Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
Midlife - the main words associated are 'crisis' and 'spread'. But what if we challenge the societal narrative and make midlife the opportunity of our lifetime? What if it was our invitation to become more intentional, live more purposeful, and use our accumulated wisdom to contribute to the world around us? In Midlife Mastery we'll explore ways to do that. So that the best is yet to come.
Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
Carl Honoré on Ageism, The Art of Slowing Down, and Aging with Intention
Prepare to be awakened to the untapped potential of our later years with the wisdom of Carl Honoré, acclaimed advocate for mindful living. We uncover the veiled ageist narratives woven into our culture and the transformative power of slowing down. Carl, author of "In Praise of Slow" and "Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives," guides us through the urgency of dismantling stereotypes that pigeonhole our elder population and depriving us of their wisdom. He offers a rich perspective on living each stage of life with zest, and shares practical steps to foster an inclusive society that celebrates aging as a natural, enriching stage of life.
This episode invites you to shift gears and embrace the slow lane with anecdotes and insights that illuminate the hazards of our current pace. Carl's personal journey—from speed reading bedtime stories to finding fulfillment in slower, intentional living—serves as a beacon for those trapped in the relentless race against time. Discover the secrets to a balanced life and the profound impact that 'saying no' can have on your journey, as we explore the significance of focus and the art of living slow.
Our conversation culminates with actionable advice for nurturing personal growth, inspiring change, and bridging generational divides. We learn the importance of lifelong learning, mentorship, and the simple joys of a lunch break in the park. Carl's infectious passion for a more contemplative approach to life's moments leaves us poised to spark dialogues, build connections, and savor life's richness across all ages. Join us for an inspiring exploration of what it means to age with grace and vigor and how to cherish the time we have at every stage.
Daniel Wagner here, founder of Midlife Mastery, and in today's episode my guest will be Carl Honoré, and Carl is an incredible guy. He's written two really important books in my estimation one called In Praise of Slow, really looking at our speed-obsessed culture and making a real clear claim and a clear call for slowing down and becoming more present, more aware to what actually goes on in our lives. And the second book is Boulder how to Make the Most of Our Longer Lives and, of course, in my mission for Midlife Mastery, helping people appreciate that face of life, move through it with more grace and ease and build a life of meaning and purpose. He is an amazing guy to be speaking to and, yeah, I really hope you get a lot out of this episode. And Daniel Wagner here, very happy and pleased to have Carl Honoré. Did I say that correctly? Even Is it Honoré or Honoré? It's Honoré. Honoré is probably the best Carl Honoré. This is always the first thing you should check with your guests before you bring them on.
Speaker 1:Carl is joining me from London. I came across Carl when I dived deep into Chip Connelly's Modern Elder Academy and I was bold enough a little punchy. It's bold enough to reach out to him and say hey, carl, would you like to come to my podcast, midlife Mastery? And he said yes, that's as short as it was, and here he is, so I'm really excited you're taking the time. You're sitting in London, I'm sitting north of Frankfurt and technology allows us to be in the same space. So, carl, welcome to Midlife Mastery. Thank you, I'm thrilled to be here with you. Good, virtually so.
Speaker 1:I told you at the beginning in our little pre-talk that I don't have a script. I want to be fluid with that. But the first thing, when listening to Boulder, which is a book you published about four, five years ago 2018, back end of 2018, what the subtitle? I just wrote it down here the subtitle of Boulder making more of our longer lives. Right, making the most of our longer lives. In this book, you're challenging ageism in many possible ways. Can you tell me what you think is the real, the detrimental effect of this ingrained ageism that we see everywhere? That is maybe even worse for women because there's an alternative and an additional expectation on looks and performance. But what do you think is the real detrimental effect it has on individuals and society?
Speaker 2:I think that if we define ageism as discrimination based on age right, discrimination, prejudice, based on how old you are, then it's everybody, at every age.
Speaker 2:We're all victims of ageism. Right, it affects young and old, but let's be honest here, it falls more heavily on those of us in later life, because, at its core, ageism is tied up with the cult of youth, the idea that younger is just better, the idea that aging is somehow a curse or a disease or a punishment, or even a form of failure. Just being older these days can mean being written up everywhere, from the boardroom to the bedroom, and that takes a tremendous toll, I think, on all of us, especially as we get into the second half of our lives. For starters, we're actually living longer now and better than ever before in human history, and yet have we ever felt worse about aging? The mere idea of another birthday with a zero on it fills us with guilt, shame, disgust, a lot of denial. Right, we lie about how old we are. We lie on Tinder dating apps. We lie at work. We lie. A friend of mine 39, celebrated her birthday a little while ago. 39 for the fourth time.
