Midlife Isn't a Crisis - It's a Metamorphosis w/ Chip Conley

28:43Oh, I'm just feeling a little stressed about things right now because I feel like I've got so much going on. And I really don't know how to prioritize it. When everything stacks up at once, it can blur what actually matters and make that old not enough story get louder. Let's slow this down by picking one thread to start with, what feels most pressing in this moment. The important reframe is this. The projects did not cure the depression. They arrived because you healed, and when you overworked to prevent relapse, you actually undermined the things that keep you well, like sleep, presence, movement, and connection.

29:17When that edge shows up, it is a signal to reduce load and restore choice, not to push harder. Okay, one more thing, and this might sound crazy at first, but this year I met some engineers from Nike who invented a new type of office chair that has not only changed my life, but actually saved my back. Especially because I am on about five hours of Zoom calls every day. The MoveLab chair has two different pivot points under the seat, which keeps your body in continuous micro movements all day. The founders told me it is the equivalent of taking 3000 steps and all the lubrication of your joints and the blood flow is why my back no longer hurts.

29:58And I can focus on my work so much better. I loved it so much that I actually joined the team as a co-founder and I will be sending one to every person I know when we launch this fall. If you're interested in learning more or pre-ordering one, we only have 500 in the first run. You can check us out at Movelab.com. And that's spelled M-O-O-V-L-A-B.com. So when you started feeling better, you sold the business, even though it didn't feel like a success at the time. But you made the change you need to make to become true to what your soul wanted to do. that's when I met you and I was like and you were telling me what you were doing and I was like wow.

30:41Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a dozen years ago 13, 14 years ago and out of the blue I get this call from again Brian Chesky who was the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb he called me and he said I want you to be my mentor, we have this tiny little tech company this was 13 years ago and we don't know really what we're doing but we're growing quickly and you know we need somebody like you a modern elder to come in and help us and so that's what led me to my next chapter of my life. And so when you had that experience there, you then wrote Wisdom at Work, right? A book about your experience there. And then that book, is that what kind of led to the...

31:20Okay. In the writing of the book in Baja, where I had a home on the beach, I went for a run on the beach one day and I had a Baja aha. I had an epiphany. The epiphany was, why don't we have schools for people in midlife, a midlife wisdom school where people can sort of make sense of what they've learned along the way and then ask themselves, how do I want to curate the second half of my life? And so, as you said, you know, people are often coming to modern elder because they might be feeling a little stuck. They might be feeling a little dissatisfied. They might be thinking their best days are behind them, but they don't want to feel that way.

31:53And they're being proactive and they're coming. I would love, because I've seen some amazing transformations myself. I've taught there three times now. I love it. Just got back. um maybe give me one or two examples of someone that came and maybe you know was stuck was dissatisfied how did they how did they change and did it stick one of my favorite stories is a litigator so she was 60 years old so average age of the person who comes to to emmy is 54 yeah um and if you're gonna look till 90 54 is exactly halfway between 18 and 90 okay so at 54 you have half of your adult life is still ahead of you, which is sort of unfathomable.

32:34But this woman was 60 and she was a litigator and her father was a lawyer. And so she came to MEA because she hated being a litigator. You can imagine because you're arguing all day long. And she said, I want to work another 10 years, but I don't necessarily want to be a litigator anymore. And the very first night when we say, if you really knew me, she says, well, if you really knew me, you'd know I'm a litigator and I think I just want to become a litigation consultant. Okay. And everybody in the room was like, well, that sounds pretty similar to me. Yeah. And that very first night she had a bunch of dreams.

33:07It was a cultivating purpose workshop. And she had dreams about her grandmother and, and you know, that campus, the Baja campus is on the beach and she and her grandmother are walking down the beach hand in hand. Well, that's interesting. What was that about? The next morning in the little wisdom circle, she talks to her group about it. The next night she has a dream, but it's more of a memory. And she remembers that when she was a teenager, she used to go over to her grandmother's and cook pies together. And she could smell the pies and she was just feeling like, I love cooking pies. I love baking.

