#143: On Purpose And Changes No Matter The Age With Whitney Vosburgh

You did, Adam, and thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, wonderful. Hey, I'd love to know if there's something that's not a part of that bio that you would, you would love in this moment for people to know about you as we get started.

Well, one of the more interesting things I did was over the course of 4 years, I walked a 1,000-year-old, 1,000-mile pilgrimage on foot. from temple to temple in remote rural Japan. And it's one of the best things I ever did because I was literally moving at the speed of life. It gave me a chance to contemplate what I'd done with my life, what I was doing, what I would like to do with the rest of my life.

Whitney, when was this? When was that?

This was 2009 to 2012.

Wow. What was the catalyst or the sort of the pivotal moment that— because this show is about pivots. That sounds like a pretty significant pivot in your life.

My family made a big pivot in that my dad worked for Pan American Airways. We were back in the Mad Men era, a suburban family outside New York, and my dad got an assignment to Tokyo, Japan. There we were, Alice in Wonderland, landed in downtown Tokyo in 1962, just before the Olympics. And we're all going, whoa, this is different. So I grew up all around the world. I've lived, worked, studied in different continents all throughout my life. But there was always something about that one year in Japan that was pivotal.

Yeah.

I always wanted to go back, not as a tourist or a visitor. I wanted to go back as a guest, a member of a community. So I went back 40-plus years as a guest of an artist residency. in the middle of nowhere. And I saw these people walking around in these pointy hats, all white, old-fashioned gear with a staff and bells, and I thought, wow, I've never seen anything like that before. So I made inquiries, and apparently there's this island of Shikoku, which is roughly a circle. This 1,000-year-old, 1,000-mile pilgrimage follows the perimeter except for the first province where I was staying. And This town was near the center. It starts along the coast, comes inwards, and then goes out towards the coast and then more or less stays there. I just thought, I want to try that.

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And so I went back— my residency was 2004, so I went back 2005, '06, '08 to prepare. And then I walk— chi stands for 4 in Japanese. Koku is rice-producing province. So I did one province each year in a different season. And so I had a backpack and I'd walk with a sound recorder and a camera to record my experiences in between the 88 temples.

That is fascinating. It's uncanny and more than uncanny, I think, too. I just got back from Tokyo, so I'm getting myself back on time zone, although this is one of those magical trips where I did sort of an around the world in 8 days kind of thing, jaunt, and I feel My body has held up really well. I don't feel any real jet lag, although I had a little trouble sleeping in the last couple of days.

Yeah.

But for the most part, I feel great, and I loved Tokyo. I absolutely— so I was there, had been hired by the Daimler Group, the Mercedes folks, and their division out of Tokyo that's mostly for their trucks and their Mitsubishi stuff. And I was there to do what's called a Fuso Talk, F-U-S-O Talk. kind of like a TED Talk, but for their internal management team.

Right.

And it was wonderful because I got to go a couple of days early and really spend quite a bit of time in the city, have some incredible days out exploring and dinners. And I would just say, and even found for myself a great way to create my own method for resilience in many ways is about doing certain rituals, things that I do on a ritual basis, including swimming. And so I found some indoor pools. It was kind of funny because there were tons of pools when I did the research, but most of them had closed at the end of September. You know, Olympic-sized beautiful pools, and some of them that were indoor but still somehow closed as though the season for swimming ended, you know, after the summer. Wow. And the Japanese, they have their— just like every culture has their specific ways of doing things. I think one of those things about Japanese culture is that they are very And why I was brought in was because they are sometimes resistant to change. They're very much attached to what they wouldn't call the status quo, but they would call their own rituals, their own ways of doing things.

Yes.

And so that was part of the reason why they brought me in as this person to talk about that. But, but I'll just say, generally speaking, I absolutely loved it and I will go back and I can't wait to go back. I thought the people and just everything was wonderful. So it's so funny. And the first time when you landed in Japan was right on the eve of the Olympics. Well, interestingly enough, I've just gotten back and the Olympics are gonna be there again now for the first time since that time when you were a kid. They're gonna have the Summer Olympics there this, this summer 2020.

I was there '62, '63, so the Olympics would have been '64. '64 marked the dawn of modern Japan. They had had this transition from the war and American occupation. '64 was like, okay guys, we're modern, we're on our own, we're on the up and up.

Yeah.

Which they did all through the '60s, '70s, and '80s. Then they've been wobbling a bit since then. Now, they stabilized and will have their Olympics. It's now a new, modern, mature Japan. What I love about Japan is the fact that they are so traditional.

