Embracing the Power of Midlife: Wisdom and Wellness with Chip Conley

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I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, Mom. Turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. And in each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. A couple years ago, I was at a retreat and my girlfriend Vivian and had her friend Chip Conley come over and talk to all of us. And Chip Conley started to talk about his concept of the modern Elder Academy and making midlife the best time of life and learning to love it. And I was like, I love this concept so much. And I think, you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, as I, as I started approaching 60, I'm like, all right. I heard from Dr. Mark Hyman that if you're positive about aging, you live seven and a half years longer. I'm like, well, that's easy. And then I saw this book that Chip came out with, Learning To Love Midlife 12 Reasons why Life Gets Better with Age. Oh my goodness. It's actually a manual for how to do this. So I'm super excited to have Chip on the show today. He's actually a well known hospitality entrepreneur. He had one of America's first boutique hotel cotilier brands and joie de vivre. And then he became the in house mentor for the Airbnb founders. And when he was doing that, he describes that he was 52, but he was the old guy at the time because everyone was 26. You know, it was a tech, little tech company. So they called him the Modern Elder. And that's where everything started to happen. He started to connect these dots about middle age, about really how you can navigate middle age and love it. And I like to joke that if I could have skipped over, you know, especially teenage years, I don't know about you, but I would love to have taken a little, little jump over those and gotten to this point in life. Like, this is definitely the most fun time, the most fun time I'm having here. So here's someone who actually has the manual for how to do that. Now. This isn't the only book he's written. He's written seven books and, you know, a couple New York Times bestsellers. He's been on TED stage times. We are going to be linking to his TED talks. And he is the founder and CEO of the Modern Elder Academy, calls it mea, which is the world's first midlife wisdom school. He's got campuses in Baja California and Santa Fe, New Mexico. And so you're going to want to grab the book. I'm going to put everything@jjvirgin.com love midlife so that you can grab the book. He does a blog every day. You can learn more about MEA and check out his TED talks. And I will be right back with Chip Conley. Stay with me. Hey, jj, Virgin here. Okay. Real talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things. And suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface, all on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

Hello, listeners. This is Anne Boeckle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.

All right, Chip Conley, welcome to well beyond 40. I feel like this show was made for you.

First of all, I Love your name, J.J. virgin. I love well Beyond 40. I think you're a branding expert, and so I just want to say, hats off to you, my dear.

Well, thank you so much, JJ Virgin was literally, because I was teaching aerobics in Japan when I was in college, and they couldn't pronounce Julie, so I became Jumbo jj. I kid you not. And back then, my name was Julie Johnson. And then. And I became jj and then I married a virgin. There you go.

Did you marry a virgin?

I married a virgin.

And so you took his name?

So I took his name. And I had Virgin boys.

His last name was Virgin.

His last name's Virgin. Funnier story from that. His last name's Virgin. I remember, you know, I give birth to my first son, and literally they had a little sign on his bassinet that said Virgin. Boy, this is so funny. Yeah, so. So there you go. And my team came up with well beyond 40. I cannot take responsibility for it. It is fantastic. But what a perfect show for. For you with Learning to Love Midlife. There's so much to unpack here with this book. But what I love the most is as I've as I've looked at this, first of all, I've realized that midlife is, you know, I think, where was I looking at this, where we're all sudden, I go, is 60 considered to be like a senior? Because as far as I'm concerned, midlife's like 40 to 80, right?

I, I think it's 35 to 75. So I mean, it's, it's, it's, here's the best way to define midlife. It's less about the specific ages, it's more about the era. It's the era. It's the bridge in between early adulthood and later adulthood. Right. I mean, midlife is between early and late. And so as we live longer, guess what? That bridge is longer. So I, yes, I don't think people 50 years ago would have said midlife lasts 40 years, but we've seen a lot more longevity. And we also see people staying healthier, staying in the workplace longer. So 75, you know, could easily be a midlife for someone who's going to live to 100.

Perfect. Well, I'm going for 120. So I'm pushing this midlife out to maybe even 90. And I, you know, as I was getting ready to turn 60, I heard a quote, and the quote was people who were positive about aging live seven a half years longer than those who aren't. And I go, well, that's easy. Let's do that.

