November 17, 2025 • 55 mins
Midlife isn’t a crisis. It’s your greatest awakening.
In this inspiring episode, gerontologist and coach Barbara Waxman redefines aging through the lens of “Middleessence,” a stage of growth, purpose, and renewal. She reveals how to reclaim energy with her Energy Audit, why mindset matters more than genetics for longevity, and how lifestyle medicine helps you live undiminished at every age.
✨ Learn how to flourish, not fade, in your next chapter.
▶️ Watch now on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts.
Timestamps:
00:00 Meet gerontologist Barbara Waxman
00:28 How she became a gerontologist
02:56 What is “middle essence”
07:18 Adolescence vs. middle essence
13:37 Why happiness rises after 50
16:42 Debunking the midlife crisis myth
18:53 Redefining legacy and purpose
20:19 Barbara’s own midlife awakening
23:03 What is the Energy Audit
24:36 What lifestyle medicine really means
28:55 The 7 lifestyle levers for thriving
30:42 Mindset’s power in longevity
32:41 Mindset studies that changed lives
35:18 Well-being burnout explained
36:23 Self-care vs. self-indulgence
38:10 Solitude, introverts, and renewal
40:09 Unlocking longevity and the third span
45:46 Living undiminished and flourishing
46:49 Wisdom bumper sticker
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#MidlifeChrysalis #BarbaraWaxman #MidlifeTransformation #MiddleEssence #LongevityMindset #HealthyAging #LifestyleMedicine #WomenOver40 #LifeTransitions #PersonalGrowth #MindsetShift #AgingWell #HumanFlourishing #EnergyAudit #PurposefulLiving
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for
it. I think that has everything to
do with mindset. If we consider longevity as a
series of exchanges, relational exchanges with ourselves and
others, exchange with the world in which the we live and all of
(00:20):
the above, our mindset guides that choice.
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Well, Barb Waxman is a good
(00:44):
friend of mine and she is reallymaybe the longest serving guest
faculty member of the MEA faculty.
And I love that this woman because she's been a constant
learner around the stages of life, initially as a
gerontologist, then as a someonewho's focused on lifestyle,
(01:05):
medicine and longevity. So we dive into all of that in
in this episode. I think you'll enjoy it,
especially if you're just curious about how to live a well
lived life. I hope you enjoy it.
Barbara Waxman, who I'm going tocall Barb.
Barb Waxman, welcome to the midlife Chrysalis.
(01:29):
You are a friend of 10 years andsomebody who is deeply steeped
in the MEA world, having been one of our first guest faculty
members, one of our most popularfaculty members.
Welcome. Thanks so much for having me,
I'm excited to be here. I want to start with just how
does? How does Someone Like You become
(01:53):
a gerontologist? I mean, like, what was it about
you back in the day when you decided you want to be a
gerontologist? And what the hell is a
gerontologist as well? Yeah, I'll answer that one first
because most people have been referring to me as doctor for
years. And I I say my parents would
have loved that, but I'm not a doctor.
A gerontologist is someone who has a master's level degree in
(02:16):
adult development and aging. The anthropology, sociology,
Physiology, I could go on and expertise because we continue to
grow and develop as adults. So that's what a gerontologist
is. And I became interested, not
knowing it at the time, in the field, probably when I was about
(02:38):
7 years old. And my dad, who was a physician,
would bring me along when he would go to the Menorah Home and
Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, And hewould leave me to roam the halls
when he would see patients. And I would peek into the rooms.
And invariably people would say,what's a nice girl like you
doing in a place like this? And at a young age, I didn't
(03:01):
have fear. No one told me be scared, don't
want to go. As a child, I got so much
positive reinforcement and I could tell there was this energy
and synchronicity happening in what I guess I needed from them
and they needed from me. And I'd always leave, want to
come to come back for more. So I did that through high
(03:24):
school and I was a candy striperin the days.
For those of you who. Explain what that means.
Oh, I wish I'd kept my little uniform, the red and white
striped uniform, like a pinaforethat we would wear in hospitals
and nursing homes and volunteer to make people's days better.
What a great, great volunteer opportunity that was.
(03:48):
So then in college I worked in nursing home, same one as a
recreational therapist. And the story goes on from
there. So I ended up going back from my
master's when I was in my mid 20s, when the field of
gerontology was in its relative infancy.
And I it's always been in my bones.
(04:09):
And you've been a constant learner, what we at MEA call a
long life learner, but you're also a lifelong learner in the
sense that you have gotten really interested in lifestyle
medicine. And we're going to talk about
that in the context of our conversation.
I, I first got to know you when I became acquainted with your
book, the, is it the middle essence manifesto?
(04:32):
Yes, yes, the middle essence manifesto.
And I was talking about modern elder.
You're talking about middle essence.
Over time, I've come to realize that you had the better word.
My, my term modern elder is, youknow, elder elder tends to send
people for the hills. But let's talk about middle
essence because I love talking about this in an MEA workshop.
(04:52):
And, but I, I'm coming to the source here because you're the
one who popularized the term. How do you define middle
essence? And and how do you know if
you're in middle essence? It's a great and rather
complicated question because 10 years ago, which is as long as
our relationship, when I published the Middle Essence
(05:14):
Manifesto, I had an idea at the time that it was from about 45
to 65. And like I like to think of
myself as a lifelong long life learner and someone open to
changing what I've published. And that is the lines are
fuzzier because age as a primaryfunction to identify ourselves
(05:39):
is less and less meaningful. It's more the life stage we're
at. So I define middle essence as a
time, typically when we're about40, and what I call better when
we start to have a different sense of relationship with time
itself. And we don't necessarily feel
(06:00):
like time will go on forever, even though at 63 years old now,
I know you've got a birthday coming up and I just had mine.
You are two years younger than me, youngster.
I feel like I have maybe 4 decades more.
So middle essence is a phase of life and it you can experience
(06:21):
this kind of feeling more than once from about 40.
So people are in their 70s wherethere's an inner reckoning where
we feel like I'm not young but I'm not old and are the rules
that I created for myself and mylife, the rules that I looked at
(06:42):
when I was fill in the blank fora number having to define this
next stage. So middle essence is about where
you are midlife and better when there is some sort of reckoning.
That's one way to to put it. The midlife reckoning ball.
Yes, yes. Not a Wrecking Ball, but a
(07:02):
reckoning ball. A reckoning ball, don't get to
hit too hard and if you fall over, get back up.
And that's lifestyle medicine. But we'll, we'll get to that.
The other reason I chose it, I didn't make up the word,
obviously middle essence. There were great thinkers like
GAIL Sheehy, Ken Dykewald. You and I wrestled with this
(07:24):
term for so long. The reason I chose to popularize
middle essence as a phraseology for this life stage is that it
has so many similarities with another life stage where
hormones change, bodies morph, relationships shift, and there's
(07:44):
an identity questioning adolescence, which was only
popularized as a word in What Was it?
Chip was in. 19-O419-O. 4 by Stanley Hall.
Stanley Hall. I felt it was time because if we
can name it, we can tame it. And you have been such a major
contributor to helping people understand, oh, here's what I
(08:09):
can call this, and now I know I can work with it to make the
stage easier. So it's interesting.
Let's compare adolescence and middle essence for a moment.
When we're going to adolescence,first of all, as you said, the
word is only 120 years old, 121 years old.
Adolescence is a stage of life where much of what's going on is
(08:32):
physical. Some of it's internal and
emotional too, certainly identity, but it's very
noticeable in terms of puberty and in terms of how one's body
and one height and weight are changing dramatically.
When you're going to middle essence.
There may be physical components.
Certainly hormonally we're goingthrough perimenopause,
(08:54):
menopause, men are going throughandropause, but it may not be as
noticeable physically. Additionally, when you're going
through puberty or adolescence as a kid, you're doing it in a
peer group and, and the difference between two people in
(09:14):
junior high school, middle school in terms of going through
puberty might be two or three years Max, you know, 12 to 15 or
something around there. When someone's going through
perimenopause, if I'm not mistaken, there could be a 12 or
15 year difference in terms of two women going through
perimenopause. And then finally, and then I'm
(09:35):
going to let you respond finally, adolescence has a whole
social infrastructure supportingit.
Now let's be clear, adolescence is a very difficult era and that
Netflix series called Adolescence was really painful
to watch. Painful.
Really painful to watch, but theidea of going through a life
(09:57):
stage with a peer group in school, with teachers, with
parents, with coaches, in sports, with Glee club.
You have a college counselors, you have a a social
infrastructure. But when we go through Middle
Essence, often we're going through things almost silently
(10:21):
without a peer group nor any school or program to help you.
And that, I mean, obviously Thisis why MEA exists.
Did I get that right? You're the expert.
So there's a lot to unpack there.
You did get that right for the most part.
The the first part of your comment about it's more obvious
(10:44):
when we're adolescents because our bodies shift in ways that
are kind of awesome and people are we're strutting our stuff
and not so much in middle essence.
It may not be as noticeable. It may not be as noticeable to
the outside world, but when we look at ourselves in the mirror,
I think that we all feel like, Oh my God, what is happening?
(11:06):
You know, I always say my face fell at 53.
We all And did you did. You prop it back up.
You didn't. No, I.
Didn't. You've not, you've not done any
of that stuff, have you? Have you done a little?
Bit no I. I don't think so.
No, I've gotten something calledFraxel, which is which is a sort
of a skin. It takes it down to the
(11:27):
essential layer, so it rebuilds It's yeah, but no, not the
fillers. And but anyway, I joke about
that and everyone else says you look the same to me.
So I don't want to underestimatethis idea that what we may feel
are big physical changes people may not notice on the outside.
