Seeking Center: The Podcast

The Midlife Awakening You Didn’t Know You Needed with Chip Conley - Episode 183

• Robyn Miller Brecker, Karen Loenser and Chip Conley • Season 2 • Episode 183

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What if midlife wasn’t a crisis… but a chrysalis?

This week, we’re talking with the legendary Chip Conley — New York Times bestselling author, hotelier, and modern wisdom keeper — about the true power and purpose of midlife. After founding the iconic Joie de Vivre hotel brand and later helping transform Airbnb as Head of Global Hospitality + Strategy, Chip experienced a life-altering wake-up call that changed everything. And it led him to create the Modern Elder Academy (MEA), the world’s first midlife wisdom school.

In this deeply inspiring conversation, Chip redefines what it means to age, grow, and become — showing us how midlife can be one of the most transformational, purpose-filled chapters of our lives. If you’ve ever asked, “Is this it?” or “Am I too late?” this episode is your soul’s permission slip to dream again.

We talk about:

  • Chip’s awakening moment (including a literal NDE)
  • Why midlife can feel like falling apart—and why that’s a good thing
  • The truth about midlife transitions (and why they’re often misunderstood)
  • The U-curve of happiness and why 47 is often our low point
  • The magic behind MEA and what it offers at any age
  • Wisdom vs. knowledge — and how to cultivate both
  • How to embrace change, purpose, and possibility in midlife (and beyond)
  • How to start your own “modern elder” journey

Whether you’re in your 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond, this episode is an invitation to see aging as expansion. Midlife isn’t an ending — it’s a beginning.

MORE FROM CHIP CONLEY

Chip Conley Photo credit: Lisa Keating Photography

Visit theseekingcenter.com for more from Robyn + Karen, plus mega inspo -- and the best wellness + spiritual practitioners, products and experiences on the planet!

You can also follow Seeking Center on Instagram @theseekingcenter.

Robyn: [00:00:00] I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com. Okay, pause for a moment because this episode might just change the way midlife forever. And I mean that in the most soul stirring, expansive, completely inspiring way. We're talking to the legendary Chip Conley, New York [00:01:00] Times bestselling author, hotelier first as founder of Jois Diviv Hospitality, the second largest operator of boutique hotels in the us.

Then as Airbnb's head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, he's now created the Modern Elder Academy, also known as MEA, and most recently launched the Midlife Chrysalis Podcast. . If you've ever looked at your life and thought, wait. Is this it or is it too late to start over? This conversation is for you.

Chip has completely redefined what it means to grow older. He calls midlife a chrysalis, not a crisis, and his work is helping people of every age. Shed outdated roles, reconnect to purpose and transform from the inside out. We are diving into Chip's own awakening journey, the magic and mission behind M-E-A-M-E-A.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom and the mindset shifts that make midlife the most powerful season of your life. So if you've been questioning, shedding or simply [00:02:00] becoming, you're in the right place. This is the permission slip your soul has been waiting for. Let's dive in. Hi Chip. Hi Chip.

Chip: Such an honor to be here with both of you. 

Karen: And just listening to the opening that Robyn was just reading, I'm thinking there's probably a lot of people in our audience going midlife the most powerful time of your life. You've got to be kidding me.

I know. I went through it. , You went through it. Robyn, I think is helping lead me through it. But we would just love to start with what was that moment that nudged you to leave that traditional path? Very influential, very prosperous path that you were on, and to start just really digging in and moving towards your soul's purpose.

Chip: I think I was living my soul's purpose starting around age 26, but sometimes things change. So I started one of the first boutique hotel companies in the United States called Jo Aviv, based in San Francisco, and ultimately we created 52 boutique hotels around California. So we were the second largest in the us.

And I loved it till I [00:03:00] hated it. There was no dimmer switch. It was like, I loved it for the creativity, the freedom, and creating a culture. But by the time we got to the Great Recession and we had 3,500 employees and we were running outta cash, this was the second, once in a lifetime downturn in the same decade because we had the.com bust and nine 11 earlier in the decade, there was just a part of me that was not just tired but uninspired.

My soul needed something new and my life was falling apart. So this is the classic midlife crisis era I was 47, which is the low point in the U curve of happiness, which we'll come back to and. I had a relationship that was ending. I had a African American foster son who was an adult who was going wrongfully to prison.

I lost five male friends to suicide during that time. And long story short is I had an NDE. I died and went to the other side due to an allergic reaction, to an antibiotic. and that was one, it was my wake up call, the hotelier's wake up call to say. You don't have to do this anymore.

