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Jeff Hamaoui: How to Boldly Embrace Longevity · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today we have Jeff Hamoui.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: He is a Seasons leader.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: He is also the co-founder of Modern Elder Academy and has held roles at NASA, ikea and Nike before permanently landing in Baja.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Jeff has an entrepreneurial mind, a teacher's heart and a seeker's soul.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome, jeff.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Jeff Hamoui.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Gosh.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's always interesting to hear yourself introduced, isn't it Jeff?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Hamoui.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love some of the words that, how you were described.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: So seeker's souls and entrepreneurial heart definitely want to dig into some of those.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: So we'd love to just start off with your definition of bold Jeff and what you define bold as Jeff.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Hamoui, you know I've actually sat with this question before we came on the call together.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: You know defining boldness.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: What I realized is that boldness comes in all sorts of different kind of categories and in all sorts of different.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It shows up in different ways in our lives.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we're bold because we have an aspiration and we're trying to do something aspirational linked to a purpose or a goal or a vision that we have.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we're bold because we're desperate.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: You don't know what the hell else to do.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like gosh.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: I'm being bold because I have nowhere else to go.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Where I keep coming to is that boldness is relative.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: What is bold for me is probably not bold for you or people listening, and what seems to be bold.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: But the things that seem to be bold that I have done in my life are actually oftentimes right in my swim lane and aren't terribly bold.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: And the things that don't seem to be terribly bold are the things that I feel make are bold for me.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Sarah Holt Okay, so an interesting definition.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So from the perspective of the ways that you have captured it, I absolutely agree with you.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It's relative, so it really is.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Your bold definition is not the same as mine.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: We may have crossover of certain things, or you know particular adjective here or there that we would describe it as, but I think one of the things that continually, if you listen to the different definitions of folks, you know one of the things is stepping into the unknown.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It's definitely one of the things.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So I think that that can come with desperation aspiration.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: But, based on your definition, I'd love to hear kind of what comes to mind when I ask you when was your or when was one of your first bold moments?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Paul.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: So again, I think there are bold stories that I know will be bold with, will seem bold.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Right when I was 47 and a half years old, I packed up my family, we left our 15 year business almost longer than that 17 year business in Northern California, packed up into a truck with a three and a four year old and a dog and set off the bar to really take a sabbatical.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: But, as you said, kind of leaping into the unknown and that kind of created this boldness cascade, or again a seeming boldness cascade.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I met my two business partners, conley and Christine Sperber, who had started working at something called MEA or the Modern Elder Academy.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: We now call it MEA wisdom as a wisdom school for people in midlife.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: I met them on my trip down to Baja and kind of boldly became some kind of a wellness guru in the desert, which was kind of nuts.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I don't even think it was bold, I think it was crazy.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: And then my own personal interests.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: The work I'd done previously was all in sustainability, so innovation in sustainability and my own desire and I think it was a big leap was to move from high concept sustainability to how we live, how we live in communities that are more sustainable, how we live as human beings in ways that are more sustainable, and so set up a regenerative community in Baja 26 homes around a regenerative farm.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So it became a regenerative farmer, started teaching at MEA.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: All of this stuff, I think, from the outside looks bold and inverted commas and, honestly, where I see it is, it drew on a toolkit.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I have a backpack of tools that I've had since I was a young human that allowed me to do those things that didn't make those things terrifying to me as a consultant, starting something new, learning something new, as a facilitator, working with groups, as someone who's inquisitive, etc.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Etc.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So I think oftentimes bold moves are perceived as bold because they are things that we would personally find hard to do or imagine doing in our lives.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Right Upping sticks, moving a family 1000 miles into a foreign country I spoke Spanish fluently it really changes the decision making in terms of the boldness required.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: When I think about the things that I've had to do that are truly bold, it's when I face into things.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: It's not just facing into things that are unknown, it's facing into things that are uncomfortable.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It's doing things that are at the edge of my comfort zone.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I have, I think, confronted recently, things like needing to be more organized, structured and so on and so forth.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: These are limiting factors for me in my work and in my life, and both of my business partners, both Chip and Christine, have been pushing me in that direction.