[00:00:00] DANIEL: Hey there, Spacemakers! I'm Daniel Sih, joined by my good friend and co-host, Matt Bain. We bring you The Spacemakers, a podcast to help you shift the way you live and work. More than a podcast, this podcourse will take you on a carefully curated journey around a simple but profound idea, that the habits and practices that fuel success in our 20s and 30s are the very barriers that hinder maturity in our 40s and 50s.

[00:00:29] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisees. If you're hardworking and business savvy, visit franchise.banjos.com.au and save 10 percent on franchise fees by mentioning SpaceMakers.

[00:00:44] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:00:48] DANIEL: Hi there, welcome back to the Spacemakers podcast, a place where we help you think about how to make space for a meaningful life.

[00:00:55] DANIEL: I'm here with my good friend and co-host Matt Bain, welcome.

[00:00:59] MATT: Hey, great to [00:01:00] be back.

[00:01:01] DANIEL: And this season we are talking about how to make space to navigate life's inevitable resets. We're feeling pretty full having gone to grab a coffee and they had this bizarre special where you buy one coffee, get some Korean deep fried chicken for free.

[00:01:16] DANIEL: It was nice. Yeah, it was great. On that very serious note, I remember going to a cafe in Adelaide many years ago. And back then there were all these different postcards for adverts. And I remember seeing one particular funny postcard. Basically it was a bit like, you know, the evolutionary picture of like a person becoming an ape.

[00:01:36] DANIEL: But there was this young boy and then he gets older and then he gets older and then eventually he bends over and he's holding onto a walking frame as an old man. And in each stage of life, there's a little caption about what he's thinking about. And so when he's a young man, maybe a teenager, early twenties, all he's thinking about is sex, sex, sex.

[00:01:54] DANIEL: And then the second stage said sex, sex, money, because he obviously realized, I don't know, he had to pay the rent. [00:02:00] And then you can imagine it went from sex, money, money to money, money, money. And then it went to. Money, money, toilet, all the way to toilet, toilet, toilet. And I always laugh. My wife says, I think you're in money, money, money, but it's not long before you're in money, money, toilet.

[00:02:16] DANIEL: But on a serious note, I always liked that postcard because it immediately and intuitively described this idea that actually we think about different things at different stages of life. Obviously, when we're young, we need to build relationships and build a life. As we get older, we need to think more about our wealth and our career.

[00:02:31] DANIEL: And then obviously we need to go to the toilet. Yeah. That's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about how do we understand the science of the life stages. Recognising that while everyone has an individualised life and everyone will have different experiences, if you look at the broader trends of humanity, there are some really common things that happen in life.

[00:02:52] DANIEL: In, let's say, our energetic 20s and 30s compared to our 40s to 60s and then beyond. And if we can understand that, well then at [00:03:00] any stage of life, we can have a much better ability to both navigate where we are now, but also to prepare in a healthy way for what comes next. And that's been very helpful for you and I, right?

[00:03:11] MATT: Yes. Yeah, very much so.

[00:03:12] DANIEL: Okay. So what did we ask listeners to do between episodes?

[00:03:15] MATT: Yeah. So we gave you guys two options. The first one was to take your current age, work out how many years you had left compared to the national average lifespan - for Australian men that was 81, for Australian women that was 85.

[00:03:30] MATT: So work out how many years you've got left and just ponder and think about what if anything you do differently in the face of that. The second slightly more advanced option was. Take the assessment courtesy of a, a life expectancy calculating tool that Dan and I recommended, Lifespan 100. And then that will give you a more kind of customised age of how long, based on the inputs that you give, how long it expects you to live.

[00:03:55] MATT: So this takes, took into account lifestyle factors, family of origin, that kind of stuff. It was fascinating wasn't it? Yeah, it was [00:04:00] fascinating. So Dan came up with, I think 91 and I came up with 92 for memory. I think that's how it panned out.

[00:04:06] DANIEL: Yeah, that's fine. It's only because I don't drink enough coffee or tea apparently. So anyway.

[00:04:09] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So we both took the exercise and it'd be fair to say that we had some reflections upon that as well. Yeah. I was actually, I was surprised, pleasantly surprised. I didn't think cause of like a bunch of ill spent elements in my youth that I'd probably make it that long.

[00:04:20] MATT: So that was encouraging. The specific feedback I found was really helpful in terms of, I've got like a, now I have like a higher ceiling than I expected, which I'm grateful for, but I want to take on board some of the feedback, particularly around, I'm not working as many hours per week. That was the number one recommendation.

[00:04:34] MATT: Like I just cut back to 40 hours per week and drink less coffee, but it's like, like I think to paraphrase Churchill, I believe that I've taken more out of coffee than coffee is taken out of me. Yeah. That's good.

[00:04:46] DANIEL: Yeah. Similarly, I found it quite sobering in some ways. It was useful because it's like, oh, well I might have a long life, but at the same time it's like, well, if I'm going to have a long life, I want to live it well because there's no point.

[00:04:59] DANIEL: Living until 91 or [00:05:00] 92 and then having the last 15, 20 years pretty infirmed in pain if, if you can help it, you know, and so it's made me, I suppose, even more aware of the importance of exercising regularly and hopefully improving what I eat, investing in relationships, which hopefully last me a lifetime, you know, I don't want to be lonely and, and put all my time into work and not have meaningful friendships after I've retired, given that I might have another 20 or even, you know, Yeah.

[00:05:26] DANIEL: 25 years or 30 years afterwards. And so that's just made it more obvious that the things that seem in the future are actually really important now because if I don't invest in those things now, well then it's very hard to backtrack when you're 65 and haven't exercised for a few years. Yeah. I mean, so that's, that's been sobering and helpful.

[00:05:44] DANIEL: Cool.

[00:05:44] MATT: Okay. So just quickly, number one recommendation for you. Buy a dog.