You think you do, but you [00:04:00] don't. And my life changed dramatically between 47 and 50. Ultimately, I sold the company at the bottom of the market. So Joie de Vivre is now called JDV, it's easier to pronounce. It's a Hyatt brand. And it opened me up to a decade, my fifties, which was just.

Astonishingly good on many levels. Not to say it wasn't without issues. I found out I had ultimately stage three prostate cancer. But, something had changed inside of me. And so that was when I can look at that and say okay I don't think everybody has to have an NDE in order to make a change in midlife.

 But we do need to wake people up to realize that they can make and navigate their midlife transitions maybe more effectively than they, thought they could. 

Robyn: I so resonate with that. I really do. Chip and I love what you said. It's really giving people the hope and a path and a guide to how to do it.

Chip: It's a roadmap, In many ways, midlife is, it's the newest life [00:05:00] stage. So there are three life stages that emerged in the 20th century adolescence in 1904. It didn't mean we didn't have adolescence, we just didn't have the word. And we thought of someone who hit puberty as being an adult.

And adolescence is now a thing. We know it. Retirement in the 1930s with social security and pensions and ultimately retirement communities and a ar A RP. That's a new life stage. then midlife is a new life stage, partly because we added 30 years of longevity in the United States in one century.

The average longevity in the year 1900 was 47. By the year 2000 it was 77. So midlife is this new creation, unfortunately, the only way. We describe it in most cultures is the midlife crisis. I believe it's a chrysalis, partly because the reality is I've seen so many people transform themselves in midlife and find that after a low point it gets better.

And that the U curve of happiness research bears this out. It shows that starting in our fifties we get happier than our [00:06:00] forties. And then sixties, happier than fifties. Seventies, happier than sixties, and women in their eighties, happier than their seventies. So there's an incline of happiness and life satisfaction after age 50 that I think a lot of people weren't aware of.

Karen: I'm resonating so much with what you're saying because that happened to me when I turned 50. I had that moment as well, which is like.. I had a career that I really loved and enjoyed, but there was that wake up call okay. If not now when am I gonna do that? that gave me so much momentum and almost fearlessness. 'cause I thought, I'm just gonna go for what I wanna do. I don't wanna have that rocking chair moment when I'm 85 years old going, dang, wish I had tried. I really decided to just have the courage to blaze my trail forward and I think.

What you're telling people is it is that opportunity to really take that leap of faith if you're so called to do something new or take that courageous journey. 

Chip: Yeah. The regret of social science has shown this. The regret of not doing the thing you wish you had done.

Is twice as [00:07:00] painful as the regret of the thing you wish you'd never done. Yes. So the regret of the thing you weren't courageous to do is much more painful, especially as we get older. 'cause we get older, it's harder to try new things. Sometimes physically and sometimes mentally, et cetera.

Robyn: Yeah, and I'm just thinking I never thought about this curve that you said, and at the bottom of the curve being 47 as like that average age. And for me it was probably a few years earlier, but it's true. From there, I felt like from my own next chapter moment, my own midlife.

Chrysalis as you call it, really was that feeling. 'cause I, did like you I felt like I knew my purpose and, but it changed and then I knew I couldn't keep going. I was so unhappy at that point that everything has to get better once you make the commitment to change. once I felt like, okay, I have to do something.

And I did. 

Chip: Yeah. We're gonna talk, a little bit about [00:08:00] MEA and modern. Yes. And I don't know if this is a good time to talk about transitional intelligence, but maybe I should. 

Robyn: Yeah, let's talk about it. 

Chip: Yeah. The rest of my story is I ended up spending seven and a half years as the modern elder at Airbnb.

What they called the someone who's as curious as they're wise, helping the three founders take that company to become the most valuable hospitality company in the world. And my job was really to be their mentor, but also to lead part of the company. While I was there, I really started getting clear on how many of my friends were struggling with midlife and they were struggling often with the transitions of midlife, the transitions we have in adolescence, which is a liminal life stage between childhood and adulthood, that those transitions are often very physical and external.

You can see them, you can see someone growing. They're happening in unison with a peer group. So the difference between one and another adolescent of when they started puberty might be two years max. And then thirdly, there's a whole social infrastructure, schools, sports teams. [00:09:00] College counselors, et cetera, to help people through their teen years family, obviously parents.

But when it comes to middle essence the adult middle essence, I love that. Yes. Middle essence is a life stage that. Is full of transitions. And yet a lot of them are internal. They're not as external. So other people don't necessarily know you're going through it.