33:37And the next morning she was saying to everybody, when I go overseas, the first thing I look at on a digital map is where's the closest bakery? For some reason, I want to go, if I'm in Peru or Croatia, I just want to sort of see what their baked goods are like. By the end of the week, she came to this realization that there was a passion she had as a kid, which was being a baker or a pastry chef. And her father had drummed into her head that being a lawyer was the thing to do. So she had neglected this passion. And she said, okay, you know what? I'm 60 years old. I'm not going to give up my law practice right now, but I am going to go to a pastry chef school every Saturday and learn pastry shoving.

34:21After 13 weeks of that program, it was a three-month-long program, she decided, I'm going to go be an entrepreneur. There is a bakery in my neighborhood with all the ovens, and it closed down during COVID, and it's not reopened. I'm actually going to give up the law, and I'm actually going to become a bakery entrepreneur because that's what I wanted to do as a kid. That's what she does now. That is one of hundreds, or with that almost 10 ,000 people come through the program. So yeah. A lot of good stories. Yeah. And I, I just had a flashback and I can't believe it just happened because I was there and it didn't happen when I was there to my first time to come.

35:03Yeah. So in the first night or second night, there's an exercise where you have all these stickers with limiting beliefs, you know, um, you know, I'm not going to get better with age. I've made too many mistakes. I'll never beat my soulmate. I never have enough money for retirement like every single kind of possible limiting belief you could have um uh is it at that stage and you ask us to pick four six and put them on our body yes and or on a piece of paper and hold it whatever you prefer and you go around the room and you look in each other's eyes and then you look at the other person's limiting beliefs and i remember that being so powerful because a required radical vulnerability for sure because i'm you're literally saying like deep secrets you feel about yourself and then also when you see someone and you be like how do they feel that way right but i just had the craziest flashback when i did it eight years ago there was a sticker there that said i'm not good enough and i had it on my are you kidding i swear to god oh my gosh you planted the seed so i mean that has been my biggest healing yeah and uh Uh, and, and it's crazy that I had that healing in so many ways, but it was almost like God was telling me ahead of time, like at some point you're going to have to address this limiting belief that's basically ruining your life.

36:29And I had that then, but it's just one of many cool exercises at MEA that really get you to break, you know, take off the mask, break down the walls. You're in a safe space and then you can really excavate. And realize you're not alone. You realize that we're all going through this. You know, it's hard to go through that dark night of the ego. And yet when you're doing it with enlightened witnesses who are mirroring you, there's a reciprocity that's going on. And you dig a little deeper. We talk about the third vault. The first vault is the facts of our life. The second vault are the stories of our life.

37:06And the third vault is the essence of who we are in this moment, maybe our soul. and helping people to move from facts to stories to really the essence of who you are is part of what we help people do in our week-long programs. Okay. I want to switch a little bit towards the book. Yeah. Because the book, when did the book come out? Come out last year, 2024. It was a bestseller and it was - Your eighth book. Eighth book? Yeah. And I think it's so important, especially for, I think, the audience is thinking about mental wellness is learning to love midlife, not looking at what you've lost, but what you've gained.

37:45Maybe talk a little bit about just why you wrote this book now and what you hope that it will do to help people. We have a very anti-aging society and we have an anti-aging industrial complex. I mean,$600 billion a year of products and services that help people to feel like, okay, aging is a bad thing. I want to stop it. Now, I understand that, especially for women. I understand why a lot of people feel the need to try to look younger and to be younger. At the same time, understand that by doing that, you're creating an internalized ageism that is not going to turn back the clock in terms of your chronological age.

38:29And so what I really wanted to do was using that Becca Levy stat about helping people to think better about aging, which will be good for their longevity. How do we create a pro-aging environment? And so I did some research and found 12 reasons why life gets better with age. And that's what the subtitle of the book is. And so here are a few things that get better with age. We know what gets worse with age. Unless we're doing work to our skin, we have more wrinkles. We have, you know, our short-term memory is not as good. Our body, you know, gravity takes hold of the body. So what gets better? Emotional intelligence improves with age on average.

