The Science of Charisma & Why Midlife Is Better Than Everyone Thinks

If your porch light seems to attract every moth and flying insect in the neighborhood, you're not imagining it. Scientists have finally figured out why artificial lights are so irresistible to many insects—and knowing what they've discovered can help you keep more bugs away this summer. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44785-3 Some people seem to light up a room the moment they walk in. Others naturally draw people in, inspire confidence, and make lasting impressions. We call it charisma, and many assume you're either born with it or you're not. Olivia Fox Cabane says that's simply not true. In this conversation, she explains what charisma really is, why it's often misunderstood, and the surprisingly practical skills anyone can learn to become more influential and engaging. Olivia has advised leaders at Google, Deloitte, UBS, MGM, and TikTok, and is author of The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (https://amzn.to/44kpuyI). For decades, we've talked about "the midlife crisis" as though it's inevitable. But what if we've gotten midlife completely wrong? Research suggests that your middle years can be one of the most productive, satisfying, and influential periods of your life. So why does this stage have such a negative reputation? And what are people in midlife uniquely positioned to do that younger and older adults often can't? Margie Lachman, Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University and director of the Lifespan Lab, shares a fresh, evidence-based perspective on why midlife deserves a lot more celebration than sympathy. She is author of Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife (https://amzn.to/4bpLbRJ). Have you ever searched everywhere for your keys or your glasses, only to discover they were sitting in plain sight the whole time? It's a surprisingly common experience, and it reveals something fascinating about how your brain decides what you do—and don't—see. https://dictionary.apa.org/inattentional-blindness PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why insects fly to your porch light and how to get them to go somewhere else. Then charisma. Anyone can have it if you understand how it works.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Remember that charisma isn't just how you make them feel about you. It's how you make them feel about themselves. Let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Stop trying to impress people.

• 1:51Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why you sometimes can't find things that are sitting right there in plain sight. And midlife. Midlife has a terrible reputation it doesn't deserve.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, we've been sold this narrative of midlife is a crisis. But the data that we have tell a very different story. Really, midlife is prime time. And that's a fundamental reframe that I hope many will embrace.

• 2:16Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming,

• 3:05Mike Carruthers?

  they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too.

• 3:49Mike Carruthers?

  And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:12Mike Carruthers?

  It's a common dance we see every summer. Bugs flying towards, circling around, and crashing into porch lights. Why do they do that? I'm Mike Carruthers, and that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of Something You Should Know. For decades, scientists thought that the reason bugs were attracted to light had to do with something about the moon, that bugs were mistaking light bulbs for the moon. But new research suggests that's not what's happening at all. It turns out insects aren't trying to fly to the light. They're getting trapped by it. Most flying insects have evolved to keep the brightest part of the sky above them.

• 4:55Mike Carruthers?

  It's a simple way to stay upright while flying. For millions of years, that worked really well because the brightest light was the sun or the moon overhead. But a porch light changes everything. As an insect flies past, it instinctively twists its back towards the bulb, trying to keep the light above it. That causes the bug to bank and loop and circle to the light and even flip upside down and crash. In other words, bugs aren't attracted to your porch light because they like it. They're confused by it. If you want to reduce the number of bugs attracted to your light, change the bulb. Remember this. If the package says daylight or cool white, you'll get more bugs.

• 5:40Mike Carruthers?

  If it says soft white, warm white, or amber, you'll see far fewer. And that is something you should know.

• 5:51Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever met someone who just has it? The moment they walk into a room, people notice. Others seem naturally drawn to them. They aren't necessarily the smartest or the funniest or even the best looking person there. Yet somehow they command attention and make people want to be around them. We call that charisma. But what exactly is it? Is charisma something you're born with or is it actually a skill? And if it's a skill, why do some people seem to have so much of it while others struggle to connect? My guest says charisma is not a mysterious gift bestowed on a lucky few.

• 6:33Mike Carruthers?

  It's a set of behaviors that anyone can learn and master. Olivia Fox Cabane is one of the world's leading authorities on the science of charisma. Her clients include leaders at Google, Deloitte, UBS, MGM, and TikTok. And she's author of the bestselling book, The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism, which has been translated into 27 languages. Hi, Olivia. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.

