MIDLIFE: Once a Crisis, Now an Opportunity

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Growing old gets a bad rap, and it's not hard to see why. Your hair thins and your waist thickens. The shot clock ticks down on your career, and you realize, much to your dismay, that your youthful dreams of greatness — patents, prizes, and periodicals with your face on the cover — are unlikely to come true before the buzzer. And what do you see up ahead? A road sign. "Highway Ends. Last Exit: Retirement. One Mile." Retirement. Just a polite word for purposelessness. That's the cynic's view of aging, anyway. But does it have to be that way? Not according to Chip Conley ("Learning to Love Midlife"). He says midlife can be a period of renewal, hope, joy, and connection. If you're open to it. Are you?

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn presents.
0:05.0	I'm Rufus Griskam and this is the next big idea.
0:09.0	Today, why aging is a superpower. I don't know how old you are. If I did, what would that tell me about you?
0:37.0	If you're under a certain age, would I not take you seriously?
0:40.0	If you're over a certain age, would I assume that you're
0:44.0	obsolescent, a walking fax machine?
0:47.7	I am 56 years old.
0:50.2	To be honest with you, I'm not sure how to feel about that.
0:53.9	I have been for most of my life unfazed by the aging process.
0:58.2	Now I'm teetering on the brink of 57, which in turn is right next to 58 which is basically 60.
1:06.0	That's an adjustment for me.
1:08.0	60 sounds old to me.
1:10.0	And I see it. I see it in the graying hair, wrinkles, sunspots, and in the humility, the oddly
1:17.0	calm acceptance I seem to have of my relative smallness in the Cosmos.
1:22.0	And yet, at the same time I feel frisky,
1:27.0	revved up as energetic as I've ever felt.
1:30.0	Like I have mountains to move, worlds to change, freak flags to fly.
1:35.0	No matter how old you are, you're probably going through some version of this.
1:40.0	A sense of periodic surprise of the passage of time, a recalibration and
1:46.2	acknowledgement of change, but maybe at the same time a defiance of it, a resistance
1:51.5	to being pigeonholed.
1:53.8	Our guest today, Chip Conley, describes this experience as age fluidity,
	...

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