Speaker 2:Right, so we're telling ourselves lies about how old we are. And what does that do? I think one thing it does is that it narrows horizons. Just think of all the roads left untraveled, all the doors left unopened. Because we pay heed to that little voice in the back of our minds whispering he's twirled for this, she's twirled for this, I'm twirled for this right. And something else gets lost as well here, which I think we're becoming more and more aware of as the science gets sharper, and it's this that ageism actually works like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you y in to the cult of youth, if you worship youth and denigrate aging, then you're going to age less.
Speaker 2:well, right, the science is very clear these days now that you're more likely to suffer cognitive and physical decline, get dementia or even die younger up to seven and a half years younger, which is extraordinary. Think of that seven and a half years of life left on the table because we are buying into the idea that aging is all about loss and decline. We're playing the ageist game and it's blowing up in our faces. So there's so many ways that we lose out. And if you look at the workplace, of course older workers bring all kinds of talents and skills and insights and problem solving, and we shut them out right. We're leaving that. We're leaving all that talent on the table at a time when demographics require us to have people of all ages in the workplace. So there are many things we lose when we play the ageist card. So what do you?
Speaker 1:think is a deep-rooted societal conditionings or narratives, maybe perpetuated by a youth-obsessed culture, by the marketing machines that keep us wanting to look back instead of appreciating elderhood. That's a term that I came across recently, again with CHIPS work. What do you think can be done to tackle it? My guess what we do here is part of it creating awareness. But yeah, which other ways do you think what needs to happen to really call it and say come on, guys, enough with the jokes. We are missing out on huge potential from millions of people. What's the utopian view here? What could be done to change?
Speaker 2:I think there are lots of levers to pull here to move the dial, to take down the industrial. You know the ageist industrial complex, if you like. I think the starting point is what you just mentioned. There is simply calling it out right. We've got very good at when we see other forms of discrimination like racism, sexism, homophobia. These days we see those and we usually call them out, but ageism not so much. We just wave it right on through. So it's time to step up and start calling it out right, not laughing off jokes about being over your, over the wrong side of 40 or past your prime, all those expressions. Call them out, and it's very important, I think, also to share stories of people who are defying the idea of ageing being all about decline.
Speaker 1:Now break in this blueprint. Your book is literally littered with hundreds or more stories where you're like, oh my God, oh my God, this possibility, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we and stories we're. That's how we process the world, that's how we understand our place in our own lives is through stories, and I think we can all tell those stories. Now I'm in a position, as an author and a public figure, to tell them on a stage or in a book that all of us have. Most of us have smartphones and most of us are on social media, and I think social media can be an immensely powerful ally in the battle to redefine ageing for the 21st century.
Speaker 2:Because if you look now on Instagram today, you will find millions of people uploading photos and videos showing their version of being 40-something, 50-something, 60, 70, 800-something, right, and guess what? Those versions are very different from the grim, downbeat myth that ageing is all about loss and decline, and so when we wallpaper the world with different versions of being different ages, that frees all of us up to write our own script in every age. So I would just urge anyone who's doing anything who wants to get involved in taking down age them to tell your story. Right, you don't have to be climbing Mount Everest or running a marathon. It's enough to be 65 and playing with your grandchildren and volunteering in a work. You don't have to be a superager who's gonna make headlines in the local newspaper, but you can be out there having an incredibly fulfilling and rich life, and I think telling that story, showing it out on social media, can be a very powerful force.
Speaker 1:So thoroughly eroding this concrete, concretized image of what old age looks like. And it's very true, you said earlier, we're living longer. If I remember, my grandparents and my parents passed away 12 years ago, in their 80s. So my grandparents passed away 20, I was young, I was still very young. I'm 57 today, but remember them only old and old age meant really walking hunched over with the stick and they weren't that old. But it's different. How we look at something has really shifted right. And then people say, oh, 50, 40 and 60 and 50. But even these are just labels, right? The fact is, people are healthier longer and we haven't changed how we speak about it. I think language you pointed to that it's very important. We haven't created a language yet. We got these sound bites we just throw out like, oh, he's over it. Or even if you say, oh, he's looking great for his age, right, this cork the fortifier is oh, just undercut the compliment perfect.
Speaker 2:Exactly this kind of age is. Thinking is woven into our vernacular, it's part of all the expressions that just tip off our tongue when we talk about age. Just think if you mislay your keys, it's a senior moment, right? What does that say? It says that you get past a certain age and that everyone gets dementia. Not everyone gets dementia. That's absurd. There are lots of reasons you might forget things that have nothing to do with age.
Speaker 1:So the moment and yet telling ourselves this story that aging is a punishment, that it's a disease, that it's all bad and that's just patently untrue Beautiful so we can penetrate the lie of what aging really means, by calling it out, when we see ageism in action, by creating positive examples, by just being telling our story and changing the narrative in people's minds. What could be done on if you and I were the prime minister of the UKF? What would you do if you had the power to change something on I'm not saying legislation, but what could be done for education? Or could we create I don't know programs for people to not fall off the cliff in retirement? Or could we create a second period of a gap year? Winner.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts on that. I work. He's sitting in Downey Street where I had a magic wand that I could wave. There are many things that I would do I would start by. I would start by launching campaigns. Right, we've had big campaigns to challenge other forms of discrimination racism, sex as well, these things we're only just now starting. Actually, the UK. Last week a major international campaign called RUAGIST was launched, which is, with great wit and humor and insight and information, is challenging these stereotypes in lots of ways in the public spaces, with ads on TV and billboards and so on the side of buses. So that's an important first step. I think it also helps to.