39:09And we are less emotionally reactive. There's wisdom. We build perspective and discernment because of life experiences. We are better able to build lasting and deeper relationships because we're a little bit less egocentric. Because we're less egocentric, also, we are more acquainted with our soul. We get more spiritually curious. Richard Rohr, who we both love and is a faculty member at MEA, he has quite famously said, the first half of your life, your primary operating system is your ego, and then you overuse it. And then around midlife, you actually start shifting toward the soul, but nobody gives you any operating instructions.

39:50And so what people are doing is they're starting to move into a place of seeing the bigger part of life. You know, what is, how are you part of a system that's bigger than you? We learn how to edit. We get less, we care less about what people think about us. That's freedom. That's a big one. That's a big one. Especially for women on that one. Yeah, that's a big one. So there's so many things that get better with age. Yeah. And what I really wanted to do is help people to see, ah, look at all these things. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you may have some things get worse with age. And there's so much. There's so much that gets better.

40:21And it's kind of what we focus on is what has a huge impact on our life. It's by focusing on those. Yep. And the other thing that you say in the book that I really like is instead of looking at midlife as a crisis, you call it a chrysalis. Yes. And I think this analogy is one of the greatest things you've given the world. Oh, thank you. No, seriously, because I went through it. I know all the stages. but I would love for everyone to hear it from your perspective of what is the chrysalis you know it's funny how does it work the first time I ever thought of this I was just sort of thinking about the butterfly journey the the caterpillar the chrysalis the butterfly and in some ways it describes what people think about midlife midlife being a chrysalis you know you have this caterpillar in our 20s and 30s and early 40s, we're toiling away.

41:13What happens with a caterpillar before it goes into the chrysalis is it's eating more. It's plumping up. It's consuming. And it's doing. And it's going out there and being a good trooper and being an achiever, a striver. Sounds like my life. Yeah, mine too. So far I'm tracking. And so then inexplicably, it turns itself upside down and spins this cocoon, this chrysalis, in which it's going to go inside and liquefy. Die. Die. That's going to be very clear. That's right. Now within the caterpillar are these imaginal disks that actually form ultimately the butterfly. So within the caterpillar is the butterfly.

41:56The soul is there, the DNA is there. But it has to go through this chrysalis period. Yes. And the U-curve of happiness research of showing people around 45 to 50 having a low point is the chrysalis. Yes. Now, it doesn't have to be 45 to 50. It could be 40. It could be 55. It could be whatever. But it's that time. And we tend to call it the crisis. Yes. But it's really chrysalis. It feels that way. I mean, death doesn't feel good. Yeah, death. And being a gooey mass sure doesn't feel good. No. But it's where the transformation happens. Yeah. And the U-curve of happiness data is so conclusive on this that guess what?

42:29on the other side of it, maybe you are a butterfly. Maybe you come out of the chrysalis and you're ready to have a new life as the butterfly. And so the chrysalis, a good language helps people to, a metaphor can be incredibly cathartic because it helps you to see, ah, that could be me. Yeah, totally. And one of the things that I like about it is the, whatever you call it what's the outside of the is it the chrysalis yeah because a chrysalis is is a pretty hard shell it is and so as soft and then it becomes hard yeah so it becomes hard for a reason because as the gooey mess is forming into the butterfly uh it has to be hard for the butterfly to get out so that it strengthens its wings so it can fly right and so when i think about my journey and the personal hell i went through and the definite ego death that i experienced and i I think, you know, we've learned from yours today too.

43:26You know, it was not like I just all of a sudden felt great. It's kind of like you had your near-death experience, which was really beautiful. But then, not that many months later, you're at the bridge. So I also want to give that to people for encouragement, that even if you've hit kind of that gooey mess and you feel like you've, okay, kind of figured out what you want to do next or how you can get out of this, it's not going to be easy. It's not designed to be easy because by being hard to break out of that shell, then you actually have the strength to fly. And I feel like that's been the last nine months of my life.

