🍋 Missing Ingredient, Part Four
“There is no path that goes all the way. Not that it stops us looking . . . “ —David Whyte
Catch up on part one, part two, and part three first.
There is no path that goes all the way.
Not that it stops us looking
for the full continuation.
—Excerpted from ’s poem “No Path,” partly inspired by:
Three beautiful lines by Antonio Machado [talking] about the Camino:
“Caminante, no hay camino, / se hace camino al andar. / Al andar se hace el camino.” “Pathmaker, there is no path. You make the path by walking. By walking, you make the path.”
Where we left off . . .
“Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.”1
Arthur Brooks shocked an aha into me with this early chapter title from his book, From Strength to Strength, no doubt named for that purpose. To bolster this bold claim, Brooks shares research from psychologist Raymond Cattell on two types of intelligence:2
Fluid intelligence, peaking in our thirties, is “the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems.”
Crystallized intelligence, increasing through middle and late adulthood, is “the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. When you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are old, you have wisdom.”
For the latter, he recommends pivoting away from success-driven climbing (whose ladder is it, anyway?) toward activities that reward crystallized intelligence such as teaching, mentoring, synthesizing, and communicating—while bolstering one’s broader life foundation with essential (possibly neglected) elements like friends, fitness, faith, and family.3
Our task, then, is to know when to leap from one curve to the other. Rather than “falling off the back of the hedonic treadmill,” by grasping for an outdated way of working that our bodies (and minds) are no longer designed for, we must adapt.
And that might require moving beyond the rose bush altogether. Perhaps pruning alone isn’t going to cut it.
To mix (and torture metaphors) for a moment: perhaps life requires jumping into a new era altogether, like planting and nurturing a lemon tree for the next phase. The rose-growing skills may be useful but insufficient.
Barbara Waxman popularized the term middlescence as the period of middle age, usually between the ages of 40 and 60, often marked by “a time of change, confusion, and frustration.”
Self-described “modern elder” Chip Conley, author of Widsom at Work and Learning to Love Midlife, says we need more rituals around this phase to build our TQ, or Transitional Intelligence. He cofounded the much-beloved Modern Elder Academy to meet this need.4
The career successes I achieved in my twenties resulted from an entirely different context, a rose bush if, you will: I was younger, with more energy, and single—living blissfully alone for the majority of those years.
At thirty-five, when my business—built on the first curve—was peaking, I got married and bought an apartment in New York City. At thirty-six, we brought a puppy home. At thirty-seven, we all got pivoted when the pandemic hit and eighty percent of my business’ forecasted revenue was wiped off the table in the first two weeks.
I have more responsibilities now, (new metaphor alert!) more of life’s browser tabs open at any given time, taking up bandwidth but also leading to a richer life. I can’t expect to “solve” my next career direction with the same energy or consciousness that worked during the first part of my professional life, and I learned the hard way (as usual) that forcing myself to do so only lands me in the Emergency Room.
Chip Conley’s book references a 2010 Sounds True podcast conversation, where poet (quoted above) shares thoughts on “living four or five years behind the curve of our transformational frontier.” Host Tami Simon asks about allowing vulnerability within oneself, apropos for the moment we realize it’s time to jump to the second curve:
“One of the vulnerabilities is the extreme disappointment we have around the version of our life we’ve established against what we set ourselves to create when we were much younger.
[It’s] putting an arm around yourself and saying, it doesn’t look very good compared to what your best hopes were, and finding the way through in the midst of it all to start to craft something that’s closer to what you want.
As soon as you do that and you start to get into the center, a lot of the peripheral stuff that you’re stuck to starts to naturally fall away. As soon as you move your focus away from all the ways you’re trying to hold the world together, you start to find more of a leverage point at the center.”
Back in Whole Foods, while bumbling through the cereal boxes with groceries teetering between my arms (dropping various items and picking them back up, only to drop the next few; a solo performance worthy of the three stooges), I heard a woman from the other end of the aisle ask, “Do you need a cart?”
I looked up. Her seven-year-old daughter appeared from behind her.
“She’s just pushing this around for fun,” the mom said, nudging Maya toward me.
Reluctantly, Maya started pushing the basket my way, then smiled, perhaps now proud to help an overwhelmed stranger. It was help—a gift—she could directly offer.
“You are both my sheroes tonight!” I exclaimed, grateful for the spontaneous act of kindness and simple grace. “Thank you, thank you!”
As soon as I had too much to carry, my old ways stopped working.
On this day, I didn’t ask for help, but it showed up anyway—something I’m learning slowly, if stubbornly, to lean into during this next phase of life.5
❤️
Brooks shares a personal practice not for the feint of heart! Yet fascinating nonetheless . . .