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: It is wildly uncomfortable for me.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: It is wildly difficult for me to get into those areas of myself.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: On a personal level, my final frontier or not my final frontier a frontier that I'm crossing right now is around dance.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I'm a bigger man and have always been sort of told since childhood that I was clumsy.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: When I enjoyed dancing as a kid I was always sort of slightly shamed about the whole thing, and so doing dance classes with my nine-year-old daughter again brought up all kinds of all kinds of discomfort for me.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: So I think for me, boldness has been mostly around the areas where I'm afraid to tread.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Really push your edges, push your limits.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Going into things that you are actually scared of and that you do not have competencies in.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Setting up a new business in a new area is not a bold move for someone like me.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I spent my entire life doing that.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Learning how to dance is bold.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Tackling the fact that I need to be that structured and organized, not because people tell me, but because I feel it is a bold move.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I sometimes think that we sort of look at these words and think big B bold versus the little B bold.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Right, the big B bold is this sort of like you know, go conquer the world.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think bold can be extremely quiet and you may be the only one that knows you're being bold at that time, like I think it whispers more than roars, and for me that's the boldest probably moments I've had is when I kind of have that, whether it's that conversation like you talk about dance or being organized or structured which as a creative I can really relate to what you're saying there, because it's just a really uncomfortable thing and it sounds silly to someone who's like highly structured and organized because like it's so easy, like what's the problem?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think the other thing you said which I think is important for people to hear although it sounds like learning to dance would be fun and all these other things but it also brings up maybe experiences or kind of notches on our continuum of life, that kind of hit us in a maybe in a not so positive way that makes us maybe not want to do that as much or maybe not put ourselves out there.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So I think there's things that can happen in someone's life that we just don't understand and I think the best thing we can do is just help someone, support them and cheer them on during those moments, even when it doesn't make sense to us, like what's bold to me is not bold to you, and vice versa.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So I really think your description of that and the experience with it is probably really on the mark for many people who are listening.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: I have a couple of reframes to offer and then we can.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: They kind of tumble us into the work that I'm doing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: So hopefully that'll give us a chance to talk about MEA.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: One of the big reframes, one of the big ahas that I personally had while I've been sort of doing these explorations, is the move from imposter to explorer.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: How you shift your mindset from saying oh gosh, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not good at this, I don't have experience in this which is sort of classic imposter syndrome right, you're going into something to understanding that those feelings are exactly the same when you're exploring.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And if you reframe from the imposter to the explorer, if you reframe to that idea that actually, as I age, in my 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, this need to explore is utterly vital, right, otherwise we just stay comfortable.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: So there's a relationship between boldness and exploration and there's a relationship in our mindsets in terms of really thinking of ourselves as explorers rather than an imposter when we're taking these steps.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: That's the first thing.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: The other thing and, lee, I'm not sure where this fits, but it's sort of pregnant and I want to share it is everything has a season, I think, where we're often that there's this sort of cultural narrative that unless you are charging, unless you're succeeding growing, scaling, leveraging, creating, doing you're not succeeding.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: And I think that there is a corollary boldness to saying this is a time for me to stop, this is a time for me to rest, this is a time for me to take stock, this is a time for me to be underground.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I often call it underground.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I told you I'm doing a lot of farming stuff at the moment, so farming analogs come easily to me.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And again, this idea of being stuck is kind of toxic in our culture, this idea that unless you're doing producing, creating, scaling, striving you're stuck.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I think I would like to reframe that as seeding.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: I talk to people constantly about this idea of you would never point at a seed as it was underground and say you're stuck.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: You would point at a seed as it was underground, say okay, that's the season, you're underground, you're germinating, you're getting ready for the next thing.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: So there's also a boldness to being aware of yourself and what you need in any given moment and not doing the thing just because that's what everyone and everyone around you is always pushing for right.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're not building something, you're not creating something, so that's that.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: And where all of that kind of thinking comes from is my work at MEA.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: So people come to MEA when they're in a transition, when they're looking at transitioning something in their lives right, maybe they've gone through a divorce, or maybe they've gone through, they're looking at changing their jobs or where they live, or whatever.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes, people come to MEA because they're seeking purpose.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: What is it that I want to be doing at this next stage of my life?
