The Midlife Curiosity Tour That Changed Everything | Allison Aubrey

Allison Aubrey walked into a longevity lab expecting a great story. She walked out believing she was failing at key parts of her own life. After 25 years as one of NPR's most trusted health and science reporters, Aubrey agreed to a battery of tests meant to measure her biological age, and the results rattled her enough to send her on a curiosity tour, looking for answers that had nothing to do with biology. What she found became her new book, Your Turn https://amzn.to/458BaFk, a reframing of the years between 50 and 75 as a third turn, the part of life where, against every expectation, a hidden surge of energy and purpose becomes possible. In this conversation, Jonathan and Allison get into the moment a lab technician's offhand comment sent her into a spiral, the recurring dream that a professional dream analyst helped her decode, and the real reason she finally stepped away from the newsroom rhythm she'd built her 25-year identity around. You'll hear how she distinguishes passion from purpose from simply mattering, and why one of those three actually shows up in your bloodwork. You'll hear the real stories behind her "curiosity tour," including a retired police officer who found her purpose as the last person walking a community 5K, and a scientist who left a powerful research job to pull invasive vines off trees in her own neighborhood. And you'll hear the simple, repeatable patterns Allison found across dozens of women from all walks of life who made real pivots, one that starts by going inward before it ever asks you to go outward. If you've ever wondered whether the pull toward something different in your life is real or just restlessness, this conversation offers something rare: actual evidence, and actual permission. You can find Allison at: It's Your Turn Substack https://allisonaubrey.substack.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/allison.aubrey | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/midlife-pivot-purpose-reinvention-allison-aubrey Next week, we're sitting down with Bella DePaulo to talk about what it actually means to be single at heart, and why some of the deepest, most authentic lives being lived right now aren't built around a partner at all. Midlife Design Lab: I'm opening up an intimate retreat with me and a small, curated group in Boulder, CO (Oct 24-25, 2026), followed by 3 months of virtual group coaching. A few weeks back, I shared something I'd been building for myself, and the response blew me away, so spots are limited and I expect them to fill fast. If this calls to you, apply here https://jonathanfields.substack.com/p/midlife-design-lab-update-and-invitation?open=false#%C2%A7midlife-design-lab-immersion. Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  Allison Aubrey spent 25 years as one of NPR's most trusted health and science reporters. Then, a routine test at a longevity lab that she had agreed to do only as part of a story she was reporting told her something about her life that rattled her. It was a huge wake-up call that sent her on a journey to figure out who she wanted to be in her next season of life and what really matters. In this conversation, you'll learn why the tests built to measure her aging body ended up diagnosing something entirely differently. The one word that a stranger used that made her stop hearing anything else in the room. You'll learn what a dream about missing a live broadcast actually turned out to mean.

• 0:42Jonathan Fields?

  We'll explore the real difference between passion, purpose, and mattering, and why one of those actually shows up in your blood work. And the simple question that helped dozens of women find their way back to themselves, along with the specific repeating patterns that Alison saw in people living incredible later lives as she traveled the country on what she called her curiosity tour. Alison is also the author of the new book, Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll jump right in after this short break.

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• 2:25Jonathan Fields?

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• 2:56Jonathan Fields?

  Your new book started as reporting.

• 3:01Jonathan Fields?

  You find yourself, you end up at a longevity institute, kind of a bit of experiential journalism, like James Nestor, Michael Pollan style, like, I'm just going to go in and become a part of this. You have a long career before that as a health and science journalist, reporter. Like, so this is not new for you. You know, you've been exploring and trying to live a life that you feel is alive and connected and healthy.

• 3:25Jonathan Fields?

  Things don't go as planned.

• 3:28Jonathan Fields?

  Take me there.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  Sure. It was actually very new for me. I have been telling other people's stories for 25 years. And I got this call from the woman who heads media relations for Northwestern University Medical Center. And she explained in this very excited voice that they had this new longevity institute they were launching. And they were trying to think of a reporter who could do a great job kind of introducing it and putting it in context. And she was sort of flattering me while at the same time offering me an exclusive. And I fell for it. And I sort of unwittingly went in there with, you know, thinking, oh, this is going to be a great story. Like, people need to understand this.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  You know, the science of longevity and lifespan is accumulating, and this is like a really important, you know, institute. So, once I found myself there that day, and I had agreed to this battery of tests to try to measure, basically, distinguish my chronological age, that's the number on my birthday cake, from my biological age or my epigenetic age, was sort of how fast I'm aging. And I just didn't give it enough thought. I assumed that I had the DNA of Methuselah, right? I was like, oh, yeah, I'm in, I'm game. And then, almost from the word go, I started to get little surprises, should we say.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  The first thing they did, they put me, they stripped me down into like, you know, a little medical robe. And I went into a bod pod that measures body composition. And the cardiologist was sort of like, oh, yeah, you know, you're healthy body weight, but you're, you're a bit under-muscled. And I was like, oh, oh, okay, under-muscled. And then, I think the moment of fear came, I was sitting in the dark in this chair with a monitor strapped to my wrist. And for a few minutes, they cut off my circulation to measure something called endothelial function, which can, in theory, detect sort of like early stages of cardiovascular disease.

• 5:40Speaker 05

  And this young medical tech had this like, look on his face, and he, he said, oh, you know, you're on the low end. And I said, what do you mean, the low end? And he said, below average, like, on the low end. And he sort of fiddled with it, thinking like, oh, you know, was he really getting the right measurement? And at that point, I kind of stopped hearing anything in the room, you know? I thought, what? Me? Like, I'm healthy. I exercise, I eat well. What is going on here?

• 6:16Jonathan Fields?

  So, I mean, you go into this thinking, okay, this is just kind of a cool journalistic project, and I'm going to go, like, I get to sort of like, learn some things maybe about myself also.

• 6:28Jonathan Fields?

  When you get this, and you sort of like, see the look on, on the person's face, and you hear these words, low end, I mean, what's going through your mind at that point? Because when you're, when you said yes to this, it wasn't about you.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 6:44Jonathan Fields?

  Now it is.