 They are not necessarily in unison. The difference between two different women in terms of when they start perimenopause could be 15 years. Yeah. If you have kids in your twenties, early twenties versus late or early forties, very different experience of how you're living your midlife.

 And then there's no social infrastructure to support people through midlife. And so that's why I created MEA, the modern elder Academy to double down on the term modern elder, which is not the best term because elder is a scary term in the us. It sounds like elderly, but it's not. It just means that you're older maybe than the people around you.

 And started it partly because I really wanted to create the world's first midlife wisdom school dedicated to helping [00:10:00] people to navigate transitions. And we've trademarked a term called Transitional quotient or TQ Transitional Intelligence. And the premise is that. If we can understand how to navigate our transitions in midlife it helps us to be able to be open to having transitions as opposed to stepping away.

And on the MEA website at the bottom footer, there's free ebook called The Anatomy of a Transition. And it helps people to understand there are three stages to any transition, the ending of something. The messy middle and the beginning of something. And once you understand, that's the cycle of a transition, which is strange.

It starts with an ending and goes to messy middle, like the chrysalis. The chrysalis is basically this in-between stage, the midlife stage of the butterfly, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. And then you start with a new beginning. We help people to understand, and this ebook is really helpful for this.

How do you go through a transition effectively? Successfully? Because for some people they get stuck in their transition. [00:11:00] The transition being newly divorced, the transition being empty nest, the transition being, changing careers or wanting to start a business, but you just don't get there. You just get stuck.

 And so this TQ helps a person to adeptly accelerate their process through that transition in a way that, makes them happier. 

Robyn: I love that. And the way that you think of transitions is how we think of we call 'em crossroad moments. Similar. There are transitions, all of them.

Karen: Yeah. So at midlife, I know for me. It was one of those moments where I really did start questioning everything. Am I in the right job? I am living in the right state. Am I married to the right person? Did I do well as a mother? Is there any future? And that really did bring me to Seeking Center because we found a lot of the tools to help navigate those questions could be very soulful spiritual ones as well.

How do you see Chip people getting to midlife do [00:12:00] they have those kind of spiritual questions? Do you see them navigating those as well? 

Robyn: and I'm gonna add to that, which is, has to do with your near-death experience. 

And was that a moment too? tying that to spirituality.

Chip: Yeah. first of all, it's defined midlife. I wrote a book called Learning to Love Midlife, and I gave a lot of social science to show that more and more sociologists are now saying midlife lasts from 35 to 75. Wow. That's a marathon. Yes. Partly because midlife is the life stage between early adulthood, which might end around 35.

And later adulthood, which might be the last 10 or 15 years of your life. So it's a really long bridge. the more longevity we have, the longer midlife lasts. So let's start with that. And I think there's three stages. The midlife, which I write about in learning to love midlife, early midlife, which is the hardest.

35 to 50 is the hardest, and then 50 to 60, the core of midlife. And then 60 to 75 is later midlife, generally speaking what's going on for people around 50? It's 35 to 50 is a [00:13:00] hard time. And the reason it's hard is because it's a really busy time. If you have kids, if you have sandwich generation, taking care of parents, if you're professionally involved in your life, you're in the peak, growth period of your career.

It's when for a lot of women, they start men start andropause. So there's that transition happening. It's a time when you get bored sometimes, especially if you've been married for a while, there may be some, lack of s spiciness in the relationship, especially if you have kids.

And so for all these reasons and it's also, around 45 ish people start to look at their life and they can start to see mortality out there in the distance. And when you're 25, you just don't think about it. Yeah, maybe your grandparents died, your parents are still living and all your friends are living but by 45, you might have a breast cancer diagnosis you might have lost your parents or, and you certainly have lost your grandparents, probably.

 And the bottom line is you start to realize that, death [00:14:00] is the thing that happens in later. way in the end of midlife is a doorway to the second half of your life. And and if you. Have a real negative perspective on aging, which the US has, by the way, Becca Levy from Yale has shown that when people actually shift their mindset around age 50 from a negative to a positive when it comes to aging, they can see the upside of aging or the unexpected pleasures of aging.

 They gain seven and a half years of extended longevity, which is a remarkable stat. So for a lot of people, what they're dealing with around 45 to 50. Is often what Brene Brown, who's a big fan of MEA has called the midlife unraveling, and what she means by that, like when I first heard her say that, I was like, what are you talking about?

That sounds terrible. Like you're losing your mind. She says no, it's a good thing . The midlife unraveling, the word ravel means something so tightly wound, you can't get it undone, which is how a lot of people feel about their lives around age 45 to 50.