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And this is where this idea that boldness is also taking a pause to kind of reacquaint yourself with yourself.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: It's taking a pause to say what I did in the first 30 years of my life, or 20 years of my life may well have served me, but may no longer suit me, and a lot of the work that we do at MEA is so good.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Who are you now?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about what it is that you value.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Having clarified about what it is that you value at this age, I think boldness without understanding what it is that you value is disconnected.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: How do we attach action to the things that we truly, deeply care about and how do we create space and time to understand that we work on all kinds of things with people as they come to MEA in terms of the sorts of experiences that we do, both online and offline, really helping people to understand what are my mindsets, what are the things that I believe about myself, what are the things that the world believes about me, and are they true and do those beliefs serve me any longer?
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: All of this in the context of an ever-expanding adulthood, and what I mean by that is in the last 100 years we've added in 1905, you would likely to have lived to around 47 years old.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: So you know, 20 to 50, let's say, was an adulthood.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, average life expectancy Fast forward.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: We now, in America especially, can expect to live into our 80s.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: So 50 to 80 is the same length of time.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: 20 to 50, 30 years, 50 to 80 is the next 30 years.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And it's like wow, holy crap, that is a second adulthood.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: We've been granted a second adulthood in the last 100 years.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: And how do we think about how we want to live that second adulthood?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Who do we wish to be, what do we wish to learn, where do we wish to go, etc.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Etc.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: So a lot of the work that we're doing is saying, okay, what's the stuff that you brought in from your first adulthood?
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: What of that do you want to keep, what of that do you want to shed and what do you want to take into your next adulthood?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: And I think there is a boldness and I keep on.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful touchstone, this idea of boldness.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: There's a boldness to looking at yourself and saying, god, am I stuck?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Have I gotten comfortable?
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But you don't know if you don't ask, I think or pause and I think as I work with the women who I support and through the things that I do, I think a lot of the times it feels like people in general don't feel like they can pause, like they can take that time.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how could I think about myself?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I'm the breadwinner, I'm the one doing this, I'm the one striving, thriving, all those things you said which I think is something really resonating with me right now.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: That is, the definition of success is if you're doing something versus being yeah, and so I think there's this sense that maybe folks that come to the modern elder economy which I think they have made that choice, that I'm going to figure this out or I'm going to answer this question, but let's just say someone's on the fence wanting to come into that environment and kind of take that time, which does mean they have to be vulnerable.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Most likely they're going to have to be introspective and they may have to look at themselves pretty deeply, which can be scary.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Is there anything that someone can do, in your opinion and your experience with this as an expert, of giving themselves the chance to do that, making the time to do something so important as what you just described.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: I love the way you framed that question.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I've got some thoughts, reflections and then a specific answer.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, prioritizing yourself is often a really difficult thing to do.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: It can seem incredibly self-indulgent to say, hey, I'm going to take a week away to go and work on myself, to think about myself, to think about what I want.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: I personally, the investment for me, is around what do you want your second adulthood to be?