Whitney, I'm just curious, what do you make of the fact that Japan has struggled economically since probably the early '90s and has had some challenge there? I know that's not the topic of our podcast, but we have this in common.

Japan is the oldest country in the world in terms of its population. What they are currently experiencing and soon will be experiencing in terms of having a disproportionate percentage of their population over the age of, you know, whatever it is. That means that they are having more and more older people and fewer younger people. So that opens up the question of, do we bring in foreigners to take the jobs of people that are no longer Japanese?

Right.

That's been a big question for them. And then just in terms of their approach, Japan and Korea were normally the most respectful of their elders, even to this point of awe, but that has crumbled. Now, the social contract is no more. They are having to rethink everything through centralization of government, to the use of robotics for eldercare, Social Security, and the like. Whatever they are currently experiencing We in Western Europe and in America, Canada are soon to follow. So, we have a lot to learn from them.

The thread of this conversation, I think, feeds into the topic of your book, the new book. So, I mean, why not? Let's go there. Brand New Purpose, that's the title of the book. What's the subtitle?

Turning Gray into Great.

If you had gray. If I had hair, it would be gray for sure. Yeah. Well, when I let my beard grow out, which I'm going to be doing shortly, There's more salt in there than there is pepper for sure. So tell us about the book and in particular, I think there's an interesting tie-in to our conversation around Japan. Oh, absolutely. And just for those of you that don't know, Tokyo has 40 million residents. It's a very large city, it's spread out. Doesn't feel crowded to me though. I'm from New York originally, so I know what a crowded city feels like, or at least cities at times when they're crowded. I didn't feel like Tokyo was crowded, so it's pretty remarkable that 40 million people are inhabitants of that city.

Yes, because Tokyo really is a very large combination of different villages that are bisected by huge avenues. But once you get past those avenues, you have a village atmosphere. And that's why it doesn't feel so crowded, because I'm also from New York originally.

Yeah. Let's talk about brand new purpose and this idea that there is a shift that's occurring and it may coincide with the shift in color of our hair. Yeah.

I wanted to write a book based on my experiences of midlife transition.

Yes.

And decided I wanted to do it within a graduate program. So I went to the graduate theological program here in Berkeley, went to the Unitarian Universalist School because they were the most liberal and flexible in their beliefs, and wrote this thesis called Second Act: Creating a Meaningful Middle Age and Beyond. I was going to publish it, but then I thought, I've got a different story to tell. I coauthored the 2 Work the Future Today books. Now, I've come back to actually publishing the brand new Purpose: Turning Gray into Great book in the spring, because I realized what the missing piece was. It was recently confirmed, Time Magazine 2019 Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg.

Hmm, right.

So there are people who are in their 60s and 70s who started a revolution back in the '60s and '70s to protest against environmental degradation and what eventually will— became a global climate change crisis and the like. So the EPA was formed in the early '70s by Nixon, of all people.

Yes, he did one or two pretty decent things. Yeah.

Yeah. The '80s happened, Milton Friedman economics from the Chicago School in terms of more is more, profit focused on shareholder. We have the shift away from a single bottom line to a triple bottom line of profit, people, planet. Now, it is planet, people, profit, because there is no planet, there is no people, no people, no profit.

Right. Is another way to explain that shift sort of a shift from we to me? That there's a sort of a pendulum shift between the time, as you say, in late '60s, early '70s, when we were very focused on community solutions or collaborative solutions to world problems, and then we shift away from that into the more I, me focus of the '80s and '90s and then—

Yes. So we went from we and communes and collectives and mass marches and the start of civil rights and fighting against all the isms except the ultimate ism, AIDSism.

Mm-hmm.

So we shifted from we to the me generation to Gordon Gekko in the '80s and Wall Street, greed is good, and people who got lost in their mortgages, children, careers. So now that we're sort of past that to a certain degree, we have an opportunity to complete the revolution that we started. Here is the really kicker, why I delayed my book by 7 or 8 years, is we cannot do it alone. I was at a party this summer, it was a bunch of boomers, very well-to-do. They retired comfortable, been there, done that, did not have to do anything. I said, why are you organizing very actively this radical social political movement? They said, I do not need to do it, but I have to do it for my children, my grandchildren. They do not have the same access to what I had access to. They do not have what I have and had. Their future is radically different from what we were facing at that age. We need to start creating a better future for them while we can. That was like a wake-up call for me when I heard that, and confirmed by Greta Thunberg as the Person of the Year for Time Magazine, the youngest person ever in the 19th century. She's 15?

16.

