30 Years of Research Reveals Why Midlife Isn’t a Crisis | Margie Lachman - EP 812

John R. Miles sits down with developmental psychologist Margie Lachman, a leading researcher on midlife and the director of the MIDUS study, to challenge the idea that getting older means life is inevitably going downhill.

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

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  What if midlife isn't the beginning of the decline we've been taught to expect? For more than 30 years, psychologist Dr. Margie Lachman has studied how people change across adulthood, and what her research reveals about midlife is surprisingly hopeful. In fact, she found that some of the very things we assume get worse with age can actually get stronger. Take a listen to this.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  No, we cannot predict how long we're going to live, clearly, but the statistics are such that when you get to 40, 50, you still have plenty of time left and you can make those remaining years really awesome and you can be healthy and happy. I think it's really important to focus on things that you are gaining rather than losing, thinking about the gains rather than the losses and trying your best to minimize the losses so that you really can live the rest of your life in a really positive way, which benefits not only you, but also those around you who are depending on you, those younger and older.

• 1:02John R. Miles?

  It's your friend, John, and welcome to Passion Struck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

• 1:42John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to Passion Struck, episode 812. And today, we're continuing our series, The Adaptive Brain: How Your Mind Learns Changes and Heals. Earlier in the week, Dan Arley challenged us to think about the risks we take and the ones we might regret never taking. Today, we're zooming out and asking a different question. What if we're thinking about getting older all wrong? Somewhere along the way, we've come to associate aging with decline, less energy, less possibility, less capacity to change. But what if that's not the whole story? That's what makes my conversation with Dr. Margie Lachman so fascinating. Margie is a developmental psychologist and one of the leading researchers on adult development.

• 2:24John R. Miles?

  For more than 30 years, she's helped lead the midlife in the United States, or MITUS study, following thousands of people across adulthood to understand what really happens to us as we move through life. And some of what she's discovered challenges the story we've been telling ourselves. Midlife isn't necessarily a crisis. In fact, Margie's research shows that people can maintain their happiness, preserve cognitive abilities longer than we once thought, and experience a stronger sense of control during midlife. We also talked about something I found especially meaningful: generativity, the shift from focusing primarily on ourselves to using what we've learned to help other people grow.

• 3:08John R. Miles?

  And that raises a question that I think is worth asking at any age. What if this isn't the chapter where you're supposed to slow down? What if it's the chapter where you're supposed to become more of who you are? So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Dr. Margie Lachman. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 3:38John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Margie Lachman to Passion Struck. Margie, how are you today? Congratulations on the launch of Primetime, a new vision for midlife.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Thank you, John. It's really great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

• 3:52John R. Miles?

  I'm so excited to have this conversation. I did a conversation earlier in the year with Mark Nepo on midlife, which was a really interesting and philosophical conversation. But you have spent 30 years studying midlife, which is really interesting to me that you have had so much focus on this, which we're going to get into today. But what's interesting, Margie, is culturally, I think we think of this stage as like a lens of crisis, decline, loss. How do you think we're getting the story of midlife so wrong?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yes, you're right on there. Midlife has such a negative connotation in our society, and it really stems from early interest in midlife that focused on the midlife crisis. And it gets a lot of attention in Hollywood and in novels, and it's people like talking about this notion of a midlife crisis. But when you really get down to it, it's not something that many people experience. I think a lot of the negativity of midlife really stems from more general negative views of aging. When people get to 40 or 50 and they start to notice some of the, I would call superficial

• 5:12Speaker 01

  changes associated with aging, things like wrinkles or graying hair, it triggers this notion that, oh, I'm getting old, things are going downhill. And I think that really triggers this notion that there's all this negative associations with midlife.

• 5:33John R. Miles?

  What was interesting with my conversation with Mark is that a lot of the focus that he had on midlife was around the concept of love. Has that come up in your studies?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Relationships are central, absolutely. And if you think about some of the theories of adult development, I think of Eric Erickson, the psychoanalyst. He talked about midlife as the central task of generativity. But prior to that, before generativity, he did talk about intimacy or love. And so in his theory, intimacy comes before generativity. So once you establish relationships, then you can move beyond yourself and start to think about other people and then to the next generation.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So yes, relationships in general, and certainly partners and love, do play a central role in terms of well-being and health in midlife.

• 6:39John R. Miles?

