There are well-documented stages in a well-lived human life. While everyone's journey is unique, the ups and downs experienced at different ages are common to many.

In this episode, Matt and Daniel delve into the science behind life's stages. We'll help you identify the key landmarks associated with each stage, highlighting the types of habits to consider both now and into the future.

Resources:

GET A FREE SUMMARY OF SEASON 2 with print-ready activities

THE SECOND MOUNTAIN



Discover more:

SPACEMAKERS WEBSITE

YOUTUBE

RAISING TECH HEALTHY HUMANS

This season is made possible with support from our sponsors: Banjo's Bakery Cafes

This podcast is recorded and produced by Production Farm Studios

Mentioned in this episode:

Banjo’s Bakery Café’s - FRANCHISEES 1

A warm thanks to our sponsor, Banjo’s Bakery Café’s, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisee’s! If you’re hard working and business savvy, visit franchise.banjos.com.au and mention ‘Spacemakers’ to save 10% on franchise fees.

Banjo’s Bakery Cafés Franchisees

[00:00:29] DANIEL: Big thanks to our sponsor, Banjo's Bakery Cafes, who are expanding across Australia and looking for new franchisees. If you're hardworking and business savvy, visit franchise. banjos. com. au and save 10 percent on franchise fees by mentioning SpaceMakers.

[00:00:48] DANIEL: Hi there, welcome back to the Spacemakers podcast, a place where we help you think about how to make space for a meaningful life.

[00:01:16] DANIEL: It was nice. Yeah, it was great. On that very serious note, I remember going to a cafe in Adelaide many years ago. And back then there were all these different postcards for adverts. And I remember seeing one particular funny postcard. Basically it was a bit like, you know, the evolutionary picture of like a person becoming an ape.

[00:01:54] DANIEL: And then the second stage said sex, sex, money, because he obviously realized, I don't know, he had to pay the rent. [00:02:00] And then you can imagine it went from sex, money, money to money, money, money. And then it went to. Money, money, toilet, all the way to toilet, toilet, toilet. And I always laugh. My wife says, I think you're in money, money, money, but it's not long before you're in money, money, toilet.

[00:02:31] DANIEL: And then obviously we need to go to the toilet. Yeah. That's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about how do we understand the science of the life stages. Recognizing that while everyone has an individualized life and everyone will have different experiences, if you look at the broader trends of humanity, there are some really common things that happen in life.

[00:03:11] DANIEL: Yes. Yeah, very much so. Okay. So what did we ask

[00:03:30] MATT: So work out how many years you've got left and just ponder and think about what if anything you do differently in the face of that. The second slightly more advanced option was. Take the assessment courtesy of a, a life expectancy calculating tool that Dan and I recommended Lifespan 100. And then that will give you a more kind of customized age of how long, based on the inputs that you give, how long it expects you to live.

[00:04:06] DANIEL: fine. It's only because I don't drink enough coffee.

[00:04:09] MATT: Yeah. Yeah. So we both took the exercise and it'd be fair to say that we had some reflections upon that as well. Yeah. I was actually, I was surprised, pleasantly surprised. I didn't think cause of like a bunch of ill spent elements in my youth that I'd probably make it that long.

[00:04:34] MATT: Like I just cut back to 40 hours per week and drink less coffee, but it's like, like I think the paraphrase Churchill, I believe that I've taken more out of coffee than coffee is taken out of me. Yeah. That's good.

[00:04:59] DANIEL: Living until 91 or [00:05:00] 92 and then having the last 15, 20 years pretty infirmed in pain if, if you can help it, you know, and so it's made me, I suppose, even more aware of the importance of exercising regularly and hopefully improving what I eat, investing in relationships, which hopefully last me a lifetime, you know, I don't want to be lonely and, and put all my time into work and not have meaningful friendships after I've retired, given that I might have another 20 or even, you know, Yeah.

[00:05:44] DANIEL: Cool.

[00:05:47] DANIEL: a dog. The backstory is I didn't want one, but apparently it makes me live longer. Cool. Okay. That's interesting. Didn't see that coming. That's good. All right. On that non serious note, let us. [00:06:00] outline the phases of life based on the science.

