The Longevity Blueprint: 6 Ways To Reinvent Yourself in Midlife

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Longevity Blueprint: 6 Ways To Reinvent Yourself in Midlife

Episode Details:

• Podcast: The Tamsen Show
• Host: Tamsen Fadal
• Guest: Chip Conley
• Release Date: July 16, 2025
• Description: In this transformative episode, host Tamsen Fadal engages with Chip Conley, an accomplished entrepreneur and author, to explore six actionable steps for reinventing oneself during midlife. Drawing from personal experiences and professional insights, Chip shares a comprehensive blueprint for navigating the complexities of midlife transitions.

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Introduction: Setting the Stage for Reinvention

The episode opens with Tamsen Fadal expressing her gratitude to the millions of listeners and introducing the guest, Chip Conley. Tamsen highlights Chip's impactful journey, noting his near-death experiences and how they reshaped his understanding of success and midlife.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [02:02]: "In this episode, he's gonna share six raw, powerful steps to help you reinvent your life from the inside out."

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Step 1: Redefine What Aging Means

Chip Conley emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset around aging. He challenges the conventional negative perceptions and introduces the concept of being "age fluid," where age is viewed as a number that doesn't solely define one's capabilities or identity.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [13:04]: "Aging and growing are the same thing... Be age fluid, which means that... age is just a number, but not necessarily a number that has to define you."

He cites research by Becca Levy from Yale, which demonstrates that a positive mindset towards aging can significantly increase longevity—by seven and a half years.

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Step 2: Embrace the In Between

The "in between" stages of life, referred to as "middlescence," are often fraught with uncertainty and lack of social support compared to adolescence. Chip outlines three phases within any transition:

1. Ending: Letting go of the past.
2. Messy Middle: Navigating the uncertainty with support.
3. Beginning: Starting something new with a growth mindset.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [26:12]: "The in between stages are often normal and natural, but we don't talk about them... there's no social infrastructure to support it."

He introduces a free resource, "Anatomy of a Transition," available on the Modern Elder Academy (MEA) website, to assist listeners in understanding these phases.

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Step 3: Stop Chasing Achievements. Start Paying Attention to What Feels Good

Chip differentiates between happiness and joy, using J.D. Salinger's analogy that "happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid." While happiness is often tied to external achievements, joy emanates from within and is less dependent on circumstances.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [33:10]: "Happiness is something you strive for... whereas joy comes from within you."

He advises listeners, especially women juggling multiple roles, to intentionally invest time in activities that bring them joy, such as a weekly massage or a solo bubble bath.

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Step 4: Edit Your Life

Drawing parallels to Marie Kondo's decluttering philosophy, Chip advocates for the "Great Midlife Edit." This involves assessing all aspects of one's life—relationships, obligations, possessions—and determining what no longer serves one's current self.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [41:25]: "By the time we get to around 50, we have accumulated way too much. It's time to do what we call the great midlife edit."

Tamsen relates this to her personal experience of cleaning her closet during stressful times, highlighting the universal need to strip back and gain clarity.

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Step 5: Build Emotional Strength, Not Just Mental Toughness

Chip distinguishes between resilience (mental toughness) and emotional strength. While resilience helps individuals survive challenges, emotional strength enables them to thrive by being self-aware and adaptable.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [47:39]: "Resilience will buy you time, but adaptability will buy you a future."

He recommends tools like journaling, personality tests (e.g., the Enneagram), and seeking support from coaches or therapists to enhance emotional awareness.

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Step 6: Find Purpose Through Service

Concluding with the most favored step, Chip discusses the fulfillment that comes from serving others. He shares a poignant quote from Rabindranath Tagore: "I awoke and saw that life is service. And I saw that service is joy," emphasizing that purpose often arises from contributing to the well-being of others.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [53:33]: "We have a bit of purpose performance anxiety in the U.S., but we all have purposes. They can be big P or small p purposes."

He encourages listeners to identify both large and small purposes, advocating for actions that ignite curiosity and address neglected areas in one's life.

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Conclusion: Embracing the Second Half of Life

Tamsen and Chip conclude by reflecting on the transformative potential of midlife. Chip shares his ongoing projects, including his new book and the Modern Elder Academy, which supports individuals in navigating midlife transitions.

Notable Quote:

Chip Conley [57:27]: "Midlife has one word attached to it, and it's a bad brand. It's crisis. But when you realize that midlife is a chrysalis, you may actually have a low point, but it gets better after around 50."

Tamsen underscores the episode's key message: midlife is not a period of decline but an opportunity for profound personal growth and reinvention.

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Final Thoughts: This episode of The Tamsen Show offers a comprehensive roadmap for individuals seeking to reinvent themselves during midlife. Through Chip Conley's insightful six-step blueprint, listeners are empowered to redefine aging, embrace transitions, prioritize joy over achievements, edit their lives, build emotional resilience, and find purpose through service. The conversation serves as a beacon for those navigating the challenges and opportunities of midlife, providing both inspiration and practical strategies for a fulfilling second act.

Transcript

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Chip Conley]

I'm not switching my.

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Chip Conley]

I think the question is like, why is this dude on your show? Let's just be honest.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Chip Conley flatlined. He had nine near death experiences in 90 minutes. Then he survived cancer and came back with a completely different definition of success and a mission to change how we think about midlife.

[Chip Conley]

The key is to be age fluid. How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

[Tamsen Fadal]

In this episode, he's gonna share six raw, powerful steps to help you reinvent your life from the inside out.

[Chip Conley]

You have a lot more life ahead of you ten years from now. What will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? It's a powerful question.

[Tamsen Fadal]

So before we start, I just wanna say thank you. Millions of you have now listened to the Tamson Show. I still can't believe it. I am so grateful you're here. If these conversations have helped you in any way, please hit subscribe and leave a review if you can. I read every single one, and they help keep us on those charts so we can keep on bringing you real powerful moments. I am so excited for you to hear this conversation with Chip Conley. We're breaking down his blueprint into six steps that you can actually apply to your life, starting right now. Honestly, Step six might be my favorite, so make sure you stick around until the end. So let's get into it. Chip, it's so good to see you, Tamsen.

[Chip Conley]

Thank you.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Every once in a while, you meet somebody and, like, their story sticks with you. And I told you when you came in here and sat down, your story has stuck with me for a very, very long time.

[Chip Conley]

Thank you.