  I saw that Bob Waldinger was one of the people who ended up blurbing your book. Congratulations on that. I've really enjoyed getting to know Bob over the past few years. And I think when he wrote The Good Life, he brought a lot of attention to a study that many people had not heard of. You are also associated with a study called the MITUS study. And I was wondering, why has it become one of the most important studies that's ever been conducted?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Waldinger's work with the Harvard study, it used to be called the Grant Study, really did play out the importance of longitudinal work. They are one of the longest lasting studies of adulthood and also the importance of social relationships, absolutely. Now, the study that I've worked on is called Midlife in the United States, known as MITUS. And it started over 30 years ago. At the time, there was very little known about middle age. As a developmental psychologist, we tended to focus on children or adolescents. And then as a gerontologist, where I really started, I focused, as did others, on later life and the problems of old age.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And it was in the middle 90s, about 30 years ago, that the MacArthur Foundation realized that there was this huge gap in our life course about midlife. And all we really thought about midlife was that it was a time of crisis. And so they were able to provide funding for us to conduct a longitudinal study. And it's been going on for over 30 years, and we've added new participants to our sample. But because we selected people who were 25 to 75 at the time, we've been able to study people as they make the transition into midlife as well as out of midlife into later life. And so we've learned an enormous amount of information.

• 8:32John R. Miles?

  Yeah, well, after following thousands of adults across those three decades, what's one or two things that surprised you the most?

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Well, one thing is, there's just no way to summarize midlife neatly. There is so much variability in terms of the nature of midlife. And as we get older, the variability and variation increases dramatically. So it actually makes it very difficult to study midlife and to characterize it. That said, we can talk about some average changes. And one of the things that we have found is that it's not all downhill and it's not all despair and depression as many people expected. There's been a lot of talk about midlife is a low point, a time of crisis, a time of despair. And we don't find that at all. We do find individual differences.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  There are some people who are happier than others, of course. But people tend to maintain their level of happiness throughout adulthood. As we follow them over time, we essentially see that people who start out pretty happy remain fairly happy. Now that said, if we look at them more closely on a daily basis, some of our studies study people in a day-to-day kind of variation. And there are certainly ups and downs that people will have. And sometimes they're happier than others. But people typically will return to their general level of life satisfaction. And also, life satisfaction, if it does change, it actually seems to increase even beyond midlife into early old age, the 60s and early 70s.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  There are other things that we've learned about cognition. Cognition doesn't decline as much as we thought it might, based on some of the early cross-sectional studies. When we follow people longitudinally, we find people are able to maintain their memory well into late 50s, early 60s. And even when we do find some minor changes in memory, it's not the kind that we should worry about, that you're getting Alzheimer's or dementia. And it's also not the kind that's going to affect your everyday life, per se. It might show up in the lab or the kind of tests that we give people. But it's not something that's going to necessarily affect your everyday life.

• 10:52John R. Miles?

  I recently had a conversation with a gentleman named Walter Green, who's in his early 80s. And we weren't talking about midlife. We were talking about a movement he's doing now called Say It Now, which is really about, say what's important to people who mean something to you now, instead of waiting for their funeral to make it happen. But while we were doing it, he brought up kind of the four paths of his life. He said, the first path was discovering me. Then he said, the second path of his life was making me. And then, when he described midlife, he called it becoming me.

• 11:35John R. Miles?

  And now that he's in this later stage of his life, he was saying it's more expanding me. Does what he said and becoming me resonate with you at all when you think about midlife?

• 11:48Speaker 01

  That is so interesting. I really love that. It's such a great way of thinking about the life course. Yes, I think it does. If you think about what happens in midlife, it's really a time when people reflect. You get to the midpoint of life. And it's a natural time to be looking back to see where you've come, what you've done. And then there's half your life left to think about where you want to go. And so it's a natural time, I think, to be making changes. And I don't think everybody sees it that way. I think a lot of people have this notion that it's too late to change. We're basically who we are, and there's nothing you can really do. So I think becoming really does resonate in the sense that it's a time when you can

• 12:33Speaker 01

  make changes and decide that either you're not happy with how things are, or you want to go in different directions. And there's plenty of time left, really, to make those changes.

• 12:45John R. Miles?

  It was a really interesting discussion. He was the CEO of a fairly large company. And he said during the making me stage, and this relates with me, we are so focused on making money, raising a family if you have kids, doing all those things, that you don't spend a lot of time self-reflecting and a lot of time doing introspection. And he said that fundamentally changed for him in the midlife phase, where he started to reflect on more the lessons of his life and how does he turn those lessons into new chapters for how he could live a more earnest or a more becoming type of life.

• 13:26John R. Miles?