(11:50):
It still feels big to us as middle essence.
So that's something it's relatedvery much to our internal sense
of self. And the reckoning is I'm
supposed to be a grown up and I don't feel like 1.
I feel like I'm still growing up.
And I think this is a real hat tip to you, Chip, your vision,
(12:12):
your commitment, because I was with you at beta when you were
there taking notes, telling me to stay on time.
And I'm riffing away. You created.
That was like 7 1/2 years ago. That was 7 1/2 years ago so.
What you have contributed is a place, and now more than one
(12:33):
location, where people can gather and feel like this is my
home base, This is my touchstoneas a middle essence to take what
I know and to continue to grow so I can continue to be strong
and empowered in the decades that come.
So I think that we are coming upwith more and more opportunities
(12:54):
like adolescents have for Glee clubs and all that.
It is becoming more mainstream. Look at the work Michael Clinton
is doing as part of Roar Forwardwith Estee Lauder and other
others who are creating these advertising campaigns worldwide,
celebrating the changes we experience as a result of time
(13:18):
on this planet instead of running from them.
So I think yes, it's more of an internal shift.
Also, because we have the wisdomto think about it more as
opposed to acting out like adolescents do.
They've lessened impulse control.
We've learned. Oh, things can be hard.
I better think through how I want to work on this.
(13:38):
In terms of your question about the core peer groups, I think
you're creating it. I think we're starting to see it
in media. I have a friend who is an
influencer. Her name is Jim Tan, and she's
an inspiration. She was an executive in the
fashion industry and sort of haddone it all.
(14:01):
And her daughter said you love clothes.
So on a lark she started postingsome photos of my outfit for the
day and now I don't. She's more than 1/2 a million
followers. She was the face of Sephora, and
she inspires others by owning some of the struggle associated
with being a middle essence. If you're enjoying the
(14:21):
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(14:45):
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The interesting thing? EU Curve of Happiness shows that
we tend to get happier starting around age 50 after a long, slow
decline in life satisfaction. So that's in middle essence.
(15:10):
What do you see as the upside ofaging?
What are the what are the thingsthat get better?
I mean, Becca Levy says that as shown in her research from Yale,
that when you can shift your mindset on aging from a negative
to a positive, you gain 7 1/2 years of additional longevity.
And we'll talk about longevity soon.
What do you think it's better ifyou had a top 3 or 4?
Just bet everything gets better.And that's the secret.
(15:34):
That's what so many people don'trealize.
So what gets better? When there's something is more
precious to us, it's because it's not ubiquitous.
It's not always available. The older we get, the more we
have a sense that Laura Carson, our colleague and friend from
(15:54):
the Center on Longevity at Stanford, talks about future
time perspective. When that time is that much more
compressed, it becomes more precious to us.
What gets better is an appreciation that even though
everything may not be exactly asI planned it, even though
everything may not be great, it could be worse.
So we have that perspective. I think that we also going back
(16:20):
to EU curve. It's it imagine a :) right
that's EU curve of happiness. It's like it goes down in our
20s. We feel like things can go on
forever. Although now people in their
20s, it's the the low one of theloneliest, most most anxious
generation of 20 somethings. But the hard slogging years from
(16:41):
20 something down to the abyss of 47.8 or whatever around 50,
we could nerd out on this chip. They're fulfilling years.
I'm making in my career. I'm raising a family.
I'm doing this, but a lot of it is I'm proving.
(17:02):
I'm proving, I'm proving. So they may be fulfilling years,
but they're not the happiest years.
It's not that they're not good valuable years.
People misunderstand some of that part of EU curve.
It's not that people are not doing important things in their
lives, it's just a lot of proving, which takes a lot of
out a lot out of us. And then what gets better is
(17:24):
this sense of I don't care so much what other people think.
That's a beauty of aging we start to think, and it's
developmental. As a gerontologist, I can tell
you it is an international phenomenon.
And it's been, it's been like this for a long time.
I mean, is this always been the case?
Is that you know starting aroundage 50 you don't know have any
(17:46):
more FS left to give? Yes, starting then it it, it
varies like as you say, your mileage may vary.
I love how you put that. It varies by person, but there
is a sense that it's too late inthe game for me to think about
what everyone else is worried about or wants me to do.
(18:08):
I'm ready to live my life. And that is the myth of the
midlife crisis. There's a myth that started in
the 1960's, the early 1960s whenadvertising became really
popular and there were a lot of companies that thought, oh, fear
sells. So let's let's key into this
idea so that when people in midlife say, OK, if I'm not
(18:33):
living my parents dream, for example, to be fill in the
blank, I'm thinking about a particular client, a doctor.
This was someone he had trained for decades.
He was top in his field as a urologist, miserable, absolutely
miserable. And it was very brave for him to
(18:56):
say at he was probably about 53 at the time.
I'm going to leave this and figure out what I want to do.
His family, his immediate family, his nuclear family who
had depended on that support andhis income.
And what do you mean you're going to change?
You must be going through a crisis when the truth is he was
(19:19):
more clear than he had ever been.
What's he doing now? What's he doing now?
Do you know? He had been, I don't know if
he's doing that this right now. He'd been working for a start
up. Using his medical background.
His background but not the skills in the ORI think another
important component is this ideaof legacy.
(19:41):
But I I use the term legacy sparingly because it puts a lot
of pressure on people. There's a lot of ego attached to
legacy sometimes. There's a lot of ego, but more
people from the work that I do. I, I haven't read research about
this. We'll switch.
Sometimes people say I need to stop as especially women, I need
(20:02):
to stop volunteering all the time and now I want to make
money. So that exists more for women
than for men. But for people in general who
have been on the career track, here comes a time when they say
I've got my mortgage under control at least.
I've gotten a lot of the issues with raising children and trying
(20:26):
to save for their college. Now.
If money is not the end all because I need to support my
family at this time, then what do I want to do?
And more people are going towards things that make the
world a better place in ways they hadn't before.
I've got a client who went into the ministry.
She's actually in divinity school right now.
(20:48):
I know many people who take up the arts, healthy nutrition,
they become chefs to help otherswho have different kinds of
ailments that have seemed intransigent.
But when you change their diet, a lot happens.
So I legacy in that way, moving towards what fills us up.
(21:10):
Did you have a midlife chrysalisat some point or a middle
essence chrysalis at a time whenyou hit a bit of a bottom going
through a transition, and how did you get through that?
I had an experience in my early 40s for quite a while, I'd, I'd
gone to my Doctor Who was younger than I and I felt
(21:37):
exhausted by 11:00 in the morning.
And she lives in my community orlived in my community and say,
well, Barbara, you run your own business, you're in your kids
school. And I used to call this benign
ageism. But truly there was nothing.
She didn't mean anything badly, but ageism is never benign.
(21:58):
She would say I'd be exhausted if I did everything you that you
do. And she would take a look at my
blood work and she'd say everything looks to be in the
normal range. And she didn't really listen to
me. And like a lot, in particular a
lot of women, I didn't want to be a complainer.
So I'd say my chrysalis was, I had this shift and I didn't have
(22:20):
the courage yet to do anything about it.
And then ultimately a friend said, if this is how you feel,
go to an endocrinologist. And I walked in and he, he
looked at me across the room andhe said, oh, I could see you've
got a goiter. And I immediately.
A goiter. He.
Sounds like a Yiddish word. A goiter.
(22:42):
A goiter. A goiter is a growth that comes
out of your neck. Do you remember National
Geographic used to when you werea kid, if you looked at the
magazines and like women in Africa would have these necks
with these huge I wouldn't. Look at their necks.
I I looked at, I looked at something else.
And as a gay man, I, I do like breasts.
I mean, I'll be honest, OK? All right, well, so you weren't
(23:03):
looking at the goiters anyway, he he immediately diagnosed me
with hypothyroid, meaning not enough thyroid.
And he said, any physician who keeps up with the research and
this woman, she hadn't kept up with the research, you're not in
your optimal range. And I could see it because it
was slightly swollen, which he he could see.
(23:24):
So my chrysalis was, it was a couple years of feeling like, is
this what's going to happen? And thinking it had to be that
way. And once I got the courage to
really research what I knew I deserved, what was scared to ask
for, then it all changed. So I don't know if that's
exactly what you were looking for, but that's what came to
(23:46):
mind for me. You also do something called the
energy audit and I've seen you, I've seen you do it in an MEA
workshop and related to talking about your early 40s and feeling
no energy. What's an energy audit?
1st, I want to have a shout out to say for anyone listening, if
you have something painful goingon in your life that may become
(24:09):
your life's work. So why did I start studying
energy chip? It's because I didn't have any
and I and I didn't even realize at the time.
So I would read everything I could get my hands on that had
to do with how do you boost yourenergy?
Because I thought it was just meand that I could just control
it. Art, chocolate.
That's the that's the story. I still believe in that.
(24:30):
I still believe in it. So I it's just, it's such an
important thing to under score because at MEA in any workshop,
I don't care what the topic is, when people unearth the
challenges, that's where the magic lives, right?
I created this energy audit, which is now called the seven
(24:53):
lifestyle levers assessment. It is all based on research and
it covers the various areas thatif you can rate yourself highly
on those areas, you will be haveyour well-being thriving and
intact. We call it flourishing.
Let's dive into lifestyle medicine and longevity and your
(25:16):
longevity road map. And this was the next thing that
or one of the next things you got interested in and have now
created in essence products around this for your coaching
clients, but also in MEA workshops.
And let's talk about that a little bit because you've become
one of our experts on the MEA team around longevity, but you
(25:39):
rooted yourself in lifestyle medicine.
So explain what lifestyle medicine is as a starting point.