“Like resistance to death, resistance to the decline in your abilities is futile. And futile resistance brings unhappiness and frustration. Resisting your decline will bring you misery and distract you from life's opportunities. We should not avoid the truth. We should stare right at it; contemplate it; consider it; meditate on it. I practice a version of maranasati, in which I mindfully envision each of the following states:
I feel my competence declining
Those close to me begin to notice that I am not as sharp as I used to be
Other people receive the social and professional attention I used to receive
I have to decrease my workload and step back from daily activities I once completed with ease
I am no longer able to work
Many people I meet do not recognize me or know me for my previous work
I am still alive, but professionally I am no one
I lose the ability to communicate my thoughts and ideas to those around me
I am dead, and I am no longer remembered at all for my accomplishments
Don’t forget ’ caveat from part three (and this astute GoodReads review):
He gives a convincing argument for not buying into research just like this: It only reports the median, and you might be an outlier. Jonathan said it should all come with a big asterisk: results may vary, so don’t let it become deterministic or self-fulfilling—there’s plenty of emerging science on how our brains (and bodies) can maintain elasticity well into older age.
“If it helps you, bless,” Jonathan said. “If not, keep moving.”
These essential “f” qualities (friends, family, faith, fitness) are based on Robert Waldinger’s decades-long happiness study, summarized in his TED Talk on What Makes a Good Life:
MEA cofounder Kari Cardinale coined the term transitional Intelligence as “the capacity to perceive life’s transitions as internal opportunities for growth, to recognize the stage you are in, and to skillfully move through it with compassion, clarity, and confidence.”
Participants of the Modern Elder Academy are guided toward answering the following questions about the next chapter of life:
Activities: Which ones will you keep? Which ones will you evolve and do differently? Which ones will you let go of? What new ones will you learn?
Next Steps: What will you commit to doing in the next week to evolve into the new you? What will you commit to doing in the next month?
🎧 For a great distillation of Chip’s work, check him out on these podcasts:
If you enjoyed this post, you might also appreciate:
I remember hiking with my Buddhist boyfriend once, and we strayed and got lost. I was a bit anxious, and he said, "You know what Gary Snyder said—'Off the trail but on the Path. . .'" and we continued, using some sort of gut intuitive sense and eventually found our way back to the car. ;-)
Hi Jenny,
I’ve noticed a lot of literature about aging is extremely biased by under-including women. Men’s career journeys are sometimes a stand-in for “universal” experiences. This is a chronic problem in clinical research (where I spent 11+ years), and I'm betting much of the sociological literature.
At the risk of writing too long a post here, my lived experience shows SO many women who go through rebirth or Renaissance experiences between age 40 and 52. Of course, that assumes generally good health and hormone balance, some financial resources and strong networks. Not accessible to all, I realize.
A wonderful podcast that highlights these stories is "The Shift with Sam Baker." I’ve only listened to about 5 episodes so far. It’s a great reminder to me that many of us are just getting started.*
***
There are certain parts of us that slow down as we age. Physically we don’t have as much bounce back from injuries as we had when we were younger. But when we keep feeding our minds, bodies, and souls with new experiences, and we don’t lose the courage to try new things that might make us feel foolish once in a while, we keep renewing our neural networks.
Statistical averages are only helpful if they are truly representative. Women aren’t just “men with slightly different hormones.” We haven’t had the access to media and publishing that men have had historically, so our stories are not shared as often. We have a set of behavioral and cultural differences in how we are socialized.
I wonder how many women were included Raymond Cattrell’s psychometrically derived theories on fluid and crystallized intelligence (from 1943). It’s amazing how much science about bodies has been considered legitimate, even framing women’s bodies as just a weaker “variation” of men. It's incorrect, and it's bad science.
One book in my queue which I can’t wait to read is Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Her recent conversation on this topic with Elise Loehnen (Pulling the Thread podcast) is something you might enjoy also.
You had early success with your first couple of books, Jenny. I believe you’re going to write a lot more of them and/or do many other brilliant things. While this contraction in your business may feel personal, I suspect we are witnessing a systemic reinvention in the way we work and live that lands differently for each of us.
*Footnote with personal story:
My grandmother started college in her 50’s while my Mom (youngest of her three kids) went to college. She LOVED it! She drank it in! Her autodidact intellectual potential (and many years of reading newspapers) finally was unleashed.
It helped that she said out loud one day to my grandfather: “I always wished I could go to college.” He stopped the car and drove to the admissions office immediately and told her to could find out what it would take. She had to get some loans, but she did it.
Grandma had a teaching career into her 60’s and went onto live until 101. Maybe she was an anomaly. But Grandpa frequently told her how grateful he was that he no longer had to count his money before going to the grocery store anymore after they had two incomes. Imagine if she’d kept that dream to herself…❤️