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And the risk is, as people age in the US, the stories about what it is to have a second adulthood, a thriving second adulthood, are vanishingly small.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: You know the kind of the mental models, the modalities for being, even for being bold, are vanishingly small.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: On average, when people retire in America, they watch 47 hours of television a week.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: So what they're doing with that second adulthood is watching TV.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So I think part of it is if you don't invest in yourself, in understanding what it is that fuels you, drives you, what it is that will make you productive and vibrant and healthy as you age.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: The models of what's available are not great.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: You know the TV model.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: The TV or social media, which can be even worse if you're older, because I think a lot of social media is all about how to erase being older.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you the Instagram ads I get Someone said do you want me to take away your wrinkles in one of the pictures I just did?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I was like no, I'm actually proud of those, like I earned those and I have a lot of them because I smile a lot, honestly, so anyway, so I think you know, just in that, like there isn't even in our culture, or maybe in our conventions, and certainly in the US, of embracing aging and longevity, I agree.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Part of our mission as an organization is to reframe aging.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: You know, with the anti-anti-aging kind of company.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Actually, I think we're pro-aging rather than anti-aging.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Anti-anti-aging is our friends at Caddus, but anyway, I'm allowed to, I'm allowed to steal that great language.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: But yeah, reframing aging.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: I want to point at realities, a couple of sort of realities.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: The first is oftentimes and I'm in the demographic that you work with in terms of your listenership and your community and we work with you know people in their 40s, 50s, 60s or maybe in their 30s as well Oftentimes we're referred to as the sandwich generation, a group of people that are going to be looking after parents, caring for parents, caring for people.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: You know, people that are older than us.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: We're also looking after the people you know who are following us children, employees.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Maybe you're building a team, maybe you're a company or colleagues or whatever.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: So this time issue is real right, if you're caring for your elders, if you're caring for your youngest, if you're caring for your business, there's just a lot going on in people's lives at this stage of their lives.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Finding that time is hard.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: It also could that stretch.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: That tension coincides with something called the U curve of happiness, which is a piece of social science research that, fascinatingly, is global it.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: This applies everywhere in the world except for Russia, but it shows that people are at their unhappiest, men and women, at around 47.8.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: As you and I were sort of setting up, you said that at 48, you had a moment, right, yeah, a big moment.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: You had a big moment.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I left my home to sort of find my new life, this bold from the outside, moving down to Baha.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I was 47.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this stuff happens to us on a it's almost on a predictable curve, this tension, the stress of the sandwich generation, all these things that are on us, and so I actually think that at that moment, saying, okay, what is it that I want?
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: How is it that I want this to work in the next?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: in my next chapter, my second adulthood.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: What are the things that I want to value?
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Who are the people I want to surround myself with?
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Taking the time to become aware of yourself so that you can thrive doesn't feel to me like a poor investment.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: I think it helps everyone around you and you to have a different experience.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: You know, building community, having experiences that allow you to thrive, this whole world of wellness as well, is expensive.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Let's just talk about that, and we've been super conscious about that as an organization.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: It's a privilege to take a week off, especially if you're caring for parents or kids or whatever, or if you're struggling to find work or whatever it is.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: And the way we've addressed that is kind of in a couple of different directions.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: One is we're a social enterprise.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: We've given over $3 million in grants to people to attend the workshops.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this and thinking that sounds lovely, but there's no way on God's earth I could afford to do to go to Baja or to New Mexico and do a course.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: well, you can, and we've got you know we do do scholarships all the way up to sort of full scholarships for people to attend.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: The second way is we put a lot of our courses online, which means that people who can't take time away from home can at least try to sort of get some of this work done online.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: And again, those are open to scholarships.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: If you can't afford it, you need it, we can.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: We can support people to get that work done.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know how did I end up talking about?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: No, like you're, because I said people don't take the time and they don't people don't think they can or they can't afford.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Like there's always, I feel like we can always make an excuse to not do something that's pushing us out of our comfort zone.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: It could be a financial comfort zone, it could be emotional comfort zone, it could be things that we actually, in a way, I think we create some of our own barriers for ourselves, and I think that's part of being bold is, like you just call yourself on your own bullshit.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Like you're just, like I don't, I can't, I'm done with that.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: You know, like I'm just going to move through this and I'm going to move into figuring this out.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be unhappy anymore, or I don't want to feel unhealthy, or I don't want to be as stressed.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to take some action and I can't do it for you, jeff, and you can't do it for me, and I think that's the most powerful thing that I try to instill Like you can't just bottle, just do it, let me know, because if you can, like you're going to be a billionaire.