Chip Conley

This recently-published study shows that many advocates for diversity and inclusion in the workplace have cognitive dissonance when it comes to age discrimination. The same progressively-minded folks who support more opportunities for women, people of color, LGBTQ employees and those with a disability often feel conflicted when it comes to keeping older people in the workplace longer.

For the next week leading up to the U.S. Memorial Day, I’m going to riff on the subject of aging in the 21st century. We have four times as many people on the planet today compared to a century ago. It’s not because humans are having more children. It’s because we’re living longer.

The onset of a healthy midlife is that moment when you fall into joyous relief that you don’t have to define the second half of your life based upon someone else’s definition of success. You’ve come to realize that “pursuing” happiness is not nearly as prudent as “practicing” contentment.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m envious of author and professor Adam Grant. The dude is smart as a whip, generous with his advice, responds to emails within minutes, and has written more New York Times bestsellers in the past eight years than I could ever imagine. I was first introduced to him ten years ago when he featured me in his first book, “Give and Take.” No one knew Adam Grant then. He’s not even 40 now, and he has given three TED talks.

Bestselling author Bruce Feiler’s terrific book, “Life is in the Transitions,” came out at a fascinating time: last summer when transition defined all of our lives. One of his insights from his public surveys was the fact that all transitions can be categorized into collective vs. personal and involuntary vs. voluntary. The rarest transitions are collective involuntary, and, yet, that’s what we’ve suffered through with the Covid-19 pandemic. The most common transitions are personal voluntary ones.

My friend Kip Tindell was the co-founder of The Container Store and a leader in the Conscious Capitalism movement. I was recently reminded of something he once told me: “One of my firmest convictions is that our wake—those waves and ripples of consequences that follow our every action—is much bigger than we can ever imagine. Everything you do and everything you don’t do affects the people around you and your business, far, far more than you realize. Even the most self-centered, egotistical person you know wildly underestimates the power of his wake.”

“Although an infant becomes a child simply by aging, a person cannot become an elder by simply becoming older. Elders fall into the category of things that are made, not born. Becoming an elder is not a “natural occurrence;” the qualities needed don’t simply develop from physical changes brought on by aging. Rather, there is something meta-physical involved; something philosophical and spiritual that is required. Old age alone doesn’t make the elder." - Michael Meade

Recently, I posed the question about whether your truth might be embedded in another language. I’ve long been fascinated by the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, partly due to my love of their hot springs (onsen) culture. This led me to buying, renovating, and reopening the Kabuki Springs and Spa in San Francisco’s Japantown nearly two dozen years ago.

“A funny thing happened on the way to the old-age home,” Maher said on his recent show about Joe Biden stepping up his game and defying skeptics showing how pervasive the problem of ageism is in the U.S. Rather than rattle-on about what he said, feel free to watch this seven-minute clip from the 65-year-old Maher.

"Overqualified" is corporate code for "too old," "too expensive," or "too unimaginative." It’s often an ageist term. The fact is, most companies should want someone overqualified, especially if that talent comes at a fair price. It’s really the job applicant, not the company, who needs to determine if they’re overqualified.