You know. Yeah, it's that, that comes from Becca Levy from Yale, and she's like a good friend of MEA our program because, you know, here's the part that's interesting about this JJ There, there's all kinds of great data out there and Peter A.A. and Mark Hyman and you name it, you and others talking about the physical side of longevity and what the opportunity is there. But there's actually at this point, no physical intervention that has been found. Not stopping smoking at 50, not starting exercise at 50, not sleeping better, not stressing less. There's nothing that has been found to be better in terms of increasing longevity than the socio emotional piece of like, how do I shift my mindset from a negative to a positive when it comes to aging? And it's not easy to do because we live in a very ageist society. But it's if you can do it and you do it well, then you get a lot more life. And not only do you get more life, you get a happier life. Because quite frankly, if at 60, you're depressed all the time and you're trying to Convince yourself that aging is not a terrible thing. You know, who wants to be around you if you can live to 120? Because, you know, frankly, you're not gonna be a lot of fun.

Well, what I've seen so far is if I could have fast forwarded from, say, 12, you know, years old. If I could have taken the 12 to 40 year old time span and just jumped past that. So why.

So tell us, tell us, tell the listeners why. What was going on between 12 and 40? You didn't like it?

It's just there was a mindset shift. And I was actually talking to Dr. Lisa Moscone yesterday. Have you seen her work? And she was talking about the female brain and how different it is at puberty, pregnancy and. And menopause, perimen it on. And I went, and then the beautiful shift that happens at perimenopause. And I go, gosh, I keep. It's been fantastic. I wish I could have had that shift earlier. And it isn't a physical body shift. It's absolutely a mental shift. That is fantastic. Right?

Yeah. No, you know, Margaret, me, the cultural anthropologist, used to. She used to have a term called postmenopausal zest. And what she meant by that was there was like, you know, once a woman goes through menopause, not only does she have the relief of knowing, okay, I don't. I won't get pregnant, you know, with a surprise, but there's a newfound sort of confidence and freedom and sense of wanting to take on life and. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. And, you know, you know, before 40, it was just a light. It was just a dress rehearsal.

Exactly. So why the heck then is it all of this? You know, you turn 50 over the hill, all this, like, why is this so misrepresented?

We've made fun of aging. And, you know, I think it's good to have a sense of humor. I have one, and I enjoy using it. At the same time, if you were to make fun in the era we live in today, make fun of someone because they're gay. Make someone because of their woman or because they are a person of color. You know, you get slapped around, but you make fun of someone because they're. They're older, it's okay. So it's. So there's a social. It's the last socially acceptable bias that we can have. But what's also weird about it is it's also the only, you know, all those other demographics. Not everybody can be those things. But when it comes to aging, if you're lucky, you will be that thing and everybody, it's universal. But I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that American culture has defined sense of self esteem and the sense of success a lot based upon the body. You know, you got a good body, got a good face, got it. You know, you're looking good, you're looking young. There's that. And I think there's also a sort of an economic issue here, which is back in the agricultural era, if you had a wise elder around the farm, they had land wisdom, they could smell the rain three days ahead and they could, they just knew things. There's an intuition. And then we went from agriculture to industrial. We didn't need elders on the factory line. In fact, elders slowed things down. And then we went to the technology era and like, oh no, you do not want your elders running, you know, Google. So the bottom line is we've sort of moved into a direction where the body defines who's powerful and hap and sexy. And our careers are more and more focused on younger people. So I like to say we're in an era where we're living longer, power is moving younger and the world is changing faster. And that has a lot of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, a bit bewildered.

So you started this Modern Elder Academy. I was intrigued purely the name alone because I look at other cultures and other cultures celebrate elders. Right. I lived in, I lived in Japan for a while and I'm like very different cultural situation than in states. And so what's the premise behind that and how do we start to do that same thing where we're celebrating elders and we have a place to be?

