40 Is Coming: Recent Episodes
OverPond Media
"40 Is Coming" is a series of reflections and rants about turning 40, and what - if anything - it means. This is a podcast about the lives we wanted, the lives we have, and the gaps between them. Join us as we explore the detours, diversions, dreams, desires, and decisions that come with the big 4-0.
How much of our lives, from the smallest everyday choices to the biggest life decisions, are impacted by our sense of what everybody is doing, or what nobodyis doing?
Many of us first encountered the everybody-to-nobody spectrum at school, especially during our pre-teen and teenage years, when knowing who was included in the word "everybody", who was being referred to by the word "nobody", and maintaining (or moving) our position on that status spectrum was of life-critical importance.
Whether online or offline, how do you tend to react when you find yourself in an environment where everybody thinks or acts a certain way, or when nobody in the space thinks or acts the way you do?
For some of us, the idea of everyone is aspirational. A signal of the kind of people you want be associated with. The kind of people you want your kids and family to be surrounded by. The kind of person you're working to become.
Others of us find the idea of being in an environment where most people talk and dress and behave in similar ways to be uninviting and/or uninteresting, and would rather be in a place where nobody like that is around.
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How much of our lives are lived in the gray, somewhere between telling the full truth at all times, an "innocent" white lie when it's convenient, and outright deception to get what we want?
Do you find that your relationship with speaking the truth, about a situation or about yourself, changes based on the power/status/authority of the coworker you're interacting with?
Have you found that your willingness or ability to be your "full self" at work depends on the type of work you do and the part of the country where you do it?
Even at our big age, many of us arrive at 40 telling - and being told - off white lies within our families. Do you tend to justify more off white lies when speaking to the elder members of your family who raised you, or the youngest members of your family who you are raising or helping to raise?
How many people in our generation are arriving at this stage of life having constructed an adult identity online built on a few off white lies?
Do you find it easier or harder to acknowledge the truth in moments of solitude? Can you still find the truth when you look at yourself in the mirror?
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Do you have enough space for your stuff?
A recent look around my kitchen after watching the latest episode of my favorite home design YouTube channel got me thinking about how our relationship between our living spaces and our stuff is a helpful metaphor for thinking about the space we have, or lack, for all the stuff that comes with entering this stage of life.
Is your life at 40 defined by the creative ways you have found to Tetris-fit the stuff of your life into the limited resources and space you have?
Are you arriving at 40 with more than enough space for the stuff of your life?, with ample physical strength, quality relationships, stable mental health, emotional capacity, and a financial situation that gives you freedom and flexibility to take on and/or give away more stuff?
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Survival is an interesting word to associate with turning 40. Some of us arrive at this season of life having suffered, endured, overcome, recovered, fallen, struggled, and battled to make it.
Others of us have built, earned, discovered, acquired, protected, and preserved the pieces of lives that we are proud of, and pleased with.
Inspired by a good book I remember reading when I turned 30, and a frustratingly unpleasant recent battle addressing a pest issue in my home, I've been thinking a lot lately about survival.
What has enabled you to survive to 40?
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Recently, I've been thinking about the saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it". And if turning 40 is about anything, it is about getting to a lot of life's bridges.
* family bridges
* health bridges
* relationship bridges
* career bridges
Are you arriving at 40 feeling hopeful and more free to build bridges, as many of the gates and gatekeepers that controlled access to bridges of opportunity are losing power and control?
Do you arrive at this stage of your life with a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment, after making life choices based on the advice of elders who promised that bridges of safety and security would be guaranteed if you followed a certain life path, only to find that those bridges are nowhere to be found anymore?
How are the bridges in your life? Do you have what you need to cross them?
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By 40, for every feel-good story of the sacrificially kind, altruistic, good samaritan, whose generosity helped someone else get back on their feet and rebuild their lives; we've heard a cautionary tale of a person who also tried to be kind, and tried to help someone in need. Often a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a romantic partner, or a co-worker. Only to have their entire life turned upside down - or worse - by the very person who desperately needed and accepted their assistance.
This stage of life is a good time to ask some questions about how we've come to think about helping others.
Who do you help?
When do you help?
What prompts you to help?
How do you help?
In what ways will you not help?
Has the range of moments - and/or people - you're open to help changed over the years?
What crosses the line from help to enabling/weakening?
When do you ask for help?
How often do you allow yourself to receive help?