[00:06:20] MATT: The things to remember here is that These are predictable patterns of life that both men and women all seem to invariably go through

[00:06:30] MATT: If we're lucky enough to live that long. Yeah. So again, we don't really have a choice as to whether we go through these stages.

[00:06:52] MATT: They may have kids at a particular age of life. These life stages are separate from that. So those events happen within those different life [00:07:00] stages. Thirdly, All these different stages involve transition points and the transition points you can see is periods of overlap between one stage and another. So these transition points may go for years.

[00:07:27] MATT: transition, that's down to you. If you handle it well, it's going to set you up with a firm foundation for the next stage of life. If we handle it poorly, it's almost like you consider it, you can consider it as sabotaging your future self. These are like broad, broad stages. It's important also to point out that there are, um, there different authors identify sub stages between these big three, but we're just really going to spend our time looking at three today.

[00:08:09] DANIEL: More predominantly on one particular framework and then we'll draw in aspects of all these other authors in order to build texture

[00:08:35] MATT: Yeah. It's all season ago. Yeah. So, so we don't want to kind of come across as, as if this is our kind of area of expertise, but again, we have synthesized, to be fair to say, really, I think, broad palette of reading and inputs. We've found it helpful. We've had conversations with friends and peers who also found it helpful.

[00:08:58] MATT: We've read a lot of books, but one [00:09:00] that we really like is The Good Life, and this is by Robert Waldinger and Mark Schultz. And this has been made famous because it's, it's written by the current director of the Harvard Longitudinal Study. So I think. It's proper title is the Harvard study of adult development.

[00:09:31] MATT: And now they've started looking at children of the original participants and even grandchildren. So it's also multi generational.

[00:09:45] DANIEL: Yeah. It actually pins really well, so we can draw it together. That's right. Maps over it very, very well. So, drum roll. Now, Matt, we've, we've given particular names to these stages, which are kind of our own, but they match the general chronological ages that we've seen everywhere [00:10:00] else in this Good Life Study.

[00:10:25] DANIEL: Stage three, we're calling the second mountain based on David Brooks's stuff, which we'll talk about as well. But the second mountain being that kind of internal transformation 65 years old onwards. And I'm going to squeeze in, cause we've debated about this for a while, I'm going to squeeze in a small fourth stage, which.

[00:10:51] MATT: feel pretty passionate about that. I do.

[00:11:00] DANIEL: Plus one.

[00:11:06] DANIEL: We've arm wrestled over this. First stage entering adulthood,

[00:11:23] MATT: Okay. So that's what it is. So it's about building this really good container and the kind of responsibilities, the skillsets, the aspirations that are conducive to that are usually ones that are consistent with performing well, with having a fair bit of, uh, Ambition and also establishing your own identity.

[00:11:56] MATT: So friends, partners, that kind of stuff, as well as succeeding in a [00:12:00] career. So again, like you need some drive for that, right? You need some, like some other, you need to some degree, some confidence, some ego, some belief in yourself, like to make that work because you actually want to succeed

[00:12:11] DANIEL: Yeah. And hopefully a bit of luck along the way.

[00:12:29] MATT: Yeah. So you need to be things like reliable. You need to be honest. You need to be relatively selfless. So in this stage too, as part of your container, you're actually kind of constructing the kind of good person. Yeah. That you want to be.

[00:12:45] DANIEL: You want to build some skills and to practice hard things in order to have something to then build an income from, you're saying you want to build some relationships, all that kind of stuff. But there's also an income. In a life that needs to develop because you're not going to succeed in your [00:13:00] forties and fifties, most likely if you're deeply selfish, if you haven't learned to delay some gratification, you haven't learned to control your impulses.

[00:13:13] MATT: you build that container. That's right. And maybe you can get away again, like with, you know, being a lot more impulsive, maybe like slightly not as honest as you could be. You know, it could be a bit more, I say, like you can make some more risky choices in your early twenties.