Speaker 2:We do have some laws on the books that work against ageism, but they're either not being enforced or there are not enough of them. So if I were sitting there in government, I would make sure that I tightened up the legal structure so that it became just as difficult and as expensive to be ageist in the workplace as it does to be racist or sexist in the workplace. Right, make sure there's a high price to pay for it, so that people move away and start being much more open, age wise. And then a third thing that I would definitely do and we can all do this in our own lives is to mix up the generations. Because the problem now in the modern world, if you look back through human history, the norm was for people of different ages to mix right. They mixed at home, they mixed in the fields, they mixed in markets, they mixed in religious festivals. Everybody of all ages is mixed up together.
Speaker 2:And then we got to the modern world and we siloed, we got off into these little bubbles of people who are more or less the same age. So you see that in housing, you see it in schools, right, like you go to school and everyone is the same year, that's you literally born in the same year. So we find ourselves in these bubbles and when you have less contact with people of different ages, that leaves a void and what rushes into fill that void? Agest stereotypes. So there's a lot of very good research that shows crystal clear that the more contact you have with people of different generations, the less ages you are right and the better you feel about your own aging and your own prospects of the future. So what I would do right across the society is pull down those walls that keep people of different ages apart. I'd start in schools. So in primary school you get six, you're six kids teaching year one kids stuff.
Speaker 2:You do this. I've seen in some countries started getting schools alongside homes for older people so that people mix across a generation, Do projects in the community and then in the workplace. Multi-generational teams perform better on all metrics. So push, push in the workplace to get people of different ages with their feet under the table on an equal footing, sharing ideas, working together to build better collaboration, and so on. Those are all things that I would do as prime minister, but we could all do them apart from the literature, at our own level right In our own ways.
Speaker 1:It sounds like a huge payoff. What do you think is standing in the way of doing those? Because even if you just think you spoke about multi-generations, even in the workplace, more productive, better solutions, longevity, the fact that we could potentially all live healthier longer, just by being aware that aging is not what we were told it is what do you think is what's the enemy? Who is the antagonist? Who's playing against these? Because when you spoke about now, I'm like, yeah, this is utopia, but I also heard it in present tense this is happening, this is real. We haven't been making those shifts.
Speaker 2:What's the?
Speaker 1:force against it From you.
Speaker 2:I think, in a way, we are our own worst enemies. Right, we swim in water that is completely contaminated with ages and the culture is built and hardwired that way and it can be hard for as one person or a group of people, to challenge that, to step out of it and see the world from a different angle. That's a hard thing to do and it will take time, but I'm optimistic because I think that A there are two reasons for optimism that we will change the narrative and rethink and reinvent aging. Number one we have no choice. The demographics have moved.
Speaker 2:The planet is aging. We don't have as many young people. We need everyone. Now, right, we need everyone. That's one reason that this is going to change in the right direction. The second is that and we've both alluded to them there there are so many benefits to opening the door to people of all ages in the workplace, in communities, in schools, because people from different ages bring to different things, to party. Everybody is going to benefit. But what's holding us back? I think it's the culture. It's very often in our own heads. We're so marinated in this idea that aging is a bad thing that we struggle to pull our heads up and see the big picture. But that's where podcasts like yours, like books and TED Talks, we're trying to get people to think, reflect, look up and then move forward in a different direction.
Speaker 2:It can be done. It just doesn't happen overnight.
Speaker 1:You've been at it for a while, right, it looks like most of your work has been. If you combine slow and everything that came out of slow, which actually is your first claim to fame, I believe this is how you really have got on the map. And then, if you look at what Boulder does and your other work, I do see them related. But I'm curious about one thing, carl For my experience you do work as a journalist, as a researcher. There's a personal interest, right. We're not just doing it for the good of the world. So what was your own moment for slow or Boulder, or bold, to say, oh God, that's a moment, right, where you're like there's needs to be.
Speaker 2:There is very much a moment and I've realized now, looking back, that all of my books start with some kind of personal existential crisis or some sort right. So right back at the beginning, for slow, I just realized I got stuck in fast forward. Back then I was doing everything as quickly as possible, every moment of the day was a race against the clock and I was racing through my life instead of living it. And I realized this when I finally started reading bedtime stories to my son, and back in those days I couldn't slow down, so I'd be speed reading Snow White. I'd be skipping lines. I became an expert at what I called the multiple page turn technique, where you're trying to snuggle, of course, floor page it didn't get possible?