• 7:06Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of charisma, and I think when most people think of charisma, somebody comes to mind, some very confident, very dynamic, very magnetic kind of person. And then I think, well, that's just who they are. Is that just who they are?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  That is the key myth about charisma, indeed, that most people think that it's innate, that people are either born with it or they're not, when in fact, we now have the science to show that charisma is not innate, it is just a series of behaviors.

• 7:40Mike Carruthers?

  But the people that I think of as charismatic, and you often hear people talk about, like, say Oprah or Bill Clinton, that these are very charismatic people. Do they work at it? Or is it just who they are?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Some people do have predispositions, a certain facility. And let me be clear, I can't turn everyone, possibly even anyone, into Bill Clinton. There are some people that are just superhuman in terms of charisma. What happens is that the people who have natural predispositions start learning the behaviors so early in life that by the time we usually get to know them in, let's say, late teenagehood or adulthood, it looks as if it were innate. There are some fascinating stories about Bill Clinton, aged three or four, already being a mini politician on the playground, going around to all the kids, learning their names, asking the teacher questions, et cetera.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  However, the fascinating thing is that you also see some people, like Steve Jobs, who absolutely learnt their charisma. And you can see it from, in his case, 1983 to 2011. You can see him learning the various pieces of charisma, the components, the behaviors, one after the other.

• 8:57Mike Carruthers?

  So that's a much more intentional process of learning it. But what does it mean to learn it? I mean, is it, I mean, there's a book, you wrote it. But the idea of becoming charismatic, is that a very sit down and intentional, I need to do these things to be charismatic and magnetic?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  If you want to essentially gain it as fast as possible and as intensely as possible, yes. There are people who don't go about it in such a pragmatic or tactical way. And you'll hear, I hear from people saying, well, I decided when I was a teenager that I'd just learn and I copied people around me. But being a nerd, for me, the answer is always first, let's see if there's science out there. And guess what? There is. So the day that I learned that in controlled laboratory experiments, researchers were able to raise and lower people's level of charisma as if they were turning a dial, that was the day I decided I'm going to learn this stuff because the science is out there.

• 10:00Mike Carruthers?

  If you can turn it on and turn it off, do you think charismatic people like a Bill Clinton turns it off? When he goes home, does he go, oh, God, thank God, that's over with. Now I can be real or not?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  I think so, yes. And the reason I think so is that some of the most fascinating stories in the lore of charisma are ones like Marilyn Monroe deciding she was going to prove that Norma Jean and Marilyn were personas she could flip in and out of. And so on one New York summer, I think it was 1955, she goes into Grand Central Station with a photographer and a journalist, and she was showing them that she could just be Norma Jean. So she boards a subway car, and even though there is a camera clicking the whole time, apparently not a single person noticed her. Then she emerges from the subway, goes back onto the street, turns to the reporter, says,

• 10:57Speaker 01

  so you want to see Marilyn? And he said that there wasn't a huge gesture. She just overall shifted her body language, fluffed up her hair, but all of a sudden to the reporter, it looked magic. And all of a sudden, for all the people around, they realized it was Marilyn and the crowd went wild. So we do have these stories of the charismatic superstars turning it on and off. And we have the studies of participants' level of charisma going up and down. Because charisma can take effort, I understand why some people would want to turn it off, especially since, let's be honest, there are downsides to being charismatic.

• 11:37Mike Carruthers?

  Really? You would think that if I can turn a dial and be more charismatic, that that's what would the downside be?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  It may sound weird, but people really do get high on your presence. And people can get kind of addicted to the charisma being turned on. And then they're the other ones like you can convince people even when you're wrong. And I've seen this with founders in Silicon Valley time and time again. Charismatic founders have a huge advantage in fundraising, but they can sometimes have a genuine disadvantage in leading because they will convince their team, they will convince customers even when they are incorrect. And then eventually, product market fit, or whatever it is that shows that they got everyone to drink their Kool-Aid along with them, the company crashes into a wall.

• 12:32Mike Carruthers?