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Is anyone's face good enough?
We have arrived at a moment in society where the range of people who feel compelled to undergo signficant shape-shifting procedures to alter their appearance has expanded well beyond those in entertainment, and now includes people from all walks of life.
In some ways, the plastic surgery spectacle of many in ithe public eye is a funhouse mirror of the rest of us. Their dramatic facial and body transformations represent an exaggerated expression of the ways that our desires and fears lead us to shape shift in our private lives.
A lot of us have altered ourselves. What kinds of alterations have you made?
What motivated/forced you to do it?
As you enter your 40s, how are you feeling about the changes you've made to your identity, tastes, and/or appearance?
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How did the latchkey kid generations grow up to become helicopter parents?
On a recent drive home on a busy four-lane road during Friday evening rush hour, in a momentary break in the traffic, I saw a group of middle-school aged kids crossing the road on their bikes and it got me to thinking about the last time I had seen something that was such a routine part of our childhoods.
The societal shift in how and where kids gather and play, especially in many areas across the U.S., has happened in just half a generation...and it's our generation of 40-year olds whose collective decisions have disappeared some of the most formative aspects of our childhoods from the childhoods of our children.
So how did we become these kinds of parents? And whether you have children or not, in what ways are our generation's ideas of protection and safety having side effects on the experiences of our youth?
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At this stage in my life, I find it difficult to connect with anyone who hasn't dealt with deep disappointment, sobering setbacks, or recurring regrets, in some area of life.
In many ways, this podcast - and the upcoming book that accompanies it - is designed for people who are arriving at 40 with a life that has some scrapes, stains, and smudges...which is most of us.
Many of us have at least one aspect of our life where we are low on hope. Whether it's an intractable issue in our bodies, an ongoing saga with our loved ones, or a recurring drama with someone, or something, in our lives; we can find ourselves in a place where we've run out of the mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual fuel to manufacture hope for certain areas of life.
And once hope runs out, so does everything else that good and life-affirming. Including the will, ability, and strength to try. So this is a moment to check on your hope tank, and identify what's filling or draining it.
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After a lifetime of positive experiences at the dentist, a throwaway comment about the structure of my teeth during a recent visit for a routine cleaning threatened to end my four-decade long run of good dentist visit vibes.
Which led me to think about the structure of our lives, the roots we have, the roots we are missing, and the roots we needed to be stable, secure, safe, and successful in this chapter of life.
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One of the things that prompted me to create this podcast was the sense that there are going to be a lot of people in our generation who are not going to feel ready, even at 40.
A recent TikTok poking fun at people who are hitting their late 30s and still aren't sure what they want in the romantic lives got me to thinking about all the other areas of life where we get asked questions like "You're not ready, yet?!" and "What are you waiting for?!"
At this point in your life, what do you consider cornerstones, things that must be in place for a quality life to be built?
And what are capstones, things that are nice to have, life goals, but come after you've got the cornerstone parts of your life in place?
My heart for this episode is really for everyone arriving at 40 with nothing solid enough to call a cornerstone, and too many immediate concerns to have much time for dreaming and planning for achieving capstones. This one is for anyone who looks around at your life and sees mostly rolling stones.
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To the icebreaker question "If you could have any superpower, which would it be?" my superpower of choice would be the ability to speak any language, dialect, or tongue.
The ability to understand, and to be understood, in all contexts & in all places is - for someone like me - the same as the ability to fly or walk through walls. Curiosity about myself & others is one of the reasons this podcast exists.
At this stage of your life, do you see yourself as someone who is curious, indifferent, or hostile to the languages and lives of other people? At 40, do you live in an environment where curiousity about others is valued?
Did you grow in a context where curiosity was not an option? Where you had to be aware of the ways of being and speaking of those around you, for your well-being, advancement, or survival?
Or did you enter adulthood in an environment where curiousity was an option? Where you were part of the default setting, and most of the people you encountered spoke, thought, dressed, and acted in similar ways to you?
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Twice this week, I had a movie studio quality, REM sleep dream sequence abruptly cut short by my phone alarm. An alarm that I set thinking that I had given myself enough time to rest and to dream. The reality of the alarm was that my time for those dream sessions was over sooner than I expected.
For some of us, turning 40 feels like an alarm that has interrupted the dream of young adulthood. For others, approaching 40 is more like a notification bell that is reminding you that it is time to get back to your dreams.