43:58And I love that analogy. And I think that part of it is something that is really landed for me. So the most important thing for us to have coming out of the chrysalis is a growth mindset. And a growth mindset really speaks to this idea of being improving and learning. And that's what we do in life is we get better at something. And that actually goes back to how we add seven and a half years to our life, right? I mean, seeing aging is not something that's bad, but good is a growth mindset. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And the opposite is a fixed mindset. And a fixed mindset means that you're just trying to optimize what you have and be perfect.

44:33And that is really debilitating, especially if you're self-critical. Okay, great. Well, the last topic that I'm excited to talk about is male friendships. Oh, yes. This is something that is really important to me. I know it's important to you. We've talked a lot about it. You've been a great friend to me. But talk to us a little bit about the difference between how women and men experience midlife and how does that affect our relationships? Yeah, women are socialized as girls to emote and to tell secrets with their friends and to be vulnerable. Yeah. Boys, on the other hand, on average, again, these are all vast generalizations, are taught to be strong.

45:18big boys don't cry um and uh as such as you know boys become men uh they find that they need to posture a little bit um and the friendships they have are often not eye-to-eye friendships they're shoulder-to-shoulder friendships i see you you go hiking with a friend you go biking with a friend You go and watch a sports game with a friend. But eye-to-eye friendships are vulnerable. And so the idea as we get older of learning how to be vulnerable is really difficult for a lot of men. So as you go through your 20s and your 30s, the other thing that's happening is we're getting really busy. We're accumulating friends.

46:05We're accumulating obligations, responsibilities. We're dating people. We're getting married. We're having children. We're accumulating stuff. We don't have time for friendships. Women are, technically speaking, women are better at multitasking. And one of the things they multitask is friendships. Men, on the other hand, are going out and being a provider and their career, and maybe they have a family, and that's it. And so for a lot of men in their 40s, especially the later 40s, they realize that their friendship muscle is atrophied. and their ability to understand that they don't know how to be vulnerable makes it such that they know they want friends.

46:49They don't want to admit to being the L word, lonely, but they don't know what to do about it. And I guarantee a lot of people listening right now that are head nodding, unfortunately. The women are head nodding about their husband. Yeah. And one of the funny things about MEA is I get to see couples a lot. And for a lot of women, they do not want their husband to retire. Because what they say is, my husband has no friends other than his work friends. And so when he retires, he's not going to have his work friends. And so he's going to rely on me. And I have a ton of friends. And so, you know, we really, Jeff Hunley, one of my co-founders of MEA, talks about friendship as a practice.

47:33Okay. And so if we can think about, we think about golf. We practice golf. you practice yoga, you practice a lot of things. Why don't we practice friendship? Oh, this is great. Tell me how you do it. So when you've practiced friendship, you're more intentional about getting better at being a friend. Okay. So as opposed to just saying, well, friends are nice to have, but I don't have to work at it. Yes. But to be intentional about friendships is getting clear. What am I looking for from a friend? Okay. And how could I be a better friend to someone else? How could I text someone just out of the blue and say, I was just thinking about you and I just wanted you to know it.

48:11Yeah. You know, I like you. Yeah. Simple practice. So Alan Mouchoir was one of my best friends growing up. High school, we played water polo together. He ultimately went to the Olympics. He's a much better water polo player than me. And guess what? Alan went off to Stanford with me. We played water polo my first year and then he kept playing and he became a pre-med. I became business. we went our separate ways we went we're in different fraternities i came out as a gay man he was like don juan uh with the women and we sort of like lost touch yeah but 25 30 years later with friendship as a practice is my intention i wrote him on facebook we were facebook friends but like i hadn't seen him in a long time and i said you know what you're my best friend and i I didn't say I love you, Tim, at that point.