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Like take the step of just do it and move forward into figuring something out or going to the next step of figuring something out, because I think sometimes people think they have to have it all figured out before they take the step, and that's actually the opposite you actually have to take the step to even figure it out.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So I think that's part of it, and I love what you're doing with the regenerative community that you're building and have built and the farming that you're doing.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So tell me and educate us about your community that you've built, along with the nurturing and the nutrition mental, physical and spiritual it happens in a community like that.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Again, I just want to pick up on something that you said and just amplify it.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: I think boldness is about doing the stuff that is uncomfortable and difficult for you.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: It is not about doing the stuff that is easy, and I think within that, moving towards what you find uncomfortable is where your growth and transformation is.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: The things that you struggle with are the things that will kind of release you.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, believe it or not.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: That's right, Whereas the things that you're awesome at you know you can do that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: They might not be adding to your life, to your second adulthood or your third adulthood, like I hope I have a third, you know.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: So, fingers crossed, yeah, so you know, thinking about that, that's what you just said.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I think it's really important for people to hear.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: So I want to say it again, probably in my words.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I won't say it's eloquently as you did, but you know, things that you're wrestling with are things that you're feeling like, oh, I go there and I like it, just kind of I don't have the answers.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: I know it needs to be different, but I don't have the time.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Or there is this reasoning that you come up with that you're not going to tackle it right now, but you'll get back to it.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: You back burner it.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: A lot of people back burner their health and wellness, including myself.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I've done it.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I'm like working to get back, yeah, working to get back to where I want to be, but like we really kick it in the strategy and the creation and the business part of our world, but for some reason our health, which we all know is our wealth, we back burner.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: So I think you know, when we look at what you do in the MEA and what you do in the courses and the things that are in person, as well as the community you're building.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I think it really.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it creates a space that you can't actually avoid yourself.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: You can't actually avoid what you need to do, but it's a it's not like a bad thing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: It's one of the best things that you could do.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Would you agree with that?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I would, and I would also say that doing it with a group of other people that are doing the same work and are in similar situations makes the whole experience a lot kinder.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: We tend to be incredibly harsh with ourselves oh God, you're so fat, you haven't done the work or whatever.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Whatever, the story is right.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And then whatever the role is in your head right, like we don't talk nice to ourselves sometimes.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I got some meanness in between my ears of how I'm like you're not doing this, you're failing you.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: You started it 10 times and you quit, like there's some stuff that happens.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we call it the shitty committee.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: It's my own head.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Is that what's in?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: the shitty committee Okay.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: They're a strong group.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: But there's a moment when you share that with someone and they look at you like you're crazy and you realize, okay, we're all going through this.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: There's something about doing this work in community that is insanely powerful.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: We help to metabolize each other and revise each other.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: We visit each other, reimagine ourselves in the light of people's reactions, reflections.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: It can kind of recreate how you think about yourself.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: I do really quickly want to touch on the community.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: So in the research around healthy aging and again we're not talking about old age, elderhood, you know, 80s, 90s, I'm talking about healthy aging in your 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s there are three predicting determinants for a healthy and thriving midlife and beyond.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: The first is having purpose.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: So we've touched on this, right.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: What is your purpose?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Big P purpose you know the things that have kind of illuminated the thread of your life and the little P purposes I'm a parent, I'm a teacher, I'm a caregiver, I'm a friend, I'm a look after dogs, whatever those big, little P purposes are.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: But having purpose, being connected to something greater than yourself, is vital to thriving Wellness, which divides into what you were talking about, physical well-being and financial well-being.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Those two are harder to control, right, as you said in terms of gosh I'm working so hard looking after my physical well-being, or if financially I'm not where I want to be, it's hard to change that.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: But that's another key factor to sort of wellness in midlife.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: The most important factor, the most important determinant of whether you will live a healthy and thriving midlife and actually that can add up to 15 years to your life is community, being in community.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw the Blue Zones work, dan.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Beeson's work on Netflix In his research and he teaches at MEA.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: He's one of our guest faculty.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: In his research he shows that the number of friends and the community that you have in your 50s will predict how long you will live and can add up to 15 years of life to your life.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: So how do we invest in friendship?