  So when you break charisma down into its core elements, what are they?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  The three basic components of charisma. They get different names in different studies, but essentially, presence, power, and warmth. If you look at presence, sometimes it's called attentiveness or receptivity. If you look at power, sometimes it's called dominance or assertiveness. If you look at warmth, sometimes it's called friendliness. But you can group them in these categories. What it means, if you look at it kind of from a survival perspective, it makes sense. It's can you move mountains for me? And would you care to do so? Because if you think of it, someone who can move the mountains, but has no interest in moving the mountains you need moved, doesn't really help your survival.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Someone who really wants to move your mountains, but doesn't have the power, equally irrelevant. And someone who can and would, but is too distracted to even know or notice which mountains you need moved, again, irrelevant. So if you think of it, you can kind of parallel to sugar, fat, and salt. The same way we overreact to sugar, fat, and salt each individually, you put them together, you kind of get junk food, and that's when the taste buds go crazy. If you put presence, power, and warmth together, that is when you have someone that all your instincts say, pay attention to this one.

• 13:55Mike Carruthers?

  And if you have presence, power, and warmth, can you put those into action for me? Tell me like how would I identify them, just to get a more real, less abstract concept of what those three things are?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Sure thing. The presence one ironically is these days the easiest to get bonus points for because so few people have it. Presence is really the ability to stay present, focused, and attentive on the other person moment by moment. It sounds simple, but it's not easy because we are so continuously distracted by our phones, our tablets, our watches, our everything, that anytime someone gives us genuinely full attention for even a few moments, it is extraordinary, the outsized impact that this can have on the people that you're interacting with. So that's presence.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And it's kind of like the foundation, power. Power is not necessarily the actual power to command an army. It's more something that we infer, and we tend to infer it, to assume it from your body language. So it really comes down to, if you appear confident, people will assume you have something to be confident about. And power, if you're looking for the one thing that can boost confidence, it's really a question of removing the one thing that kills it, which is self-criticism, self-doubt. Learning how to handle those two is kind of ground zero for emanating power and charisma.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  And the final one is warmth. And warmth is simply giving the sense that you care about the other person, that you care for their well-being. And with most of the components in charisma, it cannot be faked because humans are extraordinarily good at detecting incongruity in your body language. However, it can be for some small things. You can like some parts of the person. And the irony is, if you look at Steve Jobs, the warmth didn't come from his love of his audience or his customers. The warmth came from his enthusiasm for the product itself.

• 16:14Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, well, I've got some questions about implementing the things that you just talked about, and I'll ask you about that when we come back in just a moment. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility, sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple.

• 16:58Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:42Speaker 03

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• 18:10Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about charisma and how to acquire it with Elizabeth Fox Cabane. She's author of the book, The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. It's a bestselling book and has been translated into 27 languages. So Elizabeth, you said that learning to conquer self-criticism and self-doubt is ground zero for charisma. But if you're plagued by self-doubt and self-criticism, how do you conquer that? How do you get past that so you can move on and get charisma?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  So I'd like to start from the inside and talk about the outside just in a second. Because from the inside, ironically, the route to projecting more power, more strength, often comes from self-compassion. Because, Mike, have you ever been in a conversation where you think something and your brain goes, "Ooh, that was stupid"? Has that ever happened to you?

• 19:13Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, more times than I'd like to think.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Right. So two things happen in that moment. One, your face kind of winces or cringes. And the really interesting thing is that that was self-judgment, self-directed coldness, but the other person doesn't know that. All they know is that while you were looking at them, listening to them, and presumably thinking about them, they accurately read criticism, coldness, and judgment on your face, so naturally, they're going to assume it's about them. The other thing it's going to do is that our brain is pretty terrible at understanding the difference between imagination and reality. And this is the reason why when you go watch a horror movie, even though you know it's just a movie, your brain sees blood and guts on the screen, you still get the fight or

