're going to be gone.
They're going to be gone forever.
And that's a powerful lesson that I guess all this proximity to death has taught you.
All that helped.
And then the fourth lesson I'd say would be, how do I improve my relationship with my body?
You know one of the things that's interesting about you know as we get older— You can't dump your body.
No, you can't dump your body, and it's like this rental vehicle we were issued at birth.
And then the question is, what do you do with this rental vehicle?
You're going to ride it hard and put it away wet.
Well, that's what people do.
You know, you spend the first half of your life riding it really hard, but also polishing it and making it look good.
And sometimes people take that look good piece— And where you polish it matters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're not going there.
The reality is that the first half of your life, you care about the externals on your body.
And the second half of your life.
This rental vehicle is more important what it feels like on the inside.
And so feeling that, like I'm less focused on the short-term vanity of my body and the long-term maintenance instead, means that I want to invest in my relationship with my body as if it's my best friend.
And so that was a revelation.
And how did it affect me?
It meant I changed my diet a little bit.
I drink a little bit less.
In fact, a lot less, actually.
But I still drink.
I still drink.
I know my blue zones.
The most controversial of the nine.
Yes, yes.
I'm sticking to it.
I still do drink.
What people sometimes miss on that one, now, if you have an addiction around alcohol, guess what?
You should stop.
But what they miss sometimes is that drinking enhances social connection, just like religion.
I mean, in fact, I think, both the drinking and the one about your mindfulness practices, especially in a religious context.
They both have a social element to them.
And if we take... your lessons as well as Bob Waldinger at Harvard and Phil Pizzo at Stanford.
I mean basically, you know, social connection is the most important variable for living a longer healthier, happier life.
And often social connection in the context of drinking, in the context of being in a religious community, enhances that.
And so I want to, you know, when people start to say like, oh yeah, no alcohol, no alcohol.
Someone wants to have no alcohol.
Frankly, when we do our Vipassana or our meditation retreats, there's no alcohol.
But we do have alcohol in many of our workshops because in many ways it's a lubricant.
It's a social lubricant that helps people to get to a place where they can feel more connected with other people.
Well, the National Academies of Science will tell you that actually, a little bit of wine a day, one or two glasses, actually lower mortality.
In other words, increase your life expectancy.
But even if a little bit of wine at five, a happy hour, a nice glass of wine with a meal shaves a year or two off your life expectancy.
So what?
The point is not just getting to 100.
The bigger point is enjoying the journey.
Well, let's talk about that for a minute.
So, yes.
And why is it, and I don't include you in this because I don't think of you this way.
Why is it that the a lot of the tech bros who are sort of like the you know, the leaders in the don't die movement and leaders on longevity podcasts and leaders on in those kinds of programs that are meant to help people live forever?
Why is it?
It's mostly men.
Why, why is it that men are so obsessed with length?
I'm not touching that one.
Lengthen life.
No, I think that's a very good point.
I think, you know, women tend to be the people in charge of health, the health of my family.
And you're right men, this sort of longevity, bro.
They're focused on this fiction, really right now, of lengthening the capacity of the human machine or lengthening life.
Yeah.
It's a very different thing.
You know, one is maintaining what I have and the bros are getting more, getting more.
And it's- What do you think of that though?
I mean I'd love to get.
I mean, if you're open to talking about you don't have to mention specific people, but what is your point of view on that?
Because it's actually gotten to a place in the MEA community where there's sort of factions and there's sort of the faction of people like who are like yeah, this is great to lengthen our life and to extend it as much as possible.
That's more of the men in our program.
Whereas the women in the program are like, you know what?
Length is not important if you don't have depth.
And so depth is what's really important.
And men get focused on longevity, women get focused on wellness.
And if we want to do an MEA program and we want to attract men, we put longevity in the title.
If we want to attract women, we put wellness in the title.
The holidays are such a joyful time, but let's be honest, they can also be a lot.
There's so much to cook, so much to clean, and unfortunately, so much food waste.
You know, we're always thinking about the small things we can do that make an impact not just for our own happiness but for the planet too.
And that's why I'm such a big fan of my Mill Food Recycler.