  And I thought it was a really interesting way to think about it, because I myself have, as I've gotten from my 40s into my 50s, I've experienced the same thing, a lot more introspection and how I want to use the talents that I have to serve humanity, instead of, I felt earlier in my life, it was more about serving more a narrow aspect of that.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I think partly it depends on what your roles are and where you are in terms of life stages. And that's one of the things that we find, is that depending on where you are in terms of work and family, do you have children or do you not have children? Did you have children in your 20s or in your 30s or in your 40s? And so depending on how old your children are, depending on what you are doing at work, those kinds of experiences are going to make a big difference in terms of when you can really start to focus on other people or other things in terms of generativity or making changes in terms of yourself. And so sometimes, midlife is just so frenetic, especially earlier in midlife.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It can be very frenetic. And people are on automatic pilot, trying to take care of all the different things that they need to take care of. And so that kind of self-reflection and changes may not happen until later, maybe in the 60s or beyond that. And I also think this does point out another thing that I like to say, which is that midlife is not a set age, per se. It's 40s and 50s is the heart of midlife. But many people feel they're in midlife in their 30s. And many people in their 60s consider themselves middle-aged. So depending on how you feel about where you are in terms of middle age, it might be

• 15:17Speaker 01

  this kind of searching and becoming could be happening later or earlier.

• 15:24John R. Miles?

  I think that's an important point, Margie, that midlife is more qualitative than it is chronological. If you were going to give a listener a definition, how would you define midlife?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's really the first question I always get when I tell someone what I study. I study midlife. They say, oh, when is midlife? And I don't have a quick answer. As most academics, I usually go on to qualify the different aspects of it. So I start by saying, the heart of midlife is the 40s and 50s. But I add in plus or minus 10. So that means really 30 to 60, or 30, actually, 30 to 70 is really what I would say, if you add on 10 and on each end of that. So I would say partly that is because when we ask people if they're in middle age or

• 16:19Speaker 01

  what they consider to be middle age, although the majority of people do say 40 to 60, there are many people in their 30s and in their 60s who say they're middle-aged. Partly, I think that's because in the 60s, they don't want to consider themselves old, so they think of themselves as middle-aged. But it turns out that your subjective age, how old you feel, is actually more important in terms of predicting health than your chronological age, because there is so much variability. Two 50-year-olds can look so different in terms of their physical health, for example. So I think subjective age is really important. But if we want to go beyond chronological age, which I do, as I mentioned, I like to

• 17:04Speaker 01

  think of it in terms of the roles. So if you are in the middle generation, and there are people younger and older than you, who are counting on you, who are depending on you, who you're caring for, and that's really the heart of midlife. It's you're in the middle generation, you're in the middle of those who are younger and older. And that role, those roles that you have, really are, I think, what I like to call the heart of midlife.

• 17:32John R. Miles?

  We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. Margie Lockman. As you're listening, I'd like you to consider one question. What if the next chapter of your life isn't about what you're losing, but what you're becoming? Margie's research reminds us that aging isn't simply a story of decline. There are capacities we can strengthen, relationships we can deepen, and contributions we can make throughout our lives. If you'd like to go deeper, you'll find the companion workbook for the Adaptive Brain series inside the Ignited Life on my Substack. Links will be in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 18:16John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Margie Lockman. Yeah, I think something you just said is really interesting. I think about my high school classmates, some of them who I've known since elementary school, and then my college classmates, and you go back for reunions now, or you see them to catch up or see their pictures on the socials. And it is pretty interesting how differently we all age. I think you start seeing this most now. You were talking more about midlife just then as being kind of this junction point between different elements of your life from if you have kids, watching them growing

• 19:01John R. Miles?

  up, seeing your parents get older. But how do you think the physical aspects of it manifest in your studies?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So the physical aspects are really critical in midlife. And I think it's really important to recognize that, I like to say, what happens in midlife doesn't stay in midlife because the physical health in midlife has really long-term consequences for how you age. And I don't like to put a lot of pressure on people in midlife because they're already so busy with so much to do. But if we can really focus on keeping our health in check in midlife, it really pays big dividends later on. So I'm talking about things like, that everyone really knows about. This is nothing new. We know it's important to have a healthy weight and to have good sleep habits and to

• 19:51Speaker 01

  watch your blood sugar and not to drink too much alcohol and to not to smoke and to make sure that you're, so to focus on things like your blood sugar and your hypertension or blood pressure, those things in midlife, it turns out, have long-term consequences for health in later life. So if you have hypertension for 20, 30 years, starting in midlife, that's going to do damage down the road in later life. It really is predictive of health outcomes, including things like dementia or Alzheimer's disease, certainly cardiovascular disease, even cancer.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  So if we can take action in midlife to engage in healthy practices, then we are really doing ourselves not only a good service in midlife, but with long-term positive benefits.

• 20:45John R. Miles?

  One of the bits of hosting an alternative health podcast is I have gotten to talk to some of the world-leading experts on longevity and bioaging, etc. And many of the things that you're bringing up are the same things that they have talked about in-depth on the podcast. And it, ever since I started doing this, I've, of course, have been trying these things out, trying to eat certain ways, trying to improve my sleep. I haven't had a drink now in three years. And it's interesting how these changes have expanded so much of my cognitive functioning beyond what they were before.

