Mastering the Art of Transformation: Navigating Identity and Excellence as We Age - 187

Embark on a journey with me, Sean, as we confront the delicate balance of personal evolution and professional ambition while the sands of time quietly shift beneath us. Feel the grip of grappling with age as we relate the wisdom of sustainable practices in jiu-jitsu to the broader scope of our lives, drawing parallels to Arthur C. Brooks's enlightening observations in "From Strength to Strength." Discover how the greats, like Darwin, navigated the sea change of their intellectual prowess, and how you too can recalibrate your self-concept for a fulfilling voyage through life's later chapters.

As your guide, I'll take you through the transformative process of identity, from the high-octane thrills of athletic achievement to the rewarding embrace of mentorship and leadership. We'll dissect the roots of our fears of becoming irrelevant, a specter lurking in the minds of CEOs and leaders alike, and learn how to channel this energy into empowering others. Drawing inspiration from Marshall Goldsmith's insights in "What Got You Here Won't Get You There," we'll arm ourselves with mental models for steering through life's inevitable transitions with grace, emerging on the other side with tranquility, purpose, and a renewed sense of self.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance?  Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.  

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Navigating Identity and Excellence in Aging

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to the Reload , where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works . My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey . As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran , I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives . Okay , well , welcome . Hopefully this is not your first time , and if it is not your first time , or even if it is your first time , hopefully you are going to be entertained at least a little bit , while we also look at some deeper items . Items , topics , concepts would have you that will hopefully allow you to live a better life , whatever that means for you . So what is the subject or the topic of this evening's or this morning's or wherever you're at in the world Conversation ? Well , today I was at the gym and I bumped into somebody with whom I do jiu-jitsu . She is a black belt , I am a novice white belt , so we have a pretty massive difference in terms of our ability levels and our experience , but we do share roughly similar age and also similar history in terms of being what you might call beat up , multiple surgeries , things like that , and we were lamenting how difficult it is to continue to train as you get older and older , things that we used to take for granted are now quite challenging and we exert more effort , I guess , in trying to manage the intensity with which we train with other people , especially when it comes to live training or sparring or , if you are in the know , rolling . So when you train or when you spar in jiu-jitsu , you roll , as they say can sometimes get pretty intense . You're trying to choke each other or you're trying to manipulate each other's joints and lock them up in very uncomfortable ways . That can sometimes lead to injury , and I myself and this woman have both experienced injuries .

Speaker 1 2:38

Training Will most likely experience more , if I am being brutally honest with myself and yourself , but ultimately trying to figure out okay , well , how can we do this in a more sustainable way ? Does that require talking with our partner , so greater communication around how much intensity is acceptable , at least for us ? What is it that we can actually tolerate ? How ? Are there certain positions , perhaps , that we should take off the table and then clearly discuss with the partner whether they're willing to do that , because sometimes people have Goals , I guess , in terms of like how intense they want to be . Maybe they're getting ready for a competition and therefore Training with someone like me might hold back their competition preparation . And I get that right . I wouldn't be offended if somebody said , no , I'm looking to get after it and you're not , it Like , okay , cool , then we're not a good fit .

Speaker 1 3:45

But the deeper issue that came forward is this idea of clashing against Identity . You know this notion . I used to be the star or I used to be the doer , I used to be the one that could just get it done , I was the one that could kick ass , etc . Etc . And it's really that Tension I suppose that we're gonna be looking at . How is it that we Strive for excellence still , strive for mastery , that we have high standards still and then also manage to reform our identity ?

Speaker 1 4:33

I've recently been reading from strength to strength by Arthur C Brooks , and it's an interesting book . Interesting because and not in the most Optimistic of tones he starts off by talking about how quickly we lose our ability to perform at our peak when it comes to creating new ideas . He cites several examples about individuals who have won the Nobel Prize in different disciplines and how it was that they topped out in their respective career fields relatively early , at least in relationship to their you know , their entire working career lifespan . But then he quickly goes on to talk about the fact that most of the intelligence that's required in order to sort of produce , produce those High performance Products , let's say and of course in the context that he's talking about they are the product of mental work , but that as we age , we transition from one type of intelligence to this other type of intelligence , which he refers to as crystallized intelligence .

Speaker 1 6:02

And this second form of intelligence is one that features greater ability to synthesize and and is not actually so much about novel idea generation , which is really what the first type of intelligence is about , but it's about how do we put the parts and pieces together in new ways . How do we see trends and patterns that Our younger cells would not have seen ? Perhaps because we were too impatient , or perhaps because we didn't have a long enough tenure with sufficient depth of understanding of our field , and so , anyways , he starts to talk about how wisdom features into this second form of intelligence and that the first form is much more about Just sort of raw intellectual horsepower , whereas the second form of intelligence is really a more , I guess , mature Ah View on . Yeah , okay , how do we , how do we capitalize on this vast body of knowledge that we've developed ? Well , he also goes into this notion that well , in order for us to embrace and really truly adopt this second form of intelligence , that we also have to , as a requisite part of that process , have the ability to shift our identity .