My God, There's no space for my soul. There's no space for me to have self-care. There's no space for me to [00:15:00] ask big questions and be curious. Curiosity is an inefficient state of mind, and if you're, bowing to the god of efficiency in your mid forties, because.

Your life requires it. You don't have time to ask bigger questions or to explore spirituality. So Richard Rohr, who's a famous Christian mystic Catholic priest, amazing author, MEA faculty member says that the first half of your life that your primary operating system is your ego.

And then you overuse it and then around 45 to 50, something starts to shift inside of you, and your operating system is going through a change to your soul. But nobody gave you any warning or operating instructions. And this is why so many people around age 50 ish start to get more, curious about the bigger questions in life, the meaning of life and mysteries of life, and maybe reacquaint themselves with religion that they had disavowed and yeah.

So for me, yes, my, NDE. When I went to the other side, nine times over 90 minutes allowed me to [00:16:00] see wow, every day is a bonus. And I want to deepen my relationship. I want to have a life that's as deep and meaningful as it is long, assuming I do live a long time. And so that's how.

I reawakened my spirituality. It was always there. It's just that at that point I started to ask bigger questions, but it helped for me to sell my company because it gave me two years of a midlife atrium space in which I could really have an atrium. An atrium. There's like light and air and space in which you can ask bigger questions.

And I spent two years being very curious before the Airbnb founders approached me. 

Robyn: I love that word. That you just used too, curious and like allowing yourself to be curious and giving yourself the room to be curious because I think especially. For someone like you who was, and many people who are listening right now, no matter what you've been doing up to that point, you've just been in that groove and that has become for many people their identity.

And so [00:17:00] when you are in this transition, which I'm sure is , what you've come up with in terms of a process for someone Yeah. You don't even know. you've forgotten many times who you really are. Because we forget, we're just in the day to day. So you're not allowing that. And that's what this allows you to do. 

Chip: And. It shouldn't have to be external circumstances yes. Agree with that. Yes. To having to do this. It's just that the truth is that for a lot of people, that is what forces the change.

Yes. But that's part of the reason why MEA exists, is to give people. A program in two different locations. I'm here at the Santa Fe campus right now, which is a 2,600 acre regenerative horse ranch. And then we have a Baja campus on the beach an hour north of Cabo San Lucas. And, and we also have online programs.

What we really wanna do is make accessible These tools the art of living that help people to understand the science of longevity and the art of living and that combination of social [00:18:00] science, but also soulful exploration. And I'm proud that we have over 7,000 alumni from 60 countries and we have 56 regional chapters around the world.

So it's a bit of a movement. 

Karen: Yeah, totally 

Robyn: is. Yeah. And what you're doing is you're giving people the space to have what I like to call unlockings because they're actually dedicating that time to go and learn about who they are and therefore that's to me, divine. , I think it's on purpose.

And whatever that experience or maybe something they hear from one of your teachers, it unlocks something in their soul. 

Chip: Yeah. it does. I wrote a blog post. I have a daily blog and it was the idea that.

 We tend to say we are a body and we have a soul. Or we can say we have a body as well, but like we are a soul and we have a body, is the way I like to look at it and the premise being, what if I. Our job is really [00:19:00] just to steward the soul from the time we're incarnated until we die, and then that soul is going to live on into the future.

And what if our responsibility is, especially when our body is starting to deteriorate as we get older. To recognize that the most precious thing we have, and it's not even have, it's the most precious thing we are, is a soul. And that is a really alternative way of thinking about our relationship with our soul such that it's not a possession.

But it is. Identity. And we are a soul. And we have a body. And when you think of it that way, I like to say that our body is the rental vehicle I was issued at birth. And the first half of my life, I made sure it was shiny and clean and every and looked good on the outside. The second half of my life, it's less about what it looks like on the outside and more about what it [00:20:00] feels like on the inside.

And it's not about short-term vanity, it's more about long-term maintenance. And it's an alternative way to look at the body and the relationship with the body. 

Karen: At the MEA, you've been doing this for a while now, and as you said, have so many people go through the program. Are there any standout stories for you of people who've really maybe come there really stuck and not really knowing how to move forward and then walked away with a really inspiring vision that they acted upon afterwards?

Chip: There's lots of people who show up who are stuck with something, and there's just lots of famous people and billionaires and well-known professional athletes who are leaving their pro career and completely lost and Hollywood stars, things like that. But I would say it's the personal stories of individuals.