[00:05:47] DANIEL: The backstory is I didn't want one, but apparently it makes me live longer. Cool. Okay. That's interesting. Didn't see that coming. That's good. All right. On that non serious note, let us [00:06:00] outline the phases of life based on the science.

[00:06:02] MATT: Yes. Okay. So Dan and I over the last year particularly have done a fair bit of reading on this topic. So there's many authors that refer to these different stages of life or seasons of life. What we've done is put together a nice simple framework on the, on the phases, stages of life based on all those different authors.

[00:06:20] MATT: The things to remember here is that These are predictable patterns of life that both men and women all seem to invariably go through

[00:06:29] DANIEL: If we're lucky enough to live that long.

[00:06:30] MATT: If we're lucky enough to live that long. Yeah. So again, we don't really have a choice as to whether we go through these stages.

[00:06:36] MATT: It's just something that comes with living and with age. That's the first thing. Second thing, important to distinguish these from I suppose, rites of passage or chronological events. So these, so people get, say, for example, they may get married at different ages of life. They may buy their first house at different ages of life.

[00:06:52] MATT: They may have kids at a particular age of life. These life stages are separate from that. So those events happen within those different life [00:07:00] stages. Thirdly, all these different stages involve transition points and the transition points you can see is periods of overlap between one stage and another. So these transition points may go for years.

[00:07:11] MATT: The really critical thing to remember here, as we hinted at last episode, you can either make these transitions well, you can negotiate them from one stage to the next well, or you can handle it poorly. So again, you don't really get a choice assuming as to living as to whether you go from one stage to the next, but how you go and make that transition point.

[00:07:27] MATT: transition, that's down to you. If you handle it well, it's going to set you up with a firm foundation for the next stage of life. If we handle it poorly, it's almost like you consider it, you can consider it as sabotaging your future self. These are like broad, broad stages. It's important also to point out that there are, um, there’s different authors identify sub stages between these big three, but we're just really going to spend our time looking at three today.

[00:07:51] DANIEL: Yeah. And we've looked at a bunch of research, but we've also read spiritual authors, we've read sociological authors, we've read scientific, like, and, and so [00:08:00] while there are so many different perspectives that all actually seem to merge into the basic same picture, I think it's helpful that we've read it from different perspectives, but we're focusing

[00:08:09] DANIEL: More predominantly on one particular framework and then we'll draw in aspects of all these other authors in order to build texture

[00:08:15] MATT: Yeah, yeah, that's right and like and a really good pickup on that as well. Well, like we need to say neither of us are social researchers by trade okay, so obviously that we have different professional backgrounds Dan’s a productivity expert and a blossoming guitar player. I've had so many emails wondering how it's going, whether you've got your Hendrix back catalogue worked out yet, but what went on in season one should stay in season one.

[00:08:35] MATT: Yeah. It's a season ago. Yeah. So, so we don't want to kind of come across as, as if this is our kind of area of expertise, but again, we have synthesized, to be fair to say, really, I think, broad palette of reading and inputs. We've found it helpful. We've had conversations with friends and peers who also found it helpful.

[00:08:51] MATT: We think that you're going to find it helpful too.

[00:08:58] MATT: We've read a lot of books, but one [00:09:00] that we really like is The Good Life, and this is by Robert Waldinger and Mark Schultz. And this has been made famous because it's, it's written by the current director of the Harvard Longitudinal Study. So I think its proper title is the Harvard study of adult development.

[00:09:14] MATT: So we really like this one because it's been going, the study has been going since 1934. So you've now got 80 plus years of longitudinal research. So thousands of participants. And again, they've given the same participants questionnaires. interviews, as well as biological physiological tests along the way.

[00:09:31] MATT: And now they've started looking at children of the original participants and even grandchildren. So it's also multi generational.

[00:09:37] DANIEL: And what's interesting is actually all the other stuff we've read, even if it's not quite as research based, but it's based on, you know, years of spiritual wisdom or broader advice.

[00:09:45] DANIEL: Yeah. It actually pins really well, so we can draw it together. That's right. Maps over it very, very well. So, drum roll. Now, Matt, we've, we've given particular names to these stages, which are kind of our own, but they match the general chronological ages that we've seen everywhere [00:10:00] else in this Good Life Study.

[00:10:01] DANIEL: So, the first stage of life, we're calling entering adulthood, and you'll describe it in a minute, but that's basically between your twenties and forties, when you're learning to be a mature, functioning adult in society. We're calling the midlife squeeze and that's between your forties and sixty fives. So that's a big range, but at the same time, you know, there are a number of things that happen to many people in that range.

[00:10:25] DANIEL: Stage three, we're calling the second mountain based on David Brooks's stuff, which we'll talk about as well. But the second mountain being that kind of internal transformation 65 years old onwards. And I'm going to squeeze in, cause we've debated about this for a while, I'm going to squeeze in a small fourth stage, which

[00:10:43] DANIEL: We're going to call the twilight years, which is more the end of life stage. It might be 75, it might be 90, but it's when you're actually learning to give away your death.

[00:10:51] MATT: You feel pretty passionate about that.

[00:10:53] DANIEL: I do. You're entitled to your opinion. And four, four works well as a number. All right. But let's talk about the first stage of the three.[00:11:00]

[00:11:00] DANIEL: Plus one.

[00:11:01] MATT: I prefer and a half. Okay. We go three and a half, but not, not three plus one.

[00:11:06] DANIEL: We've arm wrestled over this. First stage entering adulthood, twenties and forties.

[00:11:10] MATT: So one really helpful way that I find to kind of picture this is that this stage, this transition, like going from basically late teens to early twenties is about successfully building a container to hold the rest of your life in.