What we've learned is that less than 20% of how long and how
well we live is based on our genetics.
Doctor Eric Verdan from the BuckCenter for Research and Aging,
(25:59):
he says 10%. I'm being conservative, saying
less than 20% of his genetics. The other 80% are the lifestyle
choices and habits that we make every day.
So this idea of lifestyle medicine, which is by the way,
the fastest growing certification for physicians, or
(26:23):
I should say for healthcare professionals, not just
physicians, there is an AmericanCollege of Lifestyle Medicine.
It uses the idea of lifestyle asmedicine in a way that I will
explain and I don't totally agree with.
It uses it as a prevention mechanism.
(26:44):
So doctors are being trained. Here's how to prevent Gary's
kinds of cancer, here's how to prevent arthritis, here's how to
prevent high blood pressure and the like.
How many of us are inspired by something we want to prevent?
(27:06):
No one. I mean, that's not something
that energizes me with or without my hypothyroidism.
What I'm doing with the work is saying I want to help you be
undiminished. That's the ticket.
And I call those years the trophy years and the work we're
(27:30):
doing and building together at MEA is saying, how do we help
people create a solid foundationto say this is a well lived life
today and I have an eye towards my future to remain undiminished
in my trophy years. So when I taught this for the
(27:53):
first time last year at ME AM EAthe longevity life plan.
One of our mutual now mutual friends, Jim Flaherty, who is
our 90 year old man with a plan,with a 10 year plan.
As he says he is just so inspiring.
He has this sensibility naturally that he is going to
(28:14):
continue to grow and to learn and has put practices in as he
considers himself and we should all consider ourselves a study
of 1 to live long and well. So lifestyle medicine is using
all of those elements to and this is where I different not
(28:35):
prevent things, but that's how the physicians are being
trained. But to stay inspired to lean
into those parts that work best for us to stay undiminished.
An advisor with you at the Center on Longevity and there
we're dealing more at the policylevel.
(28:56):
I'm also an advisor to Stanford Lifestyle Medicine.
And in fact, they also use the Seven lifestyle levers
assessment on their website. So it is and we can put it in
the show notes. It's available on my website for
free. And we're going to actually
going to start using it, I thinkwith MEA, so you'll be able to
(29:17):
post it and use it as well. Which of these seven lifestyle
ways of being do you think matters the most?
Different levers need to be pulled at different times
depending on who we are, where we are, and what we're
experiencing our circumstances. So they are nourishment, and I
(29:41):
call it nourishment, not nutrition because there are
plenty of people who eat all theright things and they're hungry
for what they're not getting. Movement.
It's not just exercise renewal, which is not just sleep, it's
how do we renew ourselves? And it's including sleep
(30:04):
cognition, which includes mindset, which we should chat
about. But I'll just go through the
rest of these, a sense of meaning and purpose,
relationships. And in answer to your first
question, which is the most important here, I'll say that
it's not the least important. But if you do all six of those
(30:26):
things, you get the 7th for free.
And the 7th is stress management, because if you do
all those, you've pretty much gotten your stress under
control. Spirituality would fit under
meaning and purpose, correct? Meaning, purpose.
And I put it in cognition too, because it has to do with
mindset. So let's talk about mindset.
So, so again, Becca Levy, 7 1/2 years, you know, people are
(30:50):
going out and doing cold plungesand taking supplements and doing
their infrared light thing to biohack their way to live
forever. But the reality is there's been
very little in terms of researchthat shows that the physical
interventions that are being done are actually as important
(31:12):
as the mindset interventions. So talk about mindset for a
minute. There's a quote that I love by
Thoreau. The price of anything is the
amount of life you exchange for it.
I think that has everything to do with mindset.
So what do I mean by that? If we consider longevity as a
(31:34):
series of exchanges, relational exchanges with ourselves and
others, exchange with the world in which the we live and all of
the above, our mindset guides that choice.
So if you've ever, say, gone onto a bus and the bus driver
(31:55):
looks you in the eye and says, how are you today in a way that
changes your day? And then you go and you take
another bus and you walk on and there's no connection and no eye
contact. And by the way, those small
interactions count. There are so many people for
whom that interaction may be theclosest they come to a
(32:16):
conversation in a day. So we can't underestimate our
mindset to say in whatever I'm doing, I'm going to show up for
others and myself. Oh, here's a great study about
mindset. There was a study of hotel
housekeepers. Have you ever heard this?
One. Yeah, I do.
I know this one. Yes, Go ahead.
And they were told that all of the activities that they did,
(32:40):
things like vacuuming, changing beds, qualified as all the
exercise they needed, according to the surgeon general.
And so rather than just feeling burnt out and spent and didn't
have not having the energy to exercise, at the end of the day,
they should reconsider it because they don't need to do
anything else. It's everything they need.
And of course, there was a control group.
(33:02):
After just four weeks, things like their blood pressure
decrease, their weight decrease,their physical health measurably
improved. And the only thing that shifted
was their mindset. And On the contrary, there was
another study, one of the same researchers with other
(33:23):
colleagues looked at people overthe course of 21 years and found
that those people who felt that they never quite did enough,
they were never quite active enough, had up to, it's
outrageous, a 72% higher mortality risk than the control
(33:44):
group. And I mentioned that one because
so many people are wearing or rings, Apple Watches, whoop.
I'm wearing an Apple Watch and awhoop right now because I'm
doing work on these. So I am tracking a lot because I
(34:04):
experiment with everything I do so I can better serve others.
But so many people are doing this.
And then what we're finding is they're suffering from a new
kind of issue called well-being burnout.
And again, it has to do with ourmindset. well-being burnout is
this idea that I'm never quite doing enough and I'm getting
(34:25):
burnt out by it and it's becoming a real issue.
Lululemon, the clothing company,did a study of 16,000 people
globally in all their markets, and they identified people are
getting too much, bombarded withtoo much, conflicting and
(34:46):
constantly changing information.To your point, Chip, about cold
plunges are good, but they're not good for women.
Or maybe they are good. People are feeling that they
have to appear well, all the time.
You know, no one's allowed to have a bad day anymore.
So yeah, there's a lot of research around mindset and the
power of it. In fact, more and more.
(35:07):
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(35:28):
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Take the Pathfinder quiz at meawisdom.com.
Forward slash quiz So in terms of this well-being burnout,
let's double click on that for asecond.
What's the, you know, in self-care?
Oh my God, that that term. I have a challenge with that
(35:48):
term. What do you what do you do?
Do you sort of just not listen to, you know, what all these
magazines are saying? Or do you do you get clear on
what it is that actually regenerates your batteries?
You know, for me, it's a walk innature with my my dog Jamie.
(36:10):
It's writing. I've come to realize I'm an
introvert again. And which is sort of weird after
having been a pretty extreme extrovert for most of my
adulthood. But I was a real introvert when
I was a kid. So my sense is that part of the
value is to do the self reflection to understand what it
is that works for you, as opposed to looking at the the
(36:33):
BuzzFeed list of the top ten ways for self-care.
So self-care, again, you're so chock full of good stuff.
There's a lot and what you just put out there, self-care is not
selfish and we must dispel that.The reason it's gotten a bad
name is in the 1970s when this holistic health movement really
(36:57):
started, like many things, and I'm not against advertising, but
it it, it became a consumer issue more than a well-being
issue or topic. Not an issue, a topic, I should
say. And as a result, it became
associated with indulgence as opposed to what it is self-care.
(37:22):
So yes, people can go over the top with self-care in ways that
they're diminishing returns or no returns.
And oftentimes those people feellike I don't have a sense of
meaning in my life because they've gone so far over that
they're spent, they're using alltheir time in ways that have
those diminishing returns. But self-care is essential.
(37:44):
And each one of us is a study of1.
So myself, care is going to lookdifferent from yours, which will
look different from my husband. You know, Scott, Scott Scott's
an extrovert. He feeds off of people's energy.
So he just loves being out there.
I'm an ambivert. I'm in the middle.
(38:06):
I love connecting and being withpeople.
And then I need my time to recoup.
You're shifting a little bit offof that to that other.
I need more and more time alone.But don't fool yourself, Chip.
You love your peeps, and that's a good thing because I'm glad
I'm one of them. But I but I am, as I said to you
the other day, we were, I have aconversation.
(38:28):
I'm going to say right here likeyou were, I wasn't seeing
Barbara enough. She's like, there's something
wrong. Like no, I told her I said what
I just said here. I was like, I've really become
more and more of an introvert. I am definitely an ambivert.
So I get I get energy from people too.
But the shock of seeing my need to have time alone, in many
(38:53):
ways, it's it's like a reminder of my childhood.
And I as a child, I felt guilty about that.
As an adult, I'm realizing, oh, this is, this is this feels
good. Solitude can be very healthy.
It's true. I think the the more life
experience we have, think of it like a tapestry, we need to be
(39:21):
able to sort of pull the right threads at the right time.
So it's have that right nubbiness but smooth level that
we want when we're younger. There aren't so many threads.
The older we get, the more experienced in every different
kind of way, which by the way, includes people being in their
discomfort zone. So when I say study one, I don't
(39:45):
mean just be in your comfort zone.
Just do what works for you. I'm going to challenge people to
find in what ways will stretching yourself feel a
little bit uncomfortable but allow you to continue to grow.
And then we need to come back together.
So our tapestry is our tapestry,right?
So I could see mine and yours and say, oh here we got them
(40:08):
mixed up because each one reflects our unique
circumstances, preferences and needs.
So you gave a Ted talk recently,A TEDx talk.
Where was it again? It was in Boston.
It's called unlocking longevity.Unlocking longevity and your TE
DX talk was on the third span, so unpack that for a moment.
