438: Facing Midlife: Ian Simkins on Success, Loneliness in Your 40s, Spiritual Abuse, and Why Efficiency Is a Terrible God
Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
Christopher Cook
4.9 • 528 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2025
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There's a moment, often quietly, when you realize life didn't turn out the way you thought it would. The dreams you chased, the milestones you reached—they didn't deliver the satisfaction you imagined. And somewhere along the way, loneliness crept in, success started to feel hollow, and the constant pressure to optimize every part of your life became a crushing weight. This week on Win Today, Ian Simkins joins us to talk about the uncomfortable truths no one tells you about midlife. In this conversation, we'll unpack:
- Why midlife often exposes the false gods we've been serving
- The unique, often hidden loneliness of your 40s—and how to navigate it
- How spiritual abuse leaves scars that don't just go away with time
- Why efficiency, while celebrated, makes a terrible master
- The freedom that comes when you stop demanding success from God
Midlife isn't a crisis. It's an invitation. An invitation to reevaluate what you've been chasing, to heal what's still wounded, and to walk with God in a deeper, quieter way. If you're feeling stuck, unseen, or frustrated by the gap between your expectations and your reality, this episode will speak directly to where you are.
Episode Links
- Show Notes
- Buy my NEW BOOK "Healing What You Can't Erase" here!
- Invite me to speak at your church or event.
- Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Art of Leadership Network. |
| 0:03.2 | It is possible to have a saved soul, but a wasted life. |
| 0:07.0 | And that is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. |
| 0:09.9 | God has so much more for you than for you to just make this decision. |
| 0:13.6 | He has this journey of flourishing and John 1010 fullness. |
| 0:17.5 | And I think a lot of us become satisfied, not having. Helping you design your |
| 0:24.4 | roadmap to wholeness from the inside out. This is Win Today. And now, here's your host, Christopher |
| 0:33.3 | Cook. Hey, friends, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here today. Listen, Midlife is going to confront |
| 0:41.4 | you with the idols you didn't know you built. It's doing it to me, and I'm not even quite there yet. |
| 0:48.0 | It's going to expose the places where performance, achievement, and efficiency have replaced |
| 0:52.9 | intimacy with the Lord. And the truth is, |
| 0:55.4 | when success doesn't satisfy and life feels lonelier than ever, when you hit the wall, |
| 1:03.4 | when you are led into the wilderness to be tested by the Lord, most people either numb out, |
| 1:14.9 | blow up their lives, or settle into quiet despair. |
| 1:21.6 | Now, I want to be a guy who walks through it and endures and learns and grows and changes. |
| 1:25.1 | But sadly, I don't think that's the case for a lot of people. |
| 1:27.4 | But here's the question. |
| 1:30.8 | What if midlife isn't the beginning of your decline? |
| 1:35.8 | Instead, what if it's the beginning of real rooted maturity? |
| 1:39.3 | That's the question I'm asking myself right now, |
| 1:41.7 | and that's the question I hear from a lot of people. So this week, my good friend Ian Simpkins, |
| 1:49.8 | joins Winn today to talk about what nobody tells you about your mid to late 30s and early 40s. |
... |
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