• 6:45Speaker 05

  Well, I, the thing that was, the ticker tape racing through my mind was, am I failing a longevity test? And that's what it felt like. And of course, it was irrational. I had not gotten any results at all. But, you know, the bod pod experience, and then this little endothelial test, it just kind of was like, whoa, wait a second, I am aging. Now, after the fact, I learned that the arm that they did this test on, I'd had, you know, the very stereotypical middle-aged injury of frozen shoulder. I was nursing a frozen shoulder, so I had been taking it easy on that left side. And later, I found out, oh, that could have thrown off the test. I was then assured, oh, Alison, this is just a research tool, like, don't read too much into it.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Like, my blood work was fine. You know, way after the fact of, as I pieced together sort of what was right and what was wrong, most of what was right were the numbers that matter, right? You know, cholesterol and, you know, the things that really make a difference, A1C. The things that were, that were wrong were kind of linked to my stressed-out lifestyle, my sort of, you know, over-caffeinated, you know, living in this sort of state of pathological productivity. Most of what turned out to be wrong with me was linked to that. And it wasn't so much biology as it was kind of this sense that I realized I was kind

• 8:16Speaker 05

  of running to stand still. In fact, the moment I felt that, we were in this laboratory, and after that endothelial test, I kind of zoned out. And there was a wall of windows, when you opened the door, looking out to Lake Michigan. And for a moment, I felt like I was in that water, tumbling, like, not drowning, but kind of just like, almost floating and coming to a deep sense of standing still. And when I came back to the room, and people were talking at me, telling me what the next test was, that was this moment, I said to myself, Alison, you are running to stand still. That's what, how I was feeling at that moment in my life.

• 8:58Jonathan Fields?

  So let's zoom the lens out a little bit then. Tell me what life looked like for you at that time. You know, if you're running to stand still, paint that picture for me.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I would say this was coming out of the pandemic. And during the pandemic, I worked unbelievable hours. I was on the air frequently, often at 5:00 AM in the morning. So finishing reporting at 10 o'clock at night, waking up to do sort of up first, the Morning Edition, you know, podcast in the morning and really just throwing my hell self in as I had have done in my reporting for years and years and years and years. And I think coming out of the pandemic, something deep within me knew that I was a little bit ready for something else. I just didn't know what it was. And so instead of facing that head on, I just dug deeper. I gave myself more deadlines.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  I kind of pushed aside any sense coming from my intuition or heart of like, oh, you know, what else might there there be? But the more I dug in, the more I felt that my work was becoming this sort of practiced task. I wasn't getting any kind of lift or reward of like hearing my story on the air or even reporting the stories. I was doing like deep dives into very complicated medical science and distilling it. That's my job. And suddenly it didn't feel like it was giving me the same lift it had. And I wondered, you know, who's benefiting from this? I sort of wondered if I had been doing the same thing so long that it was time

• 10:33Speaker 05

  to parlay my my skills and my strengths to something new, but I think I was scared.

• 10:40Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, as are so many of us when we sort of like hit a certain moment in our lives. But like you also, I think so many of us were heads down. You know, like we're in that season where we're still working really hard. We've got a million people looking to us and, you know, we're trying to do really good work. And oftentimes we've been doing some version of that for years, if not decades, without ever having the space to just step back and pause and say like, how's this working for me? So it sounds like you you come into this experience at the Longevity Institute, maybe primed, but not necessarily consciously aware of how primed you are.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  I think that's a really, really good way of saying it. Sort of like, you know, my head didn't know what was happening, but somewhere deep within I, yeah, I was starting to sense it. I should add also, I have three children. And at that time, the oldest was in college, the middle was headed off to college. And my baby, who is now 15 years old, would have been, you know, sort of starting middle school. And so I think that I was just really conditioned to what I call this moon bounce of controlled chaos, right? Because I'd been parenting for so long, I was so accustomed to sort of, you know, running from the newsroom back home to parenting duty and sort of jumping between the obligations of parenting and the obligations of work. And when you get into that rhythm, it's hard to get out of the moon bounce. Yeah.

• 12:04Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I think that's so relatable for so many people, you know? Everyone has their own version of the moon bounce. I love that. I love that visual, by the way. So when we're back at the Longevity Institute and you start to see a couple of numbers that make you raise your eyebrow, how does that come together with what you stepped into that moment, sort of like with your brain working on to make you start to ask a bigger question?

• 12:35Speaker 05

  So I wouldn't say that it was some kind of like immediate pivot. I think it was a slow recognition of what I just explained to you that, oh, Alison, yes, you're competent at what you do. And that's a very good feeling and you're rewarded. You get a paycheck for what you do and you've won awards for what you do. And, you know, you educate people, you know, who listen to NPR and all of that felt good, but it didn't feel like enough anymore. And I'll tell you why. About sometime after that experience, I was deciding I wanted to do a story about dreams. And I contacted a guy named Ian Williams and he has live interpreted thousands of dreams on the BBC.

• 13:19Speaker 05

  So he's a therapist who analyzes dreams. And we started out and he asked me to tell him about one of my recent dreams. And I had had a an incredibly vivid dream. It goes something like this. I was in my bed and suddenly the on air light was flashing and Stevens Keep, who's the host of Morning Edition, said, you know, and NPR's Alison Albrecht joins us now. And I could see the on air light. I could see actually the studio in our old building at 635 Massachusetts Avenue. But I was stuck in my bed and I couldn't get out. And then I woke up and of course I ran to my phone. My God, my God, what time is it? What day is it? Did I just miss a, you know, a live hit on Morning Edition? And I calmed down enough to realize that, you know, I hadn't.

• 14:04Speaker 05

  And so Ian Williams said to me, what do you think that dream means? And I said, I don't know, like, it's like an anxiety dream. Like maybe I'm getting too old to wake up at 5:00 in the morning or I'm scared I'm going to miss a deadline. And he said, how long have you done your job? 25 years. Oh, how many times have you missed a deadline? Ah, never. So you've done your job 25 years and you've never missed a deadline. Your your dream is not an anxiety dream about missing a deadline. I said, oh, okay, what is it? And he said, you have something to say that you can't say on Morning Edition.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  And with that, I knew he was right. It was just like every cell in my body knew he was right. I had been working on a proposal to write a book and it's a lot of work. You know, you got to get an agent, you got to write the proposal. You know, I have three kids and a full time job. And so it was just this little side hustle project that was just sitting. And after that conversation with Ian Williams, I was like, that's it. I'm finishing the proposal. I'm writing this book.

• 15:20Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 15:24Jonathan Fields?

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• 17:08Jonathan Fields?

