Chip Conley

You probably didn’t know it, but “Yankee” was a derogatory term of the Brits to describe the new world upstarts but was soon adopted by New Englanders themselves (and many a baseball fan, centuries later).

This month sixty years ago, Gloria Steinem moved to New York to pursue her fledgling journalism career and, a dozen years later at age 38, started the pioneering Ms magazine. Given how influential she was in co-creating the modern women’s movement, the 85-year-old Steinem has some words of wisdom to offer those of us who are in the early stages of creating a “Modern Elder” movement.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States, I offer you this beautiful Washington Post article on the value of giving to others. This particular passage tugged at my heart, “We crave wealth, overspend and end up broke. We desire attention but end up alone. We sprint toward what we want and away from what we need.” Highly recommend you read it on this national holiday. How can you draw joy from helping others?

Nearly 2,500 years ago, Aristotle suggested that a good story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The 3-act play (or life) has existed ever since. Five hundred years ago, scientists started studying the epic 3-part metamorphosis of the caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly journey.

While I’d love to know the answer to that question, the more relevant question is, “Who are the three wisest people in your world?” A growing number of companies are starting to track and cultivate wisdom by asking the following question on their employee work climate surveys:

From my perspective, mentorship is defined by who is asking the questions, which can be categorized into one of two roles:

What if our primary operating system for life is meant to change in midlife and beyond? Psychologist Carl Jung suggested, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego; the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

Adolescence, as we know it, didn’t exist as a word until psychologist G. Stanley Hall coined the term for a book he wrote in 1904. Today, we recognize adolescence as that time when we experience a major transition (puberty) in who we are and how we see the world.

Déjà vu, all over again. The last time I co-wrote something with my Stanford Business School classmate, Seth Godin, was 35 years ago. We were two of the youngest people in our class, and, quite frankly, we were a little weird. I entered biz school at age 21, and Seth was just 3 months older. We were both entrepreneurs at heart. But we got restless in lectures, especially from professors who’d never run a business.

I was barely old enough to buy a beer when I found myself in my Stanford GSB classroom. I was bored silly. I was the second youngest person in our class of 300. Right off, I intuitively felt there was more to learning business than drawing decision trees and grokking cost accounting. So, I decided to DIY my education.