[Tamsen Fadal]

So I'm excited for us to get to sit down while you're. While you're here in New York. You know, I've had the honor of hearing your story before. It was about a year and a half ago, but for anybody who has not heard it, can you share that with us? Because I think your story frames so much of what we're going to talk about today.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. So I think the question is, like, why is this dude on your show? Let's just be honest. So, yeah, I was at a women's sex symposium workshop conference here in New York, and I told my story, and my story is this. I, seven years ago, found out that I had stage one prostate cancer. It moved to stage two and stage three. And so two and a half years ago, it went to stage three. At that time, my treatment program went pretty aggressive, and So I had two surgeries. Ultimately, I have my prostate out. 36 radiation sessions, 19 months of hormone depletion therapy. Now, the reason they do hormone depletion therapy is because it actually reduces your testosterone to zero or close to it. And testosterone feeds prostate cancer. So my prostate cancer had metastasized to my lymphs. Long story short is, when you do that to a man, you end up having menopause. You have all of the symptoms of menopause except for some of the emotional ones. Because I'm not stopping menstruation. And, you know, and I'm not dealing with, am I menstruating or not? So I had hot flashes, night sweats, brain fog, emotional rollercoaster, bloating. I gained 20 pounds. What I ended up doing is starting to write on my daily blog about my menopause experience. And what was so interesting was both men and women were really intrigued by it. The men, partly because, oh, wow. Now I understand what women.

[Tamsen Fadal]

This is real.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. I understand what women go through. I listen to my spouse, and I don't listen well. I really don't listen to my spouse. And she complains about it, but now I know a guy who's gone through it. And then women really just appreciated the fact that I was being empathetic to what. What they go through.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I mean, I remember that story. And you actually got rid of your. You actually came there prepared to talk about something else, Right. You had, like, a script.

[Chip Conley]

I threw my script into the audience because when I got there, and I was hearing all these women, like, tell their story, and it was very unfiltered. And I was like, okay, I'm not gonna do my talk the way I was gonna do it. I'm gonna just tell people what it's like, you know, to have no libido, to feel like a eunuch. I mean, it was a really hard thing for a man. And, you know, it tests your sense of masculinity and being. Being virile. And. And so men do go through something called andropause. Of course, most men. Well, of course. But most men, 80, but they don't. 80% of men don't know what the word andropause means. So what andropause is, is it's a much more tempered version of menopause, but doesn't have some of the other consequences. Like, you know, a man can still have babies, right? Or can make babies the rest of their life, but they start losing their testosterone. We start losing our testosterone around late 30s and about 1% a year. And so there's that. There's the viscous fat that happens in your gut. So men have this belly that starts to form. They have less energy and less sexual appetite, and all these things are happening, but men don't talk about it. So you have made a big difference for women by helping women talk about this. And men just don't talk about andropause.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And I think need to know they do. I think women ask the question a lot. Don't men go through anything like this?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, well, there's that. And men, you know, men's. You know, the suicide rate for men. I lost five male friends to suicide, ages 42 to 52, between 2008 and 2010. And so men, because they don't do a very good job of communicating what's going on and their vulnerabilities. And women are so much better at making friends and keeping them. Men, sometimes around 50 years old and feeling pretty lost and bewildered and sometimes at the end of the rope.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I want to talk about that because I do think that whole concept of friendship and community and what you have created in this season of life is just really extraordinary for men and women. I know before this you had been tested even before what happened a few years ago. Can you go back and talk a little bit about that? Because you brought it up in your podcast and I think it's important to share.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. So I was a boutique hotelier in San Francisco, became the second largest boutique hotelier in the U.S. 52 hotels around California. Loved it till I. I mean, it was like there was no dimmer switch on this one.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I was like, I hear you.

[Chip Conley]

You know what I mean?

[Tamsen Fadal]

I do know what you.

[Chip Conley]

Right. You know, and it's hard and especially for you, like the ageism that goes on and the sexism that goes on in media is crazy. Well, for me there's no ageism or sexism, but there was this awakening of like, I'm starting to lose friends to suicide at a time when I was struggling with my own mental and emotional health. And I ended up having an nde, a near death experience. I died and to the other side nine times over 90 minutes. And it was that that woke me up in saying, you know what, I can change this. I do not have to continue to have this identity of for 24 years of the founder and CEO of this big hotel company. I don't want to do it anymore. I had a long term relationship ending. I had a foster son who's an adult who was going to prison wrongfully. I didn't, you know, I had all this stuff happening and I. All at the same time, all at the same time. It's like a life quake. It was what Bruce Filer, the author, calls it. And long story short, I ended up making a bunch of changes in my life. At the time, I didn't realize I was going through what some people would call a midlife crisis. What I now call a midlife chrysalis. The idea between caterpillar and butterfly is this midlife stage. And so it helped awaken me to the fact that I could have a different life in my 50s and beyond.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Did it really did that? Is that what reframed your idea of aging and reinvention and purpose, do you think? You know, a near death, I can imagine does that, but maybe not to everybody.

[Chip Conley]

Oh my God. When you die and go to the other side and sort of see what that's like you and what do you see? Yeah.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Can you share?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. And I know this partly because it happened nine times over 90 minutes. And each time I'd come back from the other side, I would say to the nurse or the paramedic or whoever's holding my hand, this is what I saw. And they'd say, oh, that's what you said like 3 minutes ago when you went flatline. And so what I saw in the brief version, I was in a tall ceilinged second floor, like a living room in the Swiss Alps or somewhere. Lots of trees, beautiful skylight, kaleidoscope of colors on the wall, beautifully frangipani, tropically scented oil going across the floor that I could actually taste. I could, but I was flying. I was flying with arms, but also like a bird. And I was surrounded by all of these tweeting birds, like 30 or 40 of them, all speaking to me. I could understand bird talk. They literally were saying to me, chip, slow down, slow down. Beauty and awe can only be seen when you slow down. And so I was like experiencing sort of this ecstatic experience. And then the birds, all of a sudden, the 30 foot tall windows going outside opened and the birds all flew outside and they said, it's time to go. And so I tried to actually fly outside, but each time I'd try to fly outside, I'd come back to life.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And you'd wake up again.

[Chip Conley]

And I wake up again in this big, beautiful, light filled room. And so that was my experience. But, yes, dying is an amazing organizing principle for living. So I'm not suggesting everybody go out.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And get NDE and their death certification. That is not the message.

[Chip Conley]

You know, I made the best use of it. And I spent in my early 50s just figuring out how to be curious again, because I'd been on a treadmill. You know what that's like. I mean, I do know I'd been on a treadmill and I hadn't had any time to be curious and give myself time to figure out what I wanted to do.