[00:11:23] MATT: Okay. So that's what it is. So it's about building this really good container and the kind of responsibilities, the skillsets, the aspirations that are conducive to that are usually ones that are consistent with performing well, with having a fair bit of, uh, ambition and also establishing your own identity.

[00:11:37] MATT: So we all know, like all can remember, hopefully like being of that age, where so much of your early twenties is about defining yourself and what your life is going to look like. And usually that definition involves in breaking away from family of origin. So the family that you grew up with, making your own new connections, like deep personal connections.

[00:11:56] MATT: So friends, partners, that kind of stuff, as well as succeeding in a [00:12:00] career. So again, like you need some drive for that, right? You need some, like some other, you need to some degree, some confidence, some ego, some belief in yourself, like to make that work because you actually want to succeed, and a bit of skill.

[00:12:11] DANIEL: Yeah. And hopefully a bit of luck along the way.

[00:12:12] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So some skill and some competency and linked to that as well. Again. If you're going to be succeeding in a career, or if you're going to be succeeding like in particularly like a long term successful exclusive relationship, for example, you need to be a particular kind of person who has a particular set of character traits, you know, some virtues.

[00:12:29] MATT: Yeah. So you need to be things like reliable. You need to be honest. You need to be relatively selfless. So in this stage too, as part of your container, you're actually kind of constructing the kind of good person. Yeah. That you want to be.

[00:12:39] DANIEL: Yeah. So it's not just you're out of life. Obviously on the one hand you want to get a degree or get qualifications.

[00:12:45] DANIEL: You want to build some skills and to practice hard things in order to have something to then build an income from, you're saying you want to build some relationships, all that kind of stuff. But there's also an income. In a life that needs to develop because you're not going to succeed in your [00:13:00] forties and fifties, most likely if you're deeply selfish, if you haven't learned to delay some gratification, you haven't learned to control your impulses.

[00:13:08] DANIEL: If you're deeply insecure, like those kinds of internal realities are truly important as you build that container.

[00:13:13] MATT: That's right. And maybe you can get away again, like with, you know, being a lot more impulsive, maybe like slightly not as honest as you could be. You know, it could be a bit more, I say, like you can make some more risky choices in your early twenties.

[00:13:26] MATT: That's kind of exciting and vibrant. But again, we're talking about a phase that goes from twenties to your, to your 40. So probably 30 or like around about then and plus, that's where you'll be looking at again, like a long term exclusive relationship, perhaps, or maybe if you can have kids, you'd be considering that, you'd be thinking about like a roof to put over the head, like all that kind of stuff.

[00:13:45] MATT: So some of that behaviour, you kind of, you can't get away with in your late 20s so much.

[00:13:49] DANIEL: Yeah. And we're, we're talking about building a container, not just for this first stage of life, yes. but to guide you through the rest, right? Yeah. Long term container. It's like Tupperware. Exactly. Life long warranty.

[00:13:58] DANIEL: Yeah, well, it's not as easy to [00:14:00] get warranty nowadays as it was. But the thing is, even if you get by in your 20s and 30s and you can kind of hide some of these traits and that, because you've got energy, you've got skill and you know, you've got the right charisma, something will fall off the bandwagon as you get older.

[00:14:15] DANIEL: If you don't have that inner life. Yeah, that's it. Eventually.

[00:14:18] MATT: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually. So, like the other couple of pieces to this, as you'd be well aware, like typically, so not always, and these are, I know, like these are generalisations, so take all this with that grain of salt. You're going to have a whole lot of energy as well, like just coursing through, yeah.

[00:14:33] MATT: So your ability to kind of push yourself mentally, cognitively, like physically, all that kind of stuff is, is, is through the roof compared to later in life.

[00:14:39] DANIEL: Yep. I like, I liken it to the analogy of, uh, uh, an elite athlete. You are actually at your best in your thirties and early thirties, late twenties from a mental capacity, from a

[00:14:48] DANIEL: Neuroplastic capacity. Yeah. You can do a lot of stuff. It's a time when you need to build a life. Yeah. But there are some pitfalls associated.

[00:14:55] MATT: So again, we talked about this idea of [00:15:00] negotiating transitions. Yeah. And doing it successfully. We talked about the overlap between one stage and the next. So particularly again, like, you know, late, late teens to early twenties, this transition where you're going from being like a very much a young, young person, a teenager to a young adult.

[00:15:14] MATT: That's a pretty tricky transition. So people have talked about the fact that if I don't, as a young person, if I don't kind of achieve enough independence. So again, if I don't kind of distance myself enough from my family of origin, all the supports that offers me, if I don't attain some degree of competency, particularly something that's going to derive me an income.

[00:15:34] MATT: So financial independence, if I don't get all those things kind of tucked away, then I'll, I can experience like what, you know, it's now being termed one phase phrase forward is like failure to launch.

[00:15:45] DANIEL: Yeah. I like that term.

[00:15:46] MATT: You like that term?

[00:15:47] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:48] MATT: Okay. Yeah. Failure. So again, if we're just like talking, you know, B grade

[00:15:51] MATT: Stereotypes and cliches. This is like the young person that still finds themselves living in their parents basement with a sweet NBN connection, doing nothing but gaming 24 [00:16:00] 7. As our American friends like to say, just covered in nothing but Cheeto dust. That's the stereotype of when it goes wrong.

[00:16:06] DANIEL: So, but it is a big risk.

[00:16:07] DANIEL: And again, I speak a lot and read and write and have conversations in the tech business. parenting space. And one of the big critiques that someone like Jonathan Haid might say is that we're raising a generation who have gone from a play based childhood to a screen based childhood. And for men or young boys in particular, it's failure to launch, which is the biggest thing.

[00:16:26] DANIEL: Maybe not mental health quite in the same way as girls and social media, but it's getting caught in gaming, it's getting caught in so many hours of online activity that you actually lose the drive to build the skills required to be a healthy man.