Mill is odorless and fully automated, eliminating all the pain points associated with old-fashioned compost pails and smelly garbage cans.
It makes keeping food out of the trash as easy as dropping it in.
It can be hectic in my home around the holidays, but Mill keeps me keeping my cool when I'm hosting.
With all the food prep and guests arriving, I never have to stress about the trash.
Plus, it looks super cool and modern in my kitchen.
Add Mill to your wishlist or gift one now.
Get up to 200 off during their biggest sale of the season, Thursday November 20th through Monday December 1st.
Miss the sale?
You can still get $75 off with code HAPPY.
Visit mill.com slash HAPPY.
That's mill.com slash H-A-P-P-Y.
You know, when it comes to holiday gift giving, the hope is that we're giving things that people really love beautiful, timeless pieces that they'll wear for years.
That's why, Elizabeth, you and I love Quince.
I mean from Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats.
Everything Quince does is premium quality at a price that actually makes sense.
Quince has something for everyone.
It has silk tops and skirts for dressing up, perfectly cut denim for everyday wear and And outerwear that actually keeps you warm.
Yes, Scratch.
I gave myself a gift from Quince.
I just recently got the featherless quilted long puffer jacket in silk and white.
So it sort of elevates all of my outfits as we go into winter.
I am loving it.
Find gifts so good you'll want to keep them with Quince.
Go to quince.com slash Gretchen for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
Now available in Canada too.
That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com.
Slash Gretchen to get free shipping and 365-day returns.
Quincecom slash Gretchen.
There is one thing that all people on Earth have in common.
We move through the world in a human body.
Bodies ache, they bleed, they desire, they hold the stories of our lives.
International Planned Parenthood Federation, or IPPF, is sharing some of those stories from around the world.
Read them now at IPPF.org slash everybody.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
The holidays are a time of traditions.
Maybe you're somebody who has lots of traditions around the new year.
Maybe you're a person who doesn't have many traditions around the new year.
A great tradition to start for yourself is to find ways to make December a way to close the year with clarity rather than chaos.
And online therapy is a great way to find that clarity as you head into the new year.
Yeah.
With over 30000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people globally.
And it works with an average rating of 49 out of 5 for a live session, based on over 17 million client reviews.
This December, start a new tradition by taking care of you.
Our listeners get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash Gretchen Rubin.
That's betterhelp.com slash Gretchen Rubin.
You know, there's two kinds of longevity.
One is avoiding the diseases that foreshorten our lives.
So the average American is losing about 14 years due to avoidable diseases like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes dementia, most of which is avoidable, or about 60 of cancer.
55 of cancers are avoidable.
That's something we can all do.
And by avoiding them, we're going to live longer, i.e. longevity.
The irresponsible arm of longevity is the one that tells you take this rapamycin or this metformin, or run down to Central America and get stem cells.
This is scientific fact.
There is no pill, no supplement, no longevity hack that has been shown to add years of life expectancy to humans.
It's amazing.
None, none.
There's all kinds of theoretical underpinnings.
And will we get to something that intervenes that could actually change the biology of aging?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we're not there yet.
And all these longevity bros, they're selling you a pipe dream.
And most of the time they have some bullshit or some bullshit program or olive oil or whatever to make money off of you.
And they make money off of hyperbole and this sort of circus snake oil salesman of take this right now and you're going to live longer.
And it just does not exist.
And I'm standing by those words.
And I was sort of worried about that you might not go there and tell us your real thoughts on this, but you did.
And I appreciate that, because I think there's a lot of people who are feeling that there's a bit of a pushback, I think, toward the messaging which is, like you know, this is you know, death can maybe be extinct.
We can like get rid of death as if it's not part of the human condition.
I love Becca Levy's work from Yale.
And she has shown that over 20 years of studies that when people shift their mindset on aging in midlife To look forward to,
From a negative to a positive, such that you don't see aging as a overall negative, but overall there's an unexpected upside of aging.
You gain seven and a half years of additional life.
So shifting your mindset on aging is better than actually even stopping smoking at 50 or starting exercising at 50.
So that's the part that's interesting to me, the idea.
And of course, the Power 9 from Blue Zones.
You know, these guys in Sardinia are not going to 24-hour fitness, nor are they taking supplements.
