We tend to get so fixated, especially in American culture, on the idea that the only way we define growth is based upon how our body looks.

And as our body doesn't look as good as it gets older, therefore we're aging, not growing.

But I think we're growing and aging our whole lives.

Growth is not just something you do at age 15.

Growth is something you do at 75.

The growth you're doing at 75 is culturally and intellectually and relationally.

So it's all these forms of growth that don't necessarily have to do with the physical plane of your body.

This is the midlife chrysalis.

Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays with Chip Conley and Derek Gale, your weekly conversation about thriving in midlife.

Together, we explore the questions, insights, and practices that help you live this chapter with more purpose, vitality, and joy.

Welcome to another episode of Wisdom Wednesday.

My name is Derek Gale.

I'm the CEO of MEA, and I'm here with our founder, Chip Conley.

Good morning.

How are you?

Good morning.

How are you?

Hi, I'm I'm I'm well good.

Why do Canadians out of you to a lot of words I I I read your memos and sometimes you've adding extra letters compared to us Americans like.

Give me an example.

I mean well like Nur well nourishment actually has AU so like favorite.

How would you spell favorite?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, FAVOURIT.

E Yeah, OK, because we spell stuff.

Properly in Canada, well.

Proper, proper.

English.

English.

Oh, God, you know, don't you want did Wait, did you?

Did you have.

I mean, the Americans had a revolution against the English.

So you're still a Commonwealth.

We're still Commonwealth.

Well, gosh, you're under the thumb.

Yeah, we are.

We are.

It's not a very big thumb these days.

No, it's not.

No, maybe you're maybe you're going back to that that direction because you know well that you're friends to the South as Americans.

Yeah, there's there's been some months.

We are not your favorites.

It's gonna pass.

OK.

I do like Mark Kearney though.

Mark Kearney, yeah.

He's a solid.

Guy.

He seems like so.

Smart.

Very smart, very smart.

Very even keeled.

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

Who else do I like?

Katie Lang?

Yep.

OK.

Yeah.

Obviously Justin Bieber.

Is he Canadian?

Oh, I no, I don't even.

I really.

I barely even know the guy.

He's way too young.

Céline Dion.

Not really.

Nothing.

Shania Twain.

No, none of you're Bryan Adams.

Bryan Adams the singer, the the musician.

Yeah.

Who was the band he was in?

Bryan Adams.

He was.

A solo artist.

I don't like him either.

69 now.

Well, like who else?

Oh.

My God killing me.

Here, I mean Wayne Gretzky, is he Canadian?

Wayne Gretzky.

OK, for sure.

Oh my God.

Ryan Reynolds.

Oh.

God, these people I don't like.

Oh, OK, I'm.

Coming back you.

Know I like you know I like you know I like.

Is Sophie.

Sophie Gregor Trudeau yeah yeah, yeah, An MEA alum yeah.

The.

What's Justin Trudeau's wife?

That's why, Well, I don't know.

They didn't get divorced.

They're sort of separated, but.

Yeah, but he's dating Katy Perry at the.

I know.

Is she Canadian too?

No, she's not Canadian.

No all.

Right.

All right, now that we've got our little Canadian trivia, yeah.

That's classic.

All right, so.

So.

Let's let's Sophie, if you're listening, you know I love you and you know I Katy Perry's like, oh, such old news and come on back.

You know, Sophie's been Sophie's been to MEA.

She loves MEA love it.

All right, I'm coming back a list of Canadians.

We're going to find some good ones, so let's let's.

Talk.

About aging and mindset.

Yeah, in the last episode last week, last Wednesday, I almost, you know, hinted at it.

And there's a woman named Becca Levy from Yale.

And what she's shown is in 20 years of research is that if you can shift your mindset on aging from a negative to a positive such that you can see the upside of aging, that gains you 7 1/2 years of extended longevity, which is more than if you actually stop smoking at age 50, that gives you 4 years.

Or if you start exercising at 50, that gives you 2 years.

Yeah.

So the idea that you actually can shift your mindset on aging has a profound impact.

Better than ice baths, better than supplements, better than, you know, infrared, you know, saunas.

Most people don't know this.

Public service announcements to stop smoking or to start exercising, Sure.

But where are the public service announcements that help people to see not coming from Hallmark?

Yeah, exactly.

It's negative from Hallmark.

Where's the pro aging message out there that just it doesn't exist.

So there's that.

And, and, and then there's also this woman, Carol Dweck from Stanford, a professor who popularizes idea of mindset.

So what is a mindset?

A mindset is a way of a perspective on the world and yourself.

So it's sort of like the the, the way you see the world and yourself.

And what she's shown is that when you have a fixed mindset, you often have a tendency to just feel like you have a fixed amount of capacity or skill or money or time or whatever.

And your job is to optimize that.

So you're trying to prove yourself and win.

But if you have a growth mindset, you have a tendency to see whatever you're looking at as something that you can improve and get better at.

