Barbara Waxman is a Life Stage Expert, coach, and author of The Middlescence Manifesto: Igniting the Passion of Midlife. As a Gerontologist-coach, Barbara founded the Odyssey Group Coaching, where she offers her unique coaching model, Entrepreneurship Turned Inward, to help people in their midlife develop professionally and personally. Barbara is a next-level thinker on a mission to advocate for a thriving midlife and to shift cultural norms around aging.

Barbara joins me today to share her ideas about “middlescence” and shares powerful tools we can utilize to age well. She discusses finding your life purpose, differentiates between the little ‘p’ purpose from big ‘P’ Purpose, and illustrates how the former can lead to the latter. She shares her “Five to Thrive” quiz and enumerates the five essential elements everybody needs to live an exuberant and vibrant life. She also rethinks the narrative that midlife is a crisis and emphasizes how we all can find happiness and fulfillment throughout the years until the end of our life.

“Middlescent people have the energy and wisdom from lived experiences to become great leaders. Our world needs us now more than ever.” – Barbara Waxman

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• The power of language and semantics
• Stanley Hall, the creation of adolescence, and how our ideas about the different stages of life evolved through time
• What ‘middlescence’is and its similarities and differences with adolescence
• The identity shifts involved in both adolescence and middlescence
• David Brooks’ “Resume” and “Eulogy” virtues
• Writing a letter from your hundred-year-old self and why Barbara enjoys reading obituaries
• Barbara’s thoughts on the prevalence of mental health issues in the country
• Contemplating on joy and passion and the difference between the “big P” and “little p” purpose
• Preparing for the One Great Act and why people seem depleted when they’re looking for their life’s purpose
• Self-care as a revolutionary act and how it becomes even more important as we age
• Barbara’s “Five to Thrive” quiz and the five essential elements and practical tools in living and aging well
• The myth of the midlife crisis
• The U-curve of happiness and how happiness dips and comes back
• Why Barbara wrote the Middlescence Manifesto
• Why the world needs people in their middlescence now more than ever
• Barbara’s pre-COVID leadership work in India
• Why Barbara doesn’t consider herself as a writer
• My love-hate relationship with writing and how Barbara got the Middlescence Manifesto completed
• The writers’ challenge of cultivating a social media following
• The power of celebrating your life’s greatest failures

Related Content:

• Modern Elder Academy with Chip Conley, Part 1
• Modern Elder Academy with Chip Conley, Part 2
• Sand Talk: Changing the World Through Indigenous Knowledge with Tyson Yunkaporta

Resources Mentioned:

• The Middlescence Manifesto: Igniting the Passion of Midlife by Barbara Waxman
• It’s Easier Than You Think by Sylvia Boorstein
• Becoming by Michelle Obama

Connect with Barbara Waxman:

• Barbara Waxman Website
• Barbara Waxman on Instagram
• Barbara Waxman on Twitter
• Barbara Waxman on Facebook
• Barbara Waxman on LinkedIn
• EMAIL: hello@barbarawaxman.com

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