[Tamsen Fadal]

You have written a number of books. Learning to Love Midlife is one of my favorite. Yes, thank you. And you've really gone through a blueprint that we haven't had and we haven't. And, you know, you mentioned Bruce, but there's been a number of books out that have talked about the fact that there's not really been a study of midlife. There was the Midas study, but there was the. Yes, that's the only one I know of. But that was a study that really kind of talked about people in Midlife. Right. We talked about the happiness curve. It talked about this time in life where you do find some happiness, but not everybody feels that right away. And I think that there's quite a transition to go to that. So you really have done a blueprint. There's a wealth of knowledge. I want to talk about the steps that you see and then you can help people take. Because I get a lot of questions about how I went from. And my story was I was in news for 30 years and. And then making a transition and knowing I was done, but not knowing where I was going next and continuing to push up against this phrase of now what? And that was all I kept hearing in my head, like, now what? What's next? Now what? What's next? So let's talk about those steps. Those steps that you have.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. If you were to sell. So the subtitle of Learning to Live Midlife is 12 reasons why life Gets better with Age. But if you were to distill it down to six, okay, six steps, they would be the following. Redefine what aging means. Number two is embrace the in between. Number three is stop chasing achievements. Start paying attention to what feels good. Number four is edit your life. Number five is build emotional strength, not just mental toughness. And finally, number six is find purpose by helping someone else.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Redefining what aging means to you. I find that one to be so big, but you really drill it down so people can feel it.

[Chip Conley]

You know, aging and growing are the same thing, but when someone is 15 years old, you say, oh, look at Janie. Look at how much you've grown. You wouldn't say that to a 55 year old.

[Tamsen Fadal]

No, because you better not.

[Chip Conley]

Because we get obsessed with the physical side of growth. But there's an emotional and a cultural and a relational and a spiritual side of growth. We're growing our whole life, and we're aging our whole life. And so Becca Levy at Yale has shown the following, and it's just an amazing study. She's shown that when you shift your mindset on aging from a negative to a positive, which is hard to do in an ageist culture like the U.S. 100%. But if you can do that in midlife, let's say at around 50 ish, you gain seven and a half years of additional longevity, which is more than any of the biohacking bros can do with any of the things they're doing right now. So this idea of shifting the mindset is really essential. And so learning that, okay, we can be age fluid, we don't have to be defined by our, our chronological age. We could have a biological age and an emotional age and a cognitive age.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And because people are always saying, like, I don't, I don't feel like I'm 54. I feel like I'm still 27.

[Chip Conley]

That's right. I mean, you can feel as wise as a 75 year old and as, and as, you know, energetic as a 25 year old. So, yeah, so the key is to be age fluid, which means that there's a guy named Satchel Page. He was a famous pitcher, and he said, how old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? Because actually he was born.

[Tamsen Fadal]

That's a good question.

[Chip Conley]

He was born in a time where he didn't have a gift certificate, he didn't have a birth certificate. And because he didn't have a birth certificate, he didn't know how old he was. But he was actually 47 years old pitching in the major leagues. And so this idea of age just being a number, but not necessarily a number that has to define you is really critical and understanding. Again, the U curve of happiness research, which shows that 45 to 50 to 52 is the low point in life satisfaction, although recent research now shows that, frankly, young adults are more unhappy than that. But it gets better after that.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Why do you think it gets better?

[Chip Conley]

It gets better because, quite frankly, as Brene Brown, who's a big fan of Modern Elder Academy Mea, the program we started, she calls it the midlife unraveling. She says it's around 45 or 50 that you start unraveling the definition of success you have. You start unraveling the expectations and obligations you have, and you get a little bit more. You become the screenwriter of your own life. You have no more Fs left to give.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes, I hear that so much nowadays, which I really like. Yeah, it's so funny.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, it's good.

[Tamsen Fadal]

It's good.

[Chip Conley]

It's one of the 12 reasons it's so true, though, especially for women, because for a lot of women, there has been a sense that you're a people pleaser. There's a way you're supposed to be, and you're supposed to fit into some. And it's like at some point you say, like, you know, I don't really want to do that anymore. And it doesn't mean you don't care about anything anymore. It just means you're more judicious and discerning about what you do care about.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And I think that's an important distinction. I think it's important that we're not saying you just give up. No, it's just that you're deciding what you're going to focus on. And it doesn't have to be everything to everyone.

[Chip Conley]

No, exactly. And so this idea of, how do we help build a life, that's great. You are, I think, 54 years old.

[Tamsen Fadal]

54, yeah.

[Chip Conley]

So you're the average age of the person who comes to the modern elder Academy, and 65% of the people who come to MEA are women. If you live till 90, Tamsin, I think the chances are really good you will. You're halfway through your adult life. So you have as many years of adulthood, 18 to 54, 36 years behind you, as you have ahead of you. If you live beyond 50, you're not even halfway through your adult life. And most of us think back to age 18 and say, like, that was a different person. But can you imagine that you have that much time ahead of you? And that's a really important part of the aging process, is to have longevity, literacy, to understand, like, you have a lot more life ahead of you. So you might ask a question 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? It's a powerful question, because the longer you have to live, the more you realize, okay, I might learn Spanish now or I might learn to surf. And when I first moved to Mexico, I had a mindset which was like, I'm too old to learn a foreign language. I'm too old to learn to surf at age 56, at that time, because I'm 64 now. Long story short is, when I put it in the framework of 10 years from now, will I regret that I didn't learn Spanish or learn to surf?

[Tamsen Fadal]

And.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, because anticipated regret is a form of wisdom.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And I do hear that a lot, though. I hear that phrase a lot. Like, I'm too old to do that now. Like, why would I do. Why would I start that now? But why wouldn't you start that now.

[Chip Conley]

If you realize that you have as much life ahead of you? I mean, if you're 45 and you're gonna live till 100, you have two thirds of your adult life still ahead of you. And scientists today say that in the developed world, like the U.S. over half of the kids who are being born today are gonna live to 100. So we really need to rethink this map of life that we have.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And that's what I think, too. And I Think it's really important to shift the story. But we still have a lot of people who are afraid of getting older. Yeah, we are. And how do we shift that? How do we start that shift now? Because I think we can sit. Really?

[Chip Conley]

Do, do you do it?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Totally. What? Yes. I'm very open about it. But I stopped the filler. I did stop the filler.

[Chip Conley]

Why'd you stop the filler?

[Tamsen Fadal]

You know, I don't know. I didn't. I felt, well, first of all, it was too much work, it's too expensive. But I also think that, like I said to myself, this, if I'm doing that at this age, what am I gonna be doing in 10 years and 20 years and 30 years? So I really, like tried to pull back on some of that maintenance.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. I think here's the way I would look at it. We were issued a body, a rental vehicle at birth.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes.

[Chip Conley]

We rent this vehicle and in the first half of our life, we wanna make sure that rental vehicle looks damn good. Shine it, you know, wash it every, you know, once a week. And it's gotta look good. But in the second half of our life, it's not about short term vanity, it's about long term maintenance. So moving to a place where we're more focused on what does it feel like inside the car, like inside of ourselves than outside is an important piece. So, yes, aging. And aging is more cruel to women than men because we have silver foxes, we don't have silver vixens.

