I recently did a podcast with RadSeason focusing on my fascination with festivals, which led me to create Fest300 in 2013. During the span of one year, I went to 36 festivals in 20 countries. I was curious that the more digital we became as a society, the more ritual we seemed to need.

When I was at Stanford Business School, unfortunately, I could not get off the waitlist for the most popular class, affectionately known as “Touchy-Feely.” Chronicled in this article, this class (formally known as “Interpersonal Dynamics”) created foundational skills in effective communication, leadership, teamwork, emotional intelligence, and creativity.

We don’t see advertisements in mainstream magazines for anti-women, anti-black, or anti-gay products, but beauty mags are full of anti-aging creams, serums, supplements, foods, and clothes.

“Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young generations to a knowledge of a world and of life? No, there are none. [...] that is not quite true. Our religions were always such schools in the past, but how many people regard them as such today? How many of us older persons have really been brought up in such a school and prepared for the second half of life, for old age, death, and eternity?”

The two most prominent pieces of advice Dad gave me in my teens were “marriage is a compromise” and “keep your options open.” For a young mind, this wisdom seemed to be at war with itself, but with a few years behind me now, I’ve come to realize that paradoxes and juxtapositions are the most interesting parts of life. Jung suggested maturity was about “holding the tensions of the opposites.”

I come from a family of women who had an entrepreneurial spirit. My grandmother and mother both had several small businesses. Thus, when I became a single parent with five of my seven children still home, no child support, and no family to help, I not only worked a day job but started micro businesses of my own.

When do you feel most untethered from what’s expected of you and most inspired by what’s inside of you? Why don’t we ask that question once a year as we approach midlife? Our habits can be like a drug, a distraction and anesthetic from what’s really going on in our lives.

If ever there was a time in our lives when we needed to shed our baggage, this is it. The mammoth changes we’ve had to make in every aspect of our lives has left most of us feeling like we’re running one long continuous, never-ending marathon. And it’s only been a few months.

As I mentioned before when I riffed on Wisdom Well with my friend Seth Godin for a week, my number one piece of advice for cultivating and harvesting wisdom is very simple. Take an empty diary or journal, write “My Wisdom Book” on the front or inside the cover and every weekend create a few bullet points of what you learned that week and how it might serve you in the future.

I was recruited to co-host The Inc. Tank podcast last January by the show's founding Executive Producer, Christina Elson. Although I was excited at the prospect of co-hosting with Christina and talking with industry leaders about the impact of innovative technology on business and society, I had a bit of performance anxiety.