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: How do we make friendship a practice?
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: How do we live in community effectively, knowing that it is the vital factor?
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Incidentally, a lot of this work has this sort of massive impact.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: How we view aging, our mindset about aging, also determines how long we live.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Beccalivi did research around this idea that a positive mindset, a growth mindset around aging can add up to about seven and a half years of life to life.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: So, right there, forget about quitting smoking.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Forget about sort of you know, doing ab crunches or getting on the peloton.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Think about your friends, think about how you think about aging.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Friends and mindset right.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: If you have that down.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: It sounds like we could add 22 years to our life.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: If you do it, we're going to live to 1000 years old.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, I told my mom she's like my goal is 115 is what my mom said this weekend.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I said why are you aiming so low?
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: You know, let's go 125.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: She's like, okay, I'll change it.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So anyway, like, yeah, aim high there.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: But you know the community aspect of it, which I think is one of the biggest things that was an aha for me as I set out to do what I'm doing it's the women and how they come together and what they connect with.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: And you get the nail on the head with regard to when you think, like you're having a challenge or a problem, or you're trying to achieve something that's not happening like you wanted to, and then you share it with others, like you realize, wow, you're actually, you're inspiring someone, someone's going to tell you that you're doing it, but you just don't feel like you're doing it.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Or they make you be that little nudge of like are you really trying?
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: You know, because that's I need that every now and then you know because I say, oh, I'm struggling with my weight, but like, am I really trying and having the habits and the discipline and intention that I need to have?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: So it's good to be checked on that every now and then.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: But I think it is that community that does help you understand, and I think the work in the blue zones and the work that Becky Levy has done, that's just.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It's to me like it is.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: It makes sense and it's it's not complicated.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But I think what we try to do is we try to complicate life with, like, some algorithm or some addition of this plus this.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Plus this equals that, like you got to take a cold ice bath every morning, you got to get up at 430, you have to meditate for 50 minutes.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: You know you've seen it.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: So then then then you feel like you're feeling because you're not doing all these extra things and you're not getting up at 430 in the morning.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Hey, I like, I like nine o'clock, I like 10am as of my first meeting versus 8am.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: You know that's okay.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes there's this comparison trap that comes into play too, and I don't know if you find that, for when people are coming into the Academy of, like they've spent so much time like thinking that they were behind, when actually they're not.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: But it's because they've compared themselves to some, to some line or some other person or some expectation that really wasn't necessary or isn't a normal expectation.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: So as we live longer, more stuff happens to us right In.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: In our research on transitions we've dug up all kinds of fascinating data, and there's a guy called Bruce Filer who wrote a book called the Life and the Transitions and he interviewed over 10,000 people to sort of try and work out how many transitions do people go through in a life, and a transition might be losing a job, losing a relationship, moving home, you know, a physical health scare or something like that.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And what he came up with is, on average, across that sort of let's call it a 50, 60 year adulthood, we're likely to face about 36 transitions and in addition to that, about three what he calls life quakes.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: So you're looking at an almost annual transition, and the conclusion that he came to, and the conclusion that I've come to in seeing people come in through MEA now for six years, is this idea of the linear life just doesn't make sense.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: As we live longer, right, you, you do your education, you get the house, the family, the kids, and then you retire and you're done.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: All kinds of crap is happening to all of us all the time.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: None of us are where we think we should be in some domain in our lives and even if we are, something happens and we're thrown for a loop right A health scare or a divorce or whatever it might be.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: I kind of get scared if I'm not challenged, Like if I have a day where I'm like, well, this is great, I'm smile, I like, and I know that's a mental thing and someone's going to send me a note about what it is.