[00:16:42] MATT: Yes. Yeah. Uh, and in that sense, I think that describes it really well.

[00:16:43] MATT: Yes. Good, good, good. So that's one pitfall. The second pitfall, which perhaps you don't hear so much about these days is, is the idea of, again, if, if young adulthood is a quest for independence, then that independence can kind of Frankenstein into [00:17:00] isolation. So if I'm kind of so understandably consumed with getting independent, which is going to mean probably working pretty hard with all that energy, all that fluid intelligence, I'm working hard at my career, which is probably involved long hours and lots of dedication.

[00:17:13] MATT: And again, I've kind of moved away from my family of origin, perhaps like, you know, the small town. Bruce Springsteen song, whatever that you grew up with and I've said, yeah, so I can be so kind of consumed with that, that actually don't invest in making new relationships, particularly with peers and friends, because again, I'm working too hard and I've left all this behind, I haven't replaced it.

[00:17:34] MATT: So the risk is I'd go from not just being dependent, which is a good thing, but being socially isolated as critical to start forming good relationships, friends, peers, partners, et cetera, et cetera in this phase of life.

[00:17:45] DANIEL: Hmm. That makes a lot of sense because, you know, I read once you can't make old friends when you're in your fifties.

[00:17:53] DANIEL: That's right. In the sense of you can't make lifelong friends if you're halfway through life. And therefore it makes [00:18:00] sense to invest in a lot of in person embodied relationships as opposed to distant social media type online relationships, which aren't at all the same thing and to invest in lots and lots of those relationships when you're young.

[00:18:19] DANIEL: So Matt, let's talk about the second stage of life, which we're calling the mid life Squeeze. Yes, the midlife squeeze. Between your 40s and 65s, which again, we debated for a while.

[00:18:30] MATT: Yeah, but I'm happy with the 65. Yeah. Yeah. So 40 to 65. And it's really important to remember with this one that when we talk about life stages, again, it's going to involve influences from the social world, our psychology, as well as our biology.

[00:18:46] MATT: And that particularly like kicks in here for this transition. I just can't get over the term influencers. You're not talking about what I'm talking about. No, no, no. Sorry. No, no. I mean, the old sense of the term, yeah. Influencers. Yeah. So these stages are obviously going to be informed, if you like, again, by our biology, our [00:19:00] psychology, and our, and our emotional life.

[00:19:02] MATT: And it's like really like the biology kicks in pretty hard between the ages of 40 to 65. So classically, this is a period of life where I am just hit around the head with the fact that I'm aging, I'm getting frailer and one day I'm going to die. Yeah. And that could be sooner rather than later. I may be halfway through my expected lifespan because either I've got, you know, I've got people in my life who I care for, often parents or older friends.

[00:19:24] MATT: And I see, and I see them getting frail before my very eyes or I, or someone who I know, experiences a very severe health crisis, like big scare. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I'm, I'm starting to be hit by this firm impression. Congratulations. You're getting older and you're getting frailer.

[00:19:38] DANIEL: Yeah. I thought Arthur Brooks' work from strength to strength is one of the best books in this space.

[00:19:43] DANIEL: And he has this second chapter, which says your professional decline is coming faster than you think. Yeah. Yeah. And it was going to really hit me in the eyes. It's like, Oh, okay. It's not just that I'm getting old, but actually my brain is not at peak performance in a different way, which we'll talk about in a different season, but we start declining.[00:20:00]

[00:20:00] MATT: Yeah, that's right. We do. So there's that. And the other thing like that again, this is, this is probably like the most kind of popular as in well known life stage as well, like the midlife. And often it's attributed to like people say, like, you know, midlife crisis, there's a bunch of cliches around it. And the other thing I think that makes it really difficult and plenty of research has pointed this out.

[00:20:19] MATT: If you're, if you've been successful, like in midlife, then to the spectator, whether like they're older, they're looking back at you going, wow, Dan's in the prime of his life. He's got the best of health and he's got, and he's, he's kicked all these goals. He's ticked all these boxes. You got younger people looking up to you going, well, like Dan's really got it together.

[00:20:35] MATT: Like he, again, he's, he's achieved all this stuff. He's got his own freaking podcast. Yeah. All these aspirations and goals that I've still got to look forward to, but for your subjective experience, you can have all these questions, all these doubts. So the way that I experienced it firsthand, being in this stage can be very different from how it's perceived.

[00:20:51] MATT: And that just adds to the difficulty. And one probably when, when it comes to difficulty, and again, this is really common in what we've referred to as the midlife squeeze. And that is classic. It's so [00:21:00] common. And the midlife squeeze is all these good competing demands on your time and attention. Usually it's kids.

[00:21:07] MATT: So if you've got kids in midlife, there's a good chance they're either teen or about to hit teens. And as you said before, it's a really complicated, demanding season of being a parent. So you've got that, you've got the squeeze from there. You may have, if your parents are still alive or your in laws, you've got ailing parents or in laws that also again, demand a fair bit of your attention and head space.

[00:21:25] MATT: And then if you're doing okay career wise, you've, you've got the squeeze, the pressure to keep on performing at your particular occupation.

[00:21:32] DANIEL: And even if you're not doing so well, then you're starting to wrestle with, well, actually now I can see that I'm running out of time to actually build a nest egg or to actually find a career that I love.

[00:21:41] DANIEL: And a lot of the time when I coach people in this kind of midlife squeeze, people are either at the top of their game, unhappy about it, realising why am I unhappy? I'm actually stale in a job that I'm supposedly successful at. Or they're actually thinking it's time for a career change, but the cost is way [00:22:00] higher than when I was 20 and I changed career from an ice cream driver to a pizza driver.