Yeah, there's a couple thoughts here. Number one is the reason the even name Modern Elder Academy, or we usually use the acronym M E A Now the reason it came about was because I was at Airbnb. I was a longtime boutique hotel year ran the second largest boutique hotel company in the U.S. started it and, and, and then at 50, sold it and was. I struggled with my late 40s, went through a really rough time and then in my early 50s I had a midlife atrium, some time and space to reflect on what I want to do next. And then I was asked by the founders of airbnb at age 52 to come in and be their in house mentor and basically help them run the company. And so they started calling me the modern elder because at 52 the average age in the company was 26. I was twice the. So let's start by saying that elder is not a time of your life. It's not like last five years of your life. Like being elderly. Elder is a relative term. Tom Brady was an elder in the NFL. You know, any fashion model in their 30s is probably an elder. A software engineer in Silicon Valley at 35 is an elder. So it's a relative term. But what they said to me is, chip, you are our modern elder. And then they said, a modern elder is someone who's as curious as they are wise. And I was like, oh, wow. The alchemy of curiosity and wisdom. I want to be that when I grow up. So I owned that. I owned being Airbnb's Modern Elder. And then when I decided to create the world's first midlife wisdom school, mea, the Modern Elder Academy, I doubled down on. On elder. On Modern Elder, I. You know, in retrospect, it's a. It's a challenging name because our average age of people who come to mea is 54. And we've had one sixth of the people who come to me a are millennials, which is so surprising with the name we have. But it's a wisdom school, and people are really curious about how to cultivate and harvest their wisdom. But I also believe, like, maybe we can reclaim the word. You know, maybe, maybe we. I like the fact it says modern Elder because this is not about. This is not a school where people come to say, okay, everybody has to respect me now. It's not about reverence, it's about relevance. Relevance is like, how do you. How do you make. Take your wisdom and make it relevant? As I had to at in a tech company. Never worked in a tech company before. So how are you relevant? How are you helping people to see that maybe your best years are ahead of you?

Yeah, I love that idea of reverence versus relevance, because I think we look at our elders with reverence, but we don't ask them questions because we feel like it's not relevant. Right, well, there's that.

Or frankly, we don't see them because they're all off in age apartheid in some retirement community or nursing home. They're at the vill over here at the villages. Yes, yes.

And how long has this Modern Elder Academy been going on?

Six years in Baja, and we've had 4300 people come to our campus from 47 countries to go through a week long or a two week long program with us. And now we have a 2,600acre regenerative horse ranch outside of Santa Fe, New.

Mexico, that opens the spring and someone goes there. What, why are they coming and what are they coming out with? Like, what are the lessons learned?

Well, so the reason they're coming is, usually has many reasons, but the primary reason is they're, they're stuck. They're trying to navigate a transition and they feel stuck. They are recently divorced and they don't know what to do. They have sold their company and they feel lost and purposeless. They've gotten fired and they don't know what to, you know, they, they feel like they're over the hill, they had a medical diagnosis that scared them or they're empty nesters and they're, and they've lost intimacy with their partner. So there's a lot of reasons people come. It's not just personal, not just professional. But they're coming partly because they want to reframe their relationship with aging and have a, have a different perspective on the second half of their adult life. The, the program really has three key pieces to it. Navigating transitions, cultivating purpose, and owning wisdom. And the owning wisdom piece is the one that I like the most because it's not something we talk about a lot. You know, when, when the founders of Airbnb said you're a modern elder, you're the combination of curiosity and wisdom. And then they said, we hired you for your knowledge, but what you really brought was your wisdom. I was like, I don't even know what you're talking about. What is the hell is wisdom? And wisdom is really best defined as, you know, your painful life lessons that are the raw material for your future wisdom. So, you know, life experience, the more you have of it, the more, the more raw material and ingredients you have to potentially create wisdom. But there are lots of people who are in their 80s who don't have, who are not wise because they didn't make sense of their experiences. They didn't metabolize what they were learning along the way. So one of my favorite exercises is to actually, every weekend, you know, sit down and say what I learned this week and how's it going to serve me in the future? And I might write down six different things.

Didn't you have a little book of that?

I've been doing that for 35 years. It's, it's nine actual journals. But about 10, 15 years ago, I turned into Google Docs. And so I now just do Google Docs. But yeah, it's, I mean, it's a, to be able to make sense of what you've gone through and then ask how Will it serve me? Moving forward is the ultimate wisdom practice that helps you become wiser. And wisdom is going to be trending, guys, you know, hey, knowledge is a dime a dozen now, especially in the era of AI. And so the world is full of knowledge and we're awash in it. And so what becomes scarce is this idea of, like, wisdom, human centered wisdom, what we learn. And AI has yet to be able to figure out empathy or intuition or collaboration or a variety of other things that, you know, are really human centric or just literally being able to walk into a room and sense something is not quite right. Not something AI does. AI also does. AI gives you answers. Also, Picasso said long ago, computers are useless. They only give you answers. And, you know, someone who's wise actually poses beautiful questions. Jimi Hendrix said, knowledge speaks and wisdom listens. And so learning how to listen and then to be very thoughtful and catalytic in your questions is part of what it means to be wise.