• 21:27John R. Miles?

  And it really does have a profound difference on how you feel, how you act, how you're able to think, how clear you are. It does have, to me, a magnifying component to it when you start layering more of these things on top of each other.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Well, that's really great to hear. And in fact, it's good because these things do have immediate effects. Engaging in these health-promoting behaviors have not only long-term effects, as I talked about, but they also have short-term effects. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't do them. But we're not good at doing things for the future as much as we would be doing things that we enjoy now or see the benefits of now. But the good news is too, that it will also have long-term benefits. But for those who haven't started or engaged in these positive behaviors yet, I like to say, it's never too early to start, of course, but it's also usually not too late. Most things, no matter when you make those changes, are going to have some benefits. The earlier, the better.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  But they will affect your health, no matter when you engage in these wonderful behaviors, such as physical activity. I can't go forward without mentioning it. I had a center called the Boston Royal Center for Active Lifestyle Interventions. And the main goal of the center was to help people who were sedentary in midlife to become more active. And we focused on walking because walking is real positive, has positive benefits, and it's something people, anyone can really do. You don't have to join a gym or have heavy equipment and so on. And so one, we really tried to find, what are the ways that we can help people to become

• 23:07Speaker 01

  more active, since active lifestyle really is a panacea for all kinds of cognitive and physical outcomes. And so, for example, one of the things that we found was a big obstacle for middle-aged adults engaging in exercise was time, the time constraints that they had. So we came up with a way to help them to fit activity into their daily schedules. And that was very effective in terms of increasing the number of steps that they engaged in, for example.

• 23:39John R. Miles?

  And when it came to the practice of walking, what did your study find are some of the ideal amounts that we should get in per day or per week?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  So we even specifically looked at that. There are a lot of exercise physiologists who have been studying that. And so you probably know that originally people said, oh, you have to do 10,000 steps. And that turns out not to really be the case. And so when I read the physiological studies, it seems like anywhere between 5,000, 7,000, 8,000 steps is great, certainly more than you might do otherwise. So any additional steps. And then, of course, the other aspect is brisk walking is better than leisurely walking. But we, and we didn't really look specifically at the different amounts or ingredients or, let's say, prescription for walking.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  We just wanted people to increase a certain percentage each week. And each person was different. It was really based on where their baseline was. And so our focus was mainly, did they do more exercise? And yes, we weren't looking specifically to see how it benefited their health. We focused more in terms of whether we could help them to incorporate exercise into their daily lives and relied on the other researchers who were able to show how important it was for their health outcomes.

• 25:05John R. Miles?

  Recently, and I'm going to switch directions on you here. I had Nick Epley on the show, and we were talking about his great new book and focused a lot on connection. But he also revealed to me during that conversation that his PhD advisor was one of my favorite researchers, Tom Gilovich, out of Cornell. And Tom's research shows that when he's looked at thousands of individuals at the later stage after midlife, that the number one regret that comes about from that research is 76% of them regret not becoming their ideal self. Did you find any similar findings from your study, looking at people who might have been

• 25:50John R. Miles?

  asked the same question about regrets during midlife?

• 25:53Speaker 01

  We didn't actually ask specifically about regrets. I do mention some other work in my book about regrets. And this is work done mainly by Udo Heckhousen and Carsten Roche, where they asked people about their regrets. And what they found was people are more likely to regret things that they didn't do than things that they did do and wish they had not done. So that's mostly what we know about regrets in my field. The social psychologists, I think, have studied regrets quite a bit more. We also didn't really ask people about their ideal self. What we did ask people is, what's the ideal age?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  And so I could say something about that. What was surprising to me is when we asked people, what's the ideal age? 99% of the people mentioned an age that was younger than their actual age. And this was true for people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and up. And that was really surprising to me. The percentage of people in their 40s and 50s who were, said their ideal age or the age they would like to be was not in their 40s and 50s. Most people, that largest percentage, wanted to be in their 20s and their 30s. So in that regard, perhaps that's related to the work that you're talking about in terms of ideal self.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I'm talking about it really in terms of ideal age, not necessarily other qualities about the ideal self.

• 27:31John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I think about myself. I'm glad I have the wisdom that I have now. I wish we could have had that wisdom when we were in our 20s or 30s because, boy, would we make some smarter life decisions, wouldn't we?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Although I like to say it's not too late to change. And you learn from your mistakes. And that's, I think, one of the things we find in midlife, is that people develop more confidence, higher self-esteem. They have experienced a lot of negative things, stresses, or failures. And it's that kind of experience that really helps people in midlife to grow and to move in new directions. Basically, develop these skills that you have to develop through experience. And so if you go through your life without ever having difficult experiences or stresses,

• 28:26Speaker 01

  then when they eventually hit, you won't be as well-prepared for them in later life.

