Ep 126: The Magic of Aging

I recently heard the sentiment that anti-aging is a ridiculous notion as the opposite of aging would be not aging, as in ‘death’. I think there might be a few ad executives who haven’t received the message🙃

To continue our conversation about aging and whether you should age gracefully or fight it all the way (!), I shared some additional thoughts about midlife on the podcast this week.

Here are a few highlights:

• Health span vs. Life span
• Postive Intelligence
• It’s okay to feel some loss of identity and even grief as life unfolds.
• Where are the rituals of midlife?
• The Daring Dozen

Here’s an idea; what if we took a ‘gap year’ or a ‘sabbatical’ to commemorate midlife? Imagine dedicating a full year to figuring out what we want to focus on in our 4th act. In his teaching about midlife, Chip Conley shares that we used to consider life as a ‘three-part play’. Part 1 was birth to 21 years of age. Part 2, 22 -45 years of age and our final act was 46-65 when we would retire and die shortly after. Now, we are often living to 85, an entire extra act! I think that’s pretty exciting. And, I think that if we want to live with vitality and a richness of friendship and purpose, we need to plan for it.

The other consideration, and opportunity is to focus on what is going right. In Arthur Brooks’ latest book, Build The Life You Want, he shares that happiness depends on choosing what we focus on. So, with that in mind, I invite you to participate in the following exercise, which Chip Conley calls “The Daring Dozen”. Here are the prompts:

What would be on your Daring Dozen list of things that get better with age?
How are you happier and freer today than you were ten or twenty years ago?

Here are a few of my ‘daring dozen’ reflections:

1. Less caring about what other people think
2. More enjoyment of the present moment
3. Beautiful Friendships! (this is a big one for me as I spent my first 50 years believing I was the outsider, the one who didn’t have friends)

What’s on your list? I’d love to hear your own daring insights; hit reply to share!