(40:34):
So as we started our conversation saying we met 10
years ago when I was really working and focusing on middle
essence and a few years ago, about seven years after that, I
published that. I guess it was a seven-year
itch. I started feeling a pull towards
(40:55):
unpacking all of this zeitgeist called longevity.
We used to call it aging, but that wasn't aspirational.
So now we call it longevity. And all the research and what I
like to think I do as a gerontologist and a coach is to
translate research which I can read and understand, but then
(41:18):
look at that, look at the meta analysis, which really just
means a compilation. Someone has taken a compilation
of studies and looked at them all together to find the
commonalities or what where it differs.
And I translate that in ways that people can use.
And that's one of the things I'll be bringing to our
workshop, the Longevity Life Plan.
(41:38):
So I felt a pull towards this and then this summer I was
invited to speak at Unlocking Longevity.
And what was funny about it is to a person, everyone else there
was associated with Harvard, Johns Hopkins Hospital for
Special, you name it. Or they had a stealth startup
(42:01):
funded by a billionaire. The reason I think I was invited
is that I'm a translator that works with leaders, whether it's
you're leading yourself, your family, your community, or
changing the world. And what I found out is in
preparing for this, that we all experts and on us regular folks
(42:26):
misunderstand what the definition of longevity is.
So we think of it and I'll define the terms because many
people listening may not know itas lifespan, which is the number
of years lived and health span, which is really referring to how
(42:46):
can I minimize disease and stay as functionally strong as
possible. So when the result of lifespan
and health span has been an all out focus on get your cold
plunge, lift your weights, all the things that are important
and getting all the data from lab tests.
(43:07):
And I support getting all of thedata.
It is foundational and that's why I'm wearing all these
things. I test everything out.
But as I wrote, if anyone watches the talk, data is not
the destination and that's what we're losing.
We think that we can squeeze more performance out of our
(43:27):
biology and therefore full Mother Nature and live forever.
And first of all, my opinion, living forever is not the goal.
Living as long as possible undiminished is the goal.
And So what I found in the research is that there is a lot
of data out of the school of human flourishing.
(43:52):
Harvard has a program in it there.
There's a number of places with good data.
So the third span of human flourishing is made-up of
understanding your mindset. It's made-up of relationships, a
sense of meaning and purpose andjoy.
Joy is underrated. Whether it's I love to go here.
(44:16):
I'm in Manhattan right now, and so I will schlep down on the
subway to the Union Square market.
So I feel like I'm in Marin County outside of San Francisco
where I live, going to the farmers market there, because
the bounty from farmers fills mycup with joy.
Everyone's got to know what fills their cup, and we're
losing out on that. So the It's the third span of
(44:37):
human flourishing. What are the 1st 2 spans?
The longevity equals lifespan plus health span plus the third
span. Again, that is a complete, well
lived life. Beautiful.
Well, and there's a book, DoctorKerry.
She wrote a burn right called joy Span and and I'm so glad you
(44:59):
brought that up. I read the book and I think it's
really well done. It's got great tips, good, good
stories. The reason it's I didn't say
thrive span or joy span is it's not that simple.
It's not just about joy. I mean, I'd love to be able to
(45:19):
package it as something as simple, but the reason I called
the third span of human flourishing, it's the elements
that again, it shows up in thosefour quadrants.
But if we get even more specific, it will differ for
different people. The joy and joy span is
certainly part of it, but it's not the whole story.
(45:41):
Do you define flourishing as thesame thing as being
undiminished, or are those two different things?
That's no one's asked me that before.
Let me think about that for a minute.
I think in my the way I like to think of it, undiminished is
flourishing. So flourishing, I mean, first
thing is a word that is, is definitely trending.
And we are maybe going to have aprivate flourishing retreat
(46:04):
here, which we will invite you to next year at our Santa Fe
campus that's being organized bysome flourishing experts,
including people from Harvard. And Joy, I mean, come on, like,
how can you not love Joy? I started a company called Jawad
Aviv Joy of Life. So it's, it's an it's a word
that I particularly appreciate. Last question for us today is
(46:27):
really, I want to understand about wisdom and your
relationship with wisdom and what you've learned along the
way. And imagine if some younger
person came to you and said, Barbara, you know, I'd love to
have hot coffee or tea or a matcha or whatever with you next
week. And would you come to our
meeting with a, a figuratively speaking, not an actual physical
(46:51):
version of wisdom bumper sticker, a bumper sticker that
actually is your, has your fingerprints on it based upon
the school of Hard Knocks, what you've learned along the way.
A bumper sticker about life or about longevity or about
whatever you want it to be. What would what would that
bumper sticker say? And what's the origin story that
(47:11):
led you to that wisdom? Oh, it's an actual bumper
sticker that I've seen is can I use that?
That's fine, yeah. I saw a bumper sticker years ago
that said don't believe everything you think.
Especially when I was younger, Iwas so sure of things.
I don't know how it is that I have more life experience and
(47:33):
more book knowledge and somehow I know that I know less than I
would like to know. The world is moving at such a
rapid pace and I don't just meanAI, but certainly including
that, that we need to stay as flexible in our minds as we can
(47:55):
can on our feet. And so number one, it means
don't take everything at face value just because you say read
it from a source you have alwaystrusted.
Think about it, maybe double check depending on what kind of
information it is. It means reconsider what you may
(48:20):
have believed in the past, because you are completely
different human. Our cells regenerate.
We are changing all the time, but we don't often dig deep
enough to think. Is my thinking keeping up with
that change as well? And it won't say something bad
about me if I change my mind. We have to be open to that.
(48:44):
And I think people are scared todo that because they think it
will show that they were wrong or maybe somehow have reflect
that they don't know everything.For me, I trust people more when
when they tell me that they're thinking has evolved because it
means they're staying on it. We live in such an era.
This is a It's a Great Wisdom bumper sticker because we tend
(49:09):
to, especially in the socio political world, we tend to find
our people and create our thinking around a point of view
that allows us to feel a sense of belonging in that group of
people. And we are not nearly
(49:32):
evolutionary in our thinking around how do we learn something
new and be open to shifting our mindset as a result.
I mean, we talked about mindset earlier, a fixed mindset.
In my opinion, there's lots of definitions of it based on Carol
Dweck's work at Stanford. But it in many ways, it's one of
the definitions would be you do not change your mind based upon
(49:55):
new information. And whereas a growth mindset, it
means you are open to new information such that you're
thinking can evolve. Now that's those are not the
only ways to define mindset fixed and growth, but I, I love
this one because, you know, to have a life in which we're
(50:16):
constantly curious, learning andand evolving our thinking is
that's a good life. It's a beautiful life.
Well, you have a beautiful life.You are, as I said at the start,
you're one of the favorite faculty members of MEA.
You've taught, I don't know, maybe a dozen workshops at MEA
(50:37):
at this .88 or 9 at least. And thank you, thank you for
being a friend and, and also someone who is a, a thought
partner. You know, we, we, we are on this
journey together and appreciate what you've shared today.
Thanks so much for having me, loved it.
(50:59):
That woman and I could talk for hours.
Barb Waxman is, as I said, my thought partner and somebody I
have really admired and appreciated because she's been
our longest serving guest faculty member of MEA.
And I really appreciate the factthat she's now moved more and
more into the longevity space. If I had three key takeaways,
(51:20):
Let's start with just the most obvious one, which is really
what lifestyle medicine is. Lifestyle medicine can lead to
longevity. And so the fact that she wears 3
hats now, a gerontologist who focuses and studies lifestyle
medicine, who also is well knownin the longevity world, these
are the seven lifestyle levers. She talked about nourishment.
(51:44):
And it's not just about eating. And it's the right kind of
eating and the right kind of nutrition, but it's also
nourishment of just feeling nourished by life.
Movement, of course, renewal, she said renewal as opposed to
sleep. And there's lots of different
ways we renew ourselves. Cognition or what kind of
mindset you have and what kind of learning you're willing to
do. Meaning and purpose, which also
(52:06):
can be short. Short form for spirituality and
religion relationship and then stress management.
If you do the first six, you getthe 7th one free.
So you know, it's interesting. Back in the day when I was in my
30s and Aceo and a little bit stressed, I had add a Doctor Who
(52:26):
said I think we should help you with some stress management.
And now that same doctor, if they understood lifestyle
management would not say, like, let's do the stress management
instead, they'd say, here are 6 things you can do first.
And if you do those things, you probably will have less stress
in your life. So check out lifestyle medicine.
It's a, it's a, it's a whole newform of medicine that's growing
(52:48):
very quickly. Secondly, you know, I really
appreciate having the conversation with her about
well-being burnout. This is, I think, something
that's going to start trending alittle bit more because it's
interesting how people are, are really not enjoying the, the
term self-care. I'm one of those people, but I'm
not the only one. And there's almost a performance
anxiety around, oh, am I doing enough for myself care.
(53:11):
And, and people have almost self-care narcissism where
they're just showing off their self-care to other people, which
is not what self-care is about. self-care is really about
regenerating your batteries. And it was great to talk with
her about the fact that each of us has our own regimen, what it
was the well-being, what what would make us feel a sense of
(53:32):
well-being. And I'd say some of the burnout
is not so much that we're doing too many things, but it's we're
actually comparing our form of self-care, our form of
well-being with others. And we're sometimes feel we feel
lacking. So do not compare yourself with
the Joneses. This is not about the BMW in the
driveway. self-care or well-being is about learning how
(53:54):
to flourish based upon what willdo, what will flirt, make you
flourish. Which brings me to the third
thing I learned. And that was she used the words
undiminished and I didn't love. I mean, undiminished is a fine
word, but it's it's sort of a negative.