[00:13:45] MATT: So some of that behavior, you kind of, you can't get away with in your late 20s so

[00:13:58] DANIEL: Yeah, well, it's not as easy to [00:14:00] get warranty nowadays as it was. But the thing is, even if you get by in your 20s and 30s and you can kind of hide some of these traits and that, because you've got energy, you've got skill and you know, you've got the right charisma, something will fall off the bandwagon as you get older.

[00:14:18] MATT: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually. So. Like the other couple of pieces to this, as you'd be well aware, like typically, so not always, and these are, I know, like these are generalizations, so take all this with that grain of salt. You're going to have a whole lot of energy as well, like just coursing through, yeah.

[00:14:39] DANIEL: Yep. I like, I liken it to the analogy of, uh, uh, an elite athlete. You are actually at your best in your thirties and early thirties, late twenties from a mental capacity, from a.

[00:14:55] MATT: associated. So again, we talked about this idea of [00:15:00] negotiating transitions. Yeah. And doing it successfully. We talked about the overlap between one stage and the next. So particularly again, like, you know, late, late teens to early twenties, this transition where you're going from being like a very much a young, young person, a teenager to a young adult.

[00:15:34] MATT: So financial independence, if I don't get all those things kind of tucked away, then I'll, I can experience like what, you know, it's now being termed one phase phrase forward is like failure to launch. Yeah. I like that term. You like that term? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Failure. So again, if we're just like talking, you know, B grade.

[00:16:06] DANIEL: but it is a big risk.

[00:16:26] DANIEL: Maybe not mental health quite in the same way as girls and social media, but it's getting caught in gaming, it's getting caught in so many hours of online activity that you actually lose the drive to. Build the skills required to be a healthy man. Yes. Yeah. Uh, and in that sense, I think

[00:16:43] MATT: Yes. Good, good, good. So that's one pitfall. The second pitfall, which perhaps you don't hear so much about these days is, is the idea of, again, if, if young adulthood is a quest for independence, then that independence can kind of Frankenstein into [00:17:00] isolation. So if I'm kind of so understandably consumed with getting independent, which is going to mean probably working pretty hard with all that energy, all that fluid intelligence, I'm working hard at my career, which is probably involved long hours and lots of dedication.

[00:17:34] MATT: So the risk is I'd go from not just being dependent, which is a good thing, but being socially isolated as critical to start forming good relationships, friends, peers, partners, et cetera, et cetera in this phase of life.

[00:17:53] DANIEL: That's right. In the sense of you can't make lifelong friends if you're halfway through life. And therefore it makes [00:18:00] sense to invest in a lot of in person embodied relationships as opposed to distant social media type online relationships, which aren't at all the same thing and to invest in lots and lots of those relationships when you're young.

[00:18:30] MATT: Yeah, but I'm happy with the 65. Yeah. Yeah. So 40 to 65. And it's really important to remember with this one that when we talk about life stages, again, it's going to involve influences from The social world, our psychology, as well as our biology.

[00:19:02] MATT: And it's like really like the biology kicks in pretty hard between the ages of 40 to 65. So classically, this is a period of life where I am just hit around the head with the fact that I'm aging, I'm getting frailer and one day I'm going to die. Yeah. And that could be sooner rather than later. I may be halfway through my expected lifespan because either I've got, you know, I've got people in my life who I care for, often parents or older friends.

[00:19:38] DANIEL: Yeah. I thought Arthur Brooks's work from strength to strength is one of the best books in this space.

[00:20:00] MATT: Yeah, that's right. We do. So there's that. And the other thing like that again, this is, this is probably like the most kind of popular as in well known life stage as well, like the midlife. And often it's attributed to like people say, like, you know, midlife crisis, there's a bunch of cliches around it. And the other thing I think that makes it really difficult and plenty of research has pointed this out.

[00:20:35] MATT: Like he, again, he's, he's achieved all this stuff. He's got his own freaking podcast. Yeah. All these aspirations and goals that I've still got. to look forward to, but for your subjective experience, you can have all these questions, all these doubts. So the way that I experienced it firsthand, being in this stage can be very different from how it's perceived.

[00:21:07] MATT: So if you've got kids in midlife, there's a good chance they're either teen or about to hit teens. And as you said before, it's a really complicated, demanding season of being a parent. So you've got that, you've got the squeeze from there. You may have, if your parents are still alive or your in laws, you've got ailing parents or in laws that also again, demand a fair bit of your attention and head space.