And so there's a history that we can look at to say many of the things that people do to live a longer, healthier life relate to purpose.
They relate to social connection.
They are not about, you know, being a lab rat.
And I think so much of what's going on right now is like the lab rat mentality of like, if I do these things, it's all metrics based.
When...
You know, when I hear Brian Johnson in his interviews, you know I think we should cut him some slack because the guy is doing something good for humanity.
At the same time I get depressed when I hear him on his interviews because he seems like a pretty lonely guy.
And when you hear how much he's doing and how structured and regimented his life is and how possessed there's a point at which purpose becomes a possession.
The possession of you're possessed by what you're doing.
I worry that this is someone who has maybe lost track of the balance and what's really important in life.
You know, I was ready to hate Brian Johnson.
Then I watched his Netflix series. and I became oddly endeared with him.
To your point, he was a guy who was kind of lost, but found his purpose.
And he not only found his purpose, he attracted a lot of other people who were looking for purpose.
And I even agree with several of his modalities.
I think generally speaking, he eats a diet of longevity.
Generally speaking, physical activity is good.
And he's got a number of people to surround himself with.
And I think those three things are going to do more to lengthen his life than any of this other snake oil or, you know, young people's plasma or whatever.
But it's his purpose.
And, you know, it's no more unhealthy than having an obsession with the Miami Dolphins, you know.
Because he has money and he's spending his own money to do this.
I think that's why he gets beaten up a lot.
There's money for crying out loud.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think at the same time, there's a sense that... You said it, actually.
And that is that all of these different kinds of modalities that are being introduced, some of which have been around a long time, but most of which are, like pill-based kind of, or medicine-based, or medical intervention-based there's not much evidence yet that they're having an impact.
But think about it, the.
It's very hard to make money on purpose.
You're kind of doing it, yeah.
Yeah, we both know if you could put purpose in a capsule, it'd be a blockbuster drug for sure.
There is billions of dollars of revenue to be made in pharmaceuticals.
Put something in a pill and market the hell out of it and and create all this sort of promise that it's going to make you better, more vital or have better sex.
And there is.
They do have a pill for that.
All the marketing, the hundreds of marketing messages that rinse over our psyche every single day, are telling us to buy something that is going to make us look better, feel better, live longer.
Turn on 60 Minutes.
I love that show, 60 Minutes.
Yeah.
It's all bizarre pharmaceutical ads.
You know most of these longevity bros.
They're going to get on and try to sell us some pill or supplement that is going to make us live longer.
None of them are going to, but that's where the money is.
There's no money in make three friends.
Yeah.
Like Robert Waldringer will tell us, who care about us on a bad day?
Where's the money in that?
Yeah.
Where's the money?
In sitting down doing a self-assessment, understanding what are the things they're going to regret in 10 years and start doing something about it today.
There is a mountain of academic literature that supports the efficacies of social connection and purpose.
There's nothing under the other ones, but you make money over here with the quick fix.
You don't make it out with the real thing.
You're not going to have Blue Zone supplements?
Over my dead body.
Okay, I know you're no longer running the business, but like, you know, like.
No, but the minute that happens, I'll be gone.
Yeah, okay.
And the people I work with know that.
Okay, when it comes to supplements, first of all, there's only three factories in america that make supplements whether you're buying them in a fancy jar really yeah, three major uh, but your most source, you know if you're, if you have this, this uh uh, bougie boutique supplement that grow your hair, or whatever.
Yeah, you're going to one of these.
I could use that.
Okay, I like your hair.
But the only supplements that seem to work when you follow cohorts of people over time are number one cheap multivitamins.
You buy 9.99 for 1,000 of them at Costco.
That seemed to work.
Or at least they don't seem to do any harm.
Second one, vitamin B12 for vegans.
You need vitamin B12.
And then vitamin D for some people.
I mean, we're talking General Papa.
If your doctor, a real doctor tells you you need it.
But when you take the population of people who take supplements every day and then compare it to the population who don't take supplements, the people who aren't taking supplements have higher life expectancy.
So as a group... Really?
Yes.
Wow.
So supplement takers have higher mortality, in other words.