We have financial aid, so we have people who, we have a guy Who wanted to become a a fireman. He was a management consultant and just so bored and. He's always loved firefighting and just been fascinated with it. but the story, very [00:21:00] relevant maybe to your listeners even more, was a female a woman litigator who is 60 years old.

 She'd gone into the legal profession. Because her father was a lawyer and when she was a kid, she didn't wanna be a lawyer. Guess what? She went to college and her dad said, you gotta go to law school. And next thing she knew at age 25, she was a litigator. And now 35 years later, she hated it.

She hated the effect that being a litigator had on her. You can only imagine she's arguing all day long as a litigator in the courtroom. So she thought she might become a litigation consultant, and when she first showed up at the Baja campus of MEA for a Cultivating Purpose workshop. She said that to everybody the first night in her cohort, they were like litigation comes out.

That sounds an awful lot like a litigator. And she explained why it was different and but her heart wasn't in it the very first night. She had dreams about her grandmother and she had dream that her grandmother was holding her hand, walking down the beach in front of the MEA campus. Right there in, in Baja.

And so she talked about it the next morning with other people. It was like, wow, that's weird. my [00:22:00] grandma died 20 years ago, then the next night she had memories during and dreams about cooking pies with her grandma, and she just could smell them. She loved them. The next morning she got up and said you know what I love being a pastry chef.

whenever I invite people over for dinner, I always say, you have to stay for dessert, because that's the thing she really wanted to cook, and whenever she went overseas, the first thing she'd look at on her digital map was. Where's the closest bakery? Because in different countries, she wanted to see what kind of baked goods they had.

By the end of the week, she realized, I don't have to be a litigator anymore. I know I wanna work another 10 years. I wanna work till 70 I don't wanna do this anymore. And so she. Continued to be a litigator for a period of time, but she went through a 13 week baking course every Saturday at a baking school, at a pastry chef school, and she loved it.

And so she's now a bakery entrepreneur. And she bought a, bakery that had closed down during COVID, had all the ovens. And so those stories happen all the time. And I think if I could say one key thing is. Helping [00:23:00] people see they have more options than they think they have is a really critical part of that.

That whether that's dating whether that is new career paths, whether that is where you wanna live. There's so many people. Are stuck where they were living because they had three kids and they wanted to go to this school district, and now they've got a four bedroom home out in the suburbs.

And they're Bored, silly. And it's let's go become expats. Let's go live in Portugal, or let's go live in Costa Rica and let's try that out because we can work remotely. And you just giving people. The courage, the tools, and then the community. Yeah, the community is a big part of it because when you're in a community of other people who are also willing to try new things and maybe be bad at it at first it gives you a little more license.

Karen: That is such great advice. Yeah, because I think there's so many of us that get to a certain age. I was just home visiting my parents and my 94-year-old father turned to me and said I'm 61 now. And my father said to me Karen, [00:24:00] what are you really excited? What are you passionate about?

Because you have the next 34 years of your life to do that. And I was like. Gosh. So for somebody who's 94 and who has filled his life with so much love and happiness and followed his path, it was such an inspiration to me to hear that, because I think even me at this stage of my career, you wonder, oh, is there really that much ahead?

Is there really that much more to look forward to and to have this 94-year-old turn to me and say, follow your dreams, follow your path. 

Chip: it's a great story by the way. Thank you. One of the. First things we do on that first night at an MEA workshop, which are usually like five day workshops is we ask the question, is there anybody in the room who's 54 years old?

And there almost always is. And we say do you think you might live till 90? And almost always, they say, yes. Then we do the math for them. If you're 54 and you're gonna live till 90, and if you're a woman in the US who's relatively well off or at least educated and takes care of themselves, the chances you're gonna live till 90, if you're [00:25:00] 54, are like 50 50.

That's not the average longevity for a woman in the United States, but if you've already gotten to 54, the chances are really good. Long story short is. if you're 54 and you're gonna live till 90, 54 is exactly halfway between 18 and 90. You have as much adulthood ahead of you as you have behind you.

Wow. And I love doing that math for people. 

Karen: That's an aha. Wow. 'cause 

Chip: people in their mid fifties often say oh shit. But then their retort will be, oh yeah, in your eighties it's gonna be just so terrible. It's yes or no. It could be terrible if you operate under that.

that fallacy, but the EU curve of happiness suggests that women in their eighties are happier than in any other decade except for their early twenties. And maybe you'll have greater life satisfaction. Here's another interesting data point. the age when people most appreciate their bodies.

 starting from age 18 up is people? Men and women in their seventies, early seventies. Around age 70. Now why is that? [00:26:00] It's not because their body looks a lot better. it's because they've gotten comfortable. 