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• 17:34Speaker 01

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• 18:08Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, which is no small thing. You've been doing a job for 25 years. You're great at it. You know, you're known for it and known widely by a lot of people for it. And there's a certain amount of identity that gets wrapped up in it, right? And for you to say, okay, there's this thing that's been sitting on the side, and it's actually time. I mean, it's interesting also, though, because a lot of people will sort of like keep their mainstream gig and then write a book on the side. Some people would just say, I'm gonna take a sabbatical, I'm gonna take a year off. When you thought about, oh, like this, what he's saying this dream means, actually, that feels real to me. And it

• 18:51Jonathan Fields?

  sounds like immediately, that book that's been sitting over here, I was like, mm hmm, like, that's the thing. Do you, how do you navigate the question of, okay, what will it take me to write this? Do I need to just pull back from everything that I'm doing to devote myself to it? Because it's so hard for any of us to step away in any meaningful way from something that we have been so vested in for so long.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I call this my rope swing moment. You remember, like, jumping from a rope swing when you're a kid? And you're kind of like, you're holding on, and you're like, looking down, and you're like, oh, you know, like, you're afraid to let go because you don't know what's underneath. But you know, it's time. You know, it's time. If you don't, you're gonna go back and hit the rock. So, you know, you're hanging on. I felt like I was hanging on. I felt that rope swing moment, like, it was just, it wouldn't go away. And so, at a certain point, after I got my book contract, I could have stayed on and written it on the side. But I just knew that that was running counter to everything that my heart was telling me. And so I just, you know, went to my editor, and I was like, look, I have this book contract.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  I want to take a sabbatical. I'm calling it my curiosity tour. And it's a lot of negotiation to get a huge, huge chunk of time away in a newsroom. Of course, I was giving up, like, job security. They filled behind me when I left. And, you know, I was intending to come back, and I did come back. But I left not knowing, you know, it felt like a risk. And to me, I just had to do that. I mean, there wasn't another choice for me. I think that my fear was that, all I kind of knew was a newsroom setting, right? I know how to be part of that hive. And I like to be part of the hive. I like to feel like I'm in the

• 20:37Speaker 05

  middle of like, exciting things happening, and that never disappoints in a newsroom. But I also didn't know what there was outside of that. And I looked around, and I was fearful that once I left the newsroom, there wouldn't be anything as purposeful, or as exciting, or as adventurous. And that's really the question I asked when I set out on this curiosity tour. I was like, I'm gonna look for people, you know, women in midlife like me, not billionaires, or movie stars, or Olympians, or super influencers, like, people like me, who've been in the trenches for decades, sort of toggling between parenting and paycheck, and find out, who are the people who are thriving? What are they doing? What are their stories? Like, how do you make a midlife pivot?

• 21:20Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I want to dive into a whole bunch of what you discovered on that tour as well. Before we get there, though, let's tease out a few other things. The idea of a summons. I think a lot of us hit a moment where we feel like, you know, and people call this different things. You know, is it a call? Is it, there's something inside of you that basically, we've probably, it's been like, sort of like, nipping at us for a long time. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But there's this idea that you explore of like, getting the summons. And almost nobody answers it. What is the thing that, like, when you get that call, like, in your mind, what's really happening there?

• 22:04Speaker 05

  Well, in my mind, so, that language of the summoning comes from James Hollis, who's a Jungian analyst who I interviewed. And I've read several of his books, as has my mother, actually, gave me the book when she sensed I was feeling sort of a midlife, you know, wall. And that language really comes from James Hollis. And it's the moment where you realize, you've been living the societal script, right? Like, we all have this sort of like, learn, earn, and then what? Retire. Like, learn, earn, retire script that we're supposed to be following. And, you know, Gen Xers have been really good at following that script, right? We've done all the things. You know, my mother told

• 22:49Speaker 05

  me, when I had two little children, and I was at NPR, and I was like, oh, like, this is feeling a little overwhelming. Like, maybe I should step off the career track. And she said, you'll do no such thing, because you will never get that job back. And you worked really hard to get there. Just keep going, you know? And so I think that's the script that we got, that we could do anything and be anything, because we were Gen X women. It came at a cost, right? Like, we've been just running and running and going and going, parenting, and the paycheck, and parenting, and like, you know, rinse and repeat of obligation for decades. And I have a lot to show for that societal script. I think my mother was right. I think that staying at NPR was the best thing ever. And it's been an incredible career. Absolutely, positively incredible. I am paid to be curious, and I am so incredibly

• 23:34Speaker 05

  lucky. But I think what the calling is, and the summoning, the summons is, is that you reach a point in this midlife, where the question you're asking isn't, what does society expect from me? But what is my intuition telling me? If I'm sensing that I'm looking for a shift, how can I tap into that intuition? And what I recognized is that I was so committed to that societal script, you know, because I've done well by that societal script. Many millions of us have, right? I had a lot to show for it. And, you know, it paid the bills, and it gave me accolades, and it gave me a sense of purpose. However, I was reaching

• 24:17Speaker 05

  a new phase, and fear, you asked, what is it that stops people from being able to listen to the summons? It's fear, right? Like, nothing cuts off intuition like fear. And I had fear. Like, what if I'm not NPR's Alice in Aubrey? Or, you know, what if the best years are behind, right? And so I had this sort of like, slow crossfade, where I was toggling between, like, hanging on, that rope swing moment, to this belief that there had to be something else. That there was a life of adventure and joy and purpose outside of a newsroom.

• 24:54Jonathan Fields?

  That land is really true. I'm curious, fear of what? Because it could be so many different things, you know? Loss of identity, uncertainty, like, there's so many different things. I would imagine, you know, the concoction is probably a little bit different for everybody.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? I mean, I think it's all of those things. I think it's, it's, you know, loss of identity, you know, it's ego to some extent. I mean, and some of it's real, right? Like, I still get my health insurance through NPR, right? So there's just the practical side. Like, women retire with 30% less than men. And so there's just the practical, like, money elements, right? Well, I have enough money. Like, how will I get health insurance? So there's the practical side of these things. But once you face those and plan for those, the meta things are just what you're saying, you know, sort of ego, identity, legacy, all of that.

• 25:49Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And I would imagine fear of the unknown also. It's just like, you've got a long history of showing up and kind of having a sense of like, I've been doing this long enough, that even though things are different every day, on a meta level, like, I kind of know. I know the rhythm of this. I can navigate this, whatever it is. And then when you're stepping completely out, you're like, I don't know the majority of what my day is gonna look like. And for most of us, that's terrifying.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  I agree. I think nothing stokes anxiety like uncertainty. And so we cling to the familiar. So I agree. Have you experienced that in your life?

• 26:25Jonathan Fields?

  Oh, so many times. I'm like, multiple career changes into, into my life. So I've been in the trenches of uncertainty. And, but there's a certain exposure therapy, when you keep revisiting that, and realizing, like, oh, this is really hard, but I keep finding a way through. So I think I'm getting it, like, whatever it is. Eventually, I think it really, it forges you, rather than destroys you. I have another curiosity, though, when you're sort of like, exploring this, which is, I think a lot of folks will be listening, saying, okay, so I've been doing the same thing for a long time. And there is this thing that I feel like it's calling me. But as you described, you know, when you're in the kind of like, the work, work, work, work, work, bouncing, the moon bounce thing, where

• 27:10Jonathan Fields?

  there's almost no time to pause. It's so hard to figure out, like, what is, am I just delusional, fabricating that call? I mean, when I left being a lawyer, I knew that I was working insane hours. I was so psychologically and physically incapable of making a rational decision, that I actually, I took a leave of absence before I made any decision. Because I was like, I'm not capable of understanding, of hearing the whispers, in any sort of...