[00:22:05] DANIEL: Yeah. I mean, the cost is higher, the risk is higher, and yet we still actually have a lot of years left to contribute. And so therefore, how do we make those ballsy decisions to significantly change what we do? Without it being kind of this crazy, throw it in the wind and hope it works out. So there's, there's squeeze, there's a squeeze and a pressure everywhere.

[00:22:26] DANIEL: Yes. As well as the fact that we'll talk about this as well in, in our happiness episode. Yeah. That statistically people are less happy in their midlife slump or their midlife squeeze for a whole lot of genetic reasons. And so it's just harder to experience a sense of joy and happiness for the majority of people in that period of life.

[00:22:44] DANIEL: Yeah, that's right. Add that all together, it's a tough time.

[00:22:46] MATT: Yeah, exactly. And so you think, okay, well, given that it's a tough time, you know, and I'm debating whether I'd like to throw in my job as a computer programmer and chase my long held dream of being a blacksmith, right? I think, like, it'd be really good to have some friends to bounce off.

[00:22:59] MATT: These ideas [00:23:00] often get some counsel from, but as a result of that three way squeeze, again, career, kids, parents, often the first thing that goes for people in midlife is discretionary, voluntary friendships. Okay. Yeah. Because again, I can't, I can't turn my back on my career. I still need to have money coming in.

[00:23:17] MATT: I can't be a bad parent, you know, and turn my back on my kids or my partner. And you know, if I did the wrong thing by my parents or in laws, it's going to be like bye bye inheritance, right? So I've got all these reasons why I have to maintain those obligations. So what goes usually, it's again voluntary friendships.

[00:23:33] MATT: And like you've talked about before, what kind of friends are the first ones to go? It's the old friends. Cause you think they've been around forever. I've got all this kind of, I've got all this goodwill in the bank. If I just kind of like, take, take my foot off the accelerator for a bit. They'll still be there in three or four years, won't they?

[00:23:48] MATT: Cause they're old friends.

[00:23:48] DANIEL: Yeah. And I don't even know if it's that deliberate, you know what I mean? There is that meme, you know, hey, it was great to catch up with you. I'll see you next year. Yeah. But I think the reality, and this is what Arthur Brooks talks about, is the idea that you end up with a lot of deal [00:24:00] friends, real friends.

[00:24:01] DANIEL: That's good. Meaning you immerse yourself in a corporate world or in a business world, where actually you're friends with the people you do life with through your work, because they're the people you see every day. Yeah. Yeah. But they're deal friends. They get you something, you give them something. But as soon as you disappear from your role for a few years, it's crickets, you know?

[00:24:18] DANIEL: And so you can inadvertently neglect the people who are actually going to build a good life for you, yourself, past that midlife squeeze, simply because of the busyness of the moment. That's right.

[00:24:28] MATT: And you can't replace You can't replace old friends who have got that history with you, who know you so well, who you know, who you can trust, who aren't just kind of into it for mercenary reasons.

[00:24:37] DANIEL: So the one bit that you haven't mentioned, you've mentioned career, you've mentioned like health, you've mentioned relationships, I do think, you know, life and spirituality is a really important thing in this stage, because again, I coach a lot of leaders and we look at the five capitals, the intellectual, physical, financial capital, relational capital and spiritual capital.

[00:24:55] DANIEL: Yeah. And typically it's mainly executives and senior leaders, they say to me, look, I get the [00:25:00] idea of the spiritual life and ideally it would be nice to be a bit more spiritual, but I just don't have time. So should we just move on? Yeah. And, and I totally respect that. But then I met a lot of other people who are just like in their forties, fifties and, and a friend of mine said the other day, I just need some.

[00:25:20] DANIEL: I just long, you know, in my, 10 years ago, I longed for lots of activity and now I just long for some space because there's so much noise around me, you know, and I do think that investing in the inner life in some form is important in your midlife squeeze, not only to help you with thankfulness and to help you with gratitude and help you to move from being a doer to a giver, to help you let go, but, but also to prepare you for what comes next.

[00:25:44] DANIEL: Yeah. Because if you've got no reserves, if you've got no spiritual, yeah, skill, I suppose it's very hard to pull it out of the hat when you really need it later in life.

[00:25:53] MATT: Okay? Yeah, well, let's talk about that super super quickly. Okay. Okay, so that I think ties into this other idea That's associated with the [00:26:00] midlife which they call it the roadrunner problem

[00:26:02] DANIEL: Okay, you might have to describe where that came from because there are listeners here who have never seen,

[00:26:06] MATT: So it's a classic cartoon of Wile E.

[00:26:09] MATT: Coyote. So this big bad coyote, he spends every single episode chasing the road runner again in America. So some kind of like some kind of like incredibly like fast, quick, swift bird. And every single episode, the coyote never catches the road runner, ends up in a whole lot of like really terrible situations for himself or he's suffering.

[00:26:24] MATT: Eating shito dust. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Eating shito dust. So the road runner problem is when you hit like your mid, you know, your midlife, there's a very good chance that it's almost inevitable that one or two things has happened. So you've either achieved everything that you've set out to achieve, which is like Wiley Coyote actually catching the Roadrunner and that presents big problem number one.

[00:26:43] MATT: You've got it. You've eaten the road, the Roadrunner that's done. Now A, it didn't taste perhaps as good as you thought it was going to taste and B what do I do with the rest of my life? So it's a problem with success. It's a problem with success. Like you find out it's overrated. Okay. That's the first road runner problem.

[00:26:57] MATT: The second road runner problem is that you're Wiley Carty [00:27:00] and you still haven't caught the road runner and you're getting old. Your bones are starting to hurt. You haven't had enough fun, fish oil as a kid or whatever. So everything's really straining and you have to resign yourself. You're not as fast as you used to be.

[00:27:10] MATT: You won't get the road runner.