Speaker 2:No, so my son would always catch me Daddy, what are you doing? Why are there only three dwarves in the story? What happened to Grumpy? And I knew it was wrong, right, but I just couldn't stop. I was so fast. And then I caught myself flirting with buying a book I'd heard about called the One Minute Bedtime Story, so Snow White in 60 Seconds, and I thought, whoa great idea. I need that book now. Amazon drone delivery. But then the light bulb came on over my head and I just thought, no, come on, this is a ridiculous sight, this is absurd. Right, I'm just racing through my life instead of living it. So that was when I began to ask questions about Snow White, which is now a long time ago. But and then, as you say, now, my more recent work, although I still do all the work about helping like the technical, the cult of speed. Now I'm tackling the cult of youth. At the same time, I'm bolder, and there too, I had a similar epiphany.
Speaker 1:They are definitely linked.
Speaker 1:They are linked right, Because if somebody is more passive or somebody is more deliberate, he immediately gets identified or judged as something wrong with you. And I notice in my, my partner still says I'm really really fast, but I feel I slowed down so much. I've watched my old videos. I'm like, oh my God, the speed is big in them and I was laughing about you when you tell a bedtime story. It's not funny at all.
Speaker 1:And I have similar moments with my daughter where I have her picked up by a taxi driver. Dad, why didn't you come yourself? And I thought she appreciated how impressive it is that I can pay someone to pick her up. I know, right, we get totally lost in this cult of speed and youth. You're right. And some of the examples in the book I find laughable and painful, like the drive-thru church or some of the examples you use. I'm like, oh my God, really did we invent that? What was the? What did we think we would gain? And I really feel the appreciation of that is a huge contribution you're making to awareness, to presence, which is without presence you're missing your own life, right it's?
Speaker 2:crazy, yeah, I think the fact that so many people now feel lonely, lost, unfulfilled. A lot of that, I think, comes down to the fact that we're stuck in fast forward. We're just skimming the surface of our lives. We're not present, so we're surrounded by this immense affluence. There's never been more stuff in the world. Right, the world is a giant smorgasbord of experiences and consumer products and service, the human instinct. We're built for famine and scarcity in the savanna. You put us in a world where there's a crispy cream donut on every street corner and we don't know when we're stuck. Right, you put a phone in our pocket that can pelt us with notifications every two seconds. It's true, we're going to look at it in the middle of the night. We're just built that way, but of course that doesn't serve us. It actually erodes everything that's good about life. It takes away our health, our attention, our ability to enjoy the moment, to see the big picture, to think deeply, to be creative, to connect really with other people. We lose all of that.
Speaker 1:Including the ability to do deep work right. This attention span chat GPT can do. That's another development which I look at with at least ambiguity. I think it's great, it can do great stuff, but if we lose emotional intelligence, human intelligence, and just have more of the same output out of its own echo chamber, it's worrying to say the least. I am positive, like you, though. I do see the change. I want to be part of that change. Tell me, Wood, with this low movement, do you feel people getting the message? But what kind of consciousness needs to be there for a human to work against the constant need for speeds, the stuck and fast forward? What needs to happen in someone's life?
Speaker 2:I think very often it's a wake-up call or a shock to the system. Sadly, it vary. For many people it's an illness. One day the body just breaks down and says that's. It Can't take the pace anymore. The person has a burnout and then they slow down and then they begin to come back to their lives with a better balanced, more mindful approach to things. But I believe that you don't have to go that far. You don't have to have a burnout in order to slow down. You can have other wake-up calls, like for me it was the bedtime story moment and that was enough for me just to think. You know what? I cannot carry on this path any longer because I'm not living, I'm just surviving. I'm just getting through to the next thing.
Speaker 2:So I think very often it's some kind of shock to the system. So maybe a relationship goes up in smoke, or you get fired at work, or you make a terrible mistake at work, or your health falls apart. Those tend to be the sparks that get people slowing down. But the more people now that was, I think, more the case, say, 20 years ago when I first started writing about this I feel now in the culture in general there's much more of an understanding and appreciation for the power of slowness, especially since the pandemic. Because what was the pandemic If not a giant workshop in slowness and of course, the pandemic, the total nightmare in many ways. But for a lot of people it was the first time that they actually stopped, they paused, there was no FOMO, you couldn't miss out on anything. How could you miss it, miss?
Speaker 1:out on how there was nothing to miss out on Right.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of people did some existential, metaphysical, philosophical, internal homework, like reconnected with themselves, thought. You know what I've realized now that I've slowed down during the pandemic? That the life I was living before wasn't the right life for me. I was an autopilot and that's why when we came out of the pandemic and you still see it now many people began to make tectonic changes in their lives leaving bad relationships, starting new relationships, changing careers, moving from the country to the city or the city to the country, learning to let big, big changes that you would never make until you'd stopped, fought, deeply reconnected with yourself and were able to ask and grapple with those big questions like who am I, what's my purpose here? Those are the questions that allow you to live life worthy of the name. But you can only deal with those questions when you slow down and I think in some ways the pandemic that was a silver lining for many people.