• 27:42Jonathan Fields?

  Rationalweise, ich muss tatsächlich lange genug aufhören, um es zu hören.

• 27:48Jonathan Fields?

  Haben Sie eine Struktur gesehen oder haben Sie es erlebt? Wie in diesem Schritt für Sie? Sie wissen, der Kampf zwischen, ist es etwas in der Realität, das ich folgen sollte?

• 28:00Jonathan Fields?

  Und wie weiß ich, dass ich so wie, ich habe das kognitive Wohin und das Raum und das Gefühl von Grund zu machen, eine wirklich gute Entscheidung zu treffen, besonders wenn Sie so hart für so lange reisen?

• 28:15Speaker 05

  Ich denke, das ist wo meine Curiosity Tour kam. Ich habe meine Sabbatik als Curiosity Tour gefragt. Und was ist eine Curiosity Tour? Es war nur das, wie ich meine Curiosity verfolge. Ich meine, ich war der Meinung, dass wenn, Sie wissen, wenn die Nachricht passiert, du fliegst, du fährst in ein Flugzeug und du fliegst, um die Nachricht zu fliegen, richtig? Und ich musste so etwas wiederum in die Richtung der Curiosity sein und zu beginnen, Dinge zu sehen, die direkt um mich herum waren. Also, ich habe einige coole Orte für meine Curiosity Tour gelaufen. Aber was ich auch gemacht habe, war, dass ich genug gedauert habe, um Menschen in meinem eigenen Backofen zu erkennen. Zum Beispiel, ich habe mit einer Frau, Catherine, sie ist ein NIH- Scientist, ein Bench- Scientist an NIH, ein Pflanzen- Scientist.

• 29:00Speaker 05

  Und ihre dritte Kürze, ich habe so etwas genannt, die Mitte des Lebenspassagier, Ihre dritte Kürze, dieses Mal zwischen 50 und 75. Das ist so der Beginn, Sie wissen, Ihrer, Sie wissen, Ihrer Mitte des Lebenspivot. Und Catherine hat mich angenommen, weil direkt hier am Korb meiner Straße dieser Strom ist und es gibt viele invasiven Arten, die sind wie Wälder, die um die Bäume herum und sie ruinieren sie. Und ich würde diese Gruppe von Menschen sehen, die auf diesen Bäumen arbeiten und wie, das hartmachtige Arbeiten, diese wie, dünne Wälder und wie, sie herunterziehen und sie aus den Bäumen wegreißen. Und die Person, die dieses Engagement leitet, war diese Frau Catherine. Und sie ist dieses brillante PhD- Scientist, der dieses große Job an NIH hatte, wenn es zu viel für sie wurde.

• 29:44Speaker 05

  Und sie hat dieses Band gestartet, was sie genannt haben, Würmer. Und so, sie entfernen diese invasiven Wälder und sie retten die Bäume, ein für ein, was dann die Wasserqualität unserer Strome rettet. Und sie nennt das ihre und/oder Aktivresistenz aus dem Star Wars Show, und/oder. Und das Idee ist, dass Menschen zusammengekommen in Gruppen sind, um ein kleines Problem zu lösen und dann sehen, was die Ergebnisse vor den Augen sind. Und, lösen sie die Klimaänderung? Nein, sie tun das nicht, weil uns niemand das Recht hat, das zu tun. Aber können sie durch die Bäume, die sie jeden Tag retten, glücklich sein? Und wissen, dass das ein Gemeinschaftsarbeit war? Und so, das ist das, was sie jetzt macht. Sie hat das wie, ein super großes, potenzielles Job an National Institutes of Health gegeben.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  Und sie hat dieses sehr soulful, sehr zielorientierte, Passionprojekt, richtig? Und sie macht eine Differenz in einer Art, die sie nicht in Bench Science gesehen hatte. Und so, mich und Catherine in meinem eigenen Backofen war mein erstes Gefühl, wie, oh mein Gott, es gibt wie, fantastische, wunderbare Pivotgeschichten alle um mich herum. Und so, ich habe ein für ein, für ein, für ein, Frauen interviewt, die sehr interessante Pivots gemacht haben. Und eine der Durchleitungen war, dass die meisten von ihnen große, große Jobs hatten oder beeindruckende Jobs, aus sozialen Standards. Aber was sie jetzt tun, ist alles über Legacy, alles über Zweck. Und es war alles aus dem Herzen, alles. Ich meine, diese waren Frauen, die mit dem Rumpf gegangen sind, richtig? Sie hatten ihre Rumpfswing, sie sagten, oh mein Gott, könnte ich jumpen?

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Sie jumpeden, richtig? Und schauen, wie wunderbar ihre Lebens waren. Ich meine, ich habe eine schweine Editorin getroffen, die ein Improvperformer wurde. Sie wissen, ich habe Menschen getroffen, die das schönste Ding ihrer Lebens tun. Wie ein 65-jähriger CEO, der, ich nenne ihn meinen schrecklichen Pollyanna, weil sie tatsächlich das 60-Millionen-Dollar-Unternehmen besetzte und es in ein 6-Billionen-Dollar-Unternehmen verwandt hat und privaten Equitybankern überzeugt hat, alle Mitarbeiterinnen und Equity-Staaten im Unternehmen zu geben, weil ihr wahrer Nord ist, Fairness. Und so, sie könnte 15 Jahre vorher zum Paradies gehen, aber sie bleibt, weil sie sieht, dass das System, wo alle ihre Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter, Sie wissen, ein Stück des Böden bekommen.

• 31:57Speaker 05

  Wenn das Unternehmen succeed, sollte jeder succeed. Also, Sie wissen, sie leben ihr wahrer Nord. Sein Purposeprojekt ist, um so zu machen, wie, wie Geschäftsführung funktioniert, wenn es nur für ihr Unternehmen ist. Also, einige Menschen tun das schönste Ding ihrer Lebens. Und einige Menschen tun die einfachsten Dinge ihrer Lebens. Ich habe mit Gruppen von Frauen gesprochen, die Mahjong spielen, das ist dieses beeindruckende Spiel. Und Sie wissen, es ist sehr trendy jetzt und die Menschen denken, dass es dieses fancy Gesellschaftsspiel ist. Aber ehrlich gesagt, Mahjong ist unglaublich. Es creates dieses Sorte wie, magic Circle, richtig? Wo die Menschen herumkommen, es ist ein Gehirn-Spiel, richtig? Sehr gut für die Erinnerung. Es fördert Verbindung und Spiel.

• 32:38Speaker 05

  Und so, die Art, wie die Menschen sich umkehren und ihre dritte Kürze finden, ist so unterschiedlich wie wir unterschiedlich sind als Menschen. Aber die Durchleitlinie ist, dass Sie was Ihrem Herzen sagen, und dass es eine Art von Passion und Zweck gibt.