• 28:32John R. Miles?

  And one of the things I find interesting is I think a myth that people have about midlife is that as we age, we lose more control. But your research suggests the opposite. Why is perceived control often strongest during midlife?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so perceived control is measured in our study with two aspects. First, it's personal mastery. To what extent you believe that you have the abilities to carry out the goals that you hope to achieve. So can you accomplish what you would set out to do and bring about desirable outcomes? So that's what we call the personal mastery aspect of control. It's very much similar to Bandura's notion of self-efficacy. But then the other component is what we call personal constraints. Because there are many obstacles in life, things that interfere with reaching goals, things that you can't always address.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  And so we also ask people about the amount of constraints that they have. And then we put them together. It's really the balance. How much do you believe that you can accomplish your goals despite the constraints, over and above the obstacles that you will face in life? And so when we look at that across adulthood in the Midas study, we find that it does peak in midlife. And we were not surprised by that because as what I mentioned a moment ago, it's really learning from your mistakes and the knowledge and experience that you accomplish and achieve and accumulate in midlife. Really, I think, is what feeds this notion that you are able to accomplish goals

• 30:18Speaker 01

  and that you can overcome the obstacles. You may need to change goals and modify what it is that you want to do, but there is a way that you can reach your goals and despite the constraints. So it does stabilize in midlife and it tends to go downhill in later life. And we think that's because there are some more obstacles and constraints, both in terms of losses, losing significant others in your life, and also health changes, physical changes that happen that are due to maybe things that are not in your control, bad luck in a way.

• 30:59John R. Miles?

  Well, the more we're talking, Margie, the more it feels like midlife isn't really about aging. It's more about responsibility in a way. Do you agree with that?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yes and no. I would say it is about aging. The aging process is very gradual, though. In midlife, there are a lot of things that are on their way down, unfortunately. A lot of it, we can do something about. So just to name a few things, our bone density is decreasing. Our lung functioning is decreasing. Our immune functioning is declining and your muscle mass is declining. So there are a lot of things that are part of the aging process that are happening in midlife. Many of them are covert. You don't really necessarily know about them. The good news is you can do things about these things. You can address muscle mass by resistance training and that type of physical activity, for example.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  So there are a lot of things you can do to slow the aging process, but it is happening in midlife. I think it's important for people to acknowledge it. We tend to focus on the superficial things like wrinkles and gray hair or thinning hair or aches and pains and realizing we're slower to recover from injuries and so on and so forth. But you also wanted me to talk about responsibility. And I do agree that this is a central part of midlife.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  And I think of it in terms of generativity. It's really at the point where we can't just focus on ourselves. When you're in your twenties and your thirties, you really are focused on your own identity and forming your career and partners and relationships. And that's really okay. That's really what is important to be doing in those earlier stages of life. When you get to midlife, there are many other people who are depending on you, whether it's family or people in the workplace or in the community. And so you do take on more responsibility and other people are counting on you, depending on you. And so it's not all about you, essentially.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Now, it's important to maintain your well-being and to be in good psychological health as well as physical health so that you can be generative and share all the experience and knowledge and wisdom that you've acquired with those who are still learning and growing.

• 33:29John R. Miles?

  When I think about this period, I actually think about it as a period of peak contribution, both to the family that you've built, but also to the greater world around us. Because I think we've learned so much more about what makes us unique. And I think, at least for me, it's been a profound period that I've now better learned how to use those superpowers for the benefit of others. Is that something Midas found as well?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  That's just wonderful. I think about it in terms of generativity, which is deep concern for those who are younger. And that could be children, but it can also just be people in the workplace. So for example, as a professor, I really enjoy mentoring. That's it's such a pleasure. I don't need to worry about my own career. For many years, I was established. And so the joy really comes from mentoring the junior faculty or the graduate students or the undergraduates and passing on what you know and helping them to develop and to grow. I completely agree with you that it really is an important part of midlife.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  That doesn't mean you want to totally forget about your own growth because it is a continual process and you can continue to grow well into old age. And many people are focused on that as well. So you don't have to give that up just because you're helping others. And I think you learn, as I learn, I always tell my students, I learn a lot from them. So I'm mentoring them, but they teach me a lot.

• 35:03John R. Miles?

  Margie, when you think about that contribution, have you seen a relationship between focusing more on contribution and how it affects our well-being?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yes, we do. We now see that well-being, which is, we can define it in many different ways, is tied to social relationships and to being engaged with other people. And generativity and purpose in life, for example, those are really important aspects of well-being that seem to be important not only for midlife, but certainly beyond. People who have higher purpose in life, for example, have better health in later life. They're less likely to have mild cognitive impairment in later life.

• 35:49John R. Miles?