Speaker 1:For me it was. For me it was clearly this moment of like. Oh my God, I used to travel, fly around the world for no other reason but to stay very, very busy, to not face certain things I've been suppressing for the rest of my life. So if we use what you just said and condense it, we could say that if you were able to slow down and I guess the whole meditation and mindfulness movement that's really is now mainstream if you were able to do that, would we naturally become more and more who we could be, our perfect version of actualized muscle of idea. So all it takes is to slow down and then life would start to adjust you a little bit, like an osteopathic crack in your spine, and you'd be aligned.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't want to claim that it's all you have to do, but it's the starting point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because if you're racing around like a headless chicken, you're never going to sort yourself out. You're just going to carry on going for the low hanging fruit and carrying on in the same autopilot lane until you finally wake up one day and you're 80 years old and you look back you think, whoa, what was that? And so the aim is to wake up way before. Wake up now. I don't wait until next year to wake up now. And it's slowing down as a way to do that. Right, because it just gives you the space and the bandwidth and the depth to get to the core, to get to the heart of the matter, to get to the essence and nucleus of who you are and how you want to be in the world. And that's how you reset, that's how you reboot.
Speaker 2:It's like a computer, right? You don't reboot a computer on the fly. You turn it off. It's slow it down, right. You stop it, then you reboot. And I think that's really what slow a lot of what slow is about. It's about finding the right groove, the right tempo, the right version of yourself. And the only way to construct that is to slow down and think about it.
Speaker 1:Got it so from slow to bolder. Both are real, really important ideas that luckily got a lot of attention. Well, in your own life, how did your values change from the fast forward? Because I read a lot of how values change in midlife and people have either a shake or a quake that you pointed to, a kind of a rhythmic event, or to get super inspired, which is rarer. But looking back at the early Carl to now, that chasm in the middle. What's really different? If you had to point to one thing.
Speaker 2:I think if I had many things on the side, but I think we got right down to the very heart of what's different. It's for me giving my time and attention to the things that really matter. I think that's what happens when you get stuck in fast forward that you end up just spraying your attention and your energy all over the place. You're skimming the surface, you're not getting down into the deep core of your life, you're just fizzing along the surface, and I think that's when I look around now. I mean, my first book is called in praise of slow. It could very easily have been called in praise of no, because I think saying no is such a potent and powerful step in the journey towards slow is because the world just offers so much that you want to say yes to. That's so tempting. And yet saying yes to everything just turns you into a yes man or a yes woman, somebody who's constantly chasing their tail. And in fact, there's a great quote from Warren Buffett, the fabled American investor, who once said the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything, and I think that really gets at what I think. If I had to sum up one thing for me it's saying no, it's streamlining, it's less is more. So I do fewer things now, but the things that I do, the well and I really enjoy them.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned that the overlaps between my work on slow and bolder and so on that actually is also something that tends to come with age Is we get better at doing triage, identifying the things that are not that important, letting them go and focusing on what really lights us up, what really puts fire in our bellies and makes life worth living. And you see that with relationships. You see that with activities that people generally get in the second half of life, you get better at dialing down the busy and zeroing in on what really mattered, really important, and I think that goes hand in hand with slow. So in a way, I guess I kind of got there via the, in a sense through the two angles of my work, but I've ended up in the same happy place, which is people look at my life from the outside off and they say, oh man, that doesn't look very slow. It feels slow to me and that's what matters.
Speaker 2:I don't feel rushed, I always have enough time for things. I do things that are just marvelous. I feel incredibly privileged and lucky to do them, but I'm not doing too many. I'm able to give myself fully to the things I do, which is really isn't that what life is all about? It's a collection of moments, right? Yes, a life you're building over. You're putting all those moments, yes, like another brick in the wall. If you're just hurling bricks into the wall, it doesn't end up a very strong structure.
Speaker 2:That if you twisting the metaphor out of all recognition. If you carefully select your brick and arrange it beautifully, you will build up beautiful, beautiful building to live in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like, I really like the idea of the created life right, and I can relate to so much of the yes saying. But the yes saying for me is not just because I want to consume everything and devour everything. There was also a fear of missing opportunity, the fear of missing out as you spoke, or letting people down, or wanting to be seen as somebody who is appreciative and, I believe, part of growing through midlife and moving to a more aware state. Some of these patterns, they don't have such a hold on us anymore, on me, I experienced it myself. So this idea of saying no is powerful and it's important because you do more of what you want to do and less of what you invited to. Right Invitations will come all the time. Life will constantly want to pull you away. Is there a mission underpinning what you do or do you accidentally, through life, fell into this role of an advocate for slow and reform?