What is the state of your dreams at this stage of your life? Do you still dream? How have your dreams changed? Do your thoughts and past experiences amplify your dreams, or weigh you down so much you don't have any energy left for dreaming?
What are the alarms in your life that are interrupting your dreams?
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We live in a world that rewards the bold individual, the spicy hot take, most strongest worded opinions, and a never-back-down approach to advocating and arguing for what we believe in.
In most areas of our lives, especially online, our society does not have much patience for taking time to reflect on what has been done, to examine what has been said, to be self-aware about the stories we tell about who we like to think we are.
We're not very good at admitting when we are wrong. We struggle to understand how our perspective could be incomplete. Many of us have a very hard time dealing with life circumstances where we were right, and things still went wrong.
At this stage of your life, how are you making decisions about the right thing to do?
And when you thought you were right, and the perspective you had could be trusted, and things wound up turning out differently that you anticipated...what do you do next?
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A recent TikTok poking fun at those of us who use the elite, world-renowned "Bunny Ears" method of shoelace tying hit close to home, and made me think about how we respond when presented with a new way of doing something we've done a particular way our whole lives.
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Depending on your lifestyle and the part of the country you live in, it can be easy to think that the postal mail system is not a big deal, aside from receiving packages from online shopping. However, recent natural disasters in the U.S., and the seemingly endless list of conflict and war related disasters around the world, have presented the world with images of people who once had hometowns, and homes, and mailboxes.
This has led me to think a lot about the phrase "return to sender", and how we handle situations when we discover that the things we planned on receiving, and the lives we expected to be living, are not going to arrive.
By 40, most of us have experienced some significant life shift that reoriented the plans that we made, and redirected the life paths we were on. Learning to process the loss of that which has been marked "return to sender" in our lives is critical to making the most of this new version of life we now find ourselves in.
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As a transition from tears and prayers of the 1st half of Jamie Foxx's Netflix special, "What Had Happened Was", to the laughs and vibes of the 2nd half, Jamie does a bit based on the refrain, "If I can stay funny, I can stay alive."
This phrase becomes more powerful as he shares multiple stories about how his sense of humor carried him through the toughest parts of the recovery process from a serious medical issue he suffered last year.
At 40, each word in Jamie's refrain take on new meaning. How would you fill in the blank for this stage in your life? If I can stay _______, I can stay ______.
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A beautiful holiday week moment in my current city and a terrible holiday week moment in my previous city reintroduced some important research about how our psychology is impacted by our social contexts, and got me to thinking about fire fighters, who becomes a fire fighter, and whether we have enough of them.
For the purposes of this episode, I'm using the phrase fire fighters to refer broadly to the kind of people who choose to remain attentive, attuned, and aware to the smoke signals in our families, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and societies. People who choose to respond to tragedy by getting up, getting involved, and working to try to reduce suffering and provide aid & assistance.
Who are the fire fighters in your life? Are you a fire fighter?
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The human body is incredible. And what happens to it over time is both fascinating and frightening.
Have you ever had a sudden "health humble"? A time when you found yourself receiving medical information about your body that you weren't prepared to hear and did not see coming?
How did you handle it? Complete denial? Intense research? Drastic lifestyle changes?
Entering your 40s often means dealing with some kind of health humble. Some are small, and you can learn to live with and/or laugh at them. Some are big, and require you to fundamentally change parts of your life you may have taken for granted. Some are serious, and don't come with good answers or happy endings.
How do you process these moments?
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One of the cultural trends that have shaped our generation of 40 year olds has been the resurgent popularity of all kinds of personality assessments.
From the use of zodiac signs to screen romantic partners, to the use of tools like the StrengthsFinder and DISC assessments to evaluate employees, to the experimentation with tests like the Enneagram within spiritual communities to help individuals identify their purpose, the various personality categories, labels, and descriptions have seeped into our societal subconscious and have become a widely-used shorthand for describing ourselves, and others.
The godparent of these personality tests is the Myers Briggs Personality Test. I recently took the Myers Briggs test, nearly 20 after the first time I took the assessment, in my 20s. And it got me to thinking about how these assessments, the labels that come with them, the conclusions we draw from them, and the way we award and avoid others based on the meanings we assign to different personality traits.
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Between The Olympics and the 60+ national elections being held around the world, we're in a fascinating moment to observe endless case studies in human behavior when people are in crowds.