[00:21:32] DANIEL: And even if you're not doing so well, then you're starting to wrestle with, well, actually now I can see that I'm running out of time to actually build a nest egg or to actually find a career that I love.

[00:22:05] DANIEL: Yeah. I mean, the cost is higher, the risk is higher, and yet we still actually have a lot of years left to contribute. And so therefore, how do we make those ballsy decisions to significantly change what we do? Without it being kind of this crazy, throw it in the wind and hope it works out. So there's, there's squeeze, there's a squeeze and a pressure everywhere.

[00:22:44] DANIEL: Yeah, that's right. Add that all together, it's a tough time.

[00:22:59] MATT: These ideas [00:23:00] often get some counsel from, but as a result of that three way squeeze, again, career, kids, parents, often the first thing that goes for people in midlife is discretionary, voluntary friendships. Okay. Yeah. Because again, I can't, I can't turn my back on my career. I still need to have money coming in.

[00:23:33] MATT: And like you've talked about before, what kind of friends are the first ones to go? It's the old friends. Cause you think they've been around forever. I've got all this kind of, I've got all this goodwill in the bank. If I just kind of like, Take, take my foot off the accelerator for a bit. They'll still be there in three or four years, won't they?

[00:23:48] DANIEL: friends. Yeah. And I don't even know if it's that deliberate, you know what I mean? There is that meme, you know, Hey, it was great to catch up with you. I'll see you next year. Yeah. But I think the reality, and this is what Arthur Brooks talks about, is the idea that you end up with a lot of deal [00:24:00] friends, real friends.

[00:24:18] DANIEL: And so you can inadvertently neglect the people who are actually going to build a good life for you, yourself, past that midlife squeeze, simply because of the busyness of the moment. That's right.

[00:24:37] MATT: So the one bit that you haven't mentioned, you've

[00:24:55] DANIEL: Yeah. And typically it's mainly executives and senior leaders, they say to me, look, I get the [00:25:00] idea of the spiritual life and ideally it would be nice to be a bit more spiritual, but I just don't have time. So should we just move on? Yeah. And, and I totally respect that. But then I met a lot of other people who are just like in their forties, fifties and, and a friend of mine said the other day, I just need some.

[00:25:44] DANIEL: Yeah. Because if you've got no reserves, if you've got no spiritual, yeah. Skill, I suppose it's very hard to pull it out of the hat when you really need it later in life.

[00:26:02] DANIEL: you might have to describe where that came from because there are listeners here who have never seen

[00:26:09] MATT: Coyote. So this big bad coyote, he spends every single episode chasing the road runner again in America. So some kind of like some kind of like incredibly like fast, quick, swift bird. And every single episode, the coyote never catches the road run, ends up in a whole lot of like really terrible situations for himself or he's suffering.

[00:26:43] MATT: You've got it. You've eaten the road, the Roadrunner that's done. Now I didn't taste Perhaps as good as you thought it was going to taste and B what do I do with the rest of my life? So it's a problem with success. It's a problem with success. Like you find out it's overrated. Okay. That's the first road runner problem.

[00:27:10] MATT: You won't get the road runner. Or even if you are just the fact

[00:27:24] DANIEL: Yeah. The opportunity

[00:27:26] DANIEL: any opportunity. I've been there, you know, I, I, I tried to see something happen for over a decade. Didn't happen. Yes. And then I was like, wow, I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if I didn't waste those 10 years, you know what I mean? And so you have enough time to have regret, but enough future space to actually still have to achieve something.

[00:27:48] MATT: Yes. So yeah, so right. So you end up saying like, what kind of coyote am I, right? So in both instances, you're like, you are met with a potentially pretty bad confronting aftertaste. So classically what can [00:28:00] happen is that if you've had a relatively, dare I say, simplistic, I suppose like inner life framework, spiritual belief, call it what you will, worldview, by the time you hit your midlife, particularly because you're going to be encountering suffering with a capital S, the kind that you never again, wish upon yourself, then that, that simplistic framework of the inner life is going to get undone, if not challenged really like severely.