16. Yeah. She went from being a solitary protester outside the Swedish Parliament with a little drawing saying climate strike to just over a little year, she's become You know, the face of the movement. The movement, yeah. Primarily, global climate change strikes and movements and what have you. But as Time magazine noticed that, you know, she, like the rest of us, rests on the shoulders of the giants who came before her.

Yes.

And so for me, it's— we've sort of come full circle in terms of we started this in the '60s and '70s because enough of us at that time sensed that things were not right and we got distracted. And now if we are to make a difference, now is the time, but we can't do it alone. So the point of the brand new purpose, turning gray into great, is yes, we need to go back to where we started to make it appropriate and relevant to today, not to back in the day. and to do it in collaboration with younger people so that we all have something to share. We can all mentor each other, young and old, old and young. It has to be of equals. It can't be like this because that would be deadly, so that we can collaborate, communicate, collaborate, co-create, so that we can create a commonwealth of purpose, Possibility and plenty, plenty of prosperity.

So this was sort of a season of— you're speaking about more the baby boomer generation, which is roughly sort of 1964, '65 as a sort of an end date. So meaning that the youngest of the baby boomers were probably born no later than about '64 or '65, something like that, right? So these folks were in their teens, Or maybe even in their 20s or 30s, I suppose, when those revolutionary movements and marches and things were happening in the late '60s and '70s. And then, as you say, people got lost in the commerce of life, in their mortgages, in their kids, in the betterment of their families, and paying for it all. As we know, none of this is— there's no free lunch with regard to a lot of these things. So now they're at a stage perhaps when they've got the time and the energy still and the focus and maybe even the cushion financially to be able to refocus on this. So, I'm curious, do you think, and this is more just maybe just a guess from you, but I'm curious, do you think that the current generation, what we have here is largely millennials, do you think that they who are very much a more conscious generation, they're conscious of things we weren't, that I wasn't conscious of growing up and I sort of am on the cusp of the baby boomer, maybe that last year or so and then more Gen X. which is sort of ill-defined or defined by apathy or I don't know what, things like that, just sort of being in the middle, I suppose. Do you think that there's a seasonality to the desire, to Greta's work, for example, to her enthusiasm and her passion at age 16? Do you think there's a season for that? And then, you know, Greta, when she's 26 or when she's 36, will now focus on family and mortgage and get lost in those more mundane aspects of life as the baby boomers did. I'm just curious if you think this is sort of a trend and therefore something that we might look at and how we have that conversation. Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new, but the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

It's a bit of both. Should people Greta's age have the good fortune the good health, the good environment, the good economy to be able to have a career, a family, a home, good health, and all that, that we— many of us, not all of us, but many of us have experienced and taken for granted, or did not experience it, but knew that it was possible, had been exposed to it. Or even exposed to the the media version of it on television or in the movies or books or, you know, comics or whatever it is. So we face very dire possibilities from the global climate and existential crisis that we currently face. Hmm. So if things progress somewhat like they did in the past, then yes, people will forget their initial passion and focus until they get to the point where they can come back to it later on. Yeah. But there again, you know, things could get progressively worse for long enough where people won't necessarily have that opportunity unless you are very lucky, very wealthy, or well situated in a part of the world where your basic needs are met outside the global capitalist society.

Yeah. I mean, complacency is an interesting thing, right? Because it can be born of comfort. It can be the result of a number of different things, of course, and complacency costs. I mean, if we take our eye off this ball— people were saying that in the '60s, people were saying that in the '70s. It's not really all that new that folks have been calling attention. I mean, Ralph Nader's been calling attention to issues relative to these things for a long, long time. The Green Party's existed for a long time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just, you know, it's interesting. Is your book meant to be sort of a catalyst or a call to action for this group of folks that, as you say, may have enjoyed some good economic times and some, or just enjoyed, as you say, making it through, making it to this point? Is there a special call to action to those folks now to just give it back in some way, pay it back, pay it forward?

Yes, it's an invitation for a conscious pivot. So to speak.

Yeah.

To go back to where they started in the '60s and '70s. And for some, it might be in the early '80s. I mean, I remember I was born in '56. I'm 63. Being in art school in New York in the early '80s, participating in anti-Reagan art shows. So there were pockets of resistance, so to speak, to the status quo that lingered far beyond the '60s and '70s.

Right.

It went far beyond that. But it's really about slowing down, going inside, traveling that longest distance of the 18 inches from head to heart and from heart to gut. You know, so for our IQ, our EQ, and what I call GQ, you know, our gut instincts, intuition, to connecting with ourselves, integrating, and then going out again from our head to our heart to our hands, you know, from our why to our who and where. to our how. What is our unique gift? Who do we share it with for maximum benefit? Where do we find them? How do we best serve through sharing our unique gift?