• 32:54Jonathan Fields?

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• 33:39Jonathan Fields?

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• 34:19Jonathan Fields?

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• 34:49Speaker 01

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• 35:23Jonathan Fields?

  Ich meine, zwei Worte, die sind, je nachdem, wer Sie fragt, unglaublich oder voll. Passion und Zweck. Ich finde, wir haben, wir haben viel darüber gesprochen. Wir haben gehört, es hat ein großes Maß an Rückmeldung auf das Wort Passion diese Tage gegeben.

• 35:37Speaker 05

  Ja, und ich werde mit dir über Passion sprechen. Und ich bin bereit, Passion zu lassen. In Wirklichkeit, lassen Sie mich mit Ihnen übereinstimmen. Passion ist wahrscheinlich über Sie. Also, push Passion zur Seite. Aber fokussieren wir uns auf Zweck, okay? Okay, der Grund, warum ich Zweck liebe, ist, weil ich den Wissenschaften lieben. Als Teil meiner Beratung über das, habe ich Steve Cole an UCLA interviewt. Und er hat dieses Studium vor fünf Jahren gemacht, wo sie Frauen genommen haben, die schon ein bisschen geschlossen waren, wie sie in der Heimat waren, sie schaute TV, sie sagten, sie waren lonely, sie hatten keinen Sinn des Zwecks. Wie auf Studien, war es sehr klar, dass sie, Sie wissen, isoliert waren. Und dieses, dieses Gruppe von Frauen hat sich für den Jahr in eine Schule beteiligt.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Jetzt, sie haben diese Frauen Blut genommen, sie haben einen Blutversuch an den Beginn des Jahres gemacht und dann wieder an den Ende des Jahres. Und an dem Beginn des Jahres, was der Blutversuch zeigte, ist, dass wenn Sie die weißen Blut Zellen im Immunsystem schauen, können Sie tatsächlich sehen, wenn jemand so lonely oder chronisch gestresst ist, wegen loneliness oder ein Missfühl des Zwecks. Was Sie sehen, ist, dass die Gene, die für, die für Inflammation entsprechen, sie werden aufgezogen, richtig? Also, inflammierbare Gene werden aufgezogen. Und antiviren Gene, die diejenigen sind, die Sie schützen, werden aufgezogen. Also, es ist dieses Sorte molekularer Signatur von chronischem Stress, von loneliness, von Abhängigkeit, von Missfühl des Zwecks.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Jetzt, am Ende des Schuljahres, neun oder zehn Monate später, haben sie das gleiche Blutversuch gemacht. Und sie konnten zeigen, dass diese Frauen, die zufrieden waren, dass sie viel besser fühlten, sie fühlten sich Teil einer Gemeinschaft. Sie fühlten sich, als hätten sie Menschen mentoren. Sie hatten einen Sinn des Zwecks, sie hatten einen Sinn der Verbindung. Sie fühlten, dass ihre Leben Sinn hatte, dass es eine Gründe für die Aufstieg in der Morgen gab. Das ist alles Zweck, es ist eine Gründe für die Aufstieg in der Morgen. Sie fühlten das, eine Gründe für die Aufstieg. Und schauen Sie, was? Die molekularer Signatur in ihrem Blut, in ihren weißen Blutzellen, in ihrem Immunsystem verändert, richtig? Die, die Gene, die Inflammation regulieren, wurden aufgezogen. Und die Gene, die die antiviren Reaktion regulieren, wurden aufgezogen.

• 37:50Speaker 05

  Und ich liebe, liebe, liebe dieses Studium, weil die Menschen wie, Zweck, Zweck, was das ist, okay? Nein, nein, nein, nein, Sie können es messen. Sie können einen Sinn des Zwecks im Immunsystem, in den weißen Blutzellen messen. Es ist verlinkt zu Langeweile, es ist verlinkt zu besserer Gesundheit. Wie, müssen wir mehr Wissenschaften brauchen, um zu sagen, dass wenn du eine Gründe für die Aufstieg in der Morgen hast, du besser fühlst und dein Leben besser ist und du mehr Freude fühlst? Sie wissen, ich denke, wir sollten das Wort Zweck nicht verlieren.

• 38:18Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I'm completely on board with that. I've done a bunch of a deep dive myself on purpose and the parts of life that it touches, it's pretty much everything, you know, from relationships to cognitive function, to immunity, to life-ending or altering disease risk. It's kind of wild how much that can play a role. So when you're on your curiosity tour, you're talking to all these different women, and from what I remember, it's sort of like age, early 40s to 100, early hundreds was the span there. It sounds like purpose is one of the big patterns that you see. But I want to tease out something specific to that, because I think you brought it up. When a lot of us think about this word, purpose,

• 39:02Jonathan Fields?

  we're kind of thinking, we need this one big thing, like a big, universal thing, like it's got to be a big thing. But what you're inviting is, well, for some people, maybe it is, like, there's one big, unifying, universal thing where you put everything behind it, it's going to impact the world. But maybe it's also like clearing the vines off of, like, it's like tiny little local things. And I think, I wonder if oftentimes we discount that.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  Oh, 100%. I mean, people are scared to talk about purpose, because I've had women say to me, like, oh, there's, I don't know how to do anything that would change the world. Like, I don't, I like, I don't like climate change, but I don't know what to do, right? Like, little me, I can't do anything. And I think that is something that all of us have sensed, like, how are, you know, in the, in the polycrisis of the world, like, how are we supposed to make a difference? Well, if you don't think that you're going to be part of some tiny, tiny little solution, if you can't right-size, you know, some little thing that you can be a part of, well, then, where's the hope, right? And once we don't

• 40:07Speaker 05

  have hope, like, what do we have? So I think picking some small, you know, to start with an interest, you know, and then work your way backwards. Here's an example. I met a woman named Ruthie Smith, and she's a retired police officer in Prince George's County. And every Saturday, my husband runs a 5K park run, which is a community run. They're held all over the country. It's an organization based in the UK. And so I went one Saturday, and there was this woman, Ruthie Smith, and she was at the very, very back of the line. She was walking, and she had on a little penny, and it said, "tailwalker." And I was like, "Oh, hi." And, and we started chatting, because my husband had run up further ahead,

• 40:51Speaker 05

  and I was sort of walking with Ruthie. And she told me that, like, when she retired from the police force, she was excited at first, but then kind of fell into this, like, oh, what is, you know, what am I supposed to be doing with my day? I need a sense of purpose. So she found the park run. At the time, she said she was pretty out of shape. And so, you know, doing a 5K walk every Saturday was really just the beginning of her taking on physical activity for the first time in a while. She was starting to feel more fit. And then she volunteered for this position called "tailwalker." And her job is just to be the eyes and ears of the trail, the last person finishing the race to make sure that, you know, nobody's hurt, or nobody needs attention. And, you know, nobody is

• 41:34Speaker 05

  ever gonna, like, say, "Wow, one day, I want to be the tailwalker in a community 5K," right? No one ever. But it gives her this incredible sense of, like, helping out others, being connected to a community, like, and she is fun doing it, because she's also walking the 5K. So I think about Ruthie a lot. It is not something that she would have been able to predict. This role found her once she found the 5K. But tapping into that community then gave her this purposeful role that makes her feel good about, like, gives her something to do when she wakes up, gives her that sense when she wakes up in the morning of, like, "Oh, I need it," right? Like, "I have something I need to do today."