[00:28:42] DANIEL: Nice. Yeah. So that must lead to the. B grade responses, which you talked about in our first reset into adulthood, 20s and 40s. Are there some B grade resets or some fallbacks that you want to avoid in order to be, I suppose, I don't know if successful [00:29:00] is the right term, but to what would you say? Navigate this with.

[00:29:04] MATT: Navigate this transition. And again, really, really, really critical. Let's go back to our original point of what got you here successfully will not get you there, which is the big idea we want to explore as we go through more specific. Yep. So two kind of classic B grade suboptimal responses to the midlife transition.

[00:29:38] MATT: And I just turned that up to 11, man. So if I work harder, if I find the right doctor, get like the right human growth hormone replacement, get some testosterone from some big right side. If I go to the gym harder, if I work longer hours at the office, if I do all that kind of stuff, for example, then eventually I'll succeed.

[00:29:57] DANIEL: Yep. So it's a bit like digging, the old analogy that, [00:30:00] you know, you, if you're not winning digging a hole in one space, you keep going. It's like the institutional insanity idea. Just do more of it, do it harder. But the problem is that you're slowing down a little bit mentally, maybe a little bit physically.

[00:30:19] MATT: Yeah. So that's response number one. Response number two is probably the more kind of popular again, like cliched stereotypical one, which is just.

[00:30:43] MATT: So it's almost like I've worked so hard to get where I am. I've caught The road runner. So I now just kind of, I deserve to enjoy myself, not knowing again, that all the science and all the research says that when it comes to hedonic adaptation, that is like just pleasure, short term pleasure. [00:31:00] Again, it'll be cool.

[00:31:08] DANIEL: It actually seems like the same response, to be honest, as the first one is doubling down because you're just doubling down saying, well, actually the twenties and thirties worked.

[00:31:23] MATT: Yeah. Well, like the only thing like that. you know, tweak there is that you're doing it with the 40 or 50 year olds resources. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not just going to an Airbnb in Broody for the weekend, but I'm taking the boys away to Europe for the weekend or whatever, and we can have a fat old time.

[00:31:47] DANIEL: Okay. That's great, Matt. We've talked about stage one and stage two, but now we talk about stage three, which we're calling the second mountain. And that was based on a book by David Brooks, which I found very useful. I think you found it useful as well. Yeah. Where he basically [00:32:00] describes the first mountain as building a container, Like you described, the first mountain is when you build a sense of ego and success and you work hard to achieve things.

[00:32:20] MATT: So is that on the right track? That's my understanding. Like, like 65 plus, like you said, in terms of our physiology and our biology, um, it's Like, regardless of how skinny my jeans are, how white my sneakers are, and how blonde my hair may be, everyone else looks at me and goes, like, you're an older person.

[00:32:37] DANIEL: if you're not ready to stop giving up stuff, people are still looking

[00:32:50] MATT: So that's the first thing. Second thing, again, we've got this much sharper idea of our mortality. So. Yeah. The thing that this really like gives us is clarity. [00:33:00] So it gives me, because again, talking about those horizons, because my horizon I know is a lot shorter than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. It helps give me discernment and clarity around what's truly important in life.

[00:33:23] DANIEL: actually gets, it gets higher rather than lower.

[00:33:37] DANIEL: successfully, right?

[00:34:00] DANIEL: Yeah, that's right. It's a different perspective. It's kind of an internal change rather than just an external change. And that's part of what leads to a better

[00:34:19] MATT: people. So

[00:34:34] MATT: And that's a really significant change.

[00:34:54] MATT: This stage of life, you know what I mean? Like just in terms of like getting stuff done again, maybe you're not as mobile, you're not as fit, [00:35:00] so you need other people. Or maybe it's like new technology. How do I operate this stupid remote control? Like you'll need the assistance of younger people usually to help.

[00:35:22] MATT: You know, people move away and then some of your friends who are close to you, old friends, particularly they start becoming really infirm.

[00:35:38] DANIEL: And very quickly you realize that no one cares. You can go back to the same workplace and two years later, people don't even know your name. And so it's wrestling with the idea that you're less relevant in the world than you used to be and learning to find a great deal of joy and satisfaction in that new reality.

