Chip’s favorite Wisdom Well posts

Rudyard Kipling's poem “If” is one of my favorites. I swoon when I arrive at the line, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same."

During my seven and a half years of full-time and part-time leadership and advisory work at Airbnb, I was fortunate to be in more than one hundred mentor relationships. Often, I was a “mentern,” a mentor, and an intern at the same time. I was learning as much from these young folks (almost all Millennials) as they were from me.

I wrote this in response to the occasional feedback wondering why MEA has “Elder” in its name even though the word can be triggering.

Most days, I feel like Nadia Comaneci exhibiting visual poetry with my command of the balance beam of life. But on a few rare days, I feel like I can barely walk to the bathroom when I wake up in the morning. Forget about the balance beam or the high wire act. A tricycle feels more my speed. Yesterday was one of those days.

The word “consumerism” is 67 years old and helped Americans see that a certain prevalent society message unconsciously influenced our behaviors around “keeping up with the Jones.” While the word continues to serve us well, I think it’s time we welcomed a new word (and concept) into the American lexicon: “successism.”

"Usually sometime around midlife, we come to a point where we’ve seen enough of our own tricks and we come to feel that my shadow self is who I am. We face ourselves in our raw, unvarnished, and uncivilized state...

Author Bill Bishop has suggested, “It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.”

“If I can meet triumph and disaster and treat these two imposters just the same...” Rudyard Kipling I chuckled when I saw the recent headline that 47.2 is the age when misery peaks in midlife. I was that age a dozen years ago and I can vouch for the researchers’ findings.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters: Serendipity, Synchronicity, and Epiphany. They lived in a small fishing and farming village in southern Baja, a tranquil place some called Yet. From far and wide, midlife pilgrims flew into the bustling Los Cabos airport seeking the sisters. But they would immediately realize this was “Not Yet.”

Attain: “to achieve through effort” Attune: “to adjust as to be harmonious” Atone: “to make reparations for a sin, crime, or error” At one: “in a state of harmony or accord”