Chip Conley

A curmudgeon friend recently shrugged, “I hate change!” I responded without trying to be too cheeky, “You’ll probably hate irrelevance even more.”

I’ll never forget the disappointment I felt one Christmas when I didn’t get the gift at the top of my Santa list. Disappointment feels like slowly falling down a cliff—not fast enough to scare you, but precariously enough, so you know you don’t have your footing. And, when you’re a kid, that fall can feel like it will last an eternity.

I arrived in the U.S. yesterday. Well, let’s be honest. I arrived in San Francisco. As Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner suggested long ago in the hippie era, “San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.” Geez, there’s a lot of REALITY these days, isn’t there?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about one of my co-founders, Jeff Hamaoui, after he wrote a post, The Carpenter and the Gardener, dedicated to me and our third co-founder Christine Sperber.

The next time someone says this sentence to you, smile, and respond, “Thank you.” Hope you enjoy the video below. #showingmyage

This week, I discussed aging in the unique and unsettling time of COVID-19 with my good friend, psychologist, gerontologist, Age Wave CEO, and best-selling author of 17 books, Ken Dychtwald, PhD.

Hermann Hesse wrote, “When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.” “Hay un árbol que adoro.” I flirt with this specific tree on my daily walk as it towers above a farm just five minutes from the MEA campus.

The title of this post is a mindset. It’s also the truth for many of us in midlife and beyond. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Along with the physical changes that occur as we get older, changes to our sleep patterns are part of the normal aging process.

Early in April, I wrote a post on what the world would be like if we all retired at the same time. Of course, that ain’t gonna happen, but an increasing number of my peers tell me they’re ready for their pitstop or gap year.

Brain fog. Cog fog. Call it what you want. I’ve got it. At least for the last few weeks. Entrepreneurs often say they eat their own dog food. At MEA, Christine, Jeff, and I have binged on our growth mindset food. And, maybe that has led me to my recent bout with “cog fog.”