The Gold of Midlife (Chip Conley)

Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

Elise Loehnen

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 900 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“The midlife crisis is not a dark night of the soul,” says Chip Conley, founder of the Modern Elder Academy. “It’s a dark night of the ego.” Conley, who is also the author of Learning to Love Midlife, outlines the main myths that we’re led to believe about midlife—and some optimistic data about what actually happens during this chapter of our lives. He shares different frameworks for navigating the transitions that come in midlife. We talk about how in the early parts of our lives, we’re often naturally focused on constantly accumulating knowledge—and how it can be such a relief, and a gift, to be able to shift into distilling it all into wisdom. For links to Chip Conley’s work and the show notes, head over to my Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread.
0:03.3	Today I'm talking to Chip Conley, the founder of the modern Elder Academy and author
0:08.1	of Learning to Love Midlife.
0:11.2	Exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:13.3	It's hard and it's brutal and that's what makes it special.
0:17.0	The multi-award winning series FX's The Bear is back for a brand new season.
0:22.6	Upon my signal, unleash hell.
0:25.6	And every second counts.
0:28.6	When that shows zero, this restaurant ceases operations.
0:32.6	FX's the Bear.
0:33.6	New season now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:39.4	18 plus subscription required.
0:40.2	Teas and Cs apply.
0:56.7	Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we're here. My hope is that these conversations
1:02.5	spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively
1:08.0	learn and grow.
1:11.6	Here is today's guest, Chip Conley, on what happens to our ego and our soul during
1:16.5	midlife.
1:18.0	And it's around midlife that the roles switch.
1:21.7	And all of a sudden, the soul is leading the dance and the ego is going backwards and
1:26.8	heals. So the ego is going backwards and heals.
1:30.9	So the ego better have a sense of humor if that's going to happen.
	...

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