Since I was young, I've been interested in this aspect of life. What is the difference between the kind of people who start chorus of cheers or lead a crowd in a protest chant, and the kind of people who are the last to finish clapping at the end of standing ovation or the last person to throw a punch in a street brawl.
Humans are social, tribal beings. So we are still being influenced by others, and influencing others, far beyond our youth. Peer pressure doesn't end when we leave school.
At this point in your life, in what areas are you the "first clapper", leading the group; the "last clapper", joining at the last minute or with the last word; or the "middle clapper", not in a hurry to join the masses, but ready to engage when the timing feels right.
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I've been thinking about the cliche phrase "Get Off My Lawn" a lot recently. It's one of the timeless anthems of middle and old age. The point when people feel like they've lived long enough and paid enough dues in a society to claim some ownership of its "lawn" - the social norms, values, and standards of the society, which we begin to take responsibility for around 40.
One of the true gifts of youth is the privilege to dissent, to debate, and sometimes, to disobey the very people and institutions you depend on for your survival and development. Part of the work of child development and human maturity is not just to identify the literal and metaphorical lawns of the society around them and "touch grass", but to pull up the blades, dig random holes in the dirt, run all over the lawn, and daydream on the lawn.
And part of the work of adulting is balancing the questioning and exploring of the youth with guidance and perspective.
But with live being as hectic as it can be, and with our individual status on the lawn of society being as precarious as it can be, it's easy to fall into the habits of past generations of 40 years olds in responding to teens and 20-somethings whenever they start asking too many questions and making too many calls for change.
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The first time I heard about the concept of 3rd places was when I was in college. Over the years, I've enjoyed a variety of 3rd places, including coffee shops, gyms, houses of worship, and live music venues.
But my two favorite 3rd places - by far - are laundromats and car washes. They are no-judgement, family-friendly, budget-friendly, class-collapsing spaces.
Last weekend, I happened to make a stop at my local car wash and laundromats, and it got me to thinking about what decisions our generation will make about the 3rd spaces in our country.
We live very different lives,in very different regions, in very different life situations. The forces of our economy, our politics, and our technology push and pull us into very different kinds of community and very different kinds of 3rd spaces.
And yet, the research is clear: humans need social interaction and connection, with a varity of people, in a variety of places.
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In many ways, this podcast is about timing. Turning 40 years is primarily a conversation about timing.
The timing of the events in our lives. The timing of the seasons and stages of our lives.
Bad timing. Good timing. Unbelievably fortunate timing. Unbelievably tragic timing.
How many of us are approaching 40 in a season of life where we cannot afford for anything to go wrong because we have too many people, and things, to care for?
There's a difference between caring about someone or something and caring for that person or thing.
What are you caring for at this stage of your life?
Who are you caring for as you approach 40?
What do you when what you cared for is gone?
How do you handle the sudden shifts in life that cause endings you didn't have time to prepare for?
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My hair-related fears and concerns about aging never included worrying about seeing my hair turning gray. My two biggest concerns had always been about developing a receding hairline and balding.
During a routine trip to the office bathroom at work, following a recent visit to my barber for my monthly haircut, I was stunned to discover two new strands of bright gray hair sticking out of my beard.
Seeing my hair turn gray is one of the few life milestones I have experienced alone, and it got me to thinking about the kind of life milestones that define the first part of our lives, and the kind of milestones that will define this stage of life.
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A few days ago, I had the unfortunate experience of being stuck in an elevator at my job for an hour. On the 13th Floor. On a Friday afternoon.
While this highly irritating, slightly traumatizing ordeal was taking place, I decided to do what most writers do. I took this unexpected prompt, opened my notes app, and started writing.
This experience was a good metaphor for life moments that happen to many people around 40. Moments when we get stopped, moments where we find ourselves stuck.
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At this stage of your life, do you still dream? What are your dreams about? What are your dreams no longer about? Who are your dreams for?
40 is a great time to ask: What have your dreams cost you? What has cost you your dreams?
Athletes have an offseason, many actors and entertainers have an offseason. Politicians get an offseason. And there are all sorts of occupations and lifestyles that have cycles that at least include slow periods where people can take short breaks.
I wish more adults could experience an offseason, especially those of us about to enter mid-life. I believe that we all need time to sleep, time to rest, time to reflect, time to reset. We need time to dream.
We need an offseason.