• 20:00Speaker 01

  flight, you still get the adrenaline, etc. So when you get internal attacks, it registers in your brain, and it has some of the same impact as a real attack would have. And so, interestingly, the most important tool to increase self-confidence is actually self-compassion, the ability to forgive yourself when you mess up. So it's, for me, it's been really interesting, over the past decade, how often, working with guys who wanted the big macho energy, we actually had to go through the soft forgiveness energy to get there. And the second way is understanding that your brain thinks that it's giving you an accurate picture of reality.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Often, it's not. Your brain is doing its very best, but if you've ever heard of the gorilla basketball study, when a group of students were told to count the number of passes that two teams made, and then, after a few minutes, the researchers asked them, "Did you notice anything unusual about the video"? And the students said, "No, but we can tell you how many times they passed the ball". Turns out, about halfway through the game, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit walked onto the court, waved her arms at the camera, and then walked off-court again. And the reason most of the students missed this is called inattentional blindness. Our brain does its best, but it has to filter. And so, sometimes, it gives us a completely distorted picture of reality.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  So remembering that just because a thought is in your head does not mean it is accurate can help in separating from the inner critic, or the imposter syndrome that you can sometimes have. Understand that it's a natural, normal part of the human experience. Some studies say up to 80% of adults, people experience it at some point or another, and really detach from it as something that, you know what? It happens to everyone.

• 21:51Mike Carruthers?

  But it does seem to me, just when I think about the people that I think of as charismatic, that they tend to be much more extroverted, you know, back-slapping kind of people. That may be too broad a stroke there, but you know what I mean, that if you're an introvert, being charismatic, it seems like oil and water.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  So that's another myth I'm so glad you brought up. You're right that extroversion is an advantage for certain forms of charisma, but introversion is an advantage for other forms. So if you look at presence, power, and warmth, you kind of think of them like in chemistry, you need a certain amount to reach the bare minimum, to get charisma. After that, what changes is the kind of charisma you get, depending on which of these is highest. So for focused charisma, for example, the kind that Bill Gates, or when I met Elon Musk about 10, 15 years ago, he was a fairly different person, I'll admit, but at that point, he was absolutely charismatic, but in a very introverted, focused way.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And what that is, is highest on presence, second on power, and third on warmth. You can still, as an introvert, have kindness charisma, the kind the Dalai Lama has, if you lead with warmth, second with presence, and lowest on power.

• 23:15Mike Carruthers?

  Charismatic people, it seems to me, have a way of speaking. There's a way of speaking that kind of draws people in. Do you agree with that? And if so, can you describe that way of speaking?

• 23:29Speaker 01

  It turns out that lowering the intonation, the intonation of your voice, at the end of sentences, and frankly, even at sentence breaks, that is what conveys competence and authority. And the faster and deeper the drop, the more authority you convey, the more power you convey. So one of the myths that was debunked for me, I was one of the people who thought that lower voices are more charismatic, right? Wrong. When they studied Steve Jobs' voice, who apparently had one of the most charismatic voices, his voice was so high, it occasionally went into the female register. But he did have that fluctuation, and he did have those sentence drops, which are

• 24:10Speaker 01

  speaking as if it is a judge delivering a sentence. The other one, if you tend to not pause enough. Interestingly, being able to pause before you speak, it doesn't have to be super long, it doesn't have to go the full Obama length, but being able to take just a moment before you speak will tend to make people pay more attention. So those are some of the quick ways to convey power.

• 24:39Mike Carruthers?

  And when you say pause, you mean before you start, or paused throughout?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Now, what's really interesting is if you look at high-status and low-status humans, the higher-status ones tend to pause not just between sentences, but even in sentence breaks. Essentially, they're communicating that I am so damn confident in either who I am or what I'm saying, that I am sure you will not dare interrupt me.

• 25:03Mike Carruthers?

  So if someone's listening to you and thinking, "Yeah, well, this is great, you know, I would like to be more charismatic, there seems to be a lot to it", where do you start?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  First of all, when you're in a conversation, anytime you feel that only half your mind is present, and the other half is busy doing something else, immediately focus on your toes, just for a moment. What this does is it forces your brain to scan your body from head to, of course, toes, and it gets you very physically present in the moment. Remember that charisma isn't just how you make them feel about you, it's how you make them feel about themselves. Let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Stop trying to impress people. The other one that I'd say is, when you want to emote warmth, the good news is, it doesn't even have to be big things.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Because the brain isn't great at understanding scale, that's the reason that, you know how a day when all the little things go wrong can sometimes be harder than a day when one big thing goes wrong? If you can find even just three small things that you like about the other person, you have to genuinely like them, but they can be as small as, "I like their shoes", or, "They wore on time". If you can start adding up the small things, this will send your brain down an approval route, and that will come across in your body language. And the last one, and this is really one of the most important ones, is, give yourself a break. Interestingly enough, the easiest way, and let me be clear and harsh, there's a reason

• 26:39Speaker 01

  that narcissism is positively correlated with charisma. It's because narcissists tend to be very easy on themselves. That gives them an advantage, please don't become a narcissist. But learning how to forgive yourselves, most people are so hard on themselves. Self-forgiveness is one of the unexpected routes to charisma.