And this can be learned. Yes.

I mean, it definitely there's tools. There's tools that can help you become wiser. There's definitely tools that could help you navigate transitions. I mean, that's really one of, you know, you were talking earlier about 12 to 40, you know, what was going on in your life. Adolescence is an era that we're all very familiar with, and it's one where we laugh a little bit, because when kids are going through adolescence, they're going through so much change, and they're going through rites of passage and rituals. We as a society have helped adolescents become something that kids go through with each other and they have their first kiss and their first, you know, whatever, and they, you know, they experience that together. There's a word that is less known, and it's called middle essence. And it really is midlife. And we're in midlife. We're going through hormonal, emotional, physical and identity transitions. But we have no rites of passage or no rituals, nothing that helps you to understand the schools or the tools that are going to help you through a roadmap of midlife. Like, you know, when you're younger, you have school counselors and teachers and parents and et cetera, you know, Boy Scouts and sporting teams. And we don't have that. So we're often going through middle essence, midlife, going through all kinds of transitions, but we're doing it alone. And this is particularly for men, because women are so much better at reaching out for help and support and talking about what's going on for them. Part of the reason why Midlife suicide rate for men is so much higher than it is for women is because men don't talk and they hold it inside and they feel like they're getting the game of life wrong, and then they don't know what to do. So I lost five male friends to suicide, ages 42 to 52, during the Great Recession. And I deeply wish that mea our school had been around then, because I don't know if it would have saved all five, but I do know it would have given them a sense that what they were going through was not abnormal. So a lot of time, a lot of times, we think we're the only ones suffering through something.

So is this because you talk? And I loved this statement so much. It was the difference between a midlife crisis and you view it as a midlife chrysalis.

Yeah, so. So when we were kids, we learned about the magical metamorphosis of the caterpillar to the butterfly and midlife for the butterfly was the chrysalis. And so you spend the early part of your life like a caterpillar, consuming and producing, consuming and producing. And then what the caterpillar does is one day it just starts spinning this little silk crystal as this cocoon, which it's going to go into and then liquid, liquidate, or liquefy. And it's dark and gooey and solitary. But it's also where the transformation happens. And then it comes out the other side, a colorful butterfly ready to pollinate its wisdom in the world. So the way I look at life and midlife is it's not a crisis because actually it is the low point of life satisfaction. 45 and 50, based upon the social science research called the U curve of happiness. So let's recognize that, yeah, yeah, 45 to 50 is. Is a rough period, but actually after 50, at starting at age 50 and beyond, we get happier and happier with each decade. So I like to think of this not as a crisis, but more as a chrysalis, a time in midlife where you are going through some stuff. It is not easy, and sometimes it feels a little dark and maybe solitary, but if you get it right, you come out the other side as this, you know, pollinating butterfly. So a caterpillar consumes, chrysalis transforms, and a butterfly pollinates. And when I say pollinates, I mean literally going out and making a difference in the world, going out and sharing your wisdom.

They're doing their purpose and their legacy.

That's right.

So what. What are. What are the strategies for that gooey liquefying stage, then to get through it.

You know, there's come to mea. Buy my book Learning to Love Midlife.

Yeah.

And Deb, like, this book is fantastic.

Thank you.

The 12 Reasons why Life Gets Better with Age. It's fantastic. We will link to this in the show notes along with your blog.