They're more likely to die than those who aren't.
So there's really no argument except expensive pee for taking supplements.
Yeah.
Wow.
Better to find your purpose.
Okay.
One more vulnerability question.
Tell me about a time when you cried.
Oh, you know, crying...
So crying is a funny thing for me because.
So there was a time when I was on the seventh grade basketball team and I was a starter and I was pretty good.
I did not make the eighth grade basketball team.
And I ran out to the car after I found that out and I buried my head in my mom's lap and I cried.
And I was really crushed.
And...
But that was at age, what, 13 maybe?
So I was sort of early puberty.
And I didn't cry again for about 12 years.
And there was a lot of reason for that.
I was at that time doing everything I could to live up to my dad's idea of a man.
My dad was a Marine captain in the reserves.
And I'm Stephen Townsend Conley Jr., chip off the old block.
That's where Chip came from.
And my dad was my baseball coach.
I was the star pitcher.
My dad was an Eagle Scout and ran the Boy Scout troop.
And I was an Eagle Scout.
Went to the same college and high school as my dad.
I mean, I was really on the path there.
And I was dating women, girls in high school, women in college.
But I knew I was gay.
And I knew there was a part of me that felt like...
I needed to do what I could to hide this.
And so crying was not something I was going to do.
So from age 12 or 13, let's say 13 until age 24, I didn't cry.
Then at 24, I was seeing a therapist.
I came out when I was 22.
And at 24, I was seeing a therapist and she fired me.
Now, when I say fired me, that's over-dramatizing it.
But she basically said she'd done everything she could to help.
And So I remember walking from the therapy appointment to my car and I just broke down and cried.
And, um, so it was, and it was a lot, I was a lot of trying to fix.
I was trying to try to fix and try to actually be straight.
I was trying to, I know, I know, I know.
And so, um, there was this sense of like, okay, I can now just surrender to this.
And um, But as I've gotten older, I mean being the hero, being the tough guy always trying to sort of – it's not like I'm not vulnerable.
You see me in the classroom.
I mean, I don't mind being candid and vulnerable and all that.
But I think tears for me has always been tough because of my dad.
So long story short is the times I am most apt to cry are watching a film on a plane.
And it could be a schmaltzy film.
I'll never forget I was watching...
Oh, Finding Forrester.
I was watching that movie on a plane and I just lost it.
And the woman sitting next to me just started holding my hand.
It was so beautiful.
I hadn't met her at all.
We hadn't talked, but she just started holding my hand.
So a film that really touches me will take me there.
When it comes to my relational life...
When someone's going through a really hard time maybe suicidal thoughts emotionally, in a really difficult place, I will shed tears.
Where I have a really hard time, I don't think I've cried twice.
In fact, I haven't cried around my cancer.
I have not had that cathartic experience.
So maybe because it's been a gift.
Maybe because it's been a gift.
Maybe because there's a part of me on some levels that says like, you have to be strong.
You know, big boys don't cry.
Except on airplanes with dorky movies.
Yeah, with strangers.
So I would just say at MEA, in a typical workshop, there's a lot of crying going on.
And so there are times when someone will say something and I get teary.
I will say, Chip, the MEA, a lot of people from around the world and they're...
They have their own problems, and sometimes they've done extraordinary things in life and sometimes they're just normal people.
And you're kind of the God.
I mean, you're famous from these books and you've been financially successful and you've built these amazing retreat spaces.
And you come in there...
Like everybody's friend.
And I wouldn't be, again, I wouldn't be saying this.
I haven't experienced.
Yeah.
You're empathetic.
You come off as thinking to yourself, I'm no better than you.
I am going on this journey with you.
Yeah.
I'm here to metaphorically hold your hand and take you on the journey.
And you don't throw off this air of superiority at all.
And I think that is whatever you've done to overcome that hubris.
I just kind of high five you here.
Listen, there's a guy named Richard Rohr, famous Christian mystic and written 50 books.
And he says, the most important thing to know in life is a humiliation a day, hopefully mild.
And he's a friend of mine.
That should be a new app.
Yeah.
You're not as good as you think.
Yes.
Having the humility.
Living in Minnesota is easy.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, having humility is, I actually, it reinforces life as well.
