Chip Conley

You work overtime and get paid 1.5 times your normal pay rate. America works overtime, and the country’s longevity grows by 1.5 times (from 1911, when it was 52, to 2011, when it was 78). Pretty miraculous, right?

At the end of last year, I wrote a post focused on the 5 best MEA-themed films of the year, but none of them are up for Best Picture this weekend.

As the Millennial generation tiptoes into midlife, I have some hope. Unlike past generations, which were more socially impacted by the tyranny of the linear, three-stage life—learn till your early 20s, earn till your early 60s, and adjourn till you die—Millennials and GenZ have popularized the idea of a quarter-life crisis.

In the more than five years we’ve been running MEA, we’ve seen people show up “running on empty.” Society used to assume that we were supposed to fill up our education tanks in early adulthood and run on that same tank of gas for the rest of our careers.

I see you. You’ve been loyally reading my daily blogs. You’ve joined us on calls with Esther Perel, Dan Buettner, and all kinds of MEA faculty members this winter. You’ve heard from a friend that MEA was a transformative experience and that it’s a good fit for you. You’ve checked out the MEA website, but you needed a reason to say, “Heck, I’m ready!”

I’ve always appreciated the four stages of learning (as outlined below), which offer a powerful guide to move our learning outcomes from freak-out to flow.

“I think you have to grow up twice. The first time happens automatically. Everyone passes from childhood to adulthood, and this transition is marked as much by the moment when the weight of the world overshadows the wonder of the world as it is by the passage of years. Usually you don’t get to choose when it happens. But if this triumph of weight over wonder marks the first passage into adulthood, the second is a rediscovery of that wonder despite sickness, evil, fear, sadness, suffering—despite everything. And this second passage doesn’t just happen on its own. It’s a choice, not an inevitability. It’s something you have to deliberately go out to find, and value, and protect. And you can’t just do it once and keep it forever. You have to keep looking.” Nate Staniforth (magician)

Imagine being the most powerful person on earth and then publicly embarrassed with one of the largest electoral defeats of a sitting U.S. President. Jimmy Carter left office at 56, ripe for a serious midlife crisis. What comes next when you rose and fell so precipitously?

“I am not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I’ve reached that state.” - Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

I don’t know about you, but I strongly reacted to reading about Bryan Johnson, a wealthy entrepreneur from Venice Beach who is so enamored by the idea of becoming biologically young again that he’s spending $2 million per year to “live the dream.”