It's like it's undiminished is like it's an UN word.
And and then I asked her about flourishing and and flourishing
(54:17):
is a word that is just going bonkers these days.
Harvard, Stanford, all these programs have that Marty
Seligman, the most famous positive psychology academic in
the world, has a book called Flourish.
So this idea of flourishing is worth exploring.
And I'm sure we'll put Barb's TEDX talk about the third span,
(54:41):
this idea of a joy span or a flourish span.
You know, maybe that is what we're supposed to be doing after
looking at lifespan and health span.
It's really looking at what helps us to flourish in in human
existence. So I hope you enjoyed that.
You know, for those of you who are longevity junkies, this was
a slightly different perspectiveon lifestyle medicine as a means
(55:05):
to live a long, healthy and happy life.
See you next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for
it. I think that has everything to
do with mindset. If we consider longevity as a
series of exchanges, relational exchanges with ourselves and
others, exchange with the world in which the we live and all of
(00:20):
the above, our mindset guides that choice.
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Well, Barb Waxman is a good
(00:44):
friend of mine and she is reallymaybe the longest serving guest
faculty member of the MEA faculty.
And I love that this woman because she's been a constant
learner around the stages of life, initially as a
gerontologist, then as a someonewho's focused on lifestyle,
(01:05):
medicine and longevity. So we dive into all of that in
in this episode. I think you'll enjoy it,
especially if you're just curious about how to live a well
lived life. I hope you enjoy it.
Barbara Waxman, who I'm going tocall Barb.
Barb Waxman, welcome to the midlife Chrysalis.
(01:29):
You are a friend of 10 years andsomebody who is deeply steeped
in the MEA world, having been one of our first guest faculty
members, one of our most popularfaculty members.
Welcome. Thanks so much for having me,
I'm excited to be here. I want to start with just how
does? How does Someone Like You become
(01:53):
a gerontologist? I mean, like, what was it about
you back in the day when you decided you want to be a
gerontologist? And what the hell is a
gerontologist as well? Yeah, I'll answer that one first
because most people have been referring to me as doctor for
years. And I I say my parents would
have loved that, but I'm not a doctor.
A gerontologist is someone who has a master's level degree in
(02:16):
adult development and aging. The anthropology, sociology,
Physiology, I could go on and expertise because we continue to
grow and develop as adults. So that's what a gerontologist
is. And I became interested, not
knowing it at the time, in the field, probably when I was about
(02:38):
7 years old. And my dad, who was a physician,
would bring me along when he would go to the Menorah Home and
Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, And hewould leave me to roam the halls
when he would see patients. And I would peek into the rooms.
And invariably people would say,what's a nice girl like you
doing in a place like this? And at a young age, I didn't
(03:01):
have fear. No one told me be scared, don't
want to go. As a child, I got so much
positive reinforcement and I could tell there was this energy
and synchronicity happening in what I guess I needed from them
and they needed from me. And I'd always leave, want to
come to come back for more. So I did that through high
(03:24):
school and I was a candy striperin the days.
For those of you who. Explain what that means.
Oh, I wish I'd kept my little uniform, the red and white
striped uniform, like a pinaforethat we would wear in hospitals
and nursing homes and volunteer to make people's days better.
What a great, great volunteer opportunity that was.
(03:48):
So then in college I worked in nursing home, same one as a
recreational therapist. And the story goes on from
there. So I ended up going back from my
master's when I was in my mid 20s, when the field of
gerontology was in its relative infancy.
And I it's always been in my bones.
(04:09):
And you've been a constant learner, what we at MEA call a
long life learner, but you're also a lifelong learner in the
sense that you have gotten really interested in lifestyle
medicine. And we're going to talk about
that in the context of our conversation.
I, I first got to know you when I became acquainted with your
book, the, is it the middle essence manifesto?
(04:32):
Yes, yes, the middle essence manifesto.
And I was talking about modern elder.
You're talking about middle essence.
Over time, I've come to realize that you had the better word.
My, my term modern elder is, youknow, elder elder tends to send
people for the hills. But let's talk about middle
essence because I love talking about this in an MEA workshop.
(04:52):
And, but I, I'm coming to the source here because you're the
one who popularized the term. How do you define middle
essence? And and how do you know if
you're in middle essence? It's a great and rather
complicated question because 10 years ago, which is as long as
our relationship, when I published the Middle Essence
(05:14):
Manifesto, I had an idea at the time that it was from about 45
to 65. And like I like to think of
myself as a lifelong long life learner and someone open to
changing what I've published. And that is the lines are
fuzzier because age as a primaryfunction to identify ourselves
(05:39):
is less and less meaningful. It's more the life stage we're
at. So I define middle essence as a
time, typically when we're about40, and what I call better when
we start to have a different sense of relationship with time
itself. And we don't necessarily feel
(06:00):
like time will go on forever, even though at 63 years old now,
I know you've got a birthday coming up and I just had mine.
You are two years younger than me, youngster.
I feel like I have maybe 4 decades more.
So middle essence is a phase of life and it you can experience
(06:21):
this kind of feeling more than once from about 40.
So people are in their 70s wherethere's an inner reckoning where
we feel like I'm not young but I'm not old and are the rules
that I created for myself and mylife, the rules that I looked at
(06:42):
when I was fill in the blank fora number having to define this
next stage. So middle essence is about where
you are midlife and better when there is some sort of reckoning.
That's one way to to put it. The midlife reckoning ball.
Yes, yes. Not a Wrecking Ball, but a
(07:02):
reckoning ball. A reckoning ball, don't get to
hit too hard and if you fall over, get back up.
And that's lifestyle medicine. But we'll, we'll get to that.
The other reason I chose it, I didn't make up the word,
obviously middle essence. There were great thinkers like
GAIL Sheehy, Ken Dykewald. You and I wrestled with this
(07:24):
term for so long. The reason I chose to popularize
middle essence as a phraseology for this life stage is that it
has so many similarities with another life stage where
hormones change, bodies morph, relationships shift, and there's
(07:44):
an identity questioning adolescence, which was only
popularized as a word in What Was it?
Chip was in. 19-O419-O. 4 by Stanley Hall.
Stanley Hall. I felt it was time because if we
can name it, we can tame it. And you have been such a major
contributor to helping people understand, oh, here's what I
(08:09):
can call this, and now I know I can work with it to make the
stage easier. So it's interesting.
Let's compare adolescence and middle essence for a moment.
When we're going to adolescence,first of all, as you said, the
word is only 120 years old, 121 years old.
Adolescence is a stage of life where much of what's going on is
(08:32):
physical. Some of it's internal and
emotional too, certainly identity, but it's very
noticeable in terms of puberty and in terms of how one's body
and one height and weight are changing dramatically.
When you're going to middle essence.
There may be physical components.
Certainly hormonally we're goingthrough perimenopause,
(08:54):
menopause, men are going throughandropause, but it may not be as
noticeable physically. Additionally, when you're going
through puberty or adolescence as a kid, you're doing it in a
peer group and, and the difference between two people in
(09:14):
junior high school, middle school in terms of going through
puberty might be two or three years Max, you know, 12 to 15 or
something around there. When someone's going through
perimenopause, if I'm not mistaken, there could be a 12 or
15 year difference in terms of two women going through
perimenopause. And then finally, and then I'm
(09:35):
going to let you respond finally, adolescence has a whole
social infrastructure supportingit.
Now let's be clear, adolescence is a very difficult era and that
Netflix series called Adolescence was really painful
to watch. Painful.
Really painful to watch, but theidea of going through a life
(09:57):
stage with a peer group in school, with teachers, with
parents, with coaches, in sports, with Glee club.
You have a college counselors, you have a a social
infrastructure. But when we go through Middle
Essence, often we're going through things almost silently
(10:21):
without a peer group nor any school or program to help you.
And that, I mean, obviously Thisis why MEA exists.
Did I get that right? You're the expert.
So there's a lot to unpack there.
You did get that right for the most part.
The the first part of your comment about it's more obvious
(10:44):
when we're adolescents because our bodies shift in ways that
are kind of awesome and people are we're strutting our stuff
and not so much in middle essence.
It may not be as noticeable. It may not be as noticeable to
the outside world, but when we look at ourselves in the mirror,
I think that we all feel like, Oh my God, what is happening?
(11:06):
You know, I always say my face fell at 53.
We all And did you did. You prop it back up.
You didn't. No, I.
Didn't. You've not, you've not done any
of that stuff, have you? Have you done a little?
Bit no I. I don't think so.
No, I've gotten something calledFraxel, which is which is a sort
of a skin. It takes it down to the
(11:27):
essential layer, so it rebuilds It's yeah, but no, not the
fillers. And but anyway, I joke about
that and everyone else says you look the same to me.
So I don't want to underestimatethis idea that what we may feel
are big physical changes people may not notice on the outside.
(11:50):
It still feels big to us as middle essence.
So that's something it's relatedvery much to our internal sense
of self. And the reckoning is I'm
supposed to be a grown up and I don't feel like 1.
I feel like I'm still growing up.
And I think this is a real hat tip to you, Chip, your vision,
(12:12):
your commitment, because I was with you at beta when you were
there taking notes, telling me to stay on time.
And I'm riffing away. You created.
That was like 7 1/2 years ago. That was 7 1/2 years ago so.
What you have contributed is a place, and now more than one
(12:33):
location, where people can gather and feel like this is my
home base, This is my touchstoneas a middle essence to take what
I know and to continue to grow so I can continue to be strong
and empowered in the decades that come.
So I think that we are coming upwith more and more opportunities
(12:54):
like adolescents have for Glee clubs and all that.