But yes, but if someone doesn't have that, you know. Yeah, and you can read my blog because I have a daily blog and talk about this stuff. But what I would say is, you know, there's a, there's a, a free resource on the MEA website, which is meawisdom.com go to the bottom and you'll see something called the Anatomy of a Transition. And I would say that's one of the most important pieces of content that we've created at mea because what it has done is helped people to see that virtually every transition you have in life has three stages to it. There's the ending of something, the messy middle, and then the beginning of something new. And once you understand that that's the sort of the roadmap for going through a transition, you need to then ask, what are the coping mechanisms for actually going through each of those three stages? And the ebook, the free ebook that you'll get if you go there to the website and look for the Anatomy of a Transition at the bottom header, helps people with the coping mechanisms for each. So for example, when you're ending something, it's important to ritualize it. So you're getting divorced, have a divorce party. You don't have to have it with your ex. You just do something to celebrate. And mark the. I was having my prostate taken out last year. I had a prostate party and I had a bunch of friends, bunch of male friends together and we talked about our prostates and what it has done for us in my life, in our lives. And so like, okay, that was like a ritual. You know, if you're an empty nester, do, do like the opposite of Ferris Bueller. And Ferris Bueller's parents went away, they had a party at home. And instead when your kids go away, have a party with some other empty nesters and just celebrate. And, and so ritualization is a really helpful way for you to say that period of my life is over. Then you go to the middle, the middle section of the. Which is the messy middle. And that's where you need social support because when you're in the messy middle, you're sort of feeling lost at times you feel a little bit awkward, it's liminal. To be in between two things and so support's helpful. And then finding your through line, finding what is the theme and how are you going to get through this and visualizing and what it's going to look like on the other side. Viktor Frankl's work was very, you know, about being in a concentration camp. And his book Man's Search for Meaning really speaks to that is like the way people got through that time was to imagine how they would have hope and meaning, about how this experience would help them in the future. And then the third stage, which is the beginning stage, is like the butterfly coming out of the chrysalis. You know, most people don't know it, but when the butterfly comes out of the chrysalis, it doesn't immediately fly. It usually ends up on the ground with wet wings, having to air out its wings and get used to the idea of flying for the first time. So when you're starting something new, you are going to be not, you know, you're gonna be awkward. Also you're gonna be looked a little silly. You know, you are gonna make mistakes. So you gotta move from a fixed mindset where you're trying to prove yourself to a growth mindset where you're trying to improve yourself. So the most important thing to have in that third stage of beginning something new is a growth mindset that makes you feel like you want to get better, you want to learn and improve.

Yeah. I was listening to your interview with Commune and we both do Commune courses and when I heard you had a Commune course on this, I'm like, that's super cool. We'll link. Welcome to Walgreens. What can I help you with today? Hi, I need a last minute gift.

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Will look like you planned it weeks ago. Well, happy holidays gifts, holiday decor and more.

The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way. Walgreens.

That as well. You brought up a point that's just so true. Is you get out of school and when do you get to go? Like, I don't know about you, but I would be in school for forever. Like when I was in undergrad, I.

Started a school so that I am in school forever.

So I love. Like at ucla they said you cannot take any more classes. You have to Leave, you have to graduate. That's it. And I'm like, gosh, I haven't even come scratched the surface of what I want to learn here. I couldn't imagine not, you know, continuing to learn. And now there's so many resources for it. But you get to this point as an adult where you don't want to look foolish, you don't want to look like you don't know how to do something. So how, you know, what does someone do? How does they get into this mindset of the beginner's mind and start to learn again? And where are the resources for all of this? I'm assuming mea yeah, that's me.

But you, you can read about. Carol Dweck wrote a book called Mindset and she t. She distinguished between fixed and growth mindset. And it's, it's a bit of an academic read, so you could maybe look for a magazine article or something like that about it. But basically the point is this, when you have a growth mindset, you are less self critical. You're less, your comparison is the recipe for suffering. And so to be in a comparison mode when you're beginning is not healthy and not helpful. And so instead you've got to sort of look at yourself and say, am I improving relative to what, how I was last week? And you also have to have a sense of humor. There's a great TED talk by a polyglot. I didn't know what that meant, but a polyglot is someone who knows a lot of languages and it's a woman from Eastern, Eastern Europe. And I don't remember her name, but she said the number one way to learn a lot of languages is to laugh. Laughing is learning. And, and I got that when I started at age 57 and started learning Spanish. I, I had a wonderful Spanish teacher and she, she was so much fun. And we, she would talk dirty to me in Spanish because she had a new boyfriend and she wanted to tell me about him. And I was like, okay, let's talk talk dirty together. And it was her idea. And I think. But what it did is it helped me to be less self critical. And that's the key. You know, if you were self critical when you were crawling, you would never start walking because it was embarrassing to keep standing up and falling down and have everybody looking at you and taking pictures of you when you're doing the thing that you're failing at. And yet somehow, and we do, we were able to do that, but somehow we get so self conscious as we get older that we lose that ability to, to just enjoy the process of learning and making mistakes and feeling like, okay, that's okay. And sometimes that's because we have a lot riding on us being successful. You know, when you're, when you, when you're a baby, you don't know. You know, no one's, there's no obligations, but you know, you're 45 years old and you're going to quit your job and start a business and you got three kids and a spouse is like, okay, there's more risk here in doing this. And so therefore, yeah, so we, we tend to get risk averse. And so, yeah, you don't have to take. That's a very risky scenario I just suggested. But learning how to surf at 57, when I asked myself the question, 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? That. Which is a beautiful question, by the way. It's an mba.