• 26:57Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I find this empowering, because I've always thought, and I think most people think, that charismatic people just have that certain something, like, they're born with it. And clearly, there's a process to acquiring charisma, and anyone can do it. I've been talking with Olivia Fox Cabane, she is one of the world's leading authorities on the science of charisma, and she's author of a bestselling book called The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Olivia, thank you, thanks for joining me today.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Mike. I really, really appreciate it.

• 27:36Mike Carruthers?

  All right.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Have a good one.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  The action's on the court, and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026, and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 28:07Speaker 05

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• 28:39Mike Carruthers?

  There's something about the word "middle" that doesn't sound very exciting. Nobody wants the middle seat on the airplane. Nobody wants to finish in the middle of the pack. Being middle of the road isn't exactly a compliment. And then there's midlife. It almost sounds like a waiting room. You're not young anymore, but you're not old either. Well, what if we've completely misunderstood midlife? What if these years are actually some of the most important and potentially rewarding of your life? Why do some people seem to thrive during midlife while others struggle? And what does the research say about making these years the best years?

• 29:21Mike Carruthers?

  My guest has spent her career studying exactly that. Margie Lachman is a professor of psychology at Brandeis University, where she directs the Lifespan Lab. Her research focuses on health, cognition, and well-being during adulthood. And she's author of a book called "Primetime: A New Vision for Midlife." Hi, Margie. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Mike. It's great to be here.

• 29:48Mike Carruthers?

  So what is midlife? How do you define it? It's the years between what and what?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Well, not everybody agrees on what the definition of midlife is. That's an interesting thing that I like to talk about because what midlife is makes a big difference in terms of people's lives. So I like to define it as 40 to 60, plus or minus 10. And that's because there are many people in their 30s and 60s who do consider themselves middle-aged. The way people define midlife varies. So the older you are, we find, the later you think midlife begins and ends.

• 30:28Mike Carruthers?

  And I imagine there's more to the definition than just the age, just a number.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  I think of middle age not just in terms of chronological age. It's not just how many candles are on your birthday cake. It's also really the way that you are situated in terms of other generations. So in midlife, many people are counting on you. And you basically hold many different roles and responsibilities. So there can be this intense feeling that everyone is counting on you. So you're caring for your kids while also helping your aging parents. So you're literally in the middle, pulled in many directions. And for me, that's really the essence of midlife. It's less about your chronological age

• 31:15Speaker 02

  and more about how you feel in your unique and challenging position between generations, at home, at work, and elsewhere.

• 31:26Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as I said in the beginning, you know, midlife, middle doesn't have a real exciting feel to it. Like, you're not young anymore. So the fun is over. And now you're in this kind of no man's land of midlife that for many people just doesn't feel so exciting.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Well, that's really what I think we need to do is to rebrand midlife because it really does get a bad rap. And there are so many good things going on in midlife. And one of the things I think that's unfortunate is that as people get to 40 or 50, a lot of the negative views that we have just about aging in general start to kick in. So I think a lot of the images of midlife are tied to these fears or negative views that we have of aging. And those aren't just depressing, it's actually dangerous. There's research that shows that having negative views about aging can really affect your health and even how long you live.

• 32:26Mike Carruthers?