49:03I did say it to him later in terms of just as a friend. And I said, I'd like to be in your life again. Now, it took a little bit of boldness. That's bold and vulnerable. And courageous, especially, hey, straight dude, I'm a gay dude. But my God, he immediately wrote me back and said, this is great. I'm so glad you wrote me. Let's hang out. And as it turns out, my partner's Israeli and Jewish. His wife is Jewish and they loved each other. And so the four of us have become close again, but it took an intentionality. Yeah. And a little bit of initiative. An initiative for sure. And a little courage because he might've just said like, hey, you know, he might not have responded.

49:43But you had nothing to lose in that group. So men who are listening to this, please - So important. I mean, this might be like the most important thing we're talking about. Please be open to taking the step. Yeah. Think of friendship as a practice. Just like golf. You got to get better at it. Because the number one pathway, the number one variable for living a longer, healthier, happier life is how invested are we in midlife and beyond in our social connections. Wow. So this idea of connectivity is essential. It's a longevity. And yet, we do not help people to see it. People are starting to hear about it, but we don't necessarily give people practices.

50:27I have a practice with that. Yeah. Don't work out alone. Yeah. You know, if you care about longevity and you're going to go to the gym or you're going to go for a hike or something, do it with someone. You get a twofer. Twofer. It's a twofer. It's an absolute twofer. I mean, that is so important. I started doing that in Santa Barbara where, you know, I could work out by myself. I know I go to the gym with a group of guys and that those relationships are bonding. I get both. And it's so, so important. And I love that you said about you just sent him a message on Facebook. I found, for me, one of the things that I've done as a practice is a video note.

51:01Because it really shows, you know, there's so much. You see so much emotion. Yeah. And it takes just as long to send a text message, maybe even shorter, if you talk fast like me. And people really respond. And they're so touched that it took time to just make a quick video note. What I would say also is there's a bunch of research that shows the sum total of the five people that you're closest to. So I would say look in your life at the people who you would say are your five people who are your closest to, who are not maybe family members. Yeah. And ask yourself, what are you learning from them?

51:37Because those people are going to mirror who you are and you're going to mirror them. So it may be that it's time that there's two or three on that list of five, that it's not you're going to get rid of them, but you're going to actually start to evolve because there's a couple of other people who you love and who are really, you admire and you want to spend more time with them. Totally. And so like being open to the idea in the intentionality, the practice that, hey, there's a golf course over there and the golf course being a friendship with this other person. Sure. I'm not talking about literally.

52:08I'm going to go start spending time with that person because through osmosis, I'm going to take on some of their best qualities. Yeah. I love that. And I think that like, I know for me, like I'm going to make a commitment to at least send a couple of video notes to friends that I haven't connected with in a while. And so I really appreciate you sharing that. And I'm so grateful that you came on the show. And I think we're going to help a lot of people with this episode. You know, we're on a journey together, my friend. And Dacher Keltner, the very first workshop you came to at MEA, famous UC Berkeley professor says that the number one pathway to feeling awe in life is not nature, it's not even collective effervescence, which is number two, but it is moral beauty.

52:53It's seeing compassion, kindness, equanimity, resilience, grit in someone else and being elevated by that. and you are a moral beauty and hopefully I am too. 100%. Thank you. I love you, bud. Love you too. Awesome. If this episode spoke to you, please share it with a friend, family member, or someone you love. Because No Magic Pill is not just a podcast. It's a resource to help us all live better lives. Hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode and let us know what you think by leaving a comment. A quick note that this episode is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not intended as medical advice.

53:36Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical questions or concerns you may have.

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54:44The show is produced by Wubatu Shimalash, Catherine Barnes, and Keegan Zema. Additional production by Ivan Karayev and Kristen Lepore. Post-production by Oranda Studio. Jackie Danziger is Head of Content at Lemonada Media. Executive producers are me, Blake Mycoskie, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and Stephanie Whittles-Wax. Special thanks to Jillian Delorio, Jennifer Song, Maggie Wertz, Andrew Fine, James Johnson, Devin Robbins, Emily Ledbetter, Chris Orwig, Sean McGurk, Jasmine Burgess, and the entire Enough Foundation team. The Enough Foundation's mission is to spread reminders in every form, bracelets, messages, actions, and community until feeling enough becomes the cultural default.

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