• 42:16Speaker 05

  And I think it can be a big thing or a little thing.

• 42:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that, because it really invites everything into the purpose tent. You know, it's sort of like saying, you don't have to make a big, grand gesture, or commit to a big thing, or put yourself at risk in some big, meaningful way. It's like, just open your eyes, look around your neighborhood, or your family, or your group of friends. Guaranteed, there's something there that will matter in a way that, like, maybe nobody's even paying attention to before.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  Maybe "mattering" is a better word than "purpose," because "purpose" has become a little overused.

• 42:48Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, a couple of years back, I interviewed, sadly, he passed recently, but somebody who was one of the leading researchers on "mattering." And he said, the academic definition, I'll try and remember this, was offering value and being, and having that value acknowledged by others. He was like, there were two pieces of it.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  Wait, say that again. Say that again.

• 43:12Jonathan Fields?

  It was offering value, like, knowing that you're offering something that's genuinely valid, but also having that value acknowledged by someone other than you. And he's like, when you have those two pieces of the puzzle, that feeling of "mattering," that's where that really lands the most powerfully. And that's stayed with me for a long time, because it's an in-between thing, you know?

• 43:32Speaker 05

  I'm writing it down. I love that.

• 43:34Jonathan Fields?

  And we're talking about this in the context of, all right, we hit this season of life, and we're kind of like, what got us here maybe isn't going to give us the feeling that's going to get us there. So like, how do we get that feeling? Purpose, it sounds like, is one of the things that you discovered as a common pattern. This kept showing up in big ways and small ways. There's another nuance I want to tease out and ask you about, which is that you mentioned that one woman who is in this company where she grew it to 6 billion, and then they had everybody sort of like, it sounds like she didn't leave, because I think a lot of people also look at this season and say, "To get what I need, to get the feeling that I need, I'm going to have to blow everything up and go do something very different." But I'm wondering if you saw patterns also in this curiosity tour,

• 44:14Jonathan Fields?

  where people actually, they stayed where they were, but they kind of, they did things in a different or a more intentional way to give them what they needed.

• 44:23Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So Kathy Bolhaus, this is the woman who turned a $60 million company into a $5 or $6 billion company. She's still the CEO, and she's still running the company. So she got to the point where she finally had the power as CEO to run the show and make decisions. And once she had that, she finally, her backstory was, she'd sort of grown up in poverty, she'd watched her mother work in a, in a factory, and work, you know, come home with stained hands, because she stained grandfather clocks in a factory, and still not be able to afford Christmas presents, right? She said, "What kind of world is this, if somebody has to work all day, every day, and they still can't, you know, buy gifts?" You know? So she, she really committed very early on in her life, if

• 45:07Speaker 05

  she ever made it to the top, she would change how the system works. So she's finally there. She's not leaving, because she's literally changing how the system works. She has thousands of employees, by the way. So her story is super inspiring. Another quieter version of that, of sticking in the job that you've been doing, is my, I profile a friend, Molly Andalina. She's a tenured professor at DePaul University, a political science professor. And, you know, we were in graduate school together, and she told me that, she went on to get her PhD. I didn't get a PhD. I stopped after a master's degree. But when she finished her PhD in political science, and she was hired on, you know, into this 10-year track job, she said, this would have been like around 2000, she said, "The

• 45:52Speaker 05

  idea was, you had to be the sage on the stage, you know, you had to stand up in front of everybody and impress, right? You had to lecture, and wow, people, and you wanted to be big and bold, in the center of the room, in the universe." And it wasn't her personality. She's an incredible scientist, and researcher, and writer, and teacher, and connector, and all the things that teachers do that really matter. But standing on stage, and like, just talking to people, wasn't her superpower. And so, anyway, she has made a career of studying listening as a democratic skill. This is her superpower. And it took years to lean into that. And there's a sort of a long backstory as how she came to see

• 46:36Speaker 05

  that we learn more by listening than we do by talking. And it's a very noisy world, where it's sometimes her students feel they're never listened to. So she sort of upended her classroom, and she's the moderator of an ongoing conversation, right? And of course, as a political science professor, she has to teach her students, like, how a bill becomes law. But you can learn that in a textbook, right? What she can do in the classroom is create this space for, you know, free, and free-flowing conversations, and questions, and allowing students to be heard, and listening to each other, and learning from each other.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  So she actually has published studies on sort of listening as a democratic tool. And she, when she made that pivot within the same job, she went from being kind of, you know, miserable in her job, wondering, is this what I should be doing, to thinking, "Wow, this is exactly where I should be."

• 47:35Jonathan Fields?

  As you're going through the tour, so, so purpose is centered. It seems like this is a common theme across all the people that you're talking to, like, "It is shifting to bring more of this into my life. Maybe it's the job that I'm doing, maybe it's the thing that I'm doing on the side, maybe it's just a couple of hours a week as a... But whatever it is, that matters." What other patterns did you see? What were the other big things, commonalities, that really stood out to you?

• 47:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I feel like there's a bit of a formula. And I say that loosely, because of course, everyone's path is different. But I did notice some commonalities. And I'm going to give some credit here to Mark Friedman, because he developed a midlife learning program at Yale. And before I ever went on my curiosity tour, I had interviewed him for a story about GenSpace in LA. And he gave me this idea, in this early conversation that we had, that when he leads these midlife learning programs, that Part of the through line is to have people, you know, explore inward, kind of like, do a reality check on what is my self-identity, you know, how am I different?