  And why is that? Why is how you think about something going to affect your health?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Well, there's a lot of research now trying to understand what are the processes by why this can happen. And I have actually developed a theory called the psychosocial prescription for healthy aging. And it really focuses on why is it that your beliefs and your attitudes, your mindsets about aging actually are so strongly tied to health and longevity? So for example, the most obvious is a behavioral explanation. So if you believe that things are going downhill and there's nothing that you can do about it, that may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won't really try hard. You won't engage in the kinds of behaviors that actually could be adaptive.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  And a second factor that we have looked at is stress. So if you feel that things are out of control, there's nothing you can do to maintain your health and well-being as you get older, that it's all downhill, that also can cause stress. And we know that stress is damaging for health through a variety of different factors. And so we need to find ways to reduce stress. And one of the ways is really to have a much more positive view of midlife, focusing on the gains rather than the losses.

• 33:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think part of the problem in midlife is it's kind of hard to identify how you're supposed to be. Like, you're not young anymore, but you're not old anymore yet. So what does that mean? What does it mean to be in the middle? How are you supposed to act? How are you supposed to dress? How are you supposed to be? There is that sense that you're kind of lost.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I think one of the most important changes that happens as you get to midlife is that the focus is no longer just on you. As you're in your 20s and 30s and starting to establish yourself, whether it's relationships or in the workforce, you can really focus on yourself. Once you get to midlife, though, there are a lot of people typically depending on you at home and at work. And so our network expands and we have to focus on many things outside of ourself. And I think that can be confusing and also stressful. And it makes people unsure of what it is that they're supposed to do. So I agree with you in that it's a kind of an unexplored territory for many people.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  But the fact is that you do have a lot of experience and knowledge in general when you get to midlife. And people are really good at solving problems and making decisions in midlife. So we can really use the abilities that we've acquired, the knowledge and experience that we've gained to help us to navigate this difficult period.

• 35:19Mike Carruthers?

  Is it a difficult period? Is it supposed to be?

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's difficult in the sense that you are being pulled in many different directions. There's this need to balance work and family, for example, to be focusing on taking care of those who are younger and older in the workplace. And it can feel like everybody's depending on you. Everybody's counting on you. Many of us are familiar with the "sandwich generation" term, which addresses the fact that many people in their 40s and 50s are in fact caring for people who are under 18 and also their parents. And that can put a lot of demands and pressure on somebody because you're also trying to navigate your work. And what I think really takes a toll

• 36:03Speaker 02

  is that you are experiencing changes in your health as you enter midlife. And it's very important to be focused on maintaining health in midlife.

• 36:14Mike Carruthers?

  So if you asked 100 people, "Finish this phrase, midlife," everybody's going to say "crisis," that everybody has heard of the midlife crisis. What is that?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. I was going to say that there's very few things that we get 90 to 100% agreement on in our research. And one of them is if you ask people to free associate with the term "midlife," everybody says "crisis." And that's really unfortunate. It's just an automatic response. I don't think people really even think about what it means. I will also say another example that we get a lot of agreement on is if you ask people, and we've done this in our survey, the Midlife in the United States Survey. We've asked people, "If you could be any age, what age would you like to be?" And 90% of the people, and these are people even in their 30s and beyond,

• 37:12Speaker 02

  say that they would like to be younger than the age that they are. They give an age that is younger. And if we talk to people in their 40s, 70% of them think that the ideal age would be in their 20s and 30s. And people in their 50s, about 70% of those people think that their ideal age is in their 20s and 30s. So there's just this negative view of being older, I think, that gets swept up into our whole conception of midlife.

• 37:46Mike Carruthers?

  But the idea of a crisis, there must be some germ of something in there. And when I think of the midlife crisis, I think of typically the, you know, the dad who's been, you know, a good dad all of a sudden goes out and buys a sports car. And that's his midlife crisis. Well, what is that?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'm just gonna say a little bit about the origin of the term midlife crisis. It started in 1965 by a psychoanalyst called Elliot Jaxx. And he came up with the term to describe some of his clients who were in their 40s and 50s and were concerned that their life was over, essentially, that there was not enough time left to accomplish anything, that it was all downhill from here. And that view stuck. It got resurrected, I think, in many different ways, from things like Gail Sheehy's book on passages, and also Hollywood and novelists. And people write about the so-called midlife crisis.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  And as you point out, there's this stereotypic view of the man who's unhappy and he wants to find a younger woman, and he gets a red sports car. So that's what we envision as a midlife crisis. And that's certainly not what most people think about when they think about a real midlife crisis, fortunately. But people are expecting that things will be difficult in midlife. And we did a study with the Midlife in the United States survey that I mentioned earlier, where we asked people whether they had had a midlife crisis or not. And we didn't define it for them. We wanted them to define it.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  And so when we asked them what they thought a midlife crisis was, it really was interesting to see, and it's very consistent with what we find now. First of all, we found no more than 20% to 25% of people reported a midlife crisis. So that's about a quarter of people, and that's not nothing, but it's certainly not a rite of passage that many people associate with midlife. Now, when we asked them what a midlife crisis was, the most important thing I want to tell people is that a lot of times what happened and they described as a midlife crisis happened much before midlife or much after midlife. So the midlife crisis term is applied to things that don't even happen during the