  I think a word you just used, generativity, is not one that a lot of my listeners probably hear on a daily basis. What exactly does generativity mean? And why is it so important during midlife?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  So it really comes from the psychoanalyst Eric Erickson's theory of the eight stages of development. And what he said is that when you get to be in midlife, it's a time when you are concerned and care for people who are younger than you, essentially. And he made it clear, it wasn't just about your own children. It's much broader than that. It's really about younger people in general. And so I think the example that I used about my concern for my students is certainly an example of generativity. So it really is to what extent you move outside of yourself and the things that you're doing are not just for your own advantage and for your own well-being,

• 36:46Speaker 01

  but to apply the things that you do to help people who are younger to advance and to help them with their own growth and development.

• 36:57John R. Miles?

  Thank you for answering that. One of the things that I have found more and more in my studies is that it appears more and more people arriving at midlife have accumulated what you could say is success, yet they feel this sense of overwhelming restlessness. And this gap, as I've been looking at it, seems to be increasing. Has your research provided any ideas on why this might be happening and what they're actually searching for?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  That's an interesting question. I have to think for a minute. I haven't thought about it in that way.

• 37:39John R. Miles?

  Well, a lot of my work focuses on mattering and why so many of us are feeling more invisible or replaceable or unseen by those around us. And I think it happens in a lot of stages in life, but for those in midlife, it seems to be getting more and more profound.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  I do think there's an increase in terms of people feeling that they haven't been able to accomplish the goals that they expected to accomplish by midlife. And I think this stems from the work on emerging adulthood because emerging adulthood has been done now. And emerging adulthood has really shown that the standard milestones that we think of for adulthood have been delayed dramatically. So I think when people are getting to their thirties and early forties and they haven't accomplished the things that they had expected to accomplish by that age,

• 38:43Speaker 01

  it does raise some concerns and people do feel like maybe they need to make some big changes at this point in time that, and they may feel it's too late. So, but in terms of mattering, I think the best thing I can say in terms of how it relates to what we have in our study is the purpose in life or meaning in life, where we do find that it does increase into midlife and then it seems on average to show declines in later life. So that may be related to what you're talking about in terms of mattering. We didn't specifically ask people about that.

• 39:24John R. Miles?

  I think especially if you look at the elderly population, I think this feeling unseen is really profound as you lose more people in your life and you're viewed differently at that stage in life. But do you find that is actually occurring earlier for many people?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  I don't see evidence of it occurring earlier. I think that, well, the negative views associated with aging are pervasive, and I think they do start in midlife. I think that in some ways fuels this notion of a midlife crisis, that this negative view of aging in general. And so people feel that they're getting old and there's all this negativity associated with it. And certainly, it continues well into later life. So the work that shows that if you have negative views of aging, also you are less likely to have good health in later life. We actually did do a study where we found that people

• 40:28Speaker 01

  who had a more positive outlook about their health in midlife actually did have better health 20 years later. So I'm not sure that's exactly what you're talking about in terms of mattering, but I think it does speak to this notion that your views of aging and your views of health in this particular case do have long-term consequences. And I think this notion of mattering is really important. I think the closest that we come to in our study is the questions about whether or not you have a purpose in life and whether you have meaning, whether your life has meaning. So that really does, in my view, speak to

• 41:11Speaker 01

  mattering. So people who do have a sense of purpose and sense of meaning in their life, that I think conveys that they feel that what they're doing matters. And we don't see that necessarily declining in midlife. I think it's later that, on average, it seems to decline.

• 41:31John R. Miles?

  What I'm trying to get at here is what distinguishes people who thrive in midlife versus those who are merely surviving it or kind of getting it out?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that question. In fact, that's really what the main goal of the Midas study has been. When we first started out, our main question was why some people do so well and age so well and age successfully and other people not so much. And so I can really speak to that in terms of multiple things. I will focus on the psychological aspects, although certainly we talked about some of the behaviors that people should be doing, things about their health and physical activity and so on. But the two things that I focus on are really what I would call positive viewpoints or mindset or attitude.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  So focusing on the gains associated with aging rather than the losses. Feeling a sense of control, which we already have talked about, is really important. Feeling that what you do makes a difference. In some ways, that's related to mattering. Feeling that what you do makes a difference, not only for yourself, but for other people in a broader sense. So that really is perhaps a way to think about it in terms of mattering. So the sense that what you do makes a difference, that it can lead to positive outcomes, that you can make changes. And then also having social relationships. Social support is really important. And the way we measure social support is by asking people, is there someone you can count