Speaker 2:I think I fell accidentally into the themes, but there is a mission I think I look back to when I was my late teens and beginning to imagine how I would move through the world. I think I've always had to save the world complex or syndrome. And so I went into journalism thinking, okay, I'm going to make the world a better place by writing about injustice and that will inspire and motivate people to change policy, and maybe I did help a little bit on that. But I definitely felt that towards the end of my full-time journalism career I felt like I was more a wing of the infotainment industry than I was actually making a real difference to the way the world was. And so now in the second half of my career I suppose which has been the books and the speaking and so on about slow and now bolder, I feel like I'm yeah.
Speaker 1:These really go home talking. It's always the same.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm on the mission I wouldn't say mission accomplished, not by a long shot, the mission is still open at life but I definitely feel like every day I get up and I'm going to leave the world of even if just a slightly better place than I found it. That is very much true. I know for a fact that every time, every day, I will look in my inbox and there'll be a message from somebody somewhere in the world, or more than one person, saying thank you for what you've changed my life. And this is what I'm doing with my family, this is what I'm doing with my business, this is what I'm doing in my school. And you just think, wow, that's a real. You're just rippling out, you're sending out little shockwaves, hope and new ways of thinking, and I feel them reaching people, and that is an incredible feeling.
Speaker 1:And if you consider all the ones who don't write, you really are making an impact here.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, Because it takes the biggest.
Speaker 1:I know that even thank an author for a book. So this is really good. From the speaking gigs all the way to being invited on becoming you did a TV show about slow and crazy stuff. Yeah, what was the personal highlight? And I'm sure it was pretty fast paced at the height of it. That was one of your highlights of bringing slow to the world. Which flavor? Because you did TV shows and you did this and you did other book operations on slow travel and a few co-authoring destinations and all kinds.
Speaker 2:Yeah Gosh, there's highlights for so many different reasons. I remember once one of the most extraordinary things was Just by the way the event was organized. I found myself on stage dancing with a former child soldier from Africa who'd become a rapper. This is a good thing to make sense of. It's a good thing. Normally I wouldn't dance. I love dancing in clubs, but not on the stage in front of a thousand people. It would look weird if I hadn't danced. So somewhere out there there's a slightly embarrassing clip with me dancing with this guy who danced. It's just incredible. But I don't know. It's hard to pick out one thing. I mean, I've worked with schools and I think in some ways, maybe that's the thing that seeing the difference that my ideas have made for children, how they learn, how they interact with each other, how they are at home that I think in some ways that's maybe the most gratifying in some ways.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't the biggest audience or the biggest payday or the celebration was more like the impact on young people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:It is, I think, actually, and in fact, whenever I look back and I've got a lot to look back on now from my speaking career I very rarely think back to the moments when I'm standing up and it's rockstar in front of thousands of people. That's exciting and thrilling and it's an adrenaline rush and obviously it's ego boost and all that. But it's not what I look back on and think well done you.
Speaker 2:It's often the little moments after the time when people come up, they all line up to speak to you one on one and actually I think maybe that's probably if I'm not getting to answering your question more squarely I think the bit that I like the most and find the most thrilling and gratifying is the after. It's the getting off the stage, getting down and speaking one on one of the people and just realizing that we all have the shared common humanity and that we're all reaching for the same thing and that I'm helping people get there, and that is an incredible feeling, beautiful, actually.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. What is that one thing we're all reaching towards? If you had to say it, what do you think is people's core desire? That you are somehow knocking opening? Because there's something that happens when you get inspired by a speaker. There's something that resonates with a deeper truth. What do you think is the core desire for people to move?
Speaker 2:towards. I think it's to be…. Well, people often say it's sort of happiness, and I sometimes think that happiness is a way station or maybe even a distraction. I think it's more a kind of what's the word? Maybe a contentment, or like we're looking to feel, like I think it's the feeling that how to describe it? The feeling you wake up in the morning and you open your eyes and you think, yes, another day, and I think maybe that is what we're all trying to get to, and what is it that makes us feel that? Just the excitement of being able to express ourselves, to be of service to others, all the things that the science shows, make us feel very good about ourselves. The right kind of package or balance or recipe of those is probably where we are going to end, because to be human right in a sense, because I always feel like the speed culture, the culture, speed dehumanizes us, whereas slowness rehumanizes us, and I think it's getting back to that simple human experience.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, really nice. Yeah, while you were speaking about this, when people come up and speak to you, the idea, I think that I see you being humble and I might be interpreting this, but I experience you as humble, as generous, as grateful and purpose. I don't say, even say purpose driven, maybe purpose drawn. It's like you feel you're moving towards. I think they are key ingredients to this space you describe as contentment or meaning.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's so easy to get rolled into what you need. But kind of being before doing. That's what I'm getting from you. There is an existence, there's a shape of you that then does and speaks and writes and does, but it comes from a place of somehow knowing who you are or who you're meant to be Does. That is that correct.
