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59. Midlife Crisis Meets Human Design with Projector Bernie Borges of Midlife Fulfilled Podcast
Episode 59 • 27th May 2024 • Unjaded: Human Design for Intentional Entrepreneurs • Vickie Dickson
00:00:00 00:38:33

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Midlife Crisis Meets Human Design with Projector Bernie Borges of Midlife Fulfilled Podcast

In this episode I am joined by Bernie Borges, a decade-long podcaster and the host of Midlife Fulfilled Podcast. He is passionate about helping people to THRIVE at midlife - through the 5 pillars of fulfillment - and is an incredible human to get to spend some time with. Listen in!

Before we get started… I love hearing from you! 💙 Is this episode inspiring you? Did you get an insane take away? Know someone who would also love it? Take a screenshot and tag @vickie.dickson on your IG story and I’ll shout you out!

In this episode, you will hear:

  • How this Projector has had his own agency, worked in corporate and hosted multiple podcasts.
  • Having the courage to do the “unthinkable” and pivot when his soul called him to.
  • How Bernie came to talking about midlife - and WHY fulfillment at midlife?
  • The difference between happiness and fulfillment.
  • Why Bernie recommends looking at your life through 5 key pillars - and what the 5 pillars are.
  • When exactly is midlife? And where that falls in the 3 phases of life.
  • Deep prompt: How do you go from being miserable in your life to 80% fulfilled?
  • How Bernie’s unique Human Design has complimented his life’s path - thus far.

You Can Participate in Bernie’s Midlife Fulfillment Survey!


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Links Mentioned in the Episode:


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Let’s Connect!


Remember! 🔔 Follow the Unjaded podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review!


 Life is gonna kick you around. Stay Unjaded! ✌️

💙 Vickie


Episode Transcript:

Bernie and I actually have a really cool story of how we met. But we didn't meet at pod fest. We both traveled to pod fest separately. And there was a table in the middle of the room and it had all of these business cards on it. And I went up and I saw that Bernie talks about he has a podcast, the midlife fulfill podcast. And as you know, I'm about all things midlife and really realizing our impact at midlife and beyond that we're here to have. And I contacted Bernie to just check out his show. And he said, You know, I went to that same table and there's one card that I picked up and it was yours. So somehow we are supposed to be talking about midlife together. I think Bernie is a husband, father, grandfather, and he's been a podcaster for 10 years. I would love to know more about this. You're an original b2b content marketer and content marketing is my very favorite thing. So we'll definitely talk about that. He can speak in front of crowds of 1000s without being afraid or anxious, but heights of more than 10 feet off the ground scare him to death. He does not like the ocean but he lives in Florida. And he's passionate about helping people thrive at midlife and that's what we're going to be diving in on today with Bernie we're going to talk a lot about he has the five pillars of fulfillment at midlife. Welcome to unjaded. I'm your host Vickie Dickson. This is a podcast with a human design spin on building the life, the relationships and the business that you were made for. Let's dive in.