• 43:09Speaker 01

  on if you need it? Is there somebody who would be there for you? It doesn't necessarily mean you have to call on them or you will actually need their help. It's really just this sense of knowing that there is someone or some people in your lives who are there for you and you can count on them. And what we also find is that it's really a balance between receiving social support and giving social support that is important for thriving. So we find that those who have a balance between giving and receiving social support, they actually live longer, their health is better, their cognitive functioning is better.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  And I think one problem in midlife is that we tend to give more than we receive because we are so busy and so many people are depending on us. I don't necessarily want to call it a problem. I shouldn't say it's a problem. It's just the fact of midlife is that more people are depending on us. And so we tend to give more support to other people than we receive. But in later life, that shifts. And so in later life, you tend to receive more support than you give. But that's an important part of thriving, I think, is making sure that you try to balance what you give and what you receive. Clearly, giving support

• 44:31Speaker 01

  benefits other people, but we also find that receiving support benefits. I actually didn't say that the right way. We know that receiving support is good for the person who receives it, but what we also find is that giving support is beneficial for the person who's giving it for their own health.

• 44:51John R. Miles?

  I love what you're just talking about there because it's squarely what mattering is all about. And in my work, I've really identified from an individual standpoint, there are really four elements of it. There's personal mattering. You need to feel like you matter. There's relational mattering. You need to hear it echoed back from other people. You're supporting other people. They're supporting you back. There's an emotional element of it that you have to feel like you matter. And then that allows us to then have an impact correlation where you can ripple it out further in the world. But if

• 45:31John R. Miles?

  those first three things aren't intact, then that ripple effect is never going to happen, which in many ways is why this need to matter is starting to fade in our intimate relationships and our families and our workplaces and more and more in our communities.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  That's really fascinating. I really hadn't really thought about it in those ways, but it just really makes a lot of sense. And I think it's really important for midlife.

• 45:59John R. Miles?

  I'm not sure if you've ever had a chance to look at something called the Belonging Barometer. It's this study that Immigration Center came out with, and the statistics are startling. It's a percent of people don't feel they belong in their community. 25% of Americans don't feel they belong anywhere. So when you see these alarming statistics, that's what has gotten me so focused on this. Why do so many people feel this way? And I am finding a clear correlation to midlife is a place where this is hitting its apex. And I was trying to find any correlations and you just gave me some.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Well, I hadn't seen that barometer, but it really resonates with me in terms of the work on loneliness. I think it's related to that. And as the Surgeon General declared that we have a loneliness epidemic. And so part of loneliness is feeling that there's no one there for you or you don't belong. And we do find in midlife that it is a period -- I want to clarify that because a lot of studies have tried to figure out what's the most lonely period? Is it early adulthood? Is it midlife? Is it later adulthood? And each study finds something different. So sometimes people find midlife is the loneliest, and other times people find old age is the loneliest, and others find that it's early

• 47:24Speaker 01

  adulthood. So I try to go beyond that. I don't think that's the important question. What I do think is important is, within any of these age groups, why are some people more lonely than others? And so this notion of mattering, as you point out, or belonging, is really an important component. And what's really interesting is, you I'm sure know, that being lonely is not necessarily tied to how many friends you have or whether or not you're in a stable relationship. It's really an emotional feeling. It's tied to how that you feel that people don't really understand you or get you or don't really know what you're all about. And even if you do have close friends, that's still possible.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  So it's really an important problem that we have looked at. And in one of our recent studies, we found it's worse in the United States than in other countries, including European countries.

• 48:21John R. Miles?

  That's really interesting because I look at countries like Brazil where they have even more lonely people than they have in the United States. So

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Oh, really? We didn't study Brazil. We were studying Europe. So that's really interesting. I didn't know about that in Brazil.

• 48:39John R. Miles?

  Part of my research has been pointing out is I'm going to disagree a little bit with the surgeon general. I don't think we have a loneliness epidemic. Maybe we do. I think loneliness is a symptom of an unmattering epidemic, just as helplessness is, just as disengagement is, and burnout is. I think they're all symptoms of something larger that's happening. And that's what my work is trying to confirm in many ways.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  That's interesting. So loneliness has a lot of different components to it. Some of it is really just tied to feeling that there's no one there for you, like you're basically alone and don't have people to talk to or to engage with. But I think the more important part, which is perhaps more related to mattering and belonging, is just this feeling that nobody gets you, that you are there without people who are there to support you. So I think in some ways, that aspect of loneliness may be more closely related to what you're talking about.

• 49:46John R. Miles?

  To me, the difference between mattering and belonging is you're in the room. It could be a small group from church or something else. I think mattering is the felt sense that your being in the room is making a difference to the conditions that are in the room. And to me, it's a pretty profound difference. It's the difference between when you're a kid being selected to be a member of a team playing kickball, to feeling worthy from your other peers, that you are actually making a difference to the team.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  That's a really interesting distinction that I hadn't thought about before. In our study, the main thing we look at is this purpose in life. And I guess it really is mattering that what you're doing is making a difference, that you feel it makes a difference. Why do you get up every day, essentially, are kind of the kind of questions that we would focus on.