Speaker 2:I think it's partly that you said something there. I think partly the speed culture makes us go from being human beings to human doings, and a big part of slowing down and I think a big part of one of the benefits of aging is we get better at just being there, being ourselves, being in the moment, and I think that's, in a sense, it's getting to the core of who you really are. There's a lot of talk about authenticity these days and obviously with AI and deep fakes and it's very conspiracy theories and fake news and disenfranchisement. There's a real juggernaut of dishonesty out there. And I think what human beings, I think what we really crave is a feeling of alignment, so that the way we are in the world aligns with what's on, what chimes, what's on the inside, and I think many of us don't have that. It's a discord between what we're living and doing and what actually is the music inside our hearts, and there's a kind of disconnect between those two things. And then when you can get those things in harmony, that's when that's the thing we're trying to get to right. Yeah, where you're living, and there's the wonderful. It reminds you.
Speaker 2:There's a wonderful quote. I think it's in the book, my book Boulder. It's maybe my favorite quote about aging from David Bowie. You remember, yes, where he says aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.
Speaker 2:And I love that idea that you're not sort of built, you kind of. You have your essence right and as you move through life you're getting closer and closer to the core of who you are. And it reminds me a little bit of Michelangelo when he talked about sculpture, right? So he said, the job of a sculptor is to see the block of stone, granite, to see the angel inside and free her. So the sculptor is chipping away to free the angel, to create this beautiful expression in stone. And I feel like that's what our lives ought to be is that we've got this beautiful angel in all of us, and it's the way we move through life. We should be chipping, scraping, pulling away, pulling a little bit to the end till we finally reveal it in later life, and I think that's the metaphor that I like to hold on to when I think about going down and aging and getting closer to ourselves.
Speaker 1:It's very beautiful, not just a metaphor. The imagery around it is very apt and I fully agree this alignment idea. I feel most of the struggle is when people do one thing but feel another, or sense yes, or still doing something which doesn't even match anymore the expanded or changed version of themselves. They are right and it feels more and more discombobulating and confusing and we're so afraid of letting go of structure or supposed safety, and I feel this is why often these shocks you speak about, these wake-up calls, seem to be the primary way that these new shifts are allowed or manifest. Wow, can I ask a selfish question while I have a quick question?
Speaker 1:Even if all are quince selfish, but I'm here in a fledgling position of wanting to start a new venture called Midlife Mastery, where I want to coach people or aid people in this kind of season of discontentment, right? What do you think would be a valuable ingredient or to help more people navigate this time in a better way? It's a bit vague in the question, but what I'd love to know from your experience if you had to create a coaching program called Midlife Mastery, which core ingredient would you think needs to be there to help, to really help people?
Speaker 2:I think two things, if you think of interesting terms, of ingredients, learning, right. So novelty. I think novelty is this spice of life at every age. It keeps us cognitively, physically sharp, keeps us relevant, it puts that fire in our bellies that gives us that sense of getting up in the morning and thinking, yeah, I'm going to learn something new, I'm going to master a new skill. So I think I would build some form of exposure to learning or whether it's learning a new language or pottery or just something where there's learning as part of the journey, I think would be essential. Another thing I would toss in is having a buddy program or reverse mentoring or something, so that you get people who are and I think this I found this myself when I began doing Boulder and I realized that I was stuck in age silos and I didn't really have any friends who were older and I made an effort to build a network of people who are older.
Speaker 2:So to have in that program assigned to people who are five or 10 years older, just to keep that extra little sense of what's there on the horizon, from someone who's gone through it fairly recently, I think that's very helpful because it's one thing to have everybody being in their mid-50s and moaning or mumbling or whatever together. But if you've got somebody who comes in and says I'm 62 or whatever the ages are, and says you know what? I was there five years ago, I was where you are, these are the kinds of things I went through, and to come out the other end Now, obviously, as the person running the course, you would be supplying some of that yourself. But you said you're 57 and I'm guessing a program like yours would attract people who are older than you. So you might be thinking of bringing in a couple of people or having a star chamber of people who are five to 10 years older than your cohort. You were just there to. I like that. I think it's a sounding work.
Speaker 1:I haven't thought about it at all. It's a beautiful aspect, I hear you because it's almost proof that there is the other side. There's an end to this right. Oh and again, it will mess with our conditioned idea of what it is like to go through it. Even what does go through it mean right, embracing it or allowing it, or there are different ways we can deal with it, instead of trying to suppress it or deny it or ridicule it. These are definitely not good ways. A core question mentorship, coaching. Have you currently somebody who coaches you in life, in business, in relationships, or are you feel very self-sourced?
Speaker 2:Nothing formal. No, I think I'm pretty. I've always been a lone gunman, so I feel I stand on my own two feet for the most part. But, that said, I ask advice of people, right, and I'm always open to and actually it tends to go the other way. I do a lot of mentoring and helping out people, especially younger people, who are interested in the work I'm doing or the way I'm doing and stuff. So I'm very open to going in that direction and, by the same token, I ask if I feel there's something that I'd like to discuss with somebody who's a few years older than me or my.