Okay, so welcome to the unjaded podcast. My guest today is Bernie Burgess, and I probably just butchered your last name, did I it is pronounced Borgias rhymes, like rhymes with gorgeous, like my wife and my daughter. I love that. I love that. So welcome to the podcast. Bernie. I'm excited to have you here. Well, thank you so much, Vicki. I'm excited to be here. So you are let's just talk about your human design for a second here. Before we dive in, you are a projector and you do a lot of things as a projector. I think there's a little bit of a misconception that projectors need to be tired all the time. You don't seem like a tired guy to me. But they need to be tired all the time. And they can't do lots of things. And you have had a corporate career for how long? Let's call it 40 years, or two years and a side hustle as a podcaster for 10 years. And it seems like you have a big full life. Yeah, yeah. Now 15 of those 40 years include my own business, I had an agency, a b2b content marketing agency for 15 years. So that's part of the 40 years I started in my first job at a very young age, it was about 20. And then I worked in different roles in corporate and then I had my own agency for 15 years. And then I did the unthinkable. Vicki after 15 years of running my own agency, I rolled the dice and I merged it with a few others, we did a roll up of three other companies and we went to market as a new company, not as an agency. We're currently totally pivoting. And after four years of of making that go, I threw in the towel and I just said, you know, I not happy I don't like what I'm doing. I don't even like the direction things are headed. And I did the unthinkable. And I took a corporate job. And I've been back in a corporate job for about three years now Vice President of Global content marketing for pretty large company and, and I enjoy it, but to your point, I started podcasting 10 years ago, and you and I run video and you see this big microphone. It's next to my face. I always joke Vicki that it's been an appendage because I've been in front of his microphone now for about 10 years. So I thoroughly thoroughly enjoy podcasting and I'm honored to be with you on the unjaded podcast. Well, thank you, thank you for being here. So when I looked at your website and the some of the stuff that I was poking around in there, you talk about fulfillment at midlife, and you say that looking at your whole life, and trying to look at fulfillment through the lens of your whole life would be like trying to boil the ocean. So how did you come to talking about fulfillment at midlife? Like what was the catalyst for that? I love this question, Nikki and I'm actually if it's okay with you're going to answer it and sort of in two parts. First, how did I come to talk about midlife and then why fulfillment. So as I mentioned, I've been podcasting for 10 years I was in between podcast shows back in late 2021. So I was looking I was searching for my next podcast. I had retired my previous podcast, the modern marketing engine podcast, it's still out there. I have retired that at episode 300. And that was a b2b focused podcast about marketing. And so because of the phase that I made in my life, I started thinking about midlife I started doing some research on midlife. I'm like okay, I can really sink my teeth into this whole midlife topic. And as I dug into it, Vicki, as I dug and dug and dug, what I discovered is that there's hundreds of podcasts on midlife, almost all of them, like probably 99% of them are hosted by women. And they're focused on women on topics like menopause and divorce and related topics. And of course, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's more to midlife than that. And obviously, I'm not a woman. And so as I dug deeper, I found more on this concept of happiness, who doesn't want to be happy, we all want to be happy, I want to be happy, Vicki, you want to be happy, we all want to be happy. But then I dug into that and realized that there's a distinction between happiness and fulfillment. fulfillment is more so level deep, it's really more associated with achievements, whereas happiness is more of an emotion. And nobody was out there or is out there except me Bernie boards just talking about fulfillment in midlife on the midlife fulfill podcast. That's how I arrived at both midlife and the focus on fulfillment. I love that because we do, you know, the pursuit of happiness is strong. But it can be really kind of elusive, or how do we even define that, but fulfilled like when you can be fulfilled in your everyday life. And I think I know that you are familiar with the scriptures. I was raised in the church. So I'm familiar with the Scriptures a little bit, but that reminds me of the Bible verse. Something like be contented. whatever circumstance you find yourself. And there's something to be said for contentment, not that we're not striving for things, not that we don't have goals, but it's like, can we be fulfilled with where we are in life? And, you know, our station in life, I guess, is kind of interesting. And you break it down into five different pillars of life, I guess that you're looking for fulfillment in all five different areas. So what are those five areas? Sure, by the way, I think the Scripture you're referring to is Paul in the book of Romans, except the kick quote to the chapter in the verse. That's okay.


So back to the earlier question about, I recommend that we don't look at our life holistically as one big ocean that we're trying to boil, I recommend that rather, we look at it through these five pillars. And these five pillars are health, which is both physical and mental health, fitness, and I'll point out why I break them into separate pillars. I was hoping you were career, yep, career, relationships, and legacy. And I've put a lot of thought into these. And I've tested them with lots of people. And I really believe that anything you could possibly think of fits in one of those pillars. In fact, many things like money can cross many of those pillars, right? They don't necessarily belong, like money doesn't belong in just one pillar, even though it's heavily leaning in career, but it's not limited to career. So health, if we don't have our health, both physical and mental, then it's really hard for us to just function, it's hard for us to really do life, you know, we need to have our health and many people have health struggles, and they still are able to go about doing life. But nonetheless, when our health is seriously seriously challenged or just impede in some way, it just makes life that much harder. Again, both physical and mental. Fitness is more about function. It's not about running marathons, nothing wrong with running marathons, but it's about being functional, it's about being able to do the things that you need to do. We were talking before we started recording, I'm in my 60s, and I like to go kayaking on the weekends with my wife, not every weekend, we can't do it, especially you know, the weather doesn't always accommodate, I've got yard work to do Vicki and I've got to lift things, you know, I, I flew to Pennsylvania a few months ago and helped my son move and we're moving all day long. And I didn't skip a beat I kept up with him. Never was out of breath. It's about being functional. It's not about you know, winning weightlifting, your bodybuilding contests or anything like that, right? That's what fitness is. And by the way, in the US, I know you're Canadian in the US 60% of adults are considered to be not even doing the bare minimum exercise on a weekly basis. Which is really, really sad. I think the path Canada is pretty close to that for sure. And what is the bare minimum? Do you know the bare minimum is 20 minutes a day, three times a week? Wow, one hour. And that's and really and they even consider walking briskly as that if you if you walk briskly 20 minutes a day, three times a week, that's considered the bare minimum in my book, I mean, that doesn't even break a sweat. And that's considered the bare minimum and 60% of Americans don't even do that.