Right.

So it's taking a personal journey and then looking for an opening in the larger conversation in the world out there amongst ourselves, our peers, but also how we might help our children or grandchildren or our nieces and grandnieces, nephews, Or just children who live next door or whatever it is. It's making connections where there should be, but there aren't.

The demographic that you're targeting with this book, they've been a resilient bunch, wouldn't you say?

Yeah. This is aimed at people who are old enough to know that whatever they did in their first career either did or didn't work, was or wasn't successful, but whatever it was, No longer satisfied. So that is to look beyond external trappings of success, whether it's the car, the house, the clothes, or membership in this or that, but to look inwards to your second act, your third act, where you become more defined. You pivot towards an internally derived and driven success. It becomes more personal. more intangible, which means it's that harder to find, but that much more satisfying because it comes from the soul.

That makes sense to me. I'm curious if you've noticed or as part of your book or any research you've done, whether there's an element of resilience that plays into the ability to create a second act or a third act. Because I mean, look, I'm fascinated with the topic of pivot. That's why the show is all about that. We wrote a book about that. And in that conversation, when we were writing the book, actually, we were thinking in terms of what has enabled— what enabled me to create a midlife calling out of what could have been a midlife crisis. And resilience was a big part of that. Yeah. That was sort of the little circle inside the big circle. And now what I realize years later, where I am in my life now and what I've noticed of people and the research I've done is that the big circle's actually resilience for me. Pivot is the small circle inside of that, that is part of my ongoing evolution and the things that I want to do with my life and the things that I want to leave and the value I want to contribute to the world, that I've got to be incredibly resilient because the world is disrupting and being disrupted on such a consistent basis. Exponentially, the change is so much greater and faster all the time. Yeah. Again, you could look at it from so many Different perspectives, but if you're not resilient in the face of that, it'll just knock you over. You won't be around or strong enough, won't have the energy to create that third act or that fourth act. What are your thoughts on that? And I'd love to know your own definition of resilience as well.

Resilience is the rocket fuel. It's the passion to maintain a sense of joy, passion, enthusiasm, curiosity, lifelong learning, creation that feeds into a pivotal moment when you decide, okay, I have got my rocket fuel. The pivot determines my projection. I am going to go this way, as opposed to that way. They say in rocketry that just a few degrees over time can make a huge difference. Resilience is the ability to bounce back no matter what. For me, it's probably my core personal quality that enables me to keep on bouncing back no matter what.

Rituals are very important. You and I, before we started the show, we talked about how in many ways, the quality of our lives is equal to the quality of our rituals. The power in our lives is very much tied to the power of those rituals. What rituals for resilience would you— take a look back at your history and the different things you've done, the second act, third act, fourth acts that you've created, including right now this book that you've got coming out and the call to action to others just like yourself. What are some of the rituals that you've had along the way that produce resilience, do you think? That ability to get back up.

You know, it goes from small to big.

You got a 10-second ritual for us? Because you're a mindset guy, I mean, right?

When I get up in the morning and before I go to bed, I walk out in nature.

Why do you walk out in nature? What's so special about nature and—

It's away from devices.

Yes.

And all the digital nonsense that we—

Shocking. Have to get away from the recording devices that are recording us all the time.

Yeah. It's getting out of the man-made environment to a more natural environment, preferably things with trees and flowers and shrubs. Instead of inside, it's outside. Fresher air.

Clean air, yes.

Cleaner air. You're exercising, you're, you're in movement, as everything is always in movement perpetually on this planet.

Or it's dead. Things that stagnate, right?

Yeah, so, you know, if you're not moving, you might not be living.

Yeah.

So it's just—

everybody check yourself right now. I always check my pulse. Am I still here? Oh yeah, good. If I can only find the pulse, I can never find my own heart.

It reminds me of that poster from the '60s or '70s where there's a person in a raincoat in front of a piece of art and it says, expose yourself to art.

Yeah,

my equivalent of Exposing yourself to nature.

Proximity to nature. Yeah.

Proximity, being open to it, be participating in it, being part of it, of being of movement, of exercise, getting away from digital devices, of being mindful, of step by step, and appreciating that we are part of the natural world and one small part of something much greater than us. But since we're part of something much greater, we are great in ourselves.

The miracle is certainly more on display in nature than anywhere else, for me. Yeah. Yeah. So I look out at the ocean, I'm looking out right now and just looking at this sea of blue and just to be able to see it or to, as you say, to walk in it, to experience it, it creates a miracle. I mean, the miracles are around us all the time. It's just I'm not always tuned enough to recognize a miracle when it's staring me in the face.