• 40:14Speaker 02

  midlife period. And secondly, many of the things that they described as a midlife crisis were tied to things such as divorce, or losing a job, or having an illness, that really could happen at any time. So we associate it with midlife, but it's not necessarily unique to midlife.

• 40:35Mike Carruthers?

  When I think of someone suffering a midlife crisis, I think of a man, not a woman.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yes. When we looked at our data, though, there really were no differences between men and women in terms of the frequency of people who reported it. As I said, about a quarter of our sample reported a midlife crisis, or that they called a midlife crisis, but there wasn't really much of a difference between men and women.

• 41:05Mike Carruthers?

  This sense of dissatisfaction, which I guess is what's underlying the midlife crisis, that I'm not where I want to be, or I'm not where I used to be, or I don't like where I am, and so I'm going to do something wild and crazy. I have to say, I don't know anybody that I've observed ever did that. But maybe they did, and I don't know it. But it just, it seems much more of a movie and a novel thing than it seems a real life thing to me.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  I think what does happen is when you get to a point, a change in your decade, say 40 or 50, and in this case, the middle of your life, so-called middle of your life, it's not unusual. It's really a natural to look back and look ahead, when you get to the midpoint of anything. So the fact that people are getting to midlife and looking back, and maybe feeling that they haven't reached all of their goals, they feel that there's things that they wish they had accomplished, they hadn't, that doesn't surprise me. And that can lead to people being dissatisfied, because they're concerned that time is running out. This is one of the misconceptions that many people have.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  When you get to midlife, there's still half your life left. We assume there's half your life left, of course. We don't know how long we're gonna live. But there should be plenty of time left. And I think a lot of people panic that it's too late to do anything new, it's too late to change. And that may trigger some, what we call, a crisis, or difficult times in midlife. And I also think that we know that a lot of millennials, millennials who are just really entering midlife, and we don't know a lot about what their midlife is going to be, but many of them who are in their 30s are starting to be concerned because they really haven't met a lot of the goals that they thought they should have by now.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  They're taking longer to reach a lot of the milestones that typically have been met earlier, in earlier generations.

• 43:12Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, you had said earlier, at the core of this might be that, you know, people feel that they haven't achieved all their goals yet, where they thought they would be right now. And who has? Do you know anybody who has said, yep, everything's right on target, I am right where I thought I would be, and right where I want to be, there's no dissatisfaction here? And I don't know a single person who would say that.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  You're absolutely right. I completely agree with you. And I think the thing that triggers the concern is the fact that people think they're getting old. This notion of aging is what throws people off. So you get to be 40 or 50, and they feel that time is running out, and there's not enough time to accomplish goals. And that's really the rebrand, or the way we need to sort of change people's thinking, is that you shouldn't have expected to have reached all of your goals. That would be, in a way, kind of boring, when what else would be left for you to do for the rest of your life? So I do think that's important for us to convey, this notion that you get to midlife,

• 44:17Speaker 02

  and you could really look back and see where you've been, what things you have not accomplished, what things you would like to accomplish in the future, and then go for it.

• 44:28Mike Carruthers?