[Tamsen Fadal]

No.

[Chip Conley]

And there's an element that, you know, the culture punishes women for the natural process of aging. In fact, the whole anti aging industry is really an anti women industry.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I couldn't agree more.

[Chip Conley]

It is about making women feel badly about their natural process of aging. And so from my perspective, and especially because we have over 7,000 graduates of MEA and 2/3 of them are women, I've really learned a lot about how do you think about midlife and beyond as a woman as well as a man? And it's quite different gender wise.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah, I think it is too. I want to talk about that, but I want to go back to one thing you just said. You just said that anticipated regard is a form of wisdom. Can you explain that?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. No. So wisdom. I love wisdom. So MEA is the world's first midlife wisdom school. So wisdom's a thing. So understanding that you might regret something ten years from now or five years from now if you don't do it is not something that a 20 year old thinks about because at 20, you have a whole Runway ahead of you. It's like, if I don't do it now, I'll do it later. But as you get older, time becomes scarce, your body becomes a little bit harder. Your brain can't do things like it used to do. And your brain gets better in some ways as you get older. Wisdom was called crystallized intelligence. Arthur Brooks is from strength to strength. He's on our faculty at mea.

[Tamsen Fadal]

One of my favorites.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, he's amazing.

[Tamsen Fadal]

He really is.

[Chip Conley]

Some things get better, but some things get worse. And so as we get older, we gotta start being really thoughtful about the things that we might regret if we didn't do it now. And so that's why. And wisdom, the reason why it's wisdom is because anticipating something is a form of wisdom. Because often when you're young, you don't have that. But you know what? Wisdom is really your metabolized life experience. You know, your painful life lessons are the raw material for your future wisdom.

[Tamsen Fadal]

How do you recommend somebody live like they have decades left then? Because I think that that is hard. And I guess, you know, I was. When I was younger, I would be like, oh, someday. That's what you're talking about. Someday. Someday I do that. And I'm like, oh, this is someday right now. And it's hard to put. Put that into play sometimes.

[Chip Conley]

It's a shift in your mindset. And I would just say the number one thing is do the math. Do the math on how long you think you're gonna live. What percentage is still ahead of you when you realize how much is still ahead of you? Yeah, if it's like 90% still ahead of you, then you might not care. I don't have to do that. But when you start to realize that you have like 50% or 40% or 60%, you get a little bit more judicious about, like, okay, it is time. Because it's not going to be easier to learn Spanish at 66 than 56.

[Tamsen Fadal]

No.

[Chip Conley]

Or to learn to surf at 66 than 56.

[Tamsen Fadal]

You know how to surf?

[Chip Conley]

I do. I learned at 56 because down our campus in Baja is next to a surf break. So that was my.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I think that's amazing. That's amazing. All right, I'm going to take you up on it. I'm going to be there with you.

[Chip Conley]

Okay.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I don't know if I'm going to learn how to surf yet, but I'll get out there.

[Chip Conley]

I think we're going to have you teach.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I'll get out there.

[Chip Conley]

I think it's time to have you teach at me.

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Tamsen Fadal]

Okay, step two embrace the in between and this might be one of my favorite of the list because that in between is so scary and you don't know whether to go back right or what's ahead of you. So explain what embrace the in between is, because I definitely live that between being a news anchor and where I am today.

[Chip Conley]

So there's a word called liminal and the word liminal means to be in between something. And I love the word and I didn't know it until I started studying. Midlife adolescence is all about being in between, right? I mean you're at puberty and you're in between childhood and adulthood and you're going through a lot. And most of the transitions you're going through in adolescence are physical, and they're visible to others, and you're doing it in a peer group. The difference between one person and another at 13 or 15 in terms of puberty might be two years. The difference between two women going through perimenopause could be 15 years.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah.

[Chip Conley]

So when you're going through adolescence, it's visual. People can see it. You're doing it with a peer group, and you have a whole social infrastructure to support it. Schools and guidance counselors and parents, et cetera. When you're going through middlescence, which is the adult corollary of adolescence, you're going through all kinds of transitions, but a lot of them are internal. And you're not doing it with a peer group that you're doing with all at the same time. And there's no social infrastructure to support it. So, long story short is the transitions we go through in midlife, the in between stages, are often normal and natural, but we don't talk about them like menopause, like empty nest, like men's andropause, like, you know, getting fired or starting a new career or, you know, getting divorced or. There's so much that's happening. What we need to embrace is the following. There are three steps to any transition. In that in between stage, there's the ending of something, the messy middle and the beginning. And so for you, when you were leaving, you know, TV news, you had like, you know, if we had spent some time together, then I would have said, like, okay, how are you going to ritualize the ending of this? Like, what's the thing you do to help you say, I am moving beyond that. Like, you know, in. In the divorce world, it'd be have a divorce party.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Right?

[Chip Conley]

Empty nest. An empty nest party. I'm literally having a menopause group that you sort of like, get together and you sort of say, like, okay, I'm beyond that now. I go to the messy middle. In the messy middle, we need social support and we need to understand our through line. Where are we going with this? I mean, if you're getting divorced and it wasn't your idea to get divorced, that can be really painful. And now you're single and maybe you're empty nest. And so you have no one. You're living at home for the first time in 30 years. That's hard. And yet the thing you need to be able to say is like, wow, on the other side of this, when I put My personal profile up there on match.com I am going to have a better pair of glasses to imagine a partner because I have some wisdom. My painful life lessons have been the raw material for my future wisdom. And that helps you get through the.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Chrysalis, to start stringing it through so you have the direction so you can.

[Chip Conley]

Sort of feel like you don't get stuck. Because a lot of people in the in between space feel like they're like the circus performer going on the trapeze, and they're like, oh, no, I am in between. I don't have either of the trapeze bars.

[Tamsen Fadal]

And so you get unstuck by actually having something definitive.

[Chip Conley]

You can see where this is going and the upside of it. And then the third piece is the beginning of something new. And in that case, it's having a growth mindset. You and I both are becoming beginners at podcasting. And so what does that mean? And how do we do that and how do we have a sense of humor? Because one of the problems that shuts us down when we're becoming a beginner is feeling like we got to do it perfectly or I care.

[Tamsen Fadal]

It's serious.