• 50:38John R. Miles?

  Margie, I have two final questions for you. After studying thousands of adults across these 30 years, if people take one thing away from today's episode, what do you believe most people misunderstand about the second half of life?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  I think people forget how much time is really left. Now, we cannot predict how long we're going to live, clearly. But the statistics are such that when you get to 40, 50, you still have plenty of time left. And you can make those remaining years really awesome, and you can be healthy and happy. And so I think it's really important to focus on things that you are gaining rather than losing. A lot of people will focus on the negative changes that they associate with aging, and think that they can't make changes, or that it's all set in stone, and it's all downhill from there. So I think one is really this positive mindset about thinking about the gains rather than the losses, and trying your

• 51:39Speaker 01

  best to minimize the losses, so that you really can live the rest of your life in a really positive way, which benefits not only you, but also those around you who are depending on you, those younger and older.

• 51:54John R. Miles?

  So what I'm hearing from this whole discussion, then, and it's the title of your book, midlife truly is prime time. So it's so important that we use these years well, because they are the prime time, and they set up the rest of our lives.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I do want to add one caveat, though, and that is, I don't want to imply that it's necessarily going to go downhill from there. So when we think of it as prime time, you can extend prime time. That's what I really hope people will take away, because people in their 60s and 70s can be thriving as well. But if you lay the groundwork in midlife, then it opens up the opportunity for keeping prime time going beyond midlife into your early, older years and later years. So I think prime time is definitely what I think of as midlife, but I don't want that to imply that it ends once you turn 60 or

• 52:55Speaker 01

  65. I think many examples of people who are doing well in midlife and thinking about the future, taking an optimistic view of the future, are doing well beyond and keeping prime time going.

• 53:10John R. Miles?

  Margie, thank you so much for joining us today. Where is the best place that people can learn more about all your work, your book, everything else?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Thank you for asking. I would say my website, margilockman.com, is a really great place. I keep adding things to it. I'm going to be adding self-assessments for some of the measures that we use in our study. And I'm also putting a lot of other information there, questions that people can ask if they read the book. They can ask questions and have discussions with other people or on their own. So I think the margilockman.com website is a really good place to start. I appreciate your asking.

• 53:48John R. Miles?

  Margie, it was really an honor to have you on today, and thank you for all the work that you've done over the years examining this important phase of our life.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. I really learned a lot. I really enjoy hearing about your work, and I'm going to look forward to hearing more about it and listening to more of your podcasts. Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

• 54:08John R. Miles?

  Oh, well, my pleasure. Thank you so much. It means a lot that it resonated with you. So thank you for sharing that.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Sure did. Thank you so much. Take care.

• 54:16John R. Miles?

  I hope today's conversation with Dr. Margie Lachman gave you a different perspective on getting older. For me, one of the most hopeful ideas was that our lives don't simply become smaller with age. There are things that can actually grow: our sense of control, our confidence, our wisdom, and our ability to contribute to others. And maybe that's the biggest lesson. We're not finished becoming. If something from today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Share it with me on LinkedIn or Instagram. And if you know someone who needs a more hopeful perspective on aging, send them this episode. If you haven't already, be sure to follow Passion Struck on Spotify, Apple Podcast,

• 54:57John R. Miles?

  or YouTube, so you never miss an episode. Because tomorrow, we're continuing the Adaptive Brain series with Caleb Campbell. Caleb is a former West Point football captain, Army officer, and NFL player who has spent years exploring what happens when the identity that once made you successful no longer fits the person you're becoming. In our conversation, he told me something that really stayed with me.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  The version of who I am today needs to die, because it is not capable of creating the life that I want to live tomorrow. And that's ultimately the deeper work that I was avoiding by making excuses in my life, and avoiding giving it all that I had, because I didn't have the capacity, the tools, the awareness, or the guidance to navigate the liminal space that I would inevitably have to cross over to go from who I used to be to who I needed to become.

• 55:52John R. Miles?

  We talk about performance, belonging, identity, ambition, and what happens when external success still leaves us feeling like we're not enough. And Caleb has a powerful new way of thinking about that transition. He calls it unstriving: not giving up on ambition, but changing the place that ambition comes from. As he puts it, "The goal isn't to achieve less, it's to stop sacrificing yourself to achieve." I think this is going to be a particularly meaningful conversation for anyone who's ever achieved something they thought would make them happy, only to discover that they still felt like something is missing. Because sometimes the next version of your life doesn't require you to strive harder, it requires you to become someone new. I'm John Miles, and as always, stay curious, stay intentional,

• 56:37John R. Miles?

  and stay passion struck.