So you don't have a fixed amount of that.

And also a fixed mindset speaks to the idea of with new information, I'm not going to change my mind.

Yeah.

So as we get older, not only do we need to sort of look, move, you know, get rid of our internalized ageism, yeah, and see the upside of aging, as Becca Levy from Yale suggests.

But we also need to be careful getting stepped in a fixed mindset.

Because for older people, if you have a fixed mindset, and a lot of older people do, what happens is you start to close down your options and close down your openness to new ideas.

Curiosity and openness to new experiences are both very positively correlated to living at a longer, healthier, happier life.

So growth mindset means that you're not just trying to only play games that you can win, because if that's what you do, as you get older, you play less and less games.

Your sandbox gets smaller.

So what we really need to look at is how do we become a beginner and how are we open to trying new things?

Yeah, as we get older.

So.

OK.

Well, let's put that in practice because I mean, it's easy to say, oh, you just got to have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset.

Like what are some practices DAP that?

Change that when I moved to Baja from San Francisco, not planning on doing an mea.

I just was going to have a home there going to write a book, wisdom orc, the making of a modern elder.

And I never had a second home before.

So it was sort of fun.

I had a point of view.

I had a fixed mindset, which was I'm too old to learn to surf.

I am too old to learn Spanish.

And you know, that sort of was almost like an externalized ageism because the I'm too old too is a classic ageism point of view, that point of view.

And it infected me.

And to in order to shift that, to change that, what I had to say to myself was 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now?

It's a beautiful question because what it does is it catalyzes you to take action because anticipated regret is a form of wisdom.

Anticipated regret is a form of wisdom.

When I said to myself, gosh, I'm 56 at that time.

And if I hope to be living in Mexico at 6610 years from now, which is a year from now that you know, I'm 65 now and I haven't learned Spanish, I will regret that at 56, I didn't Start learning Spanish.

Similarly, I will regret that I didn't Start learning to surf because as you know, there's a surf break right near Mea.

So at 56, you know, against all odds, I started learning Spanish and MI espanol is MUI Malo pero estoy mejorando.

It means I'm just, you know, I'm not good at Spanish, but I am getting better and I started learning to surf.

There was this wonderful feeling, this beginner's mindset of saying like, wow, this is something that I didn't think I could do.

And the beauty as we get older of saying, I'm trying something that we that I didn't think I could do, gives you the sense of gives you a sense of confidence.

And it also so opens you up to trying something new.

One of the things that's really important as we get older is to realize that life, you know, we're supposed to be constantly learning.

There's a getting Dan Gilbert, a Harvard professor who gives Ted talks and I got to know him because I've, I give Ted talks too.

And he says human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished.

We are meant to be trying new things.

There's a word called liminal.

To be liminal is to be in between two things.

When we're in adolescence, we know we're liminal.

We're growing so fast.

We're going through puberty.

We're trying, you know, having first dates and we're having, you know, driving a car for the first time.

But when we're in middle essence, which is the adult version, corollary to adolescence, when we're actually going through hormonal things as well, we are liminal.

We're going through all kinds of transitions.

And yet somehow at that, at this age, in our 40s, fifties, 60s and beyond, we think that we're supposed to be too old for transitions.

But to realize that our mindset of accepting that we are constantly gonna be in transition allows us and gives license for us to try new things, Yeah.

And I was reading an article, I can't remember where it was from, but it was just recently.

And they're talking about lifelong learners is a predictor of longevity and it adds to life.

And it doesn't have to be learning anything productive like, oh, I'm going to learn this skill to do this.

It's just be learning.

Something you're interested in.

Know that.

Ask yourself what you're curious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, there are so many things that we can learn.

And for some of us, we didn't have time for curiosity.

If you're on the treadmill and you're in the sandwich generation, taking care of both adult parents, you know, who are aging and kids at the same time, you know, you may not have the time.

If you're working 60 hours a week at work, you don't have time to be curious.

But as you get older, you can start, says, make a list.

Make a list of things you're curious and also make a list of things that get better with age.

I, I made a list in anticipation of our time today.

Here's some things that get better with age.

We know things that don't get better with age, but wine gets better with age.

Pickles get better with age.

Whiskey gets better with age.

Beef, certain kinds of beef get better with age.

Cheese, leather, sofas, jeans, flannel sheets, mattresses, slippers, trees, wow, all those things get better with age.

So like, OK, maybe we get better with age as well.

I mean, I like to say that, you know, when it comes to trees, we there's old growth forests, old growth redwoods, but I think they're old growth humans and all.

We tend to get so fixated, especially in American culture, on the idea that the only way we define growth is based upon how our body looks.

And as our body doesn't look as good as it gets older, therefore, you know, we're aging, not growing, but I think we're growing and aging our whole lives.

It's not growth.

Growth is not just something you do at age 15.

Growth is something you do at 70, 5, but it's the growth you're doing at 75 is culturally and intellectually and relationally.