[00:27:13] DANIEL: Or even if you are just the fact that you haven't caught the road runner yet, and you've given it all you've got and you realize you're running out of time. That's right. You start to doubt. Yeah. Whether or not you'll ever catch it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You start to regret some of the things you could have done differently.

[00:27:24] MATT: Yeah. The opportunity cost as well. You've had any opportunity.

[00:27:26] DANIEL: I've been there, you know, I, I, I tried to see something happen for over a decade. Didn't happen. Yes. And then I was like, wow, I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if I didn't waste those 10 years, you know what I mean? And so you have enough time to have regret, but enough future space to actually still have to achieve something.

[00:27:43] DANIEL: Is that kind of what you're playing? Yeah. Great guitar player.

[00:27:48] MATT: Yes. So yeah, so right. So you end up saying like, what kind of coyote am I, right? So in both instances, you're like, you are met with a potentially pretty bad confronting aftertaste. So classically what can [00:28:00] happen is that if you've had a relatively, dare I say, simplistic, I suppose like inner life framework, spiritual belief, call it what you will, worldview, by the time you hit your midlife, particularly because you're going to be encountering suffering with a capital S, the kind that you never again, wish upon yourself, then that, that simplistic framework of the inner life is going to get undone, if not challenged really like severely.

[00:28:21] MATT: Okay. So again, it's going to make you have to reset your inner life. Or again, if you've caught the road runner and again, and you think, well, I've reached the apex and pinnacle of my plan success, but it tastes, you know, pretty B grade. Then again, is that going to be a catalyst for there being something more, something more that's related to the inner life and perhaps taking on or exploring spirituality or faith or whatever it is for the first time around.

[00:28:42] DANIEL: Nice. Yeah. So that must lead to the B grade responses, which you talked about in our first reset into adulthood, 20s and 40s. Are there some B grade resets or some fallbacks that you want to avoid in order to be, I suppose, I don't know if successful [00:29:00] is the right term, but to what would you say? Navigate this with.

[00:29:04] MATT: Yeah. Navigate this transition. And again, really, really, really critical. Let's go back to our original point of what got you here successfully will not get you there, which is the big idea we want to explore as we go through more specific. Yep. So two kind of classic B grade suboptimal responses to the midlife transition.

[00:29:21] MATT: Number one is, and they both, they both involve an element of denial, sort of sticking your head in the sand, pretending that this isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening. So the first B grade response related to that is, doubling down. So I take whatever it was that's got me here and worked the first, you know, like four decades.

[00:29:38] MATT: And I just turned that up to 11, man. So if I work harder, if I find the right doctor, get like the right human growth hormone replacement, get some testosterone from some big right side. If I go to the gym harder, if I work longer hours at the office, if I do all that kind of stuff, for example, then eventually I'll succeed.

[00:29:53] MATT: So I've just got to grind it out, suck it up. Try harder, double down.

[00:29:57] DANIEL: Yep. So it's a bit like digging, the old analogy that, [00:30:00] you know, you, if you're not winning digging a hole in one space, you keep going. It's like the institutional insanity idea. Just do more of it, do it harder. But the problem is that you're slowing down a little bit mentally, maybe a little bit physically.

[00:30:11] DANIEL: And so you just have to rally the troops, but it doesn't lead to the outcome because you actually need a fundamentally different framework to succeed in your midlife. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[00:30:19] MATT: Yeah. So that's response number one. Response number two is probably the more kind of popular again, like cliched stereotypical one, which is just.

[00:30:27] MATT: Hadronic escapism. Okay. So that's where you buy the Tesla. Yeah. That's what, yeah. Even though I want one. Yeah, you buy the Tesla, the sports car, you change partners like normally, again, kind of like go for, like, say like, like a younger model, so to speak. Again, you do stuff that tries to kind of, but it's just fun and escapism and pleasure.

[00:30:43] MATT: So it's almost like I've worked so hard to get where I am. I've caught the road runner. So I now just kind of, I deserve to enjoy myself, not knowing again, that all the science and all the research says that when it comes to hedonic adaptation, that is like just pleasure, short term pleasure. [00:31:00] Again, it'll be cool.

[00:31:00] MATT: It'll, you know, spike in that first, maybe week, but then a fortnight later, it'll be back to baseline and a Tesla will just be another car.

[00:31:08] DANIEL: It actually seems like the same response, to be honest, as the first one is doubling down because you're just doubling down saying, well, actually the twenties and thirties worked.

[00:31:17] DANIEL: So let's be a 20 year old rather than a 50 year old. Yeah, that's right. I'm just expressing it externally rather than through work and achievement.

[00:31:23] MATT: Yeah. Well, like the only thing like that, you know, tweak there is that you're doing it with the 40 or 50 year olds resources. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not just going to an Airbnb in Broody for the weekend, but I'm taking the boys away to Europe for the weekend or whatever, and we can have a fat old time.

[00:31:35] MATT: But it's still both responses involve denial. That makes sense.

[00:31:47] DANIEL: Okay. That's great, Matt. We've talked about stage one and stage two, but now we talk about stage three, which we're calling the second mountain. And that was based on a book by David Brooks, which I found very useful. I think you found it useful as well. Yeah. Where he basically [00:32:00] describes the first mountain as building a container, Like you described, the first mountain is when you build a sense of ego and success and you work hard to achieve things.

[00:32:08] DANIEL: But then when the second mountain comes, it's often through pain and suffering, or it's through chronology and age, and it's where the second mountain falls on you rather than you climbing it.

[00:32:20] MATT: So is that on the right track? That's my understanding. Like, like 65 plus, like you said, in terms of our physiology and our biology, um, it's Like, regardless of how skinny my jeans are, how white my sneakers are, and how blonde my hair may be, everyone else looks at me and goes, like, you're an older person.

[00:32:34] DANIEL: Okay. So, so even if you feel young, even if you're feeling young, even if you're not ready to stop giving up stuff, people are still looking at you differently just because you're older. Yeah.