[Chip Conley]

It's very serious, Very serious. And I care what other people think. And like, you know, that's where the, you know, no more Fs left to give is helpful. And so being able to just say, like, okay, I'm gonna go out and date and I'm gonna, like, it's gonna be weird and I'm gonna have fun and I'm gonna have a sense of humor and I'm not gonna do it very well at times, and that's okay.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Do you think that your near death experience got you here? Were you always like this when you looked at this, being stuck? Because I went through a, like, time of everything was very serious and it had to be perfect and get it right. And today I'm not quite like that. And it's probably more age. Do you think it was near death experience or age?

[Chip Conley]

I think the near death experience helped because it helped me to see everything's a bonus. Every day is a bonus, you know, and that's a great attitude to have. And I think also there's an element of realizing that, what if I didn't have to have any more success in my life?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Are there tools that really help during this process, this in between process? Because I know we get lists and lists and lists of things to get well, but there are some real tools that you drill down into that can.

[Chip Conley]

Help you to this idea of these three stages, you know, ending, messy middle, beginning, you know, that understanding that. Well, there's a free resource. I mean, my book talks about it, but there's a free resource on the MEA website, meawisdom.com, called the Anatomy of a Transition. It's at the bottom footer and I would just recommend people download that because it's free and it helps you to understand when you're going through a transition. What are the different stages of each of these three parts to a transition?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah, tools like journaling, rituals, routines. Are any of those important during this time so you can stay focused?

[Chip Conley]

Journaling's great. Recognize that there's a reason we go to coaches and therapists and best friends because they can see us objectively. And when we're in the midst of a transition, often sometimes we're obsessed with it and we don't realize that we're a good person. And so having, whether it's a coach or a therapist, a best friend, a spouse, an MEA workshop, you know, these things can help you to see yourself in terms of how other people see you.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Okay.

[Chip Conley]

And that's helpful as well.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I think nowadays a lot of people are very terrified of AI taking jobs because they've learned a certain skill and now they've got to relearn something. But I think that there's this growth that we're talking about that can really take you to some other level if you're interested in learning.

[Chip Conley]

AI is not going away.

[Tamsen Fadal]

No, it's not.

[Chip Conley]

Let's recognize that human wisdom is the balance for artificial intelligence. So double down on what it means to be human because at this point, and maybe never will we ever see AI be able to replace some human qualities. Ingenuity, creativity, innovation, empathy, literally being in service to someone else.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Physically touching.

[Chip Conley]

Touching, exactly. Caregiving. These are things that we should double down on. And yes, AI is going to take a whack at, at the employment market, both at senior levels as well as junior levels. So the key is to double down on what it means to be human and the qualities of being human.

[Tamsen Fadal]

To the 45 year old listening right now, who has built their career for years and all of a sudden is in the now what stage and wants to get out. What do you say to them?

[Chip Conley]

What I would say is, first of all, you have, you may have something that you always wanted to do that this is the opportunity to do, it's time to do it. And that's the unraveling that Brene Brown talks about. The Idea that, okay, I have raveled up a career path that was based upon my parents. We had a mea alum, a woman who's a litigator. And so she's been a lawyer for 35 years. Her father was a lawyer. She didn't really want to be a lawyer, but she's been doing it for 35 years. And at age 60, she doesn't want to do it anymore, but she wants to work another 10 years. So she thought she actually would become a litigation consultant. But when she came to a cultivating purpose workshop, what she learned was the following. She said, when I was a kid, a teenager, I loved cooking pies with my grandmother. It was the thing. I could still taste them, I smell them. When I go overseas, I look for the first bakery near wherever my hotel is, because I want to sort of see in a different culture what kind of baked goods they have. So she's decided, okay, I'm gonna go to, you know, a bakery school, a baking school, and for 13 weeks, I'm gonna do baking on Saturdays, and I'm gonna see if I like it. If I like it, I'm gonna become a bakery entrepreneur. And that's what she's done.

[Tamsen Fadal]

She's left such a great story.

[Chip Conley]

So she could be 45, and I've done that. But she sort of said, like, okay, I want to go back to something that feels neglected in my life now, if you're, you know, in her case, she was able to move into that and know that initially as a bakery entrepreneur, she's not going to make anything like what she was making as an attorney. So some people can do that, some people can't. But if you can, like, taking a step away from the success script you inherited, in her case, from her father is really valuable.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah. It's so important because I think we've all inherited some kind of script, whether it's being a woman and thinking we have to do xyz, or if it's from parents or peers. Okay, step three, Stop chasing achievements. Pay attention to what feels good.

[Chip Conley]

Well, there we go.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I think we're here. I think we're here.

[Chip Conley]

I think we just did a little bridge there. But all I would add to that is, at what point in your life are you going to really invest in Joy? It's a really important question. And as somebody who spent 24 years running a company about Joy, Joie de Vivre, my boutique hotel company, it's deeply wedded to how I see the world. And joy is different than happiness.

[Tamsen Fadal]

So there's a explain those too, because I think that's important.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. J.D. salinger, who wrote Catcher in the Rye, said, happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid. And what he meant by that is, happiness is often circumstantial. It's something you strive for. It's something you're on the treadmill to try to attain. And then once you attain it, you look at it, it's like, oh, okay, what's the new shiny object to attain? Whereas joy actually comes from within you. And so one of the best things a person can do in terms of getting off the achievement treadmill is to just say, what would give me joy? What would that be? And how am I going to invest in that? For women who are doing the classic sandwich generation, taking care of parents, taking care of kids, having a career. At the same time, women are so much better than men at multitasking. I think one of my rules of thumb for women is often the following. Based upon how many kids you have, if you have kids. Because if you have kids, boy, are you, are you caregiving them. You deserve a minimum of one hour of joy per week per kid. So if you've got two kids, you schedule. And again, it should be more than that, of course, but it's a good starting point.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I think that would be hard for most women to try to figure out how to carve it out.

[Chip Conley]

How do I get my two hours? I've got two kids. And so it's your job. Your job is to invest in joy. Your job is, so what does joy look like?

[Tamsen Fadal]

What can it look like? It can be getting your palace. I don't even know what joy is.

[Chip Conley]

Let's say that there's a woman who's 45 years old, she's got two kids at home, she's got a job, and she also is the primary caregiver for her parents who are in their mid-70s. One massage a week for that person. So that's one of the two hours. The second hour could be literally a bubble bath path with reading a book. It could be going walking in nature by herself with no one else. It could be listening to your podcast while not doing something else. You know, most of us listen to podcasts while we're doing other things, but it could be like making notes for the from the Tamsden podcast. It could be literally going out to lunch once a week with your best friend.

[Tamsen Fadal]

It could just be simple. But it's that quiet time.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, I could be taking up painting or drawing and doing that. So just know in my opinion, the more kids you have, the more hours you get.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I love that chip. I think a lot of women are gonna be very. I know it is. Well, quite frankly, it's not only hard to find the hours when you're in that hustle mentality, it's hard to actually define joy.