Speaker 2:I ask, but I haven't got any fixed like built into some kind of architecture of a program I don't tend to. I'm not sure about joiner. Actually I'm a natural outsider. I think that's how you become a journalist, right?
Speaker 1:Of course you're also in the outside looking Exactly, A journalist is the observer right. So it's a safe space in a way, but also a reflected space and you feel very private. I know you're a public person, but you feel very private.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting you said, because I've got a very public angle, but it's like a secret garden right, or a sealed. There's got it's that I show and I show that it's like an iceberg. Here you can see the top of the iceberg. That's all very public and I'm going to go up, but then there's all the stuff below that I just don't share. So I don't share, like on social media. I don't share anything about my private, my private life, my family, my friends, nothing.
Speaker 2:I don't that's very much Very little Few words here and there that I'd share.
Speaker 1:I like it. That's very much how I want to also live my life right. It's a trap to fall into. To think that exposure, vulnerability means I have to share my life with everybody, Right? Strangers, is definitely a recipe for disaster and struggle. Who inspires you today? I want to keep people out there that you get inspired by that have inspired your journey. Be a journalist or change makers or societal change. Is there anybody?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm always inspired by people who take a risk, right, I think it's very easy to do to challenge the status quo in a performative way or in a way that serves you financially or for status and so on. But people who really just go out there like I was just reading something about Malala the Afghan girl was and I just think what an extraordinary that's the kind of thing I find really inspiring. Someone who wasn't seeking a public profile but just swept up in a historical moment and stood up and was to be counted in a way that's shot through with dignity and poise. And she's not somebody who's out there splurging everything on social media, right, she's out there doing her, she does her own life. So people like that and she really ran a lot of risks, obviously risks that I've never run in my life. So someone like that I find very inspiring.
Speaker 1:What do you think of this? You know, some carry on.
Speaker 2:The person I find probably most inspiring, though is dead, is Martin Luther King. Actually, for me, he's always been a kind of guiding light, because he was somebody who was as a human being, was obviously deeply flawed, and so on. He took a risk and paid the ultimate price for it, but at the same time, he was a person of immense compassion and love and tenderness, and also he was a lover of words and language which I am as well, very, very often.
Speaker 2:We kind of come together and I just think if I have to think of a hero or someone I'd have at a dinner party, he'd be up near the top of my list.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how we keep recycling those same names the Martin Luther Kings, the Gandhi, the Nelson Mandela's right. There's just something so great about their sacrifice, I guess, but for me it's always that courage to stand on the truth. I am chicken shipman. I love to say that I stand on my truth and I stand up for truth. But oh my God, if I see, including Malala, as you spoke, or the guy at Tiananmen Square in China who just stood in front of this tank, it does something to human beings, to remind us of what the human spirit can do right, and it inspires us to be greater, to be bolder. Here we go again. I will never be able to use this word again without I mean, neither do I.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's all kind of like whiff of the book. It's true, though, and I think it's revealing, isn't it, that these kinds of figures who light us up are very few and far between. There are not that many of them out there. There are no doubt many more of them that we don't hear about. Obviously, yes, that by and large, it's a minority of people. But they do have this incredibly sweeping effect on the rest of us that they can raise our eyes to the sky.
Speaker 1:Totally. They're not successful in the traditional way. You could say. Apart from worshiping youth and worshiping speed, we're also worshiping monetary success, the superficial accolades of so-called successful life. And then you look at the true value of what Gandhi was achieving, or what Martin Luther started and has triggered as a consequence Ridiculous.
Speaker 2:If you were like choosing, would I rather if I'm lying on my deathbed? Would I rather be Silicon Valley billionaire or Nelson Mandela for Martin Luther King? For me, it's an easy choice.
Speaker 1:I really feel we all would love to matter and have mattered, when the day comes, wow, thank you. Thank you, carl, I really appreciate it. It felt like such a casual way of hanging out. I forgot halfway through we're actually recording a podcast here, but that's how I like it.
Speaker 1:It was very personal and I appreciate it. Would you, in the final statement, what could people have made it all the way to 50 minutes listening to us? What steps could they take to find out about you or create life change that is meaningful to them? What would you suggest would be a good next step?
Speaker 2:I'm very easy to find. As it happens, you can just get everything. There's one website which is my name Carl Honoré no punctuation carlhonoréinfo. There you'll find books, videos, ted course, just everything you could more than anyone would ever want to know. I'm far from being said. My worth is all there in one place. On the call, then for getting started, just start small, start small. If it's about slowing down, maybe tomorrow, instead of having lunch at your desk, go for a walk in the park, eat it on a park bench just a small little thing like that to slow down. Then for the aging thing, what can you do? I talked a lot about multi-generational mixing. Just go and speak to a person who's in your neighborhood, who's 20 years old, and you Start a conversation.
Speaker 2:It's a small thing like that.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Thank you so much, carl. I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for coming. Thank you, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you very much.