Speaker 1 7:32

And again he has sort of a compare and contrast section of the book where he looks at various historical , famous historical figures , obviously famous , otherwise they wouldn't be around to be talked about , I guess . But he looks at them and he looks at how they became bright , shining stars in the beginning of their career and then how their career continued to unfold and Then how the career and also in some cases the actual life of the individual ended . And One of the sort of prime examples that he gives is Darwin and the way in which Darwin's career ascended to such astronomical heights with his theory of natural selection , which ultimately is a theory of evolution , and that he was able to really ride that for quite some time , but that many of his subsequent ideas were eclipsed by sort of up-and-comers in the field and that from a professional perspective his later works were not near as relevant or significant as that initial work and that really he wasn't able to make a transition out of that initial identity of sort of key discoverer and that he spent the latter part of his life actually quite embittered and disappointed and ultimately apparently I mean I wasn't there , obviously , but apparently died rather unhappy , even though he was knighted and there was . You know there was great fanfare around his name still but having , I guess , tasted that sort of again astronomical high of being in the pinnacle limelight , and I don't want it to sound like it's just some sort of material , superficial ego scratching , from what I understand , just from the research that was mentioned that you know there was a real sense of wow . You know I previously contributed a great deal to the field of science and to humankind's understanding of how the world works and now I've lost that step , I've lost that ability to contribute . So it's not just sort of an ego stroke that was missing .

Speaker 1 10:24

And Brooks goes on to contrast that with Johann Sebastian Bach or Bach , or however you want to pronounce it , and the way in which Bach was actually eclipsed by his own son of all things , and that in the beginning of his musical career JS Bach was so famous and so brilliant and so widely well regarded and then to be eclipsed by his own son and that the sort of the baroque style of music that Johann Sebastian Bach was putting forward really became viewed as quite antiquated and quite irrelevant , like almost silly . But Johann Sebastian Bach managed to find different ways of contributing and he actually became a very powerful tutor and mentor and teacher of composition and in fact , one of the reasons why he's so famous today is because he strove , strived , strove grammar who knew relevant on a podcast . He made the effort to write a book that would teach others how to compose various aspects of music and that work was later rediscovered and in turn served a number of musical students in such a profound way , because what he was doing was he was making very complex composition more accessible to those individuals who did not have the amount of brilliance native , just raw ability , that JS Bach had . And that's the contrast that Arthur Brooks is attempting to make here is you know , how do we go from being the doer or the star of the show and then , as some of our natural talents begin to decline , we're going to be brutally honest with ourselves , which I hope we are . How can we begin to recognize .

Speaker 1 12:49

Okay , yeah , maybe , maybe I'm losing my step here and one of the things that I've mentioned in other episodes , part of the reason why going to Jiu Jitsu is so tremendously instructive for me and I'm not saying that you need to do this as well , although have added if you want to is that when I train with 20 something year olds or teenagers me being 45 , and having a lot of injuries from my time in special operations I get to see first hand , right up close and personal , just how many extra gears they have when it comes to hitting the accelerator . Even some of these individuals who I would say are not as good a shape as I am because I actually do work quite hard to remain physically fit for my age and ability level and yet these , dare I say , kids kids nowadays who knew but these younger individuals , man , man , they can just throw it down and they can get after it in such a degree of intensity and then do it again , and then do it again . I mean , their ability to reset is far in excess of my own . Can I touch it ? Sure , yeah , I can still get after it , but it's way more costly and there's way more reset time that I require than apparently what they do . And then I remember back to my younger self and I think , oh God , yeah , I used to be that , that adaptable or that resilient , I guess , in terms of my just raw physical horsepower . And so it's this tremendously wonderful , albeit sometimes brutal , lesson on how certain natural attributes are starting to dissipate and simply go away . And that's , it requires me to try to exercise . And well , and first off , explore , look for and then exercise different skills , different traits . Can I be craftier , can I be more patient ?

Transitioning Identity and Finding Success

Speaker 1 15:04

In Jiu Jitsu , oftentimes the one who is more patient can actually find themselves being able to sort of strike when the moment is right , as opposed to trying to force it and thereby wasting more energy . That's just , you know , sort of one tangible example . But if we go back to this notion of Darwin versus JS Bach , we see one individual who really was by all accounts , unable to make that transition , unable to reimagine or reform their sense of identity , whereas the other party , js Bach , was able to really transition into being a gracious and grateful teacher , instead of really entrenching on meaning and significance can only come through this one form . It seems that he somehow found it within himself to ask okay , if I were interested in remaining significant or remaining relevant , or continuing to make a contribution with the attributes that I currently have available to me , how might I go about doing that ? So one is fixated on a specific outcome and the path to get to that outcome is also quite fixed , and then the latter is able to still look at the outcome but is able to recognize hmm , there might be a lot of different ways to get to that place .

