The Real Problem Isn't Aging. It's Resisting It.

**Chip Conley** (0:00)
If you spent your lifetime defining worthiness in the world based upon your looks or your body, aging is a bitch. This body is the only way you live. You were born with it, you'll die with it. So you better treat your body well because it's frankly the thing that you have the greatest relationship with over the course of a lifetime. Let's have some gratitude around what is working.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:22)
This is The Midlife Chrysalis. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays with Chip Conley and Derek Gale.
Your weekly conversation about thriving in midlife. Together, we explore the questions, insights and practices that help you live this chapter with more purpose, vitality and joy.

**Derek Gale** (0:39)
Welcome to another episode of Wisdom Wednesday here at The Midlife Chrysalis podcast. My name is Derek Gale, I'm the CEO here at MEA and I am with our founder, Mr. Chip Conley. Chip, how are you?

**Chip Conley** (0:48)
Howdy.
It's gorgeous out here on the ranch right now.
We had some beauty this weekend. We had our MEA alumni homecoming and boy, it's just one of the lessons I had when I was running Joie de Vivre, my boutique hotel company was the more you can introduce your team to stories of your customers who love you, the better it is for the meaning of them. In fact, this week we have Arthur Brooks workshop, the meaning of your life. Meaning is a fuel in life. Victor Frankel even created something called logotherapy before he even went into a concentration camp saying that meaning is the fuel of life. Well, I think our MEA staff and team felt a lot of meaning this weekend just based upon spending so much time. And I had some challenges. Our topic today is going to be about when the body is ailing. And I had a real challenge on Friday when we were launching this film, A Soul Biography, which I wrote about it in my Wisdom Well. Wisdom Well is my daily blog that's also on Substack. And it was June 15th that the blog post came out, and it was entitled To Have Your Soul Captured on Film. It's a 15-minute film of me talking about my life. But ironically, on the day I was talking about having an MDE, a near-death experience, and dealing with slowing down, my body fell apart, and I had a really hard time. I had nausea, I was throwing up, and it was hot. And I have zero testosterone because of my hormone depletion therapy right now. So with all these people who come to town, I was doing my best to put on a big smile. But sometimes your body is not up to what you thought it was gonna be up to. So let's talk about that today.

**Derek Gale** (2:45)
Oh, yeah.
God, where do we start? I guess the question I would have is, when do you start to notice that?

**Chip Conley** (2:56)
First of all, living part-time in Santa Fe is a reminder of it because we're at 6,600 feet here of elevation. So for anybody who has a little bit of lung issue or not in the greatest of shape, it can be sometimes the first day or so, you can feel a little winded. So that's how sometimes we feel. Think about being at an elevation when you're at sea level. It's your body doesn't feel quite normal. I see it at the gym. If I go to the gym and I'm not, since I've been on the hormone depletion therapy, I don't hike as much as I used to, as many miles. My gym workout goes a little shorter.
Now that is because there's a pharmaceutical castration process going on right now to save me from my prostate cancer. But in normal life, for a lot of us, it happens very slowly. For men, it's that process of andropause, in which our testosterone is dropping by about 1 percent per month or per year.

**Derek Gale** (4:11)
It's per year since about 30

**Chip Conley** (4:14)
So we start seeing a decline in our testosterone, which means we have less drive. Our body doesn't look quite as good. We can't lift as much weight. We have less libido. All those things go together. For women, because women have perimenopause and menopause, the changes in body are much more obvious.
And frankly, because we live in a culture in which women are judged on their bodies more than men are, I think women notice the changes in their body physically as well. You know, I think the biggest thing that I need to learn around this is not so much, you know, what is my bench press weight. It's really, what is my body telling me? Like, can I listen to my body and recognize that if I am really tired or if I'm feeling nauseous or if I'm feeling like I, it's hot outside and I don't feel like I have the energy to do that hike, that I listen to my body a little bit more.