  Well, let me describe something that I've noticed, and I'm sure other people have noticed too, about older people, people in their later years. Like, when my grandmother was 60 years old, she dressed like an old lady, she acted like an old lady, she was an old lady. Today, 60-year-olds don't act that way. 70-year-olds don't act that way, or many of them. They like, fight it. They're not willing to go down that path just yet. How does that play out in midlife? Or do midlife people, in other words, do midlife people act younger and seem younger

• 45:10Mike Carruthers?

  and live younger today than they used to, just as older people seem to do it today, unlike they used to?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I think you are on to something here. First, I'm gonna say that when we ask people today how old they feel, in general, they feel about 20% younger than they actually are. So if you're 40, you're likely to say you feel in your early 30s. And if you're 50, you're likely to think you are feeling like you are in your early 40s. So there's this notion that people feel younger. And part of that, I think, is just our healthy lifestyle has really changed in more recent generations. And so people are healthier. We have more ways to treat illnesses, and we're more aware of the things that we need

• 45:59Speaker 02

  to do that can help us to maintain our functional health and well-being. And so I think people do feel a lot younger now than they used to, in part because they are healthier. And your functional health is really what affects how you feel. If you can do the things that you want to do, then you feel young. But if you can't, then you're gonna feel old. And so I think older generations really didn't do things like exercise. I don't think, I don't know about your grandmother, but I wonder if she really engaged in physical activity and physical exercise. Maybe they walked more than we do today. We are much more dependent on our automobiles than we used to be.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  But I think a lot of what we're seeing now in terms of younger generations feeling and looking younger has to do with taking better care of ourselves.

• 46:53Mike Carruthers?

  And so what is your message, then? What is it you want people to understand about this? Because it is what it is. I mean, you can't not get into midlife and face the issues that midlife brings. So what do you want people to get?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Well, I really think it's important that we focus more on the gains that accompany midlife than on the losses. There's no doubt that there are things that are on the decline in midlife, physical changes that happen, but many of them are things we can do something about. So yes, there are declines in your reaction time, and in your bone density, and in your muscle mass, and so on, and in some aspects of cognitive functioning. But there are things you can do, physical activity, for example, or cognitive stimulation. So I think it's important that even though we recognize there are many losses, we try to do something to maintain functioning and...

• 47:53Speaker 02

  And minimize the losses. At the same time, we want to recognize that you're gaining in so many different ways as you enter midlife and beyond. Things like self-confidence, ability to regulate emotions, the knowledge you acquire, your ability to solve problems. All of these things are on the rise and increasing into midlife and beyond. And so I think if we focus on the things that are in our control, things that we can actually improve, then we can really do better in terms of our health and wellbeing.

• 48:31Mike Carruthers?

  You have spent so much time studying people in their midlife. What maybe that we haven't talked about that you think is important to mention before we close things out?

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, we've been sold this narrative of midlife is a crisis. But the data that we have tell a very different story. Really, midlife is prime time. And that's a fundamental reframe that I hope many will embrace. I think of midlife as a tremendous opportunity. It's really a moment in which you can use your experience and you've honed a lot of skills for decades and there's still plenty of time. So I like to see midlife through the lens of opportunity rather than loss. And if you do that, then everything can change for the better.

• 49:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I enjoy hearing you talk about this. And your view of midlife is very refreshing compared to what I think most people think of midlife, which is it's not an exciting time. It's kind of the, you know, the fun is over. And your view is, is much more optimistic. I've been talking to Margie Lachman. She's a professor of psychology at Brandeis University and author of the book, Primetime: A New Vision of Midlife. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Great, Margie. Good discussion. Thank you.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. It's just really enjoyable.

• 49:53Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever searched for something like your glasses? And you look everywhere, only to discover they were right there. They were on the table the whole time. Well, that's not absent mindedness. Psychologists call it inattentional blindness. Your brain doesn't record everything your eyes see. It filters out most of what it sees so you can focus on what's important. The downside is that when you're looking for something specific, you can literally overlook an object that's sitting in plain sight because your brain has decided it doesn't match the picture that it's expecting.

• 50:36Mike Carruthers?

  One trick that actually works is to stop looking from where you're standing. Move to another spot or crouch down. Changing your viewpoint changes what your brain notices. And that is something you should know. If you would like to support this podcast, I would suggest, and I know a lot of people do this to help us out, is to just share it. Tell someone you know about it. Share the link off the player you're listening to this on and help us grow our audience. That is the very best thing you can do. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 51:11Speaker 05

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• 51:38Speaker 06

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