• 48:42Speaker 05

  How am I the same as I was 25, 30 years ago, right? Because as you and I have been talking about, when you've been in the moon bounce of controlled chaos, you know, going between parenting and the paycheck, you haven't been thinking to yourself, oh, like, Alison, what are your, what are your, what are your strong suits? Like, what are your values, you know? And so this idea of, you know, of self-exploration, or self-exavation is what I call it in the book, and I put a lot of tools in there that are evidence-based for self-exavation, and I redid all these tools myself. And so this idea of going in, right, to really listen, that seems to be stage one of a midlife pivot.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Because when we go inward, we often discover like, the joyful parts of us that we'd left behind, right? Like, when I went inward and sort of like, excavated the eight-year-old Alison who was freckly and redheaded and running through the woods, muddy and, you know, carefree and blithe and unguarded, I was like, wow. The eight-year-old version of me, she was, she was something, right? Like, she, she was happy and joyful, and she laughed a lot, and she was goofy, and she was mercurial, and, you know, and I, I sort of was like, excavating like, my 1.0, if you think of it that way, or how I came to think of it that way. And I realized I'd left a lot of her behind.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  And once I kind of excavated freckles, I started to remember what lit freckles up, right? Like, I played piano my whole life, and the piano was the thing I would do when I was happy, when I was sad, like, I mean, it was the instant way for me to get a reset, and my piano's still up there, but I hadn't been playing it. It just goes out of tune, and I didn't have a good excuse, I just hadn't been playing it, right? So I started to be pulled back into the more creative parts of me that I'd kind of left behind. And I felt like that was a through line for all of the women. When I asked them to sort of, take me back to, how did you make this pivot? Everybody had this moment of sort of, looking within to rediscover, almost like the kid within, right? You know, who was the playful you?

• 50:49Speaker 05

  What were the hobbies and the, the things you did for fun? And are they calling your name again? Or is there something that you didn't get a chance to do that you were excited about as a kid, and now you might have the chance to do it? So I would say step one is look within. And once you do that, these new interests bubble up, and then you find people who are interested in the same things, right? When I think about the eight-year-old me running through the woods, like, it's not an accident that three of the women in my book, one is a certified forest bather, one is Catherine, the weed warrior, that, that nature is a huge, huge theme in my book, right? How do we reconnect with our wild home? How do we spend more time in nature, right?

• 51:29Speaker 05

  And so it just reminds you of who you were before the world had expectations of you, and before you got too busy, and the world was nothing but obligation. And you can make time in this very crossfade kind of way, to, to bring that person to the fore again, you know? So, and that connects you to other people, and to these interests. So I think inward, and then outward, to connect with people with the same interests, right? And I think that's the recipe for going forward. And I really did borrow that from Mark, sort of inward, outward, forward. And I think it really does hold true.

• 52:05Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and I mean, it, it makes a lot of sense also. It's really hard. You know, I, I tend to believe that a, a life well-lived is an intentional life. But you can't be intentional. You know, you have to make decisions that are intentional. You can't make good decisions until you have a basis for making good decisions. If that decision is about, like, what am I going to say yes or no to? You've got to have a sense of who you are and who you aren't, like, what lights you up, and what, what drains you, before you can make a decision, which is actually going to be well-aligned. And, but so many of us, I mean, it's interesting, you, you're sort of like inviting us to step back into our, like, when we were kids, to remember, like, who were we? Like, what were the things back then?

• 52:45Jonathan Fields?

  And what are the adult, you know, like, how is that presenting in an adult life now? I wonder if some people struggle with that, though, because we've become so disconnected from it over a period of decades, that we can't even remember anymore. Like, we're just like, I don't even know, like, I don't remember the last time I felt something resembling aliveness. How do, um, which is a little bit tragic, but I think, I would imagine there are questions that you can ask yourself.

• 53:14Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. So one of my intellectual inspirations, before I started writing the book, I was reading Mary Catherine Bateson, and she's the daughter of Margaret Mead, and she's deceased now, but she wrote a lot in her books about kind of, a second adulthood, right? She kind of likened it to Eric Arson's, you know, stages of development, when we're asking ourselves these really important questions of like, who am I? What's my self-identity? What's happening to my body? And what is my generativity, or my purpose, basically? What's my reason for getting out of bed in the morning? And I let that sit with me for a long time, this idea of a second adulthood.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  And what I realized is that for me, it did not feel like a second adulthood. It felt like a second adolescence, right? I was going through this transition, like, physically, emotionally, at the same time my daughter, who's 15 now, started puberty. And when, you know, we, when our teenagers are angsty, when they are irrational, when they have, when there's rebellion, we say, oh, yeah, they're teens, like, that's teenage rebellion. Like, we have a cultural acceptance of that, and, um, you know, we give them a pass, we give them space, we love them even when their behavior is bad.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  Where is that cultural acceptance for people our age, right? If I go around saying like, oh my God, who am I? What is happening to my body? And what is my, my purpose? People be like, lady, get it together, you know? We do not give enough space to have this second adolescence, but that's exactly what it is. We are asking the same questions. Who am I now? What is happening to my body? And what is my purpose? These are not easy questions to answer, because they require what you and I just talked about. They require like, facing that passage and going, what am I willing to let go of? Am I willing to let go of ego and accolades, right? How am I going to make this transition?

• 55:18Speaker 05

  This, this bridge between like, what we have been and what we're going to become, there's a lot of rocky water underneath. And asking these questions, you know, is, is hard to do. So it takes courage, and it sometimes brings like, a kind of form of rebellion, I'd say, and struggle.

• 55:38Jonathan Fields?

  I love that you use the word become there. I think about this often, and I wonder whether, you know, once we hit the middle season of life, um, we feel like, who do we want to become next? But what we're really, really more deeply looking for is how do we return to who we once were?

• 55:56Speaker 05

  Oh, 100%. It's exactly, it's coming full circle. I mean, I use a lot of circle analogies in my book. You know, I, I came up with the term, third turn. I was inspired, I grew up in Kentucky. When I was 12 years old, I went to Churchill Downs, which is the home of the Kentucky Derby. And oftentimes in a horse race, you know, it's this predictable front of the pack horses, and then right around the third turn, some horse pulls from behind and, and, you know, finds this surge of energy that no one's expecting, there's, and it's always a surprise, as my grandfather told me, something unexpected is going to happen at the third turn. And you find this surge of energy to, to race ahead and win.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  And I had this conversation with my grandfather about, you know, why, why at this point? Why do you think the third turn? And of course, as a teenager, you know, you have no concept of midlife. And I am, I never forget, what he said to me is like, well, when you can see the finish line, a sense of urgency arises, you know? And I thought, wow, okay. So I know you had a guest on who was sort of like, talking about time anxiety. That's time anxiety right there, right? Like, if there's something you're going to do, if not now, when? And so I feel like, at a time when the 100-year lifespan is possible, you know, 50 to 75 is kind of the third turn, or the third, the third quarter.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Like, there is time to surge ahead.

• 57:23Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that. One of the things that you reference also, which I want to dip back into, because I think it's really important, I don't want us to miss it, is, so you shared, okay, so you find something that really just like, you connect with it for whatever reason, it's purpose, it matters, it gives you the feeling that you want to have. And right after that, you planted this seed that says, okay, now go find people who are doing that, too.

• 57:46Jonathan Fields?