[Chip Conley]

Again, it comes back to mindset. Mindset. How do you shift your mindset to say, like, I deserve this?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yep.

[Chip Conley]

People talk about self care all the time. It's great. But I also. I don't love the term. I've never loved the term self care. For some reason, for women who are worried about being selfish, it just sounds too much like selfish.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah.

[Chip Conley]

And it's like investing in joy. That's a different way to look at.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Feels like, actionable, like, another thing to put on your list.

[Chip Conley]

And investing, you sort of like, okay, you're building something. And so the idea of building joy in my life is like, okay, yeah, sign me up for that.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Well, I mean, I. I couldn't agree more with it. I think that the shift can be hard. I think that we look at things and we're like, okay, what feels good is one thing, but I have to have achievements and I have to succeed. I have to cross things off the list, make sure that I.

[Chip Conley]

Where'd that come from, Tamsen? I have the same thing. But, like, was it your. Your parents?

[Tamsen Fadal]

You know, I don't know. I. I don't think it was parent. I think it was. Well, maybe it was. I don't know. I think it was just, like, I looked around and I saw what I deemed success. I didn't grow up with money. I didn't grow, you know, So I was like, oh, to get to a next thing, I have to do that. So whatever that was.

[Chip Conley]

And I kept saying, it's called a success script. For many of us, the success script came from our teen years, maybe from college or early in adulthood. For you, like, gosh, the success script is very public.

[Tamsen Fadal]

It is, yeah. It's always been.

[Chip Conley]

Because. Okay, oh, she's got. She's growing, and she's now the anchor.

[Tamsen Fadal]

What are you doing next? What are you doing next?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, the now what. I mean, that's why there's that now what in your head. Because, like, the world wants to know. And so for you, it was harder because the fact that the world was witnessing all of this meant that there was a sense, like, you were doing this for your audience.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I never thought of it like that.

[Chip Conley]

And then the question becomes like, okay, well, if I am the screenwriter of my own play here, I spend time figuring out what it is that matters to me. And I mean, this is why we. I mean, literally, part of the reason I created MEA was because so many people could use some help with that.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Well, let's talk about that. So Modern Elder Academy, when did you create it?

[Chip Conley]

Created it seven and a half years ago. And, you know, don't mind the name of it. It's like people like, why do you call it Modern Elder? Well, that became. Well, good. Some people have a hard time with the word elder, but when I joined Airbnb when I was 52 and I became the mentor to the three founders and helped them for seven and a half years run that company, and they were amazing. I loved them. I learned as much from them as they did from me. But they started calling me the Modern Elder. I was like, well, you're making fun of my age, aren't you? I said, no, a modern elder is someone who's as curious as they are wise. They're not just dispensing wisdom, they are going out and seeking wisdom. I was as much a. An intern learning as I was a mentor teaching. And so that's how the name came about. And so, yes, we have two campuses. One in Baja on the beach, and then a 4 square mile regenerative horse ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And we do workshops year round.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Okay. People get stuck in midlife and in this hustle mentality and do not even realize it. How do you help people get out of that?

[Chip Conley]

It's almost like a shadow self for some people. There's a little bit of a sense, like they don't even see it. The blind spot, working too hard. And no one wants to be called a workaholic, but a lot of us are that. And so, first of all, just recognizing it's like anything, and it's a bit of an addiction. And so with any addiction programs, 12 step programs, like, oh, first you have to acknowledge you've got an issue. And that's the first step. And then the second step is to actually ask the question, how could I curate my life differently and know that there are options? Most people don't have the options that they really do have. And that's part of the reason at mea, the now what becomes like, well, maybe I can become a bakery entrepreneur, or maybe I could go and become a marathon runner, and maybe I could actually become a mentor to women who are 25 years younger than me, who would love to know, in your case, what it's like to be in media. So there's a lot of different paths. And the key then is like, okay, well, how do I do that and make money doing it? And that's a very personal question because some people need to make money and some people don't, or something's in between. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's really opening up to new possibilities.

[Tamsen Fadal]

So your step number four is edit your life. And this might be my favorite one, maybe because of the media background, but also I have found this. And my family makes fun of me, friends make fun of me. Every time I go through a big life shift or I'm stressed out about something, or I'm trying to figure something out. I clean. I clean my closet. I edit my stuff. I get rid of things. I don't know if there's any correlation to it, but I definitely feel like I understand you, like, control, Is that what it is?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I just feel like I have to strip everything back so I can see what's going on and then move forward.

[Chip Conley]

Feel productive. Yeah.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Is that the editing your life?

[Chip Conley]

So the editing your life is. Yes, that can be. Definitely. Editing can come up in any form. So we spend the first half of our life accumulating.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes.

[Chip Conley]

We accumulate knowledge, friends. We accumulate people. We date, and ultimately a spouse and maybe two spouses and then children, a handful. Stuff. We accumulate stuff. Obligations, responsibilities, career path, you know, jobs. By the time we get to around 50, we have accumulated way too much. And it's time to do what we call the great midlife edit. The great midlife edit is when you start to ask yourself, is this serving me anymore?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes.

[Chip Conley]

It's sort of like Kondo, Marie Kondo. Marie Kondo with her stuff. There's this element.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Does this bring joy?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, but what if you did? Does this bring joy to everything in your life?

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes.

[Chip Conley]

Not just the stuff in your closet. You know, if you're on three boards, should you be on three boards? What about one board? If you have a lot of friends, but some of them are, like, just friends you've had, and they just sort of like, hang around and it's not very nourishing. Like, is it time to actually do a little pruning there? Is it time to actually look, as your kids start to get to a place where they're no longer living with you to live somewhere else? You might be living in a ranch home with four bedrooms and there's just two of you, you and your husband. And it's time to look at where you Might want to live and how to live differently. So this idea of editing is really important because what editing allows for, first of all, it takes some of the pressure off. You know, when you have accumulated so much, you're just carrying a lot. But most importantly, when you get to the place where you actually start to edit, you create new space in your life to be a beginner again or try something new. And that's really important. The McDonald's snack wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap, spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack. Snack wrap is back.

[Tamsen Fadal]

The Abercrombie Kids summer sale is in full swing with up to 50% off. Select styles for the season. Summer plans, vacation and camp days are all covered with new dresses, shorts, tees and swim. Abercrombie Kids has the summer staples they need and the looks that they want to wear. Shop in store, online, or in the app. Offer applies to select styles as indicated. Discount applied at checkout online. The letting go list. You went through some of those. It can be scary if someone knows something needs to go, but they're afraid to let it go. How do you convince yourself of that? Because I think it's important. And a lot of people feel if they have stuff, even if it's people, relationships, careers boards, then they're insulated and they're safe and they want to feel safe. Like, I've succeeded.