[00:35:55] MATT: that's true. Maybe some of us get a taste of that. In the second stage as well. Okay. It just [00:36:00] amplifies. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Sneak preview here, but it's going to go full bloom here.

[00:36:15] DANIEL: And I wrote, I actually wrote a blog posts from lost to the second mountain. So I've kind of gone back to that and pulled out some of the quotes that I found. So I like this quote from David Brooks. He says, you conquer the first mountain, but you are conquered by the second mountain. Meaning that the first mountain you climb through effort and skill, you know, when you truly have your second mountain experience is actually about letting go and allowing life to happen to you, but finding a great joy within that.

[00:36:57] DANIEL: It is done to us. Same idea. [00:37:00] My favorite quote is from Parker Palmer, who wrote in his seventies, a great book called On the Brink of Everything. And he says, there is a gravitas in the second half of life, but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness or okayness. Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness.

[00:37:52] DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. And that's the second mountain.[00:38:00]

[00:38:04] MATT: Yeah, now to the pseudoscience. That's great. Hit me.

[00:38:17] DANIEL: I love what Ronald Rollhiser says. He says the first stage of life is where we struggle to get our lives together. Which describes what you described. He says the second is the struggle to give our lives away. I think he's talking about the second mountain. And he says the third stage, which is like the twilight years, he describes is the struggle to give our deaths away.

[00:38:55] DANIEL: And I love a description by Parker Palmer where he talks about An elderly person who [00:39:00] described walking down the stairs and sitting down and eating, I don't know, some prunes for breakfast. Toilet, toilet. Toilet, toilet. Looking out at the sunrise and that's all they had the capacity to do that day. But they're having an overflowing sense of joy and inner peace.

[00:39:23] MATT: aspirational.

[00:39:40] DANIEL: I'm not saying you have to do that, but I love that as an aspirational idea. And I've heard it called the twilight years to, to learn to end well.

[00:39:49] DANIEL: So Matt, we've talked about three life stages and my pseudo science life stage number four. Speculative. Speculative stage. But look, there's a lot in that and in the space makers, we really [00:40:00] believe in giving people time to make space to reflect because you can hear a lot of stuff and you can absorb a lot of information, but unless you make space to reflect on what matters to you and how you live it out, it doesn't actually make a lot of difference.

[00:41:09] MATT: So Dan, I believe we're at that time of the episode where we're going to put out our personal challenge that you and I also embark on as well, don't we? Okay. So this week related to the big idea of the three life stages that we've talked about thus far. We'd like to ask you guys to spend 10 minutes in between this and the next episode.

[00:41:47] MATT: Are you entering adulthood? So again, 20 to 40. Are you in that midlife squeeze of between 40 and 65? Or are you in that second mountain phase? So [00:42:00] 66 plus. Which three of those, which one of the three of those do you find yourself in? Secondly, Given the state that you find yourself in, what is one pitfall that we've covered that you'd like to avoid?

[00:42:33] MATT: So, about 10 minutes considering those three questions, again, journaling would be excellent.

[00:42:54] DANIEL: Do you want to shoot them quickly one more time? What are the three questions? Identify

[00:43:11] MATT: Hmm. Now

[00:43:28] DANIEL: You'll actually do the activities week by week, step by step, and actually end up then emailing us at the end of the season saying, Hey, this has actually made a big impact in my life. It's changed either my relationship, my career, how I use money, how I build friendships, or even it's changed my career over time as a result of doing this.

[00:44:07] DANIEL: Why we're less happy in our mid life slump and what to do about it. So we would love to have as many people join us on this journey as possible. If you think others in your relational world will find this podcast of interest, well then please let them know about these episodes so they can join us to make space along life's many resets.

[00:44:34] NARRATOR: The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:44:53] NARRATOR: Want to change your habits through this pod course? Download our free Season 2 Toolkit. It's packed with activities, [00:45:00] reflective questions, and print ready handouts to guide your midlife reset. It's our gift to you. Visit spacemakers. au forward slash S2 and make space.