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One of the social media trends I've come to appreciate has been people making TikToks of themselves using the face aging filter. In the majority of the ones that appear in my feed, people genearlly respond lovingly, gently, and knowingly at the visuals of their future faces.
I think this trend, that made it socially acceptable to publicly share images of a version of yourself with more wrinkles, less hair, and no youthful glow, has been a much-needed counterbalance to the body slimming underclothes, weight loss supplements, plastic surgery procedures, hair dyeing kits, and the billion-dollar industries that feed on the insecurities and realities of many of us soon-to-be middle agers.
We all have multiple aspects of our lives that function as windows that others to see us at this stage in our lives, and as mirrors that allow us to see ourselves. So I wanted to invite us to think about the mirrors and windows of our lives, and how they impact how we think about turning 40.
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Have you ever experienced the stages of shock, denial, anger, and grief after discovering that someone who you respected and admired was not who you thought they were?
At this stage of our lives, a year has not gone by without us witnessing some once-beloved and respected entertainer, politician, local community leader, or religious figure get caught up in a reputation-tainting scandal.
And as we continue to occupy more positions of influence and authority on-and-offline throughout our 40s, in our families, in our commmunities, and in our society, we have the opportunity - and responsibility - to impact how our culture handles those who slip, trip, stumble, or tumble from a position of status.
So we're going to need to be as honest with ourselves as we expect those who have let us down to be with us.
Did an experience of being let down by someone you looked up as child affect how you react today to hearing about a public figure's fall from grace?
Has an experience of being the person who has disappointed others as a result of life choices you made changed how you respond to news about a famous person's shortcomings and setbacks?
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One of the gifts of turning 40 is the self-awareness to know when to keep your two cents to yourself and sit out a fight, whether over the internet or in your house.
But life comes at us fast, and it seems like every few weeks another Really Big Deal Event happen, and many of us answer the battle cry of our group and take to our phones, our TVs, and our streets to stand up and speak out.
One of my core unifying principles of everything is that much of human behavior, especially between groups of people, is that much of life functions like the cafeteria of a large public high school. Where you sit, who knows you exist, whose side you take when conflict arises...these same questions are as important the dining tables, boardroom tables, and political roundtables of our adult lives as they were to the lunchroom tables of our childhoods.
This episode is a check-in meditation for a generation of 40 year olds who have already lived through a lifetime worth of interpersonal conflicts, social movements, online fights, and existential crises. We have been seen a lot, said a lot, and done a lot. We've been in a lot of fights, about a lot of topics, with a lot of people.
How's going for you at this point in your life? How's it going for the 40-year olds around you? How have the technological and societal shifts in the speed and scope of the stands we've had to take and the fights we've had to engage impacted us?
How many of us are carrying unhealed mental scars from last month's tragedy into this month's tragedy?
How many of us are living in the rubble of crumbled relationships, in the aftermath of the arguments and battles from last year's outrage?
What have you learned from all the online and offline fights that you've seen and experienced?
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Ignorance can be bliss, the time between when something went wrong and when you found out something went wrong. But what happens your bliss is rudely interrupted by reality and you discover that things are not going to be okay unless you get help.
At this point in my life, I realize that there are two kinds of 40-year olds: those who have experienced at least one humbling moment where they weren't as smart as they thought they were, or that things around them weren't as certain as they thought...and people who have never had such an experience.
One advantage of experiencing a humbling moment, is the knowledge of what it feels like - as an adult - to need help.
It's one thing to need help. It's another thing to want help. But to ask to for help? For many of us, asking for help is an entirely different matter.
Are you someone is comfortable asking for help? In what settings and circumstances do you find it harder to ask for assistance?
How good are you at accepting help? Do you ever feel obligated to return the favor as soon as possible? Do you try to "pay it forward?"
What level of gratitude do you expect when you are the one who provided help to a stranger who asked you for assistance?
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By 40, many of us have experienced being on multiple sides of expectation-acceptance dance.
Many of us had childhoods that were defined by the expectations of others. We saw how their acceptance and approval of us was often determined - or withheld - by how much we met their expectations, or how much we resisted and went against them. And this social reward/punishment system continued into multiple aspects our adult lives, whether we are known by a few hundred people, or by a few million.