[Chip Conley]

The first thing I would ask someone in that situation is, how's it working for you now? You know, the thing we often say to each other is how busy we are, how much we have going on. And the truth is that that's the starting point. And the reality is 98% of us will say around age 50, I just got too much going on. I have too much. I have too much stuff, too much thing. And so if that's true, you have to edit. But you don't have to edit the things that you love. You just have to edit the things that you don't love. But it may take a while. Like, for example, you're taking care of your ailing mother. Your father's passed away, your mother needs you. It's not like, okay, it's yes or no on that one, but could you actually diminish it a little bit such that instead of giving 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week to your mom, could you hire somebody to help with this part of it? Could your siblings who are sitting on their butts not doing anything, could they do a little bit of it? And does your mom need as Much as you're giving her. So those are the kinds of questions that you need to ask.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Did you edit.

[Chip Conley]

Oh, my God. I added some friends, you know, some friends who I love them, and it's not like I wouldn't see them anymore, But I didn't actually find, like, we were having deep and meaningful conversations. When you're doing that with friends, if you want to have deep and meaningful conversations, start by trying to have those with your friend. And if they're not going to go there and that's what you want, then. Yeah, then you need to start doing some editing.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Do you do it little by little with that?

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, for sure, I did that. And then I also edited some of my aspirations. You know, I thought at one point I was gonna be mayor of San Francisco. And I was asked at one point by Gavin Newsom, who was the mayor of San Francisco at the time and was becoming lieutenant governor, like, there was some possibility that, you know, I was gonna be mayor. And it's like, no, you know, I was at an age at that point where I was like, I don't wanna be mayor of San Francisco. Yeah.

[Tamsen Fadal]

But that's a big decision.

[Chip Conley]

It would not have been a vote. Yeah. And from age 12, I always wanted to be in government and in politics at some point. And so, yeah, that was something I had to edit.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I think that's a big move and like, a big growth move. Because sometimes it's very scary to let those aspirations go because you think, like, am I giving up? Am I not doing what I'm supposed to do? But, wow, the relief that probably came with that.

[Chip Conley]

Here's the thing, Tamsin. Especially if you listening in on this or watching this are sort of like the two of us, I promise you, once that aspiration goes away, a new one's gonna pop up.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Chip, you're so right. You're so right.

[Chip Conley]

You're just creating space for a new one that may be more relevant to you today.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yes, absolutely. Then something you think you need to hold on to. If you meet somebody that is stuck in that past and does not know how to move forward, is there one piece of advice they can do today?

[Chip Conley]

The thing that we do and find a friend and do this with a friend, write on a piece of paper those mindsets or limiting beliefs or things in your life, people in your life even, that you're ready to let go of, and you and your friend read it out, read out what it is, and then throw it in the fire. Have a collective ritual such that both of you can Sort of be accountability buddies for that.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yep. You gotta witness. Witness.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. Witness is helpful.

[Tamsen Fadal]

All right, step five. Build emotional strength and not just mental toughness. Explain.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah, I mean, grit is beautiful, and I'm a big fan of gritting it through. Someone once said to me, chip, you have tenacity and grace. I was like, oh, I like that combination. I think you do, too.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I'll take you. You and I are.

[Chip Conley]

The problem with trying to power through is often we don't realize the toll it's taking on our body and our psyche. And so, yes, sometimes you have to do it. Sometimes you have to be willing to just power through. But then. So resilience will buy you time, but adaptability will buy you a future. And so resilience is a form of mental toughness. I can get through this. But if you spend your life in that mentality, it takes a toll. That litigator, that litigator who said, at age 60, I can't do this anymore. I've had to be mentally tough. And her point of view was like, I still want to be. Like, use this career. But what she really needed to do was adapt. And adaptation she made was something very different as a career. This idea of being emotionally aware is really critical because when you're in the resilience mode, the grit mode, often you're not taking an inventory of your emotions or your body. What you notice at the end of the week or at the end of the year is just literally how much your shoulders are right next to your neck. That's right. And how much you're stressed. And everybody can see it in you, but you've gotten so used to it. And so for a lot of people, what they really need to do is just take the toll. And they don't really. I'm sorry. Take the toll. Take the inventory. A lot of people don't want to do that because, like, what if I really find I'm just deeply unhappy? I don't want to go into that dark hole. I am trying to outrun my emotions, and I know a lot I've done that. I think one of the things that people need to do, and this gets back to the fourth one, too, is we do New Year's resolutions, but we don't do New Year's editing.

[Tamsen Fadal]

No, no, we just do that.

[Chip Conley]

Why not at New Year's? Just say, like, okay, maybe I'll have some resolutions and these are things I'll do, but I gotta let some things go too. And that requires a certain amount of self awareness and so this one number five is really just about how do we help ourselves be a little more self aware. And, you know, I'm a big fan of personality tests as well. There's this thing called the enneagram, and it's called spelled E N N E a G R a M. And when I learned about that, like 40 years ago, it totally helped me to see how I fall into traps. I think you're the same as me, which is a 3 on the 9 scale.

[Tamsen Fadal]

You know, I'm doing this like in a half an hour.

[Chip Conley]

You're doing it in a half hour, and you're probably three, which means you're a success motivated performer. You are very good at holding it together. The us is sort of a three culture.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Okay.

[Chip Conley]

But then you have a wing, potentially a two or four. The two is the helper, the four is the artist. And so for me, once I understood my personality type, it really helped me to see the traps that I fall into. And so, yes.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Why do you think you fall into him? Do you think it's because we compare a lot with other people for threes?

[Chip Conley]

We do.

[Tamsen Fadal]

For threes.

[Chip Conley]

We do threes or social comparison is a huge part of it. But a one, on the other hand, is somebody who's a perfectionist. And so it's less focused on the social comparison, more focused on their own definition of what is Right. And so once you understand these personality types, it helps a lot.

[Tamsen Fadal]

All right, step six. Find purpose through service. That's probably my favorite one. But I wouldn't have said that 10 years ago. I wouldn't have. I was just working, working, working, working. But what I have seen happen in the past two years, because I didn't go looking for it, obviously. It just found me. And every time I heard someone say that, I went, okay, yeah, yeah, I get whatever. But now I really understand that.