And for me, the last thing I want to be is a guru.
You know, there's lots of, There's lots of retreat centers or programs.
I don't want to be Tony Robbins.
I don't – I'm not looking to – Enough hair.
No, I just – I don't really want to be that person who is put up on a pedestal.
So when – I think one of the surprises for a lot of people when they're coming to a workshop where I'm co-leading it, like I did with you – is that I will be vulnerable and I'll actually go there.
I'm not there to be the genius nor the guru.
I'm there to be the human.
One of the things I say is I'm in the business of making love.
And that is not.
You know, when you lose all your testosterone, you're definitely not in the business of making love.
But when you create the conditions for people to fall in love with each other as quickly as we do at MEA, you're doing something the world needs more of.
And so if you were to distill down who I am and what my gift is in the world, because I love the quote from David Viscott who says the purpose of your life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
And the meaning of life is to give it away.
My gift is to be a social alchemist, a mixologist of people, creating a potent cocktail of people coming together in a vulnerable way to discover a little bit more about who they are.
I love that.
That was like the end of an epic novel.
There's been no focus on optimizing midlife.
All this talk about retirement and end of life and old age, but here you're bringing the best voices in the world to this topic we've completely overlooked, but it's arguably the most important period of our lives.
You're bringing purpose to it.
Well, the truth is, you know what?
We do focus on the end of life a lot.
And we focus on, you know, that health system certainly does.
The investment you make in your midlife helps your end of life.
There's no doubt about that.
I mean, it both extends it, it deepens it, makes it more happy.
So yes, I really wanted to demystify, elevate and operationalize midlife in a way where people could say I now have a roadmap.
You know, the reality is...
500 years ago, cartographers became very important because there was a whole part of the world that nobody had ever seen.
And so the cartographers would go out with Christopher Columbus and map things, because there was no map of the world.
Otherwise, you fell off and there were dragons.
That's right.
So there was like the Flat Earth Society.
So...
I'm sort of a cartographer in the sense that with the extension of longevity as we've had it, midlife has become a longer life stage.
And yet we have no roadmap for it.
We have roadmaps for early in life.
We have roadmaps for the end of life.
We have social infrastructure to help support adolescents.
Where is the social infrastructure to support middle-essence people in the middle of their life?
Where do we find your podcast?
Where do we find out about MEA?
Where do we follow you on Instagram?
Yeah, you'll find Midlife Crystalist wherever you listen to podcasts.
Chipconley.com is how people find me.
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn.
I have a daily blog, which you'll find on the Chip Conley website or on the MEA website.
The MEA website's meawisdom.com.
So those are all the ways.
And yes, I'm on Instagram.
And my newest book is The Midlife Manifesto, a book that is really a distillation of everything I know about midlife in a format that is you can read it in an hour.
So.
The original modern elder, Chip Conway.
Thank you very much.
From the Onward Project.
Hi, Gretchen, Craig Robinson, and my little sister Michelle here.
We host a new podcast called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
We know you're the queen of giving advice, so we wanted to get a few tips from you.
You know, Gretchen, a lot of our listeners are going through some major life changes.
What advice do you have for folks who are trying to stay grounded in the midst of major life transitions?
Craig and Michelle, I am so happy to be talking to you.
Here are a few questions that might help us gain perspective.
So consider questions like this.
What activities take up my time but are not particularly useful or stimulating for me?
Do I spend a lot of time on something that's important to someone else but is not very important to me?
If I could magically change one habit in my life, what would I choose?
And here's a question.
Would I like to have more time in solitude restorative solitude or would I like to have more time with friends?
You know, just thinking about questions like this can help us start to figure out how we might make our lives happier.
With greater self-knowledge, we're better able to make hard decisions that reflect ourselves, our own nature, our own interests, our own values.
In my own case, I have found that the more my life reflects my nature, the happier I get and the more grounded I feel when I'm going through a period of major change or transition.
For more great advice, search for IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson wherever you get podcasts.
You can listen to Issa Rae on letting go of certain friendships, Kiki Palmer on why disappointment is actually the key to career success, Seth and Lauren Rogan on caring for aging parents, and so many more.