[00:32:40] MATT: Like, just because you're older. Yeah. Yeah. And chances are for most of us, like our, our subjective feelings of how old we are physically will also be very real and very present.

[00:32:50] MATT: So that's the first thing. Second thing, again, we've got this much sharper idea of our mortality. So. Yeah. The thing that this really like gives us is clarity. [00:33:00] So it gives me, because again, talking about those horizons, because my horizon I know is a lot shorter than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. It helps give me discernment and clarity around what's truly important in life.

[00:33:11] MATT: So again, statistically, and almost surprisingly, people report being really happy. at this phase of life. Because again, like they know what's important to them. Their happiness increases from 65. I find very encouraging. We'll talk about that more later.

[00:33:23] DANIEL: That's right. But it actually gets, it gets higher rather than lower.

[00:33:25] MATT: Yeah. Cause I know what's important. So I know what's important to me and what brings me joy and B, I'm not going to sweat over the small stuff so much. You know what I mean? As opposed to my younger self. Yeah. Cause it's no big deal, right? It's just noise to some degree. But that's if you transition successfully, right?

[00:33:38] DANIEL: Yes. Yeah. Which often again, uh, if you refer to the story that I shared last week, it often involves letting go, again, letting go of career success or letting go of the need to achieve in the same ways as you have before. Maybe letting go of some of the, some of the things you've done physically, which you can't do as easily anymore, but learning to embrace thankfulness and, and, and, and, and, and, and embrace the best of what you do [00:34:00] have right now.

[00:34:00] DANIEL: Yeah, that's right. It's a different perspective. It's kind of an internal change rather than just an external change. And that's part of what leads to a better life.

[00:34:07] MATT: Yeah, that's right. And with that letting go and giving up, it's probably seeing yourself, I'm not, to some degree, I'm not going to be like the star of my own show anymore, as much as I'm going to be someone who helps direct and invests in other people.

[00:34:20] DANIEL: So you're truly becoming a grandparent in that sense, rather than the doer, you're the giver, you know, rather than achieving everything, you're kind of coaching or training or supporting those who are actually doing the stuff. Yes. So your role changes. Yeah, that's it.

[00:34:34] MATT: And that's a really significant change.

[00:34:36] MATT: Yeah. Yes. Yes. So two quick questions, common pitfalls with this stage of life. Number one, particularly if you have someone who feels that you've been competent and you have and are investing a lot in other people and in providing assistance and support, it can be really tough for you to accept the support and the assistance that normally comes with being competent.

[00:34:54] MATT: This stage of life, you know what I mean? Like just in terms of like getting stuff done again, maybe you're not as mobile, you're not as fit, [00:35:00] so you need other people. Or maybe it's like new technology. How do I operate this stupid remote control? Like you'll need the assistance of younger people usually to help.

[00:35:06] MATT: And that can be hard. Okay. Particularly in the later end of that. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's more your point five. I don't know. And then, and then secondly, like the second big pitfall is that just again, being socially isolated because again, like the older you get again, you know, younger family have their own responsibilities and stuff as well.

[00:35:22] MATT: You know, people move away and then some of your friends who are close to you, old friends, particularly they start becoming really infirm.

[00:35:29] DANIEL: I would have thought a third stage is just struggling with irrelevance. That idea that actually, you know, you've left being the CEO or the boss or the professional in your company.

[00:35:38] DANIEL: And very quickly you realize that no one cares. You can go back to the same workplace and two years later, people don't even know your name. And so it's wrestling with the idea that you're less relevant in the world than you used to be and learning to find a great deal of joy and satisfaction in that new reality.

[00:35:55] MATT: Yeah, that's true. Maybe some of us get a taste of that in the second stage as well. Okay. It just [00:36:00] amplifies. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Sneak preview here, but it's going to go full bloom here.

[00:36:04] DANIEL: I, I might finish this section if it's helpful by reading a few quotes. Cause I, you know, again, when I was doing my silent retreat, which I talked about last episode, I read a heap of books and there are a few quotes that really stood out.

[00:36:15] DANIEL: And I wrote, I actually wrote a blog posts from lost to the second mountain. So I've kind of gone back to that and pulled out some of the quotes that I found. So I like this quote from David Brooks. He says, you conquer the first mountain, but you are conquered by the second mountain. Meaning that the first mountain you climb through effort and skill, you know, when you truly have your second mountain experience is actually about letting go and allowing life to happen to you, but finding a great joy within that.

[00:36:39] DANIEL: I like Richard Rohr who wrote Falling Upward, which is another really beautiful description of the second mountain. The way to move upward is to actually fall, which is the same description. He says it is not by our willpower or moral perfection that we reach the summit. We can't engineer it by ourselves.

[00:36:57] DANIEL: It is done to us. Same idea. [00:37:00] My favorite quote is from Parker Palmer, who wrote in his seventies, a great book called On the Brink of Everything. And he says, there is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness or okayness. Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness.

[00:37:21] DANIEL: There is still darkness in the second half of life, in fact maybe even more, but there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety. I think it's beautiful. I love this idea of a bright sadness or a sober happiness and that while there's pain and struggle, a loss of health, maybe the death of loved ones, a loss of ego, a loss of attainment, there's also a deep joy that is greater and bigger that occurs from the inside out, which is again, what we see in the research.

[00:37:52] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And that's the second mountain.[00:38:00]

[00:38:01] DANIEL: So let me finish with what I think is a fourth phase.

[00:38:04] MATT: Yeah, now to the pseudoscience. That's great. Hit me.

[00:38:07] DANIEL: That's right. So the Good Life guys give us three frameworks. But look, I've read a lot of stuff as well that talks about, you know, there is a difference in the final stage of our life, which is really about learning to end your life well.