[Chip Conley]

Yeah. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from an Indian philosopher named Rabindranath Tagore. And he said, I slept and thought that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life is service. And I truly awoke, and I saw that service is joy. And so the idea that you can find joy in service, now this is one for a man, like a revelation for a woman. Women have been in service in a lot more ways than men. So I sometimes am very careful about saying this amongst women because, oh, you need to be in service. And I was like, well, hey, dude, I've been in service my whole life. But I think the main point here is this. In the first half of Your life, as David Brooks would say, you're climbing that first mountain, which is often the mountain of success. And in the second half of your life, you're now climbing the mountain. And I don't like the mountain analogy because I think you're like, you're just hanging out by the river in the valley, but you're in the second era. You're moving toward purpose. And there's lots of different purposes. There are big P purposes. Often your career is a big P purpose, and there's a lot of small P purposes. What people you'll see in an obituary is the big P purpose. Okay, this person did all these things. What you'll see at someone's eulogy, and here is the small P purpose. And so some of these small P purposes are really important. And we have a bit of purpose performance anxiety in the U.S. we are so wrapped up in saying, oh, my God, everybody has a purpose but me, as if it's like a Birkin bag.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I do love your analogies. They speak to me.

[Chip Conley]

We all have purposes. They can be big P purposes and small P purposes. The bigger question is not so much the noun of purpose, but the verb of being purposeful. What is something in your life? Or what are the things in your life that give you a sense of purposefulness? It's usually something that excites you or agitates you or something that you're curious about or something that feels neglected. But for me, in my life, it is very much being in service. People were in service of me. I've been mentored. I was mentored by people. I'm now mentoring people I don't pay myself a dime for, you know, for doing mea. Partly because this is my way of giving back. And I love that movie. I love a couple movies. Schindler's List. At the end of Schindler's List, there's, you know, everybody goes by Schindler's Grave. And these are all the descendants who would not be living if Schindler hadn't done what he did in Germany. But the other one that I like even more is It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and George Bailey. And. And he ends up, you know, Jimmy Stewart, George Bailey ends up at the bridge ready to jump and take his life. And Clarence the angel comes down and says, let me show you what Bedford Falls would look like if you never existed. And he's able to see. And I wish we had, like, a technology. This would be the most important technology we've ever created. A technology that allows any person in their life, especially in midlife or mid to later life, to see what the world would have been like with, like, without them.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah, it kind of takes my breath.

[Chip Conley]

Away that technology would allow us to see what we have offered the world in service. And. And some of it's usually tangible. It's like you have kids.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Sure.

[Chip Conley]

You can see that.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Sure.

[Chip Conley]

But of course, your kids don't necessarily show the gratitude.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Thank you for your purpose, Mom. Thank you for being of service. Do you find a lot of men are looking for purpose as they get older in midlife, or are they looking to have companions, be busy?

[Chip Conley]

Men are lost.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Oh, okay. Okay. Well, that answered that men are lost.

[Chip Conley]

For a couple reasons. Around 50, men realize that their friendship muscle has atrophied, and they're in a place where they are feeling stuff vulnerable for the first time in their life, especially if they're a straight white male. They're seeing a form of demographic. You know, if you're a woman, you've had some sexism. If you're lgbtq, you've had some homophobia. If you're a person of color, maybe some racism. But for a guy in his 50s who's been top of the world, like, all of a sudden, ageism's creeping in. And so men really need to learn that friendship is a practice. My co founder and ma, Jeff Humley, says this. If you think of friendship as an intentional act, something you do for the sake of getting better at it, then you're going to do it better. And so for men, women have been doing that for 20s, 30s, and 40s, but men need to do that. Secondly, the other piece that you asked about with purpose is that retirement is really hard for men, more hard than for women. Why? Because women tend to have a lot of roles, a lot of identities. So when they let go of one identity, they have other identities. Men have had for many men have had two identities. Breadwinner. So I'm taking care of the family and making sure. And then this career thing that my business card defines my life. And so, long story short is, you know, men need MEA more than women. Women come to me a more couples love coming to MEA because, frankly, they're gonna learn from each other because the gender issues around, you know, in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond are sometimes really different.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Do you feel like there's so much more hope for people in midlife now than you've ever seen before and that we're still learning?

[Chip Conley]

I think so.

[Tamsen Fadal]

That's gonna be There.

[Chip Conley]

But I think it's like with menopause, you know, to take it back to.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Yeah, you know, I mean, midlife had a bad rap.

[Chip Conley]

Midlife has one word attached to it, and it's a bad brand. It's crisis. And when you start to realize that midlife is a chrysalis. Yes. In the middle of midlife, you may actually have a low point, the U curve of happiness. Research shows that. That. But when you realize that, it gets better after around 50, and that Becca Levy's work shows that you actually live longer when you shift your mindset, people start to actually see that their 50s and beyond may be the best time of their life.

[Tamsen Fadal]

I love that. What is next for you?

[Chip Conley]

Well, I have a new book that just came out, so the Learning to Love Midlife came out last year, the Midlife Manifesto. And I'm teaching a lot. I love that. And I have two sons. I have sons, biological sons, 13 and 10. And my thing about 10 years from now, the sons don't live with me. I was the sperm donor to friends who were lesbians, but because they had two boys, I'm in the boys lives. So my tenure thing is 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? It's how do I spend time in Houston with my sons just to show how much I love them, but partly because I won't get adolescence with them over again.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Wow. And how old are they?

[Chip Conley]

13 and 10.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Wow, that's amazing. That's really amazing. What are you learning from them right now?

[Chip Conley]

Oh, my God. Just discovery and curiosity, you know, just the idea of trying new things and being open to being bad at first. You know, it's really important. We all need that, especially in midlife.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Chip, where do we find you?

[Chip Conley]

Ah, you find me at mea wisdom is the Modern Elder Academy. Mea website, chipconley.com, and I do a daily blog, which you'll find, and a weekly podcast. You'll find those in the free wisdom section of the MEA website.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Thank you so much. So. What a pleasure. I learned so much.

[Chip Conley]

Thank you.

[Tamsen Fadal]

Thank you. I love that Chip broke this down into six clear, practical steps. Because sometimes when you're in it, you really just need a roadmap and some clarity. He sure gave us one. If you're in that in between place or questioning what's next or now what, please remember you are not lost. You're in a transition. And there's a big difference. A big thank you to Chip Conley. For laying out such a powerful blueprint. And if you haven't yet, go check out his book Learning to Love Midlife. So if this conversation helped you, please share it with a friend. You can subscribe, follow and leave us a review. And you can always follow us Hempson show on Social Media by the way, if you have a topic or a question you'd like us to talk about, my email is in the show Notes. Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you next Wednesday. The Tamsen show is an original production by Authentic Wave executive producers Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett and Rebecca Grierson Brander director Johanna Ofsnik. Our line producer is Sabrina Sarre. Editing by Zach Smith and Marquis Harris. The views and opinions and information shared by guests on the Tamsen show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Tamsen Fadal or the production team. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional, medical, legal or financial advice.

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[Tamsen Fadal]

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