Those of us who are fans of sports believe in the power of athletic competition, and the personalities and performances of athletes to tell a story of who we are, individually and collectively. So as U.S. 2023 World Championship Gold Medal sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson reclaimed the attention and applause of the world this month, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on what we've learned at this stage in our lives from the times we've been the one placed on a pedastal, knocked off the pedastal, and fighting for the chance to get back on top of the pedastal once again.
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Taking an episode to celebrate the impact of the semi-strangers in our lives. They are not the super famous figures who had an impact on our lives. They are also not the super foundational people who have close, personal connections to us and to our life story.
They are...the people in the middle. We may not have known them well, but they made an impact on us, they played a role in our lives, and their legacy matters.
Who are the semi-strangers in your life? How do you celebrate the impact they have had on your life and preserve their memory?
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When you're young, ignorance is bliss. By 40, more often than not, ignorance is just expensive. And what's even more expensive than ignorance? Procrastination.
Those things that we know we should not put off, delay, and ignore but we do anyway. Whether because of fear or fatigue, denial or distractions, being overwhelmed and/or underpaid, most of us have some area of our lives where we have been warned and informed that there's something we need to address and we have yet to do anything about it.
Sometimes, we have less time than we think, the future comes faster than we expected, and we're left stuck with the consequences of our choice to put off to tomorrow what should have been handled today.
Each day is a opportunity to create new possibilities for our future selves, to reignite relationships and realities that have become stagnant...to get unstuck.
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When was the first time you knew you were adult? When you moved out on your own? When you took over paying the bills for older/younger loved ones? When you accepted responsibility and accountability for your actions?
One of the things we all come to realize is that there are levels to adulting. One key level of adult life is being able to identify and prioritize the essential components of our lives. The relationships, habits, beliefs, and possessions that allow us to survive and navigate our days.
What are the parts of your life that cannot break?
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Have you ever found yourself disconnected and detached at the kind of party you used to enjoy, with people you used to be comfortable with, in a space that you used to look forward to going to?
When was the first time you remember feeling isolated, alone, and/or invisible in a space full of friends,family, neighbors, or coworkers? When was the most recent time you felt like this?
How do you navigate the times when you are required - or feel responsible - to stay in environments and around people who don't resonate with you?
How do your social habits differ when you're planning an event for someone else vs. when you're deciding how to engage at an event you're just attending?
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Do you love to travel on your birthday? Are you the kind of person who needs to take some sort of trip - whether across town or across the globe - as part of your birthday festivities?
But sometimes life happens, and we have to adapt and adjust, and expand our definition of what a getaway can be.
Do you find that you still feel pressure to have plan big birthday trips, have Instagrammable birthday events, and make big birthday plans you can talk about when someone asks you what you're doing to celebrate?
Do you have space for the small, simple, short moments of joy?
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Does anyone else feel the strange pressure to look young on the day when the calendar is literally reminding you that you've never been older?!
At this stage in your life, are you finding that how you think and feel about your body on your birthday is more about how well your body is actually doing, or more about the expectations and opinions from friends, family, and/or society about what your body should look like at this age?
At a deeper level, how is the journey with your body going at 40? How has the way you use your body, talk about your body, treat your body, and think about your body changed over the years?
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How often have you looked at a situation, looked around at the people with/near you, and decided that you were going to have to be the one to make sure that things didn't go bad on your watch?
What are the muscles you've built from the times when you've had to go it alone and get it done by yourself? What are wounds and scars that came as a consequence of not having anyone by your side?
How have your life experiences affected when you're willing to step up and step into a situation? Are you finding yourself more cautious in offering support to be by someone's side? Who do you allow to step into your life and support you?
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When did you start weighing the tradeoffs between a good night's sleep and a good night out?
For many of us, turning 40 means that our preferences have shifted in when we find the time to have a good.
Everything from where we are willing to go, when we are willng to go, how long we are willing to stay, who we are willing to go with, and what we are willing to wear.
At this stage in your life, what are your requirements for going out? How do you balance the joy of spontaneous outings with the inconvience of unplanned events?
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Who do you go to for advice about money? How many of those people did you find online?
For those of us turning 40 at this moment, our adult lives have overlapped with the rise of real-time financial data, the rise of the personal finance media industry, and the rise of the financial expert/influencer.
And it feels like we've seen it all: from cable TV stock pickers and social media real estate gurus, to crypto evangelists and entreprenuer lifestyle influencers.
How do you decide who to listen to about finances, investing, and handling money? How have your life experiences affected where you look for information about finances and whose advice you are willing to listen to?
