Wrinkles and Wisdom: A Guide to Aging Like Fine Wine (Not Milk)

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Midlife has a marketing problem, it’s always followed by the word crisis. Honestly, for good reason: Midlife is the chapter of your life where the things you and society value decline. E.g. you’re getting weaker and dumber. Embrace and optimize for this reality or suffer. Luckily there is a good formula here: both to embrace it, and to find new strengths to focus on.

This post covers several books on the topic.

From Strength To Strength

TL;DR: Not sure if you felt like you were crushing it, or not through your late 30s, but you’re going to start to decline. You can either deny it and suffer, or embrace it and optimize for the next set of skills you can develop

Your professional decline is coming (much) sooner than you think

Huh, this is true for all who moved my cheese situations

  • 3 choices:
    • Deny and rage against failure - setup for failure and disappointment
    • Shrug and resign yourself to decline - experience as a tragedy
    • Accept what got you here won’t get you there - and build new skills

The second curve

  • Fluid Intelligence: “Raw Horsepower/Being Smart” - This is what declines
  • Crystallized Intelligence: “Wisdom” - This continues to grow. Get onto this curve

Kick your success addiction

  • You’re going to get worse so stop tying your satisfaction to that
  • Tie your satisfaction to stuff you can continue on - helping others, and getting spiritual

Start chipping away

  • Figure out what makes you happy and focus on that
  • Pro tip: Start with nothing and add vs throwing away
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Ponder your death

Cultivate your aspen grove

  • Make friends

Start your vanaprastha

  • Find spirituality, helps you avoid thinking about yourself (todo add notes about this)

Make your weakness your strength

  • Share that you’re in decline, being vulnerable is a strength

Cast into the falling tide

Seven words to remember.

Midlife

Book: Learning to love in midlife

  • U-shaped happiness curve - dip at 47, comes back up the other side
  • What is good about the other side of life

  • Middlessence

    • Adolescence - invented in 1900s before that, just children and adults
    • Sets expectations
    • Includes Rituals
    • Includes Support

  • Same for midlife

  • Old Stage:

    • Learn
    • Work
    • Retire
  • Life Stages:
    • Up to midpoint - all about accumulating
    • Middle Edit - all about editing
    • End - all about savoring

5 lives

  • Physical Life
    • I have more life than I thought
    • I’m relieved my body no longer defines
  • Emotional Life
    • I’m making friends with my emotions
    • I invest in my social well-being
    • I have more ducks left to give
  • Mental Life
    • I’m marveling at my wisdom
    • I understand how my story serves me
    • I’ve learned how to edit my life
  • Vocational Life
    • I’m joyfully stepping off the treadmill
    • I’m starting to experience time affluence
  • Spiritual Life
    • I’ve discovered my soul
    • I feel as if I’m growing whole

Modern Elder

Learning to Love Midlife: Reasons to Thrive in the Best Years of Your Life

The skills

Being present …

  • Noticing. Modern elders are first-class noticers and make the unconscious conscious. They are fully aware of themselves and others.
  • Presencing. Modern elders are really present for others, rather than having a cluttered mind in the presence of others. Doing regular mindfulness meditation calms and quiets the cluttered mind and moves you to be more attentive to others.

Being proactive …

  • Mastering. Modern elders mine their own mastery. “What sage experience do you possess that might help someone a generation or two younger than you? Ideally, your mastery taps into your wisdom and has your fingerprints all over it.”
  • Catalyzing. Modern elders initiate something new. “How do we best start something? What are the things that have traditionally held us back from new learning, new exploration, and new adventure?”

Having purpose …

  • Purposing: Modern elders understand and shape their purpose for living. “Purposing takes time and work. This is often more easily said than done … Being patient as ideas digest and evolve require fortitude to not jump before we are ready.”
  • Editing. Modern elders use the skill of noticing/awareness for a “great midlife edit.” What could you edit out of your life so that you can edit in something more inspiring and purpose-filled?

Relationships first, Serve Others

Loving well, and feeling well-loved, are the two qualities that people cherish most later in life.”

  • Connecting. Modern elders are intentional about connecting with people, and joining communities. “Building rapport, laughing, playing, and socializing form a deep part of human thriving and impact our ability to collaborate.

  • Serving. Modern elders serve others. Modern elders ask, “How can I best serve this person? They move from attaining — where they seek to win — to attuning - where they seek to understand the environment, be in tune with it, and make it better.

Book: Wisdom at work - modern elder Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder

Idea:

  1. Evolved elder - not just older, but actively involved in the business environment
  2. Learning mindset - curiosity about new technologies and trends
  3. Collaborative leadership - guiding, not commanding
  4. Counselor - sharing insights and fostering a culture of mutual learning

All Fours - A novel.

OK, be warned - this sucker gets a bit pornographic. But when I told my buddy I was studying midlife, he was like how are you getting a woman’s perspective, go read all fours.

I don’t read a lot of books from a woman’s perspective, it’s fascinating, but I’ll share that for another post. For now, let me start with the topics

The name - I think it comes from a line in the book: people think doggy style is the most vulnerable position because you can’t see what’s happening. But it’s not, with 4 limbs on the ground you’re actually the most stable, best able to respond.

The advantages of menopause

  • Copy this out of the sound bites

To file

  • Gotta invest in physical health
  • Settling vs doing what you want
  • Parenting vs spousing
  • Gender fluidity
  • Mind vs Body sexuality
  • Gender Unfairness
    • The mom vs dad expectations
    • The man vs woman’s drop in hormones
    • The point where women stop being attractive, but remain sexual beings
  • Affairs
    • Saving something only for th wife
    • Not wanting to say I love you
    • Non sexual intimacy
    • The impact of eye contact
  • The desire to be wanted
  • Suicide (Barely)
  • The relativeness of success
  • The “peaking early”
  • Drivers vs Passengers ( I need to understand that better)
  • The Salute between husband and wife
  • The callousness of repetition (nurse in the NICU)
  • Loss, even when it wasn’t
    • The whole thing about the baby that could have died
  • Trauma to bring us together
    • The dog dying scene
  • The guilt of doing stuff for yourself

Are there 40 year old programmers?

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Post midlife, you’re going to die

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