[00:38:17] DANIEL: I love what Ronald Rollhiser says. He says the first stage of life is where we struggle to get our lives together. Which describes what you described. He says the second is the struggle to give our lives away. I think he's talking about the second mountain. And he says the third stage, which is like the twilight years, he describes is the struggle to give our deaths away.

[00:38:34] DANIEL: So what happens when you truly get old? You're not young old. But mid old to old old where you truly lose the ability to physically function, to maybe feed yourself, to, you know, to live in any kind of external capacity, well there's a lot of writing and thinking about the beauty of learning to help others and to contribute to the world by going deep inwards.

[00:38:55] DANIEL: And I love a description by Parker Palmer where he talks about an elderly person who [00:39:00] described walking down the stairs and sitting down and eating, I don't know, some prunes for breakfast. Toilet, toilet. Toilet, toilet. Looking out at the sunrise and that's all they had the capacity to do that day. But they're having an overflowing sense of joy and inner peace.

[00:39:18] DANIEL: Because of the thankfulness of being alive, you know, not, I haven't reached that.

[00:39:23] MATT: Yeah. That's, that's really aspirational.

[00:39:24] DANIEL: It's aspirational, but I, but I do hear a lot of stories about people at the end of their lives, having accumulated a life well lived throughout the older stages who have this ability to, even in their letting go to give their deaths away in a way that help others around them and encourage and inspire others.

[00:39:40] DANIEL: I'm not saying you have to do that, but I love that as an aspirational idea. And I've heard it called the twilight years to, to learn to end well.

[00:39:48] MATT: Hmm.

[00:39:49] DANIEL: So Matt, we've talked about three life stages and my pseudo science life stage number four. Speculative. Speculative stage. But look, there's a lot in that and in the space makers, we really [00:40:00] believe in giving people time to make space to reflect because you can hear a lot of stuff and you can absorb a lot of information, but unless you make space to reflect on what matters to you and how you live it out, it doesn't actually make a lot of difference.

[00:40:11] DANIEL: So we want to give you a bit of space like we did in our first season to give you 30 seconds of silence to simply reflect on what you've heard. What stands out to you? What stage of life are you in? Is there an aha moment that comes out of our conversation so far?[00:41:00]

[00:41:09] MATT: So Dan, I believe we're at that time of the episode where we're going to put out our personal challenge that you and I also embark on as well, don't we? Okay. So this week related to the big idea of the three life stages that we've talked about thus far. We'd like to ask you guys to spend 10 minutes in between this and the next episode.

[00:41:28] MATT: And we'd suggest journaling this as well. And maybe even like, maybe again, having a conversation with one other person about it too, but at the very least what we'd encourage you to journal it. We'd like you to. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Consider these three questions. So I'll say them nice and slow. First of all, what stage of life are you currently in?

[00:41:47] MATT: Are you entering adulthood? So again, 20 to 40. Are you in that midlife squeeze of between 40 and 65? Or are you in that second mountain phase? So [00:42:00] 66 plus. Which three of those, which one of the three of those do you find yourself in? Secondly, Given the state that you find yourself in, what is one pitfall that we've covered that you'd like to avoid?

[00:42:13] MATT: So again, think and journal about that. And then lastly, we talked about how negotiating the transitions from one stage to the other is like laying a foundation, a good foundation for your future self. So given that, what is one thing that you'd like to start doing or addressing in this stage to help prepare you for the next?

[00:42:33] MATT: So, about 10 minutes considering those three questions, again, journaling would be excellent.

[00:42:37] DANIEL: Yeah. And you and I are a big fan of journaling, right? The, just the idea of laying down your thoughts, taking the time to write, which somehow clarifies thoughts. There's a lot of research in that. So, you may not be a journalist, but at least take the time out to be still, away from your digital devices to reflect on those three questions.

[00:42:54] DANIEL: Do you want to shoot them quickly one more time? What are the three questions?

[00:42:56] MATT: Identify what life stage you're in. Yep. Outta those three, [00:43:00] identify one pitfall that you'd like to avoid. And again, like pitfalls, probably like one that you are most likely to, to fall into. And then lastly, what's one thing that you can do in this current stage to best lay the foundation for the next?

[00:43:12] DANIEL: Hmm. Now I know there's a big temptation to just listen to a podcast and then play the next one, but I would really encourage you to stop and pause and make space because it's in the making space that life changes. And we would really love you to end this podcast course. So it's not just a podcast, but a podcast where

[00:43:28] DANIEL: You'll actually do the activities week by week, step by step, and actually end up then emailing us at the end of the season saying, hey, this has actually made a big impact in my life. It's changed either my relationship, my career, how I use money, how I build friendships, or even it's changed my career over time as a result of doing this

[00:43:45] DANIEL: going through this process. Yeah, I'm now a blacksmith. Hey so, thank you so much for joining us on our second episode of the Spacemakers Season 2, next week we are going to talk about happiness, which is one of the key elements [00:44:00] of the changes between our 20s and 30s to 40s to 60s, and we're going to explore the science of the happiness curve.

[00:44:07] DANIEL: Why we're less happy in our mid life slump and what to do about it. So we would love to have as many people join us on this journey as possible. If you think others in your relational world will find this podcast of interest, well then please let them know about these episodes so they can join us to make space along life's many resets.

[00:44:27] DANIEL: And please leave a review, it helps us enormously. But, until next time, make space.

[00:44:34] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:44:37] DANIEL: A warm thanks to our sponsor, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisees. If you're hardworking and business savvy, visit franchisebanjos.com.au and save 10 percent on franchise fees by mentioning Spacemakers.

[00:44:53] NARRATOR: Want to change your habits through this pod course? Download our free Season 2 Toolkit. It's packed with activities, [00:45:00] reflective questions, and print ready handouts to guide your midlife reset. It's our gift to you. Visit spacemakers.au/S2 and make space.