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: But I think it was really interesting what you just said about 36 transitions easily one you know per year and something that you said was like three life quakes.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm just again going back.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: I know I've had one, so if I do, for two more and I'd really like to pass on that.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: So, unless it's a positive life quick, I guess I'm going to the negative, because it could be something super positive, right, that could happen in a life quake, or no.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: And I think that's actually so check.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: I think the message is change is inevitable.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in a life, yeah right, transition is how we manage change, and we can either make that productive and generative or it can.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: It can create fear and and difficulty and struggle.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: And again, what we come back to is self-awareness and I hate to use this language sometimes because it feels so hippie-dippy but if you don't pay attention, then you can't control what's gonna happen.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Not control, then you you're not aware of what's happening.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: And if you're not aware of what's happening, then how you feel, how you think your mind sets about, whether it's aging, your friends, your whatever.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: If you're not aware of them, how can you work on them?
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Do you see what I mean?
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: So by building that awareness, by building we call it TQ, that sort of transitional quotient understanding Yourself as you're in a transition, understanding how you manage change, understanding what you care about in terms of your values, your purpose, etc.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Etc.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: And Understanding what are the things that that help you stay on top of that.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: It's really helpful.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Also, even to your point, understanding when you're just being awful to yourself and Kind of giving yourself some grace and saying, hey, it's okay, it's okay to be underground right now.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: It's okay to not be losing the weight, because I'm dealing with these five other transitions right now.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean it Awareness in one a domain gives us grace in other domains.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: No, say that again for the people in the back.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Awareness in One domain should give us grace and others and I think we try to do it all all the time.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: We have this sense of you know what we see in the world of like you can't have it all.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: You should be doing it all.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: You can't be 100% in every zone of your life all the time.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: It's impossible, it's mathematically impossible, you know.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting, like in your work, in that you know all the folks who have come to you and are learning through you.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Do you see a difference between men and women as they go through these transitions and their TQ, so to speak?
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: These are our long conversations, each one.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: We'll have to do another one, but just give me the the, the clue notes on that one.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some fundamental differences, I mean right off the bat.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I think men are less Traditionally invited to do this type of work, so there's a discomfort in going into some of this type of work.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Our balance is around 60 40 60 percent women, 40 percent men, which is actually outstanding for this type of work.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Weirdly pre-covid, we were about 50 50, so something happened during cobit that tipped, tipped us 10%.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: So it's easy to be reductive in this type of conversation and sort of just come up with something neat.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah but typically with men, the index far more heavily on work and far less heavily on on what I talked about, community.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: But it's essentially pro-social behaviors, on behaviors that build friendship, community and meaning outside of work.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Isolation, loneliness epidemic you know that the surgeon general was talking about has written a book on sort of.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: The loneliness epidemic is Particularly acutely a problem with men.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Suicidality in men the highest rate of suicidality in the US is white men over 65.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Go figure those three pillars right Wellness, community, purpose if you knock out purpose because work's gone away.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Wellness, as you said, we're working so hard.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Physical health has gone away.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And then community goes away because if all you've invested in Is your job, then suddenly there's not much that's sustaining you, you know, in your 60s, especially for men.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: So men struggle with relevance.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Men struggle with relevance.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: They struggle with okay, well then, how do I become relevant again If work is what?
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: What kind of gave me those things?
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: How do I stay relevant?