So it's all these forms of growth that don't necessarily have to do with the physical plane of your body.

We really.

Have to shut off the societal narrative, though, that that's pushed on us.

I mean, you know, I remember turning 40 and having all the people say to me, oh, you're not going to be able to do that anymore.

And now I'm heading for 50 people like, oh, you're not going to be able to do that anymore.

I'm like why?

Well, maybe one of the exercises or experiments someone could do as a result of this episode is to ask themselves maybe that you make 2 two columns.

What is I'm too old to and see what comes up.

You know, no one's going to look at this, only you.

I'm too old to, you know, I'm old, too old to find a soulmate.

I'm too old to start a business.

And then in the other column, maybe say I'm finally at the age when I can and write down those and take a look at those two lists.

You know, if you have nothing in the list of I'm too, I'm finally at the to the age that I can, then you really need to come to MBA because you need to really have, you know, you know, a dose of pro aging medicine.

But also look at your I'm too old to list.

I thought I was too old to surf.

I thought I was too old to learn a new language.

And I came to realize that I wasn't.

There's a guy named Jim Flaherty who's come to Mea five times between 87 and 990.

His first time coming to Mea was in Baja and he surfed at the end of the week in a in a Baja workshop.

We take you out surfing if you want to.

If you don't want to, you can just video and take photos and go for a walk in the beach and body surfing.

But if you want to go on a board, he had 80, seven years old.

Wow.

We have pictures of it.

He didn't stand up.

He wasn't even trying to stand up.

He was just holding the board and the white water was bringing him in.

And you know, that kind of spirit.

Yeah, that kind of framework of like, hey, I'm not too old to try something now at 88.

When he came back, he said, you know what I did that I don't need to do that again because, because I because I had my experience.

But that's, that's the beauty of living a fully engaged, flourishing life is when you can try things and realize, OK, you know what?

I I did it and I don't necessarily have to do it again.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, I've watched it's it's many a cohort.

I've gone down to the beach and watched when I'm down there and it's 70s people actually standing up and, and, and just the, the sense of, Oh my God, the accomplishment, the reframe that happens.

If we had started at the at the start of the week, we said like, OK, we're going surfing today.

You know, maybe one out of four would be people would try it by the end of the week, 3 out of the four are trying it.

Similarly here there's people who go out horseback riding on the ranch in Santa Fe that have never tried it before and have been a little bit scared.

Sure.

And so by the end of the week, they're, they're up on a horse if they want, or they're doing sometimes Equino learning through our partnership with Equus and the, you know, the, the ability for people to actually try something new that that they thought was out of their reach.

You know, the way to think about mindset is the following.

Is your mindset serving you?

And sometimes closing down options.

You know, Jim, Jim might have said, like at 88, my mindset if I don't want to do it again, is serving him because I don't want to get hurt.

Yeah.

That's fine.

Yeah.

But often the question is, is your mindset serving you?

And it's if it's closing down your options, that isn't always the best solution for you.

Yeah.

And we live in a society where we're told to retire at 65, we're told to close down.

I think that's going to change.

It has to.

Well, and that's why this whole premise of retirement is, is, is flawed for a lot of people because it's like, OK, what am I going to do?

Totally.

You know, I'm, I, I don't, I don't want to be bored with my life.

So, you know, I, I would just say at the end of the day, mindset is like the fish for water for a fish.

Yeah, it's something that's totally in your life.

You have, you have it just like the fish has water, but you don't even notice it.

And part of what we do at MEA is to help people to notice what mindsets we do, an exercise, as you know, the Great Midlife Edit, where we help people to see they're limiting beliefs that are mindsets that they're ready to let go of.

And then in a collective ritual have them just throw it into the fire.

Love it.

All right, let's give, let's give people one assignment this week.

Well, I think the one assignment I would do is just this idea of make a list of I'm too old to and make a list.

I am just becoming to the age where I can and see what is in both of those lists.

But especially look at the I'm too old to list and ask yourself, is that true?

OK.

Or you or here's another one.

There's another one that that person do 10 years from now what I was.

Just about to say what about?

10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it?

Yeah, that that one.

That's a good one.

With friends.

Maybe that's what the exercise is, is have a meal with your spouse, with a friend, with your sister or brother and say like, hey, let's have a conversation about what is what it is that we would like to do but we are scared of doing.

And this question will help help us to see the anticipated regret if we don't do it.

Love it.

All right, everybody, there's your assignment for the week.

And this has been another episode of Wisdom Wednesdays with Chip Conley.

And thank you for listening.

Chip, any final words?

No Join us on Friday, my next interview.

And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, and we'll see you again next week.

Yeah.

Thanks, Derek.

Thanks for listening to Wisdom Wednesdays on the Midlife Chrysalis.

This show is produced by Midlife Media.

If you have a question you'd like us to explore in a future episode, please send it to podcast@meawisdom.com.

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