Yes. Well, we are miracles. I mean, just think of the human body. Life itself and life in us, the billions of microbes and organisms and what have you that live inside us that keep us alive.

This conversation is a miracle. I'm looking at you, right? For folks that are watching this on YouTube, where, you know, you get to see that if you're listening, you know, but yeah, but I'm looking at you, Whitney, and you're a miracle. Yeah, we are. It's beautiful. I will share, as I'm apt to do, the one ritual, the sort of the 10-second miracle in my life, which is 3 steps that are 3 easy pieces. Wasn't there— what was that? Oh, it was 5 Easy Pieces. Was that old? Nichols.

Mike Nichols.

Yeah, great movie. Crazy movie. But these 3 easy pieces are not so easy to pull off every day. First piece of it is to wake up, and waking up just to be awake is a miracle all by itself because we know not everybody has that. We get that cleanly. The waking that's more of a figurative sort is the consciousness, is our ability to, you know, how open can I be today? What's the degree to which I'm open or closed on any particular day? It's like the aperture of a camera, you know, and that changes. It depends on sleep for me. It depends on my own mindset. You know, do I start off in a pissy mood or am I more apt to just—

Choice.

Be humble. Yeah, choice.

What do I choose to be today?

Yeah. You think about those folks that have more gray. As we get older, we have a few more aches and pains. We have a few more things we could complain about.

Mm-hmm.

And it's interesting, I had gotten in the habit of watching the news a little bit in the morning just to kind of catch a little glimpse of what was going on because of this melodrama that's unfolding in front of us all. And I never talk politics on the show and I won't do so now. I just say that it wasn't a healthy way for me to begin the day, to start my mind in that direction where Immediately, I could feel that aperture of my heart closing

and

becoming quite agitated and judgmental and even angry. I'm a recovering New Yorker, recovering lawyer from New York. So I really had a— pretty susceptible to that, getting worked up quickly kind of thing. So you can identify, you can understand, right? Yeah. I really hope you're enjoying this episode. of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. So the first step is this waking And second step is to feel something about waking up. What do you feel when you begin the day? Again, is it, am I feeling a rush? You know, are we feeling rushed to get going and get moving, get doing something, get the coffee going, get the, you know, find out from the phone what great messages we've missed while we were sleeping? You know, maybe it was a message from the Queen, who knows, right? We could be getting knighted or something. Anything could happen while we're sleeping. Good God. Pick up that phone and find out. Sir Adam. I could be Sir Adam. I could be a duke, something.

The Duke of Merkel.

The Duke of Merkel. So I choose gratitude and it never fails. It really is quite— you talk about a 10-second miracle or a 1-minute miracle, just sit in gratitude for 60 seconds and see how your body feels. I know how my body feels. I know what's coursing through my veins is somehow more healthy for me.

Yeah.

But for the long term, to be in gratitude. And then the third piece, after allowing that 10 seconds to a minute just to feel grateful, is to actually use the power of words for myself to declare something out loud that I— and lately it's been 2 things. Folks that have heard this message before, they know that the 4 words that I've been using for better part of a dozen years now is, I love my life. Those 4 words, I love my life, has really had massive meaning for me. And then recently I had a woman who's in her 70s on the podcast, and if you haven't heard this show, Judy Whitcraft, you got to just go back and check out that episode. It's really cool. She's just a wise, wise lady, and she said that she wakes up and she says out loud, I wonder what miracles are coming today. And I have— I wrote it down. I've got it by my bedside. I like that. Yeah, isn't that beautiful? I wonder what miracles— we've been talking a little bit about miracles, and yeah, I wonder what miracles are coming today. So this was a miracle, Whitney. I am so thrilled and really feel blessed that our mutual friend Teresa de Grobois— shout out to Teresa— made that introduction. And Ben Joya is another friend of ours that we have in common, and, and all those beautiful people in Tokyo, Japan. Hi. Exactly.

So does.

Arigato. Yeah, just, uh, just beautiful. So happy to have you on the show today.

Pleasure.

Thanks for being with us, everybody. We'll have full show notes. You can find out more about Whitney and his upcoming book as well as other books that he's written. Just good, good stuff. So check out the show notes, leave a comment, let us know what you feel about what we've done here today and any suggestions. We're really always so open. I mean, feedback is like oxygen for all of us. So we'll see you soon. Ciao for now, everybody.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook. At pivotfb.com.