Oh, that is a beautiful question.

Ten years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now? Because it anticipated, regret is a form of wisdom. And so at 57, I was living in Mexico. I was like, I don't know Spanish. Ten years from now, I'll regret if I don't learn it now. Because at 67 will be harder than at 57. Although at 57, I was in the mindset like, oh, I'm too old to learn a foreign language. But that question, anticipated regret, catalyzed me into saying, oh, I'm going to do it now. Similarly, I was living on a beach in Mexico near a surf break, and I was like, okay, I gotta learn to surf now. And so curiosity and a willingness to open be. To open to new experiences are both correlated with living longer, healthier, happier lives.

Well, also learning, right? I mean, yeah, yeah. Learning new skills is going to help you. I remember they used to think you couldn't learn things. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. And yet we know it's completely opposite of that. And in fact, we can. But I remember hearing on the other podcast you were talking about how our brains change with age and that. And now I don't remember quite what it was about how you would learn differently.

Yeah. So Arthur Brooks wrote a book called From Strength to Strength and wrote about mea in the book, and it was a New York Times bestseller. He wrote about the fact that as we get older, we move from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence. So when we're young, our brain is very fast and focused, and we tend to move quickly. And then as we get older, the brain shrinks a little bit. And one of the things that happens is we start doing four wheel drive. The brain, when it's fast and focused, it doesn't move very well from left brain to right brain. So it's adept at going deep on one or the other, but not like sort of holistically doing both at the same time. You get older, the brain shrinks a little bit. You can actually go adeptly four wheel drive of the brain from left to right brain. And you start to think not. Not fast and focused. You start thinking holistically and systemically, and you connect the dots. So, you know, there's 12 reasons in the book. The book has 12 reasons why life gets better at with age. And one of them is the fact that frankly, we become wiser with pattern recognition and we're better able to sort of see the big picture, which when you're young, you don't know that even a big picture exists. But when you're older, you know a big picture exists and you have peripheral vision. You also know that when something doesn't go your way, it.

It's.

You know, it might have broken your heart in the moment, but it's not the end of your life. Age 14, when you're. When your boyfriend or girlfriend broke up with you, oh, my God, my life will never be the same. And. And we, you know, we can say that. You can say the same thing at 24, 34, 44, but you get to 54 and beyond, you start to realize, you know, look at all that I have gone through in the past. I will get through this as well. And you have a lot more confidence in your ability to, in essence, metabolize bad news.

Yeah, I love the idea of metabolizing these things. That is fantastic. One of the things you mentioned when you're talking about the three was this purpose. And I coach a lot of health entrepreneurs, and for a lot of them, they're trying to find their purpose. Right. Is there a shift that happens as you get into midlife on purpose? And is there. Do you have a process to help people with figuring out their purpose?

Yep. We have an online course called Living and Working on Purpose as well.

This was not a setup for that. I didn't know.