1987 Letter from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Investment Advisers Act: https://tinyurl.com/34r7fz38
2013 Publication from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Regulation of Investment Advisers: https://tinyurl.com/437hb9cb
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Few things are more sobering than realizing how easily your day, your month, or a whole season of your life can be altered by one random decision by one random stranger on a random day.
Anyone who has ever had their property attacked or their body assaulted knows, listing what was taken from you is different than thinking about what you lost.
When an incident like this happens, our common triage assessment of the aftermath involves asking:
"What happened?"
"Where are you?"
"Are you okay?"
"Who was hurt?"
"Did they take anything?"
There are so many ways to answer that last question, and to explore what those words mean to us at this point of our lives.
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You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
You may or may not spend a lot of time on social media. You may or may not care about Twitter, or its CEO. But we all have blue checks in our lives.
Most of societal structures and social norms that influence how we see ourselves, and how others see us, we had no role in creating.
Social media is one of the rare instances where we were present at its orgin, participated in its construction, and observed how certain things were created and became status and identity markers.
We have survived long enough online to see how this thing - which didn't used to exist or matter - arose to change how people interacted with each other in a specific space.
At 40, there is a certain clarity about the blue checks in life that we never got.
How do we think about the identity markers we never received, the status symbols we attained which have become irrelevant over time, and the privileged positions we didn't pay attention to when we were younger that have only become more important in adulthood?
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This episode is for givers. The people who have everything, for everyone else. Those who do everything, give everything, fix everything, find everything...for everyone else.
When do you allow yourself to take? When do you ask for what you need? Which area(s) of your life do you keep for yourself?
April 2023 Univ. of Pennsylvania Knowledge at Wharton Interview with Adam Grant: Givers vs. Takers: The Surprising Truth about Who Gets Ahead: https://tinyurl.com/mry3y879
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At this stage of your life, are you still finding a stream of potential new friends for you to meet? How have your friendshiips changed and evolved over the years? Has the way you make friends changed over the years? Are you still making friends?
Have your various identites - in your family, relationship, wealth, beliefs - impacted who you've kept as a friend, who considers you a friend, and who you will consider as a potential friend?
How do your friendships differ from the kinds of friendships that you see with younger or older people in your life?
The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss - Findings from the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey: https://tinyurl.com/32sepdus
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What irritates you at this stage of your life? Has your opinion on what is annoying, self-righteous behvaior changed over the years?
Are there things that you now do - and you know rub other people the wrong way - which you haved doubled down on, regardless of who is bothered by it?
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What have you experienced or witnessed that has changed the choices you make in certain areas of your life? Is there something that you can't unsee that has caused you to change the way you think and act?
The late legendary author Maya Angelou once reflected on her life by saying, "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."
Doing better is a choice, a commitment, and sometimes a struggle to actually follow through with. But sometimes we make the choice and the change, and do things differently. What are the events/moments that left such a mark on us that we had to do better afterwards?
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After years of trial and error, listening to different points of view, and trying new approaches, at this point in your life, how do you deal with being told that what you're doing isn't right, isn't enough, or isn't helpful anymore...and that you need to try again?
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"It is better to give than to receive." Often, we give right after receiving. Whether what we've received is a rush of happy hormones after seeing/experiencing something wonderful, or a vibe-killing wave of sadness/shame after being made aware of something horrible, a strong motivator for us to take action and do good in the world is driven by temporary moments of heightened emotion.
At this stage of your life, how do you decide which cause/issue to give to, when to give, who to give to, and what to give of yourself?
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At this point in your life, what are some things you simply will not do? In your personal life, with your family, on your job, as you navigate the society, are there things you will always do? How are you creating the "Will and Won't" lists in your life?
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Whether you're the type of person who likes to chill and keep the peace, or the type of person who is ready for whatever needs to be done to deal with someone who has disturbed your peace; at this stage in your life, how do decide whether a fight is worth it?
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For the generation that redefined greatness online and in our society, with what we know now at our age, how should we think about what makes someone great? How do we nurture and navigate our own greatness?
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How do build community, make friends, and find our place now that we've graduated from the spaces that were created for us just because we were the newest and youngest adults?
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From OverPond Media, "40 Is Coming" is a new podcast series featuring reflections, rants, and lessons learned about turning 40. This introduction gives you a sense of the inspiration for this podcast, and where I hope to take it.