With their body. And yes, just as they got comfortable in their own skin, it started to sag, but they have a sense of humor about it.

Yeah. And so 70 is the peak. for being satisfied with your body is 70. After that. The reason it actually goes down is not just because it doesn't look good, it's because it actually doesn't feel good. And there's a lot of chronic conditions and things like that are happening for people in their seventies.

It doesn't mean it doesn't happen in their sixties or fifties as well. These are all averages, but yeah. 

Robyn: Yeah. I just turned 50 this year and it's so interesting to me because I am excited. I think there's so much to look forward to, and most of that is 'cause now I just feel like.

I don't necessarily care what other people think, 

Chip: Yeah. I think, oh that's one of the 12 reasons why life gets better with age. So learning to love Midlife has a subtitle, 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age, and one of number five on the list of 12 is, I have no more F's or, yeah, I really [00:27:00] Exactly.

And no more F's left to give. And it's not because you don't care about things, it's just like you're much more discerning about what you do care about. That's right. And You're not people pleasing 

Robyn: That is so right. You know what? I wanted to ask you for two reasons, because you were bringing up the two campuses and because of your background and creating spaces for people to really thrive and enjoy life.

 was there anything that called you to either of those pieces of land? Because I'm thinking about the story you just talked about where someone came to the campus and maybe that workshop that night did end up triggering something, so they had that kind of dream with their grandmother.

I also believe, and I think Karen does too, there's something about certain 

Chip: places on earth. They're both very powerful places. In Baja, I had a home on the beach where I was writing a book was the work, the making of a modern elder based upon my Airbnb experience. And so I loved that area.

And then I had this Baja Aha, an epiphany and was [00:28:00] like, oh I love the idea of. MEA and a midlife wisdom school, why don't I just build it around my home? And so that's really how that happened. And the thing that's really powerful about this particular area of Baja, it's a food mecca.

First of all. It's a rural place, but a food mecca, which is so interesting. And it has 7,000 foot mountains plus tropical forests plus desert. Plus farmland, plus the ocean. So four of those five are within walking distance. The 7,000 foot mountains about a 20 minute drive. to have all of those ecosystems there is amazing.

And then Santa Fe, everybody knows Santa Fe. So Santa Fe was actually this year travel and Leisure Magazine. Readers made it the number one. Most popular city in the us which is amazing, and Santa Fe has a long history of being a sort of a spiritual mecca where people go to seek, and it's a very powerful place in terms of the land and the history and the native [00:29:00] elders and so yeah, both places make sense for us. 

Robyn: It feels like a sacred. 

Chip: they're also two places that require a little bit of a pilgrimage. So I was in San Francisco forever and went to college at Stanford and business school at Stanford. And it would've been very easy to create our first campus up in Sonoma, but if we did that, it wouldn't be the same because it'd be a bit of a commuter school.

It doesn't mean people would leave at night. They'd stay if a lot of people are just driving there, then, it's not the same as having to go to a foreign country, go to a place that's a bit liminal, a little bit slightly foreign, that the value of it being slightly foreign in Santa Fe, it feels very foreign, does not feel like the us.

And Baja in Mexico, the fact is slightly foreign. It means that you've changed your habitat, so now you can change your habits. But if you don't change your habitat, if it feels way too familiar, then you are going to have a hard time disRobing of the identities you're ready to get rid of.

Robyn: That is so true. 

Karen: In your experience with the people that you are working with is there a percentage of like mind, body, spirit work that they have to do? Do they have to do [00:30:00] all of it as they're going into this transitional time in their life? In other words, do you feel that people come feeling stuck most emotionally, they become feeling uncertain about what to do?

That the physicality of their life. What is the common thread that you find in the people that come there? 

Chip: The most common thread is some transition. They're in some transition of some kind or they're a contemplating one. And I would say some people are like full on mindfulness and spiritually, inclined to folks.

But they're looking for a roadmap of how to get through this. The hope and faith is not enough. They need a roadmap as well. Some people are not at all spiritual. They like as people say I'm new to woo . And so yes, and so that's why the fact that our program is a combination of social science.

And evidence-based work along with the woo being mindfulness practices, equine assisted learning at this campus, learning to surf down [00:31:00] in Baja obviously meditation, yoga and dance, and a variety of other movement techniques. But the program What makes it different than some other programs out there is, I think it has that intellectual ballast to it so that we have I literally had just finished today with 30 faith leaders from like famous faith leaders from around US for a private retreat that one of our ME alums funded.