So and that, of course, contributes to so fitness and health are definitely related. I mean, I'm stating the obvious, but I break them out just because I think people need to really have a focus on both, especially since health is both physical and mental. Right. So there's health there's fitness. The third one is career obviously Vicki career is a big part of all of us, right? We spend most of our waking life in a career, whether it's a job, a business, or a combination of the two as it is, for me, career is big. And many, many times a midlife, people wake up at some age, oftentimes in their 40s, but not for everybody. And they go, Whoa, I've been doing this for 20 years, and I know it like the back of my hand, but I'm not fulfilled. Like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. That's a lot of people experienced that a lot of people experienced that. Relationships, there's obvious and not so obvious. The obvious are things like our family, our friends, our co workers, our neighbors, community, that sort of thing. But then those of us people like me, perhaps you have faith, relationships also fits there as well, right? Because we have a relationship with our, our, our beliefs, our religious beliefs, that sort of thing. And so relationships is huge, because we want them to be healthy, we want them to be contributing to our happiness and fulfillment. And then the last one is legacy. And this is probably the most complex one, Vickie, because we tend to think of our legacy. As we age, the older we get, the more we think about legacy, which is really about what's the impact we want to have on fill in the blank. What's the impact? Like I know that you love spending time with your grandchildren? Right? So what's the impact you want to have on your grandchildren? What's the impact you want to have on your clients? What's the impact you want to have on a cause that maybe you support and you volunteer time and talent and treasure and, and really feel passionate about that? That cause right? So legacy is something we tend to think about in sort of our later years? And I don't mean 80s and 90s? I mean, a lot of us started thinking about that, or 40s and 50s. So those are the five pillars. But I want to answer your question. You haven't asked me yet, because I get this question a lot. And I think it's inherent to this whole conversation. And that is like how do we define midlife? Right? Ah, yeah. And what is midlife? Midlife is a term that actually, a lot of women hate that term. I was so surprised in like my previous career, I was using the term midlife. And there was not one person on the plane of huge survey that I did that didn't hate it. And I was like, here we all are using it. But what else we're going to call it. So first, what is midlife? And then I don't know what else we would call it. But yeah, there's not a lot of concrete scientific data to really define midlife. I've I've done some research on this. Now, I wouldn't say it's exhaustive. It's just, you know, the Google searches and the reading and that sort of thing. And what I have found Vicki is that midlife is generally defined as 40s through mid 60s. I personally disagree with that. I disagree with that. I think we have three phases in life, three phases, youth, midlife and end of life. So let me define those three phases, youth birth, to about age 30. And the only reason I say about age 30 is it's really when we sort of become a full fledged, responsible adult. And we have some maturity in us. For many of us, it's in that approximate range of about age 30. I don't know about you, but in my 20s I thought I was smarter than I really was. I thought it was more mature than I really was. I just thought I was better than I really was. Then I look back now and I go, Oh, yeah, you know, in my 30s, I began to get my act together and take on responsibilities marriage, children mortgage, that kind of thing. Right. So we begin midlife in our 30s. And let me also say that midlife has nothing to do with a midpoint in life, nothing zero. You know, I often say we parked in a driveway, and we drive on a parkway. Right? So you can't use words literally, midlife has nothing to do with the midpoint in life. So then those midlife decades really span for multiple decades, 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s, even 80s. Then we get into an end of life phase. And that's really characterized by decline in health. I sadly but naturally witnessed my parents go through that. They both passed away in their 90s 93 and 94. And I watched them for about three or four years decline in health. And I knew because it's natural, right? It's just the circle of life. I knew that they were in this end of life phase. So my father was 95. And he's going strong. I mean, no one can predict, you know, when his Iman is gonna come but he's going strong, he's healthy. He still does all the activities he's been doing for the last 30 years since he retired. So that's how I define midlife. Vickie, is those decades multiple decades that the biggest span of our life, you know, that for many of us begins in our 30s but most people never think of themselves in midlife in the 30s. Now regarding why people don't like the word midlife, this is my opinion. I have nothing to back this up with just as my opinion and that is that I think for a lot of people, midlife is two words and it's really midlife crisis. That's what they think of. You know? Yeah, because that's actually the most searched word. If you look if you do the keyword research, which I've done, midlife crisis is the most searched phrase associated with midlife, not a sad thing.


I always say, midlife awakening, because there are a lot of planetary not a lot of there are planetary returns that happen in my human design world at around 40, and around 50, and around 58, and they are massive drivers. And what all of these planetary returns do is that they drive us further towards our purpose, or as he was their legacy, our impact is the word that I often use, but they're not just to, like, mess up our lives and have us craving something else. It is actually to push us towards our purpose. It's like, okay,...

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