Chip Conley

Korea is a fascinating country, not just because they have a vibrant artistic culture (think K-Pop and Academy of Awards Best Picture “Parasites” and many other films), but it also has the lowest birth rate of any modern country in the world (just 0.74 children per woman when the replacement rate for a country is 2.1) and it also has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, just behind Japan. If you want to get a window into our aging global future, you’d want to look at Korea and Japan.

I love being a myth-buster. And, one of our biggest myths is that younger entrepreneurs are more successful than older entrepreneurs.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright completed one-third of his most famous work between the ages of 80 and 92. Business author Peter Drucker wrote two-thirds of his forty books after the age of 65. Morris Chang started the influential Taiwanese chip company, TSMC, at 55 and ran it for thirty-five years.

“Authenticity is not something we have or don't have. It's a practice—a conscious choice of how we want to live. Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real.” - Brené Brown

I’ve spent most of my career as a crossing guard at the congested, complicated intersection of psychology and business. My books and blog posts have profiled psychology wizards from Carl Jung to Viktor Frankl to Esther Perel.

I thought I graduated from Cancer School on January 12 when I rang the bell after 36 sessions of radiation. Three days later, I was on Good Morning, America. A day after that my book came out. And, the day after that, I was blowing air kisses to Hoda on The Today Show set. I felt surprisingly remarkable as ending the radiation and being off my hormone depletion pills gave me such a spurt of energy.

“A Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.” - Michael Bungay Stanier, “The Coaching Habit”

Really enjoyed this recent UK Guardian article (https://bit.ly/3vMIYyh) about older people making significant changes in their 90s. There’s the story of Maybelle Blair, who proclaimed, “I was in the closet for 95 years. Then that door blew open!” Imagine coming out as a lesbian at 95. Wow!

“Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young generations to a knowledge of a world and of life? No, there are none. [...] that is not quite true. Our religions were always such schools in the past, but how many people regard them as such today? How many of us older persons have really been brought up in such a school and prepared for the second half of life, for old age, death, and eternity?”

I deeply admire those who’ve gone from being a striver to a thriver. I have to admit that just when I thought I was embracing my post-achievement life, I jumped right back on that treadmill. Of course, this makes no sense for someone who loves “time affluence” as much as I do. I love a leisurely Sunday at our home in Baja, napping on the outdoor mattress after a long walk with our dog Jamie. It feels good to attune with my privileged habitat in Baja. And I know it’s nirvana for my nervous system.