I swear I didn't know. It's okay. It's like one of our programs. So the thing to know about purpose is that people get performance anxiety about purpose. It's like everybody else has one And I don't have one as if it's a BMW or something like that. We have purpose of envy. And so we gotta get off the idea of the capital P purpose. Because capital P purpose is the kind of purpose that you feel like, oh my God, they'll talk about this once I die. My name's on the building. Or I wrote that book. And the small P purpose is what we start with. Because small people are the things that are purposeful to us. You start with the verb purposeful and you'll find the noun purpose. So I, what I like to say is there are four paths to purpose. And they, they can find. You can find them in these four different directions. Something that excites you, something that agitates you, something that you're curious about, and something that feels like it got forgotten from childhood or early adulthood, maybe a passion. There's this woman, this litigation attorney, she's. Did I tell you about this? No, I haven't mentioned this. 60 year old litigation attorney. And she hated her job because, you know, if you're a litigation, you're a litigator, you're just like, you're fighting all day long. And she was 60 and she felt like she had all this armor on. And she came to me a, and she's like, I just, I, I, I don't know what to do. I don't want to do this anymore, but I've got to work. And, and I, you know, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna find something adjacent to it. And, and so we were gonna help her find like, oh, you become a litigation consultant or whatever. But we went through this exercise, you know, excite, agitate, curious or something from childhood or early adulthood. And she started having dreams down in Baja. And the dreams were about her grandmother and the fact that when she was an early teenager, she would go over to her grandmother's house and they would bake pies and she could smell the pies. And so what? She also, when she got up in the morning and, and had remembered the memory, the, the, the dream, she looked at the fact that whenever she would travel with her husband and they'd go to a new city or country, she, she had a weird thing about wanting to go to bakeries because she wanted to sort of see what the baked goods were in different places. Like, okay, like, like that's a weird pastime. And then when she had friends over, she always like said safe space for dessert, because in fact she even called something like safe space for desse. But she never Put two and two together and saying, like, oh, maybe I should go and train to be a pastry chef for three months and see if I like it. So that's what she did. And then she's like, oh, I like a lot. I'm gonna quit being a litigation attorney, and I'm gonna start a bakery in my neighborhood, because the bakery in my neighborhood actually closed during COVID and we don't have a bakery in my neighborhood. And that's what she's doing. So excite, agitate, curious, or something that feels forgotten from earlier in life. I'm not saying that it's the only way to get there with that. Part of the reason we have workshops and courses on this is because it's a lot more complicated than that. But that's a really shorthand way of saying you can get there.

I just also wonder, Chip, when you hear that story, one of my friends, Mary Morrissey, says you can't see the picture when you're in the frame where you look from the outside and went, all right, well, you. You love pastries. You get the whole thing. You can see it from the outside. But so often we have a thing that we love, but we don't think about it, and we also don't think there's anything unusual about it, because it's normal for us.

Yeah, yeah. And this is why we go to therapist. This is why we have coaches. This is. This is why you go to a workshop, and with two dozen people in a workshop, all of a sudden feel like, oh, my God, you guys see me. And I haven't. And I haven't seen my blind spots. And it's also part of the reason why friends and family members sometimes are not the people who are going to be helpful here. Because. Because, in fact, especially if you want to change, I mean, the systemic situation there is like, oh, you want to change? I guess that means I have to change. I don't want to change. So therefore, I don't want you to change. So, like, oh, okay, that's. That. That's not a dynamic that's going to, you know, help initiate change in your life. So, yeah, I think that one of the beauties of going to any kind of workshop program is assuming that it's well curated and facilitated, is you all of a sudden get to see yourself through other people's eyes. Especially if you're going into a program like ours where people don't know each other's last names. We don't send out LinkedIn profiles. The person over the course of five days that you've gotten to become best friends with, happens to be, you know, know, a billionaire who knew or. Or they happen to have been in prison for 10 years earlier in their life. Something you would never have guessed when you first met them, but you found it out halfway through the week. So, you know, learning and getting to meet people and get to know. Get to know them from the inside out is not what we normally do. And yet it's God that is the Roto Rooter to your soul. You know, we are, we are so plugged up in terms of our ability to connect with something deeper in ourselves, and the conversations we tend to have in our normal life do not get us there.

Yeah, that, that is, that's a beautiful concept. And I know, you know, we've both been to events where you really don't know anything about people and it's. You're not supposed to. And you just talk to them. I'm talking about Burning man where you just. You don't know what anyone's doing or who they are, and you just meet people and yeah, get to know them as a human and it's a completely different experience. And you go, oh, that guy did that.

Oh, I'm a fan. I was a founding board member of the. Of Burning man. So I, I know, I know it well.

That felt like you pulled a little. A little bit of. There's some great lessons learned in, in Burning man, for sure. So we have all this anti aging or de aging or longevity, et cetera stuff. I prefer to think of it as powerful aging, as really stepping into this time of your life to be your, you know, to really have the best time of your life. But there's people I see that are just, just doing like, I would call like a fight, the fight against aging. And I'm talking specifically about Brian Johnson, who's spending a million or $2 million a year.