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Women, and I try, let me tread carefully.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Women typically try to struggle more with invisibility.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So Men struggle with wanting to stay relevant.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Women struggle more with being seen as they age.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: You know we we have this sort of celebratory culture for youth and a lot of the gifts that we get as men and as women Are less visible as we age, so being seen and being relevant, so they're slightly different drivers for the people that are coming, that are coming in, but the root causes Fascinatingly, the root courses are very, very similar.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the sense of of that, I think one of the things that you said there is like being seen, and actually being seen for the gifts that we have, because the gifts that we have just Maybe not on our face anymore, you know, and sometimes when we're younger, that's what's in there, you know, as we age, I think also and I wrote a post about this today, just Sanititally, but I think in the in the sense of you know, just really actually embracing it and like thinking and thoughtfully does take an, a pause of like what are you most excited about today being 51?
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Like, what are you glad it's done?
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: What are you looking forward to and what's in this moment that you're taking in?
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Because, again, just trying to remind people to pause and like think about these three little questions, that if you actually take time to think about them, you might think and you need to do something different or more of or less of something too, because it doesn't always mean doing more.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: I think we hear that a lot, but I think, especially through your teachings and the things that happen in MEA, I think people realize that, just like you said, that seed, no one points at a seed and says that seeds lazy or failing or struggling, it's, it's growing, it's pausing, it's germinating.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe we all need to germinate a little bit more.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: It's a great concussion.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get one that I have my sweater on everyone today.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: It says be bold.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Today, maybe I'm just getting one says I'm germinating.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just germinate more.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, germinate more.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: So here's a merch idea for you, thank you.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: So, as we kind of close out, and I just want to make sure people understand what MEA is, what are some of the things that you know?
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: You provide that you know.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: All the information about MEA is below in the episode notes for anyone that wants to check it out.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: But, like, if someone leaves, like what, what do they feel like?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: What does it feel like when they leave the Academy?
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: So let's, let's just do the sort of the clockwork, the basic logistics.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Sure, we're based in Baja California, which is Mexico, so sometimes I have to tell people People come and they'll spend a week with us, they'll spend a week long workshop with us.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: We have our own core workshops that look at transitions, purpose and wisdom, which is how do I live in this kind of more generative, productive?
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: way.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: So that's one thing, one side of things.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And then we have these mastery weeks where we we get guest faculty People like Dan Butner coming in.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: I just spent a week last week with a lady called Lynn Twist who wrote the Soul of Money.
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: So we'll then do a deep dive with someone like that on their work and their thinking and so on and so forth.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: So that's the general sort of shape of what we do in real life.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: We're opening up in Santa Fe in New Mexico, where we have a two and a half thousand acre horse ranch just outside of Santa Fe, which is stunning, stunning, stunning and beautiful.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: So we'll have beach and ranch and again, both of them kind of related to this regenerative Practices.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: How do we think about ourselves and regenerating ourselves, which is another episode.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: And we do online courses.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: You know, typically speaking, what you have to kind of go out with, the message you go out with, is Come and land this, come and do this, and that's what's going to make this a productive experience.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: The physical venues are gorgeous.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: It's a, it's a five-star Venue, it's on the beach or it's, as I said, in on a ranch.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: And I think what works on people Most profoundly is not the content, it's not the questions, it's not.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: These are the curriculum, those kind of set the stage.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: It's the container.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: It's being.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: It's being with a group of people who are going through similar transitions.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: It's building these magical friendships and relationships at this stage of your life and having time to consider, reflect and be reflected on with other people and, honestly, it Feels we can.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: We can't like love.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: There is just such an intense bond that's created, and this is men and women.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: If you're like, oh Jesus, I don't want to feel that, it is that connection that you feel when you've made a Friend, when you're in a community, when you feel seen, when you feel heard, that's, I think, how it ends up feeling.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: That's a fabulous way to end.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I can't top it more than that.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge again, please check out the MEA and all the things that's happening in their community below in the episode notes.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories Bonerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share their journey of those with the bold mindset.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.