It is becoming more mainstream. Look at the work Michael Clinton
is doing as part of Roar Forwardwith Estee Lauder and other
others who are creating these advertising campaigns worldwide,
celebrating the changes we experience as a result of time
(13:18):
on this planet instead of running from them.
So I think yes, it's more of an internal shift.
Also, because we have the wisdomto think about it more as
opposed to acting out like adolescents do.
They've lessened impulse control.
We've learned. Oh, things can be hard.
I better think through how I want to work on this.
(13:38):
In terms of your question about the core peer groups, I think
you're creating it. I think we're starting to see it
in media. I have a friend who is an
influencer. Her name is Jim Tan, and she's
an inspiration. She was an executive in the
fashion industry and sort of haddone it all.
(14:01):
And her daughter said you love clothes.
So on a lark she started postingsome photos of my outfit for the
day and now I don't. She's more than 1/2 a million
followers. She was the face of Sephora, and
she inspires others by owning some of the struggle associated
with being a middle essence. If you're enjoying the
(14:21):
conversations we've been having on the midlife chrysalis, I have
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(14:45):
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The interesting thing? EU Curve of Happiness shows that
we tend to get happier starting around age 50 after a long, slow
decline in life satisfaction. So that's in middle essence.
(15:10):
What do you see as the upside ofaging?
What are the what are the thingsthat get better?
I mean, Becca Levy says that as shown in her research from Yale,
that when you can shift your mindset on aging from a negative
to a positive, you gain 7 1/2 years of additional longevity.
And we'll talk about longevity soon.
What do you think it's better ifyou had a top 3 or 4?
Just bet everything gets better.And that's the secret.
(15:34):
That's what so many people don'trealize.
So what gets better? When there's something is more
precious to us, it's because it's not ubiquitous.
It's not always available. The older we get, the more we
have a sense that Laura Carson, our colleague and friend from
(15:54):
the Center on Longevity at Stanford, talks about future
time perspective. When that time is that much more
compressed, it becomes more precious to us.
What gets better is an appreciation that even though
everything may not be exactly asI planned it, even though
everything may not be great, it could be worse.
So we have that perspective. I think that we also going back
(16:20):
to EU curve. It's it imagine a :) right
that's EU curve of happiness. It's like it goes down in our
20s. We feel like things can go on
forever. Although now people in their
20s, it's the the low one of theloneliest, most most anxious
generation of 20 somethings. But the hard slogging years from
(16:41):
20 something down to the abyss of 47.8 or whatever around 50,
we could nerd out on this chip. They're fulfilling years.
I'm making in my career. I'm raising a family.
I'm doing this, but a lot of it is I'm proving.
(17:02):
I'm proving, I'm proving. So they may be fulfilling years,
but they're not the happiest years.
It's not that they're not good valuable years.
People misunderstand some of that part of EU curve.
It's not that people are not doing important things in their
lives, it's just a lot of proving, which takes a lot of
out a lot out of us. And then what gets better is
(17:24):
this sense of I don't care so much what other people think.
That's a beauty of aging we start to think, and it's
developmental. As a gerontologist, I can tell
you it is an international phenomenon.
And it's been, it's been like this for a long time.
I mean, is this always been the case?
Is that you know starting aroundage 50 you don't know have any
(17:46):
more FS left to give? Yes, starting then it it, it
varies like as you say, your mileage may vary.
I love how you put that. It varies by person, but there
is a sense that it's too late inthe game for me to think about
what everyone else is worried about or wants me to do.
(18:08):
I'm ready to live my life. And that is the myth of the
midlife crisis. There's a myth that started in
the 1960's, the early 1960s whenadvertising became really
popular and there were a lot of companies that thought, oh, fear
sells. So let's let's key into this
idea so that when people in midlife say, OK, if I'm not
(18:33):
living my parents dream, for example, to be fill in the
blank, I'm thinking about a particular client, a doctor.
This was someone he had trained for decades.
He was top in his field as a urologist, miserable, absolutely
miserable. And it was very brave for him to
(18:56):
say at he was probably about 53 at the time.
I'm going to leave this and figure out what I want to do.
His family, his immediate family, his nuclear family who
had depended on that support andhis income.
And what do you mean you're going to change?
You must be going through a crisis when the truth is he was
(19:19):
more clear than he had ever been.
What's he doing now? What's he doing now?
Do you know? He had been, I don't know if
he's doing that this right now. He'd been working for a start
up. Using his medical background.
His background but not the skills in the ORI think another
important component is this ideaof legacy.
(19:41):
But I I use the term legacy sparingly because it puts a lot
of pressure on people. There's a lot of ego attached to
legacy sometimes. There's a lot of ego, but more
people from the work that I do. I, I haven't read research about
this. We'll switch.
Sometimes people say I need to stop as especially women, I need
(20:02):
to stop volunteering all the time and now I want to make
money. So that exists more for women
than for men. But for people in general who
have been on the career track, here comes a time when they say
I've got my mortgage under control at least.
I've gotten a lot of the issues with raising children and trying
(20:26):
to save for their college. Now.
If money is not the end all because I need to support my
family at this time, then what do I want to do?
And more people are going towards things that make the
world a better place in ways they hadn't before.
I've got a client who went into the ministry.
She's actually in divinity school right now.
(20:48):
I know many people who take up the arts, healthy nutrition,
they become chefs to help otherswho have different kinds of
ailments that have seemed intransigent.
But when you change their diet, a lot happens.
So I legacy in that way, moving towards what fills us up.
(21:10):
Did you have a midlife chrysalisat some point or a middle
essence chrysalis at a time whenyou hit a bit of a bottom going
through a transition, and how did you get through that?
I had an experience in my early 40s for quite a while, I'd, I'd
gone to my Doctor Who was younger than I and I felt
(21:37):
exhausted by 11:00 in the morning.
And she lives in my community orlived in my community and say,
well, Barbara, you run your own business, you're in your kids
school. And I used to call this benign
ageism. But truly there was nothing.
She didn't mean anything badly, but ageism is never benign.
(21:58):
She would say I'd be exhausted if I did everything you that you
do. And she would take a look at my
blood work and she'd say everything looks to be in the
normal range. And she didn't really listen to
me. And like a lot, in particular a
lot of women, I didn't want to be a complainer.
So I'd say my chrysalis was, I had this shift and I didn't have
(22:20):
the courage yet to do anything about it.
And then ultimately a friend said, if this is how you feel,
go to an endocrinologist. And I walked in and he, he
looked at me across the room andhe said, oh, I could see you've
got a goiter. And I immediately.
A goiter. He.
Sounds like a Yiddish word. A goiter.
(22:42):
A goiter. A goiter is a growth that comes
out of your neck. Do you remember National
Geographic used to when you werea kid, if you looked at the
magazines and like women in Africa would have these necks
with these huge I wouldn't. Look at their necks.
I I looked at, I looked at something else.
And as a gay man, I, I do like breasts.
I mean, I'll be honest, OK? All right, well, so you weren't
(23:03):
looking at the goiters anyway, he he immediately diagnosed me
with hypothyroid, meaning not enough thyroid.
And he said, any physician who keeps up with the research and
this woman, she hadn't kept up with the research, you're not in
your optimal range. And I could see it because it
was slightly swollen, which he he could see.
(23:24):
So my chrysalis was, it was a couple years of feeling like, is
this what's going to happen? And thinking it had to be that
way. And once I got the courage to
really research what I knew I deserved, what was scared to ask
for, then it all changed. So I don't know if that's
exactly what you were looking for, but that's what came to
(23:46):
mind for me. You also do something called the
energy audit and I've seen you, I've seen you do it in an MEA
workshop and related to talking about your early 40s and feeling
no energy. What's an energy audit?
1st, I want to have a shout out to say for anyone listening, if
you have something painful goingon in your life that may become
(24:09):
your life's work. So why did I start studying
energy chip? It's because I didn't have any
and I and I didn't even realize at the time.
So I would read everything I could get my hands on that had
to do with how do you boost yourenergy?
Because I thought it was just meand that I could just control
it. Art, chocolate.
That's the that's the story. I still believe in that.
(24:30):
I still believe in it. So I it's just, it's such an
important thing to under score because at MEA in any workshop,
I don't care what the topic is, when people unearth the
challenges, that's where the magic lives, right?
I created this energy audit, which is now called the seven
(24:53):
lifestyle levers assessment. It is all based on research and
it covers the various areas thatif you can rate yourself highly
on those areas, you will be haveyour well-being thriving and
intact. We call it flourishing.
Let's dive into lifestyle medicine and longevity and your
(25:16):
longevity road map. And this was the next thing that
or one of the next things you got interested in and have now
created in essence products around this for your coaching
clients, but also in MEA workshops.
And let's talk about that a little bit because you've become
one of our experts on the MEA team around longevity, but you
(25:39):
rooted yourself in lifestyle medicine.
So explain what lifestyle medicine is as a starting point.
What we've learned is that less than 20% of how long and how
well we live is based on our genetics.
Doctor Eric Verdan from the BuckCenter for Research and Aging,
(25:59):
he says 10%. I'm being conservative, saying
less than 20% of his genetics. The other 80% are the lifestyle
choices and habits that we make every day.
So this idea of lifestyle medicine, which is by the way,
the fastest growing certification for physicians, or
(26:23):
I should say for healthcare professionals, not just
physicians, there is an AmericanCollege of Lifestyle Medicine.
It uses the idea of lifestyle asmedicine in a way that I will
explain and I don't totally agree with.
It uses it as a prevention mechanism.
(26:44):
So doctors are being trained. Here's how to prevent Gary's
kinds of cancer, here's how to prevent arthritis, here's how to
prevent high blood pressure and the like.