Yeah, 2 million.

You've got all of this obsession here about in there. You know, I look at how he spends his day in his life, I go, that just sounds miserable. Miserable. Are you kidding?

And who could date the guy? I mean, when you, when he was on Rich Rolls podcast and you listened to them, it's like, you know, I actually had more empathy for him after I heard him. But, but I also heard him like, say, like, I go to bed at 6 o' clock at night. I don't do this, I don't do that. I only eat for three hours a day. And I felt like, man, he's become a robot. Like, he's, he's not, he's not living a natural life. And yeah, I'm, you know, the biohacking tech bros of Silicon Valley want us to live forever. And you know what? I think it's beautiful that they're helping us to maybe find and discover new ways to extend our lifespan, but in some cases they're doing it at the expense of social connection. You know, Harvard has a study that's been going on for 85 years. And the number one variable for living a longer, healthier, happier life is how socially connected are we? And then this other piece, the Becca Levy has that we talked about earlier, where shifting your mindset also is important. So, you know, when we are so obsessed with our stem cell regeneration, so obsessed with our ice baths, I mean, it's fine. I do, I love ice baths. I'm a big fan of them.

But to be clear, you love them.

I do, I do.

Wow. I mean, I, I have a cold plunge, but. But I don't love it. I love that I did it.

You know, it's sort of like yoga for me. I don't. In the midst of the yoga, I don't love it, but afterwards I do do. So. Yeah, that, that's sort of true. I do like cryotherapy, though. And like, you're right, it's like afterwards it's better.

It's the, it's the after endorphins. It's, it's.

Yeah, but the Brian Johnson's of the world, they're usually men and they're usually obsessed with length. All right, okay, where are we going with that, Chip? Length of life, when what's really important is depth. Depth of life. And you, if you could have both length and depth, beautiful. But if you have to choose between them, I will choose depth over length. And as such, you know, I won't spend my life the way Brian is spending his life, where it is incredibly regimented and I would say lonely.

I completely agree with that. And what I, I think the biggest shift for me in this time of life is that I value relationships. I like. They are my gold, they are my treasure. They're the most important thing to me. So I absolutely agree. I'm very intrigued with the modern elder academy my girlfriend Vivian Glick's been talking about.

Oh, yes, yes, Vivian's amazing. Well, let's do a private group. We do private groups at MEA all the time, both in Baja and Santa Fe. So. So, you know, let's talk about that.

Very exciting. Yes, we will. So I Want to just shout out a couple things. So you have your book, Learning to Love Midlife. This is a, like, it's kind of amazing that no one has done this, isn't it? It's.

It's like, well, you know, but midlife. Midlife has a terrible brand. And so, like, why would we, anybody want to give attention to it but reframe it?

It's the best time ever.

It is. And when it lasts 40 years, like, okay, someone's got to get it some attention.

Right? And, you know, and again, it's. It's the best time ever. It's a complete privilege. And really, how you age is a choice. So I'm going to choose, like, to have an awesome time of it. And this is a great. Here's the guide book to do that. You have the academy to do it. You've got your daily blog. So we'll put all of that. We're going to make it easy. JJ vi.com love midlife. There you go. Go there. Grab all of Chip's stuff. And you also have a TEDx talk. So we're going to link that to every single thing that you've done there. And again, it's, thank you for shining awareness on this and making this something that people know that they can lean into and have.

Thank you for being a role model for healthy, powerful aging and not just aging gracefully, but aging gratefully.

More importantly, I love that my whole thing is forget aging gracefully.

Exactly.

Forget it. And especially, here's the thing for women, Chip. All our lives, we've been good girls. We played small, we've been good, blah, blah, blah. And as I've talked about, you know, putting on muscle, being strong, they're like, I don't want to get big. And at first I was like, you know, there's no drive by muscle, accidental muscle. It's very hard to put it on. I go, but then now I'm thinking, you know what? This is your time in life to get big, to be a little mischievous, naughty, disruptive, stand up, be powerful, audacious.

Yes, yes.

Right. Get fierce. Go for it. There you go.

All right.

Thank you. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great, and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and my website, JJvirgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast, podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetojay.com See you next time. Hey JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that's designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.