When Success Isn't Enough: Finding Purpose in Midlife

**Chip Conley** (0:00)
For some people, you get to 55 years old or 60 years old, and you say, to hell with it. 10 years from now, what will I regret if I don't learn it or do it now? There's this thing I really want to do, but I don't know how to actually turn that into a purpose.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
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** (0:30)
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'm with our founder, Mr. Chip Conley. Chip, how are you doing?

**Chip Conley** (0:41)
How am I?
I am a mixed bag. It was so gorgeous this morning.
Sometimes we're in Santa Fe and then we got maybe some rain clouds this afternoon. We had an amazing storm on Wednesday night under lightning. Yeah. This time of year gets really interesting because you can feel the elements. Feels good. I have a testosterone score of seven. Oh, God.

**Derek Gale** (1:11)
Seven, just to be clear, you should power down.

**Chip Conley** (1:15)
50 to 700

**Derek Gale** (1:16)
To 700, yeah.

**Chip Conley** (1:18)
So basically, the average might be 4500 or something like that. I'm seven. And that's just not because I'm a wimp. It's just because I'm on hormone depletion therapy for nine months. You basically, what they call pharmaceutical castration for my prostate cancer.

**Derek Gale** (1:34)
And so how does that show up? How does that?

**Chip Conley** (1:37)
It doesn't show up.
No libido. No libido. I have 20 percent less energy. And well, this time, I've done this before, 19 months last time, this time it will be nine months. I don't have as much of the menopausal stuff, the night sweats, brain fog, hot flashes. I had that last time, two or three years ago, and that was hard. But yeah, I'm okay. And what was really fun recently was we had our homecoming, alumni homecoming here in Santa Fe. And it was so beautiful to see so many alums. And we also had the Richard Rohr Workshop. I think more than half the people who were in the Richard Rohr Workshop, which was a sold out workshop, were alumni. It was so fun between the Richard Rohr Workshop and then homecoming to have the experience of just seeing alums that reminds me of my purpose, which is our topic today. The sense of like, why am I doing this? Why the hell am I doing this? There are days when I feel that way, when my energy is low, and when the bank account is low.
Yeah, but one of the things I learned a long time ago was if you really want to remind your employees about the meaning of what they do, bring in your loyal customers and have them tell their stories.
When we have repeat customers come to Baja or Santa Fe, they're on fire, and it's fun to see them actually all engage with each other.

**Derek Gale** (3:07)
Well, I mean, let's be honest, this is not an easy business, and I feel the same way you do in any time that you're just like, oh my goodness, this is a heavy lift. We treat centers and how we're doing this and such. You're right. That's what keeps me going was when I'm on the campus and I get to spend time with the people or I get to be in a workshop and watch the arc of the week and watch these people come in and the transformation we see. Yeah, it's beautiful.

**Chip Conley** (3:33)
All right. Enough of the backslap.

**Derek Gale** (3:36)
Yeah.

**Chip Conley** (3:37)
We'll talk purpose.

**Derek Gale** (3:38)
Let's talk purpose. Okay. So you've been deep in purpose education, if you will, the last year we launched something called the Purpose Fellowship. Now we've been doing Cultivating Purpose as one of our core programs since when did that one start?

**Chip Conley** (3:54)
Probably five years ago. Okay.

**Derek Gale** (3:57)
So five years ago. So we've had hundreds, if not over a thousand people probably go through that pillar now. And if you factor our online, well over a thousand people that we've worked with that. But you've gone to a different level with us because this is not just to come to a workshop or an online event. This is a one-year program. So you've curated this group of 25 really, sorry, 28 very, very interesting people. And let's talk about what this program is and then we're going to dig into what you're learning through this.