How many of us are inspired by something we want to prevent?
(27:06):
No one. I mean, that's not something
that energizes me with or without my hypothyroidism.
What I'm doing with the work is saying I want to help you be
undiminished. That's the ticket.
And I call those years the trophy years and the work we're
(27:30):
doing and building together at MEA is saying, how do we help
people create a solid foundationto say this is a well lived life
today and I have an eye towards my future to remain undiminished
in my trophy years. So when I taught this for the
(27:53):
first time last year at ME AM EAthe longevity life plan.
One of our mutual now mutual friends, Jim Flaherty, who is
our 90 year old man with a plan,with a 10 year plan.
As he says he is just so inspiring.
He has this sensibility naturally that he is going to
(28:14):
continue to grow and to learn and has put practices in as he
considers himself and we should all consider ourselves a study
of 1 to live long and well. So lifestyle medicine is using
all of those elements to and this is where I different not
(28:35):
prevent things, but that's how the physicians are being
trained. But to stay inspired to lean
into those parts that work best for us to stay undiminished.
An advisor with you at the Center on Longevity and there
we're dealing more at the policylevel.
(28:56):
I'm also an advisor to Stanford Lifestyle Medicine.
And in fact, they also use the Seven lifestyle levers
assessment on their website. So it is and we can put it in
the show notes. It's available on my website for
free. And we're going to actually
going to start using it, I thinkwith MEA, so you'll be able to
(29:17):
post it and use it as well. Which of these seven lifestyle
ways of being do you think matters the most?
Different levers need to be pulled at different times
depending on who we are, where we are, and what we're
experiencing our circumstances. So they are nourishment, and I
(29:41):
call it nourishment, not nutrition because there are
plenty of people who eat all theright things and they're hungry
for what they're not getting. Movement.
It's not just exercise renewal, which is not just sleep, it's
how do we renew ourselves? And it's including sleep
(30:04):
cognition, which includes mindset, which we should chat
about. But I'll just go through the
rest of these, a sense of meaning and purpose,
relationships. And in answer to your first
question, which is the most important here, I'll say that
it's not the least important. But if you do all six of those
(30:26):
things, you get the 7th for free.
And the 7th is stress management, because if you do
all those, you've pretty much gotten your stress under
control. Spirituality would fit under
meaning and purpose, correct? Meaning, purpose.
And I put it in cognition too, because it has to do with
mindset. So let's talk about mindset.
So, so again, Becca Levy, 7 1/2 years, you know, people are
(30:50):
going out and doing cold plungesand taking supplements and doing
their infrared light thing to biohack their way to live
forever. But the reality is there's been
very little in terms of researchthat shows that the physical
interventions that are being done are actually as important
(31:12):
as the mindset interventions. So talk about mindset for a
minute. There's a quote that I love by
Thoreau. The price of anything is the
amount of life you exchange for it.
I think that has everything to do with mindset.
So what do I mean by that? If we consider longevity as a
(31:34):
series of exchanges, relational exchanges with ourselves and
others, exchange with the world in which the we live and all of
the above, our mindset guides that choice.
So if you've ever, say, gone onto a bus and the bus driver
(31:55):
looks you in the eye and says, how are you today in a way that
changes your day? And then you go and you take
another bus and you walk on and there's no connection and no eye
contact. And by the way, those small
interactions count. There are so many people for
whom that interaction may be theclosest they come to a
(32:16):
conversation in a day. So we can't underestimate our
mindset to say in whatever I'm doing, I'm going to show up for
others and myself. Oh, here's a great study about
mindset. There was a study of hotel
housekeepers. Have you ever heard this?
One. Yeah, I do.
I know this one. Yes, Go ahead.
And they were told that all of the activities that they did,
(32:40):
things like vacuuming, changing beds, qualified as all the
exercise they needed, according to the surgeon general.
And so rather than just feeling burnt out and spent and didn't
have not having the energy to exercise, at the end of the day,
they should reconsider it because they don't need to do
anything else. It's everything they need.
And of course, there was a control group.
(33:02):
After just four weeks, things like their blood pressure
decrease, their weight decrease,their physical health measurably
improved. And the only thing that shifted
was their mindset. And On the contrary, there was
another study, one of the same researchers with other
(33:23):
colleagues looked at people overthe course of 21 years and found
that those people who felt that they never quite did enough,
they were never quite active enough, had up to, it's
outrageous, a 72% higher mortality risk than the control
(33:44):
group. And I mentioned that one because
so many people are wearing or rings, Apple Watches, whoop.
I'm wearing an Apple Watch and awhoop right now because I'm
doing work on these. So I am tracking a lot because I
(34:04):
experiment with everything I do so I can better serve others.
But so many people are doing this.
And then what we're finding is they're suffering from a new
kind of issue called well-being burnout.
And again, it has to do with ourmindset. well-being burnout is
this idea that I'm never quite doing enough and I'm getting
(34:25):
burnt out by it and it's becoming a real issue.
Lululemon, the clothing company,did a study of 16,000 people
globally in all their markets, and they identified people are
getting too much, bombarded withtoo much, conflicting and
(34:46):
constantly changing information.To your point, Chip, about cold
plunges are good, but they're not good for women.
Or maybe they are good. People are feeling that they
have to appear well, all the time.
You know, no one's allowed to have a bad day anymore.
So yeah, there's a lot of research around mindset and the
power of it. In fact, more and more.
(35:07):
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(35:28):
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Take the Pathfinder quiz at meawisdom.com.
Forward slash quiz So in terms of this well-being burnout,
let's double click on that for asecond.
What's the, you know, in self-care?
Oh my God, that that term. I have a challenge with that
(35:48):
term. What do you what do you do?
Do you sort of just not listen to, you know, what all these
magazines are saying? Or do you do you get clear on
what it is that actually regenerates your batteries?
You know, for me, it's a walk innature with my my dog Jamie.
(36:10):
It's writing. I've come to realize I'm an
introvert again. And which is sort of weird after
having been a pretty extreme extrovert for most of my
adulthood. But I was a real introvert when
I was a kid. So my sense is that part of the
value is to do the self reflection to understand what it
is that works for you, as opposed to looking at the the
(36:33):
BuzzFeed list of the top ten ways for self-care.
So self-care, again, you're so chock full of good stuff.
There's a lot and what you just put out there, self-care is not
selfish and we must dispel that.The reason it's gotten a bad
name is in the 1970s when this holistic health movement really
(36:57):
started, like many things, and I'm not against advertising, but
it it, it became a consumer issue more than a well-being
issue or topic. Not an issue, a topic, I should
say. And as a result, it became
associated with indulgence as opposed to what it is self-care.
(37:22):
So yes, people can go over the top with self-care in ways that
they're diminishing returns or no returns.
And oftentimes those people feellike I don't have a sense of
meaning in my life because they've gone so far over that
they're spent, they're using alltheir time in ways that have
those diminishing returns. But self-care is essential.
(37:44):
And each one of us is a study of1.
So myself, care is going to lookdifferent from yours, which will
look different from my husband. You know, Scott, Scott Scott's
an extrovert. He feeds off of people's energy.
So he just loves being out there.
I'm an ambivert. I'm in the middle.
(38:06):
I love connecting and being withpeople.
And then I need my time to recoup.
You're shifting a little bit offof that to that other.
I need more and more time alone.But don't fool yourself, Chip.
You love your peeps, and that's a good thing because I'm glad
I'm one of them. But I but I am, as I said to you
the other day, we were, I have aconversation.
(38:28):
I'm going to say right here likeyou were, I wasn't seeing
Barbara enough. She's like, there's something
wrong. Like no, I told her I said what
I just said here. I was like, I've really become
more and more of an introvert. I am definitely an ambivert.
So I get I get energy from people too.
But the shock of seeing my need to have time alone, in many
(38:53):
ways, it's it's like a reminder of my childhood.
And I as a child, I felt guilty about that.
As an adult, I'm realizing, oh, this is, this is this feels
good. Solitude can be very healthy.
It's true. I think the the more life
experience we have, think of it like a tapestry, we need to be
(39:21):
able to sort of pull the right threads at the right time.
So it's have that right nubbiness but smooth level that
we want when we're younger. There aren't so many threads.
The older we get, the more experienced in every different
kind of way, which by the way, includes people being in their
discomfort zone. So when I say study one, I don't
(39:45):
mean just be in your comfort zone.
Just do what works for you. I'm going to challenge people to
find in what ways will stretching yourself feel a
little bit uncomfortable but allow you to continue to grow.
And then we need to come back together.
So our tapestry is our tapestry,right?
So I could see mine and yours and say, oh here we got them
(40:08):
mixed up because each one reflects our unique
circumstances, preferences and needs.
So you gave a Ted talk recently,A TEDx talk.
Where was it again? It was in Boston.
It's called unlocking longevity.Unlocking longevity and your TE
DX talk was on the third span, so unpack that for a moment.
(40:34):
So as we started our conversation saying we met 10
years ago when I was really working and focusing on middle
essence and a few years ago, about seven years after that, I
published that. I guess it was a seven-year
itch. I started feeling a pull towards
(40:55):
unpacking all of this zeitgeist called longevity.
We used to call it aging, but that wasn't aspirational.
So now we call it longevity. And all the research and what I
like to think I do as a gerontologist and a coach is to
translate research which I can read and understand, but then
(41:18):
look at that, look at the meta analysis, which really just
means a compilation. Someone has taken a compilation
of studies and looked at them all together to find the
commonalities or what where it differs.
And I translate that in ways that people can use.
And that's one of the things I'll be bringing to our
workshop, the Longevity Life Plan.
(41:38):
So I felt a pull towards this and then this summer I was
invited to speak at Unlocking Longevity.