And these are people who like, they're, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Christian Buddhist. and then pagan animist a little bit. And a bunch of different denominations. These are people who do not suffer fools.

They're like good faith leaders, but they're like, who's this chip guy coming in, leading a workshop on wisdom for wisdom faith leaders? My God, it just was so over the top. Great. And part of it was because. We do have a sense, we've worked with academics from Harvard and Stanford and uc, Berkeley and Yale, who've [00:32:00] helped to develop our program so that there's a semblance of not just closing your eyes and doing guided visualizations and.

Positive psychology, if we're gonna talk about positive psychology, we're gonna talk about the data that's behind it. Which for some people, especially for men, is really an important part of them being willing to surrender is to say okay, yeah, 

Karen: we love that too. And I think there's more and more of that cross pollination of the science and the spirituality, and then the impact on the body.

So it feels every year we're finding more and more of those con conversations cropping up, which, to your point, if you're just dabbling in any one of those areas, that it gives you that comfort zone that, okay, this isn't too far out there, and there can be actually some really tangible, practical benefits of doing this work.

Robyn: I feel like there's a lot of people, especially recently, that have come our way that is what they need to open the door. They need the data to open the door, and they're at a point where they're [00:33:00] in a transitional period, but they still need something a little more tangible in order for them to really trust, I think.

Yep. Yeah. What is one thing you would hope people who are at that point where they're in that midlife chrysalis, that they can hear today? And maybe even start to question as they move forward. 

Chip: First of all, so many people in midlife because the transitions are often internal, they're not synchronized with your peer group and there's no social infrastructure.

People think they're going through it alone. And do know that, if you're going through menopause I bet you have some girlfriends who are going through it, and are you conversing about it? Yes, you probably are these days, 15 years ago that you weren't or even 10 years ago.

And so how do we help create the social infrastructure and a safe space for people to have conversations about what they're going through? And so whether [00:34:00] you're going through a career change or getting divorced or empty nest or whatever it is. There may be a Facebook group for you or there may be a, just a group of friends.

You just bring it up to them. And of course there's MEA and a lot of our tools that we have are free on our website. So I'd just say that, the number one thing is you don't have to do this alone. I love 

Karen: that. I think that's why we've created the community that we have as well.

I think people more than ever, you think with all the digital connections that we have for each other, that we would be so connected. And I think people are feeling that more and more. You did 

Chip: do a seeking center retreat at at MEA. Oh. I think that needs to 

Karen: happen. I haven't been to Santa Fe and it's been on my list forever, yeah. We'll have to sidebar on that one chip after this. I'm amazed by your journey in so many ways, chip, I think so many people are gonna be inspired just hearing the fact that you are able to take these crossword moments of your own life and really follow that intuitive. Inspired action that kind of [00:35:00] took you off on, your journey.

How are you feeling about where you are in your midlife journey at this point? And I know one of your podcasts you talked about that 10 years ahead and making sure you don't wanna have that regret about 10 years. How do you answer that question for yourself?

Chip: So the question is really 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now? And when I moved to Baja and was living in Mexico, halftime, I had a mindset, which was, I, this was when I was 56 years old, so it was eight years ago. I had a mindset which was, I'm too old to learn Spanish, and I'm too old to learn to surf, even though my home was right next to a surf break.

When I put it in the context of this question, 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now? I started learning Spanish and I started learning to surf because at that point, 10 years from now, it would be 66, which would not be easier than 56 in terms both of those. It's a really powerful question.

It's a really catalytic question because it actually anticipated regret is a form of wisdom. Knowing [00:36:00] that you might regret this. A young person doesn't have anticipated regret 'cause they've got a full life ahead of them. So I think that's a key piece in terms of my life, to be living my calling feels beautiful, but it's not easy.

anybody who thinks oh it's easy for you, chip, it's so easy. It's, no, it's not. There's the intensity of the work of, being in workshop mode with people. Through the tears and the, just the challenges that they're going through is, it is wonderful.

It's beautiful. I see moral beauty every day, but it's also a lot. And as someone who is moving from, having been an extrovert most of my adult life, to being more of an introvert, I need to be very thoughtful about that. And. Yeah, there's that. And then, it's just the growth of having, we really have three retreat centers.

We have two here on the ranch and then one in Baja. And we're open year round. So do the math. 52 weeks times three retreat centers means 156 programs a year. Wow. And so that's a lot. And especially for something that has never been done before. Yeah. There are retreat [00:37:00] centers and there are universities, but there's not really what we do, which is a midlife wisdom school.