  And it sounds like that was a common pattern also, you know, that, okay, so it's, it's cool to do this yourself, but when you can build community, family, chosen family, friendships, and you're all sharing, you have this, this affinity, whether you're kind of like parallel playing and doing it in your own way, or all collaborating on one thing together, that, that, that connectedness, that sort of like shared participation in the thing is, is a, it sounds like that was a common pattern, and also probably really important.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think as you bring this up, I'm thinking about this woman I met, her name's Leslie, and she was a classical violin player. And I met her on a flight from Oakland to Dulles Airport in DC, so five and a half hour flight or so. And at one point, the wifi went down, and I'm a talker, so I struck up a conversation with her. I had watched her boarding the plane, put her instrument case up above, and I said, do you play the violin? And she looked at me and she said, no, I don't. And I thought, oh, this is, she's not a talker. And she, there was this pregnant pause, and I kind of looked back to my, you know, notes or my book or whatever, and then she goes, I play the fiddle.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  And she said it with this like playful, like, I play the fiddle. And I was like, oh, okay, well, um, I'm not sure I know the difference, you know? I, I, I think maybe I thought they were the same thing, but I'm not, I mean, you know, I don't know, blah, blah. And she was like, oh, yeah, it's the same instrument, but a completely different attitude. She said, when you play violin, you're playing someone else's music. When you're trained to play the classical violin, you're sitting in front of somebody else's music. And the stress of hitting every note the way somebody else intended you, intended for you to hit that note, it's a skill, and you can get good at it, but it also takes a lot out of you.

• 59:43Speaker 05

  So she said, I left behind classical music, and when I found fiddle, I got to improvise. I got to make my own music. So she made this like really simple switch from performance to play. And I think that's an amazing, her story encapsulates so much of the midlife pivot, right? If we can all go from performance, doing the thing to please the fans, right, to please the crowd, to a return to play, to playing music because music makes your soul feel good, and it's improvisational music, well, there you go. That's the recipe right there. And so I asked her, well, how has playing fiddle changed your life?

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  And she said, well, I didn't have any community around violin, but once I started playing fiddle, I started going to fiddle competitions and weekend, you know, and once you find your fiddle people, you got your peeps, you know? You know? So it's a great example of like, find the thing you love, and then, or parlay that thing you know how to do, playing violin, to something more playful, and then find other people who are doing that. And she was a very, very happy person.

• 1:00:56Jonathan Fields?

  So if someone's joining us, right, and they're sort of like nodding along there in this season of life, and they're like, okay, so finding something that really, that, that gives me that sense of purpose or aliveness, finding, you know, taking some time to really pause and look inward, you know, whatever that means to you, whatever the process or the questions are, and finding people that you can share whatever emerges from that, really important. And maybe they're joining us and thinking, this sounds really cool. I'm in the moon bounce phase right now. I'm going hard, but I would love to figure out a first step in. What would you invite them to explore?

• 1:01:31Speaker 05

  So a couple of things, and also a little preamble. Oftentimes, when we, people will say, oh, I would love to have that feeling again, but you know, I'm too busy, or I'm taking care of my mom with Alzheimer's, or I have this responsibility. And I understand, we are the sandwich, you know, generation. And it goes without saying that we, just because our kids are launching, or getting older, and maybe we're, you know, done climbing the career ladder, most of us are still working and still have obligation on both ends, parents, kids, and those things never end, never will. That will be until the day we die. But we do have, if you have an extra hour a week, an extra hour of week, you have time

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  to start doing a slow crossfade to a pivot, to a third term, right? So two things that I would say, two little starting places. One is, I'm a big fan of this survey called the Values in Action Character Strength Survey. It was developed by Marty Seligman and a bunch of other people, Peterson, right? And I interviewed Dr. Seligman about it when it was brand new, and I was a young mom and struggling to know if it was like, I was doing the right thing, like, running from here down to the train every morning at 8:20 while my au pair was trying to clean the kitchen here and get the kids ready, and my life felt like chaos. And I often wondered, like, am I doing the right thing?

• 1:02:55Speaker 05

  And the, the, the tool is great because it helps you really figure out how your values and your strengths come together, right? And I remember taking it as a young mom and realizing that, you know, Marty Seligman telling me, assuring me, like, it seems like you're doing the right thing, like, you do a job, you know, you're, some of your, your, your strongest strengths and, and values are curiosity and lifelong learning, you know, like, of course, you're doing the right thing, like, you know, even my mother told me, if you stay home all day, every day, all you're going to be doing is cleaning the house and changing, changing diapers, and everybody was right. I just needed to, to see it.

• 1:03:35Speaker 05

  And taking that survey really gave me, reminded me of who I was at a time when I was too busy to see it. And so I think, go online and take it. You can find a free version online, you can take one of the VIA classes, which are amazing, and just, it's a way to check in with yourself, to remember, what are my strengths? What are my values? And it'll, that will start speaking to you. And then I think the first idea that you have bubbling up when you hear about a volunteer opportunity, even if it's just an hour a week, whether it's with, you know, animals or the environment, or something political, it doesn't matter. The first thing where you feel your heart make that little leap when somebody describes what they're doing, follow along, right?

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  You don't have to commit, you just have to try something. And then that might be an on-ramp to something else.

• 1:04:25Jonathan Fields?

  Love that. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  To live by heart and intuition. We talked about the three chapters of life as learn, earn, retire. I think a much better script is learn, earn, return. Return to living a life by heart and intuition.

• 1:04:56Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you.

• 1:04:57Speaker 05

  Thank you. It's been a great pleasure to be here.

• 1:05:00Jonathan Fields?

  So one of the things I'm still thinking about from this conversation, it's, it's how much Alison's body told her something that her mind kind of wasn't ready to hear. Two other ideas I keep circling for me, the summoning or the summons, that, that quiet nudge that most of us have gotten really good at not hearing. I'm really thinking about whether I've missed some in my own journey, and especially in this season of life. And the moon bounce, that visual, that specific exhaustion of bouncing between obligations with no space to ever ask if any of it is actually still working for you. And maybe a little bit of a bonus, the importance of mattering and finding people to share

• 1:05:43Jonathan Fields?

  a deep, a deep curiosity or pursuit with. If there's one thing to really carry into the week, maybe it's this, find one small thing that makes your heart, just do that little leap that Alison talked about, and give it a minute, give it a couple of minutes, give it an hour, see what it tells you. Hey, before we leave, next week, we're sitting down with Bella DePaulo to talk about what it actually means to be what she calls single at heart, and why some of the deepest, most authentic lives being lived right now aren't actually built around a partner at all. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss that or any other upcoming episodes. And do me a quick personal favor, share this conversation with just one person, or leave

• 1:06:27Jonathan Fields?

  us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us get discovered and reach more people. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing helped by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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