And what was funny about it is to a person, everyone else there
was associated with Harvard, Johns Hopkins Hospital for
Special, you name it. Or they had a stealth startup
(42:01):
funded by a billionaire. The reason I think I was invited
is that I'm a translator that works with leaders, whether it's
you're leading yourself, your family, your community, or
changing the world. And what I found out is in
preparing for this, that we all experts and on us regular folks
(42:26):
misunderstand what the definition of longevity is.
So we think of it and I'll define the terms because many
people listening may not know itas lifespan, which is the number
of years lived and health span, which is really referring to how
(42:46):
can I minimize disease and stay as functionally strong as
possible. So when the result of lifespan
and health span has been an all out focus on get your cold
plunge, lift your weights, all the things that are important
and getting all the data from lab tests.
(43:07):
And I support getting all of thedata.
It is foundational and that's why I'm wearing all these
things. I test everything out.
But as I wrote, if anyone watches the talk, data is not
the destination and that's what we're losing.
We think that we can squeeze more performance out of our
(43:27):
biology and therefore full Mother Nature and live forever.
And first of all, my opinion, living forever is not the goal.
Living as long as possible undiminished is the goal.
And So what I found in the research is that there is a lot
of data out of the school of human flourishing.
(43:52):
Harvard has a program in it there.
There's a number of places with good data.
So the third span of human flourishing is made-up of
understanding your mindset. It's made-up of relationships, a
sense of meaning and purpose andjoy.
Joy is underrated. Whether it's I love to go here.
(44:16):
I'm in Manhattan right now, and so I will schlep down on the
subway to the Union Square market.
So I feel like I'm in Marin County outside of San Francisco
where I live, going to the farmers market there, because
the bounty from farmers fills mycup with joy.
Everyone's got to know what fills their cup, and we're
losing out on that. So the It's the third span of
(44:37):
human flourishing. What are the 1st 2 spans?
The longevity equals lifespan plus health span plus the third
span. Again, that is a complete, well
lived life. Beautiful.
Well, and there's a book, DoctorKerry.
She wrote a burn right called joy Span and and I'm so glad you
(44:59):
brought that up. I read the book and I think it's
really well done. It's got great tips, good, good
stories. The reason it's I didn't say
thrive span or joy span is it's not that simple.
It's not just about joy. I mean, I'd love to be able to
(45:19):
package it as something as simple, but the reason I called
the third span of human flourishing, it's the elements
that again, it shows up in thosefour quadrants.
But if we get even more specific, it will differ for
different people. The joy and joy span is
certainly part of it, but it's not the whole story.
(45:41):
Do you define flourishing as thesame thing as being
undiminished, or are those two different things?
That's no one's asked me that before.
Let me think about that for a minute.
I think in my the way I like to think of it, undiminished is
flourishing. So flourishing, I mean, first
thing is a word that is, is definitely trending.
And we are maybe going to have aprivate flourishing retreat
(46:04):
here, which we will invite you to next year at our Santa Fe
campus that's being organized bysome flourishing experts,
including people from Harvard. And Joy, I mean, come on, like,
how can you not love Joy? I started a company called Jawad
Aviv Joy of Life. So it's, it's an it's a word
that I particularly appreciate. Last question for us today is
(46:27):
really, I want to understand about wisdom and your
relationship with wisdom and what you've learned along the
way. And imagine if some younger
person came to you and said, Barbara, you know, I'd love to
have hot coffee or tea or a matcha or whatever with you next
week. And would you come to our
meeting with a, a figuratively speaking, not an actual physical
(46:51):
version of wisdom bumper sticker, a bumper sticker that
actually is your, has your fingerprints on it based upon
the school of Hard Knocks, what you've learned along the way.
A bumper sticker about life or about longevity or about
whatever you want it to be. What would what would that
bumper sticker say? And what's the origin story that
(47:11):
led you to that wisdom? Oh, it's an actual bumper
sticker that I've seen is can I use that?
That's fine, yeah. I saw a bumper sticker years ago
that said don't believe everything you think.
Especially when I was younger, Iwas so sure of things.
I don't know how it is that I have more life experience and
(47:33):
more book knowledge and somehow I know that I know less than I
would like to know. The world is moving at such a
rapid pace and I don't just meanAI, but certainly including
that, that we need to stay as flexible in our minds as we can
(47:55):
can on our feet. And so number one, it means
don't take everything at face value just because you say read
it from a source you have alwaystrusted.
Think about it, maybe double check depending on what kind of
information it is. It means reconsider what you may
(48:20):
have believed in the past, because you are completely
different human. Our cells regenerate.
We are changing all the time, but we don't often dig deep
enough to think. Is my thinking keeping up with
that change as well? And it won't say something bad
about me if I change my mind. We have to be open to that.
(48:44):
And I think people are scared todo that because they think it
will show that they were wrong or maybe somehow have reflect
that they don't know everything.For me, I trust people more when
when they tell me that they're thinking has evolved because it
means they're staying on it. We live in such an era.
This is a It's a Great Wisdom bumper sticker because we tend
(49:09):
to, especially in the socio political world, we tend to find
our people and create our thinking around a point of view
that allows us to feel a sense of belonging in that group of
people. And we are not nearly
(49:32):
evolutionary in our thinking around how do we learn something
new and be open to shifting our mindset as a result.
I mean, we talked about mindset earlier, a fixed mindset.
In my opinion, there's lots of definitions of it based on Carol
Dweck's work at Stanford. But it in many ways, it's one of
the definitions would be you do not change your mind based upon
(49:55):
new information. And whereas a growth mindset, it
means you are open to new information such that you're
thinking can evolve. Now that's those are not the
only ways to define mindset fixed and growth, but I, I love
this one because, you know, to have a life in which we're
(50:16):
constantly curious, learning andand evolving our thinking is
that's a good life. It's a beautiful life.
Well, you have a beautiful life.You are, as I said at the start,
you're one of the favorite faculty members of MEA.
You've taught, I don't know, maybe a dozen workshops at MEA
(50:37):
at this .88 or 9 at least. And thank you, thank you for
being a friend and, and also someone who is a, a thought
partner. You know, we, we, we are on this
journey together and appreciate what you've shared today.
Thanks so much for having me, loved it.
(50:59):
That woman and I could talk for hours.
Barb Waxman is, as I said, my thought partner and somebody I
have really admired and appreciated because she's been
our longest serving guest faculty member of MEA.
And I really appreciate the factthat she's now moved more and
more into the longevity space. If I had three key takeaways,
(51:20):
Let's start with just the most obvious one, which is really
what lifestyle medicine is. Lifestyle medicine can lead to
longevity. And so the fact that she wears 3
hats now, a gerontologist who focuses and studies lifestyle
medicine, who also is well knownin the longevity world, these
are the seven lifestyle levers. She talked about nourishment.
(51:44):
And it's not just about eating. And it's the right kind of
eating and the right kind of nutrition, but it's also
nourishment of just feeling nourished by life.
Movement, of course, renewal, she said renewal as opposed to
sleep. And there's lots of different
ways we renew ourselves. Cognition or what kind of
mindset you have and what kind of learning you're willing to
do. Meaning and purpose, which also
(52:06):
can be short. Short form for spirituality and
religion relationship and then stress management.
If you do the first six, you getthe 7th one free.
So you know, it's interesting. Back in the day when I was in my
30s and Aceo and a little bit stressed, I had add a Doctor Who
(52:26):
said I think we should help you with some stress management.
And now that same doctor, if they understood lifestyle
management would not say, like, let's do the stress management
instead, they'd say, here are 6 things you can do first.
And if you do those things, you probably will have less stress
in your life. So check out lifestyle medicine.
It's a, it's a, it's a whole newform of medicine that's growing
(52:48):
very quickly. Secondly, you know, I really
appreciate having the conversation with her about
well-being burnout. This is, I think, something
that's going to start trending alittle bit more because it's
interesting how people are, are really not enjoying the, the
term self-care. I'm one of those people, but I'm
not the only one. And there's almost a performance
anxiety around, oh, am I doing enough for myself care.
(53:11):
And, and people have almost self-care narcissism where
they're just showing off their self-care to other people, which
is not what self-care is about. self-care is really about
regenerating your batteries. And it was great to talk with
her about the fact that each of us has our own regimen, what it
was the well-being, what what would make us feel a sense of
(53:32):
well-being. And I'd say some of the burnout
is not so much that we're doing too many things, but it's we're
actually comparing our form of self-care, our form of
well-being with others. And we're sometimes feel we feel
lacking. So do not compare yourself with
the Joneses. This is not about the BMW in the
driveway. self-care or well-being is about learning how
(53:54):
to flourish based upon what willdo, what will flirt, make you
flourish. Which brings me to the third
thing I learned. And that was she used the words
undiminished and I didn't love. I mean, undiminished is a fine
word, but it's it's sort of a negative.
It's like it's undiminished is like it's an UN word.
And and then I asked her about flourishing and and flourishing
(54:17):
is a word that is just going bonkers these days.
Harvard, Stanford, all these programs have that Marty
Seligman, the most famous positive psychology academic in
the world, has a book called Flourish.
So this idea of flourishing is worth exploring.
And I'm sure we'll put Barb's TEDX talk about the third span,
(54:41):
this idea of a joy span or a flourish span.
You know, maybe that is what we're supposed to be doing after
looking at lifespan and health span.
It's really looking at what helps us to flourish in in human
existence. So I hope you enjoyed that.
You know, for those of you who are longevity junkies, this was
a slightly different perspectiveon lifestyle medicine as a means
(55:05):
to live a long, healthy and happy life.
See you next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. This show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
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