And so yeah it's not easy, but I go back to what we talked about earlier. If I were to die tomorrow, do I feel like I've lived a good life and I feel like there's a sense of having planted seeds that are gonna grow beyond my life. And I definitely feel that. 

Karen: And your ability, even in your podcast conversations to bring out the stories of the people that you're interviewing.

Yeah. Fantastic. was watching you interview Krista Tippett, who I'm a big fan of, and I didn't even realize that she had quit her job because she was under so much stress. I always looked at her as a visionary as well in the. The radio field of being able to be brave enough to have some of these spiritual conversations that I love so much.

but I loved how you, I know she was there on site with you, but I love the comfort of you being able to just let her unfold her story in front of that audience and really inspire other people. So what you're really doing is not [00:38:00] only all the work that you're doing, but you're helping others.

Amplify their own stories to inspire other people, which is incredible. 

Chip: It's important that we take all of us, myself included, off the pedestal and realize that, whether it's Hoda or Maria Shriver or Rich Roll or Gavin Newsom, who I'm interviewing in the next few weeks or Dan Butner, who I.

 from Blue Zones this week, actually, I interviewed Elizabeth Gilbert Beck and Anne Lamont, all on the same day. Oh my God. that's a spectacular day, by the way. Three episodes, they're not together, but yeah. are coming out very soon.

But yeah, to do all of those on the same day. it's important because we tend to look at these people on the pedestal and think oh, they haven't had their midlife chrysalis. And the truth is just about everybody's had one. 

Robyn: Just a reminder to everyone, your podcast is called The Midlife Chrysalis, and so these stories are [00:39:00] extraordinary because they are a lot of people we all look up to and they've all had their own reinvention periods of their lives.

 Yeah. And that's what you're uncovering. I love it. 

Karen: Back to your comment about all that you are doing and the energy that you're putting into all of this work. Is there anything that you do to refill your glass 

On a regular basis that helps you? 

Chip: Yeah, I try to make Sundays my Sabbath which means I'm a bit of a digital detox for the day. I meditate more on that day. I try to meditate every day, but I meditate more on that day. I go out for long hikes in nature often by myself or with my dog.

And it's just a day where the introvert in me allow, allows himself to not have to talk, and, so that's. A big piece of it. Meditation, I would say, as a daily practice is the thing that I do. And every morning when I take a shower every morning, just like most people. And I've stacked a habit on that.

So I, say three prayers and six [00:40:00] mantras. And the six mantras, three times each in the shower every morning takes me five to six minutes. That's about what it takes me to do a shower. And so every single morning I say the same three prayers and the same six mantras. And that is a really grounded grounding kind of thing for me.

Robyn: It's so important, and I love that you just brought that up. We always talk about these morning rituals that can ground us and they don't have to take a long time. And in your case, you're integrating that into something you're gonna do every morning anyway, So it's really important 'cause it changes your day.

Yeah, It really does. 

Karen: I just wanna thank you personally for everything that you're doing. I also wanted to acknowledge too, on your website, there's a really great quiz Yeah. That you offer that really ask very deep questions that sometimes are hard to answer by the way, because they really go in and look into the heart of How you behave at a crossroads and how you actually really think about yourself. But I think it's really worthwhile for people to take that quiz to see if you [00:41:00] are at that crossroads and you're trying to figure out what to do next. It reinforces the type of seeker that you are, our favorite word.

Yeah, 

Chip: It's called the Midlife Pathfinder Quiz. You'll find it on the MEA website under Free Wisdom, which is actually also where you'll find a link to my podcast as well as my daily blog. So there you go. 

Robyn: Yeah. I just wanna say thank you as well for all that you're creating, all that you have created, all the wisdom that you've acquired, and continue to now share in your books, your podcast, and.

In creating something that nobody had ever thought to create that is not just, I think, necessary, but a gift. it's something we all actually should be required in some ways to do. And yet it also is this huge gift that you can give yourself in leading the most fulfilling and meaningful life.

 Thank you. 

Thank you. 

Chip: Yeah, 

Karen: There's no guidebook really for this time of [00:42:00] life, and I think for anybody who's listening who may be at that time of life where they do feel stuck, it's such a wonderful resource to at least go and look through and see what speaks to you there, because there is so much no matter where you are or what you're trying to get to next.

So thank you, chip. 

Robyn: Yeah. Thanks for having the courage to follow it. And you can visit chip conley.com to find out more about Chip's Books, course events and more, and visit m mea wisdom.com to explore all that MEA has to offer. And listen to the Midlife Chrysalis Podcast wherever you listen to your podcast.

Thank you.