Speaker 1 16:54

Now , why is this so difficult ? If you look at your own career , if you look at the organizations of which you are a part or have been a part , I'm guessing that you've probably seen a lot of people that really struggle with this . Why is that ? Why is it so hard ? Well , part of it is that we sink a lot of investment into the identity that we currently have . I am this person . And if you look at professional athletes , for instance and this is also in Arthur C Brooks book , athletes I think they have sort of a mixed blessing , because human bodies decline far more rapidly than our minds do typically , and so professional athletes who hone their bodies and their athleticism to such a fine degree very quickly start to recognize that it ain't gonna last all that long , and that's yes . I mean , I'm sure that that is a very splash of cold water in the face when they begin to first feel it .

Speaker 1 18:08

The reason that I think it's a blessing in disguise , as it were , is because of the fact that relatively early in life , they have to contend with something that is very sort of existential , that is very on the nose when it comes to what is my identity , what is my purpose ? Why am I here ? I thought it was to , I don't know , play tennis or football or whatever at the highest levels and to be filling stadiums with people trying to observe and , I assume , in many cases , live vicariously through the athleticism of my body . But then , relatively early , they're being surpassed by people who are younger , and so then it brings this crisis of identity forward . And do I wish discomfort for people ? No , I don't , and I can recognize that it is through discomfort that we typically tend to grow , and the earlier that we can have substantial and powerful growth moments , more than likely , the better off we're gonna be , as opposed to waiting later in life .

Speaker 1 19:23

And one of the things that I think about when I mention this is the number of clients I have who say , god , I wish that I'd found this sooner . I wish that I had realized that coaching would have made this benefit in my life sooner . I feel like I've wasted a lot of time , and that may sound self-congratulatory . There are other coaches trust me out there that have clients that say the same thing . So it's not just me , right , and it's also therapists and , I'm sure , healers and shamans and these individuals that try to help people and try to help people pull down their own blinders . But in this process of going through difficult self-evaluation and inter-exploration , these individuals have started to recognize wow , oh my gosh , all the baggage that I was carrying around for such a long period of time . I'm thinking about one in particular . And for a long , long time you carried a lot of anger . And it's not just one client . A lot of my clients carry a lot of anger when I first get them , and that's okay , right , like they work through it and they learn how to shed it and they figure out why there was so much anger in the first place , and et cetera , et cetera . Right , like they do the work . And that's the point , because they start to recognize , wow , huh , didn't have to be this way , and I wish I would have found it sooner . So , when it comes to athletes , I mean , like I said , they're almost in this kind of blessing , in disguise territory where they're able to have that crisis earlier in their life . And then what can they learn from that ? Now , obviously not every professional athlete does , but there are a number that begin to figure out oh yeah , okay , like this isn't going to last for too long . So then what else am I going to do with myself ?

Speaker 1 21:23

Another thing that makes this difficult is the mistaken belief that what got us here is going to get us there , meaning your current mindset and behaviors are what led to your current success . So you believe , mistakenly , that those things should lead to similar future success or even dissimilar future success . And I remember I had one client . He was adamant , I mean , he got all kinds of hired up and he said , no fuck , that Grinding is what got me here and grinding is what will get me there . And I don't think I ever actually reached him on that point , which is fine . Maybe life has subsequently stepped in and given him a little bit more instruction on this notion of grind , and I mean , for that matter , so many of the folks that I work with have a similar mindset that grinding is the only way to be .

Speaker 1 22:34

And so there's this book , another book in case you want another book recommendation , here you go by Marshall Goldsmith , and he happens to be a very famous executive coach and his book title of all things is what Got you here , won't Get you there . And in that book one of the things that he sort of Riley observes is that all these high achieving , high performer executives and you can equate that out to sports or military or the arts or music or what have you right , any industry these individuals who are at the top of their game and they say no , no , no , no . It's these qualities , these traits that got me my success . And Goldsmith's rather rye observation is well , what if you were successful in spite of those behaviors ? Meaning , how much more successful could you have been if you didn't have those behaviors ? And nobody ever really wants to think about that .

Speaker 1 23:37

Everyone is so convinced that they are successful because of dot , dot , dot , and with my kind of client it is grind . I'm successful because I worked harder than everybody else and I'm sticking to it . And guess what ? I'm going to continue to grind , even though I'm in this new role with much more responsibility , and I am now becoming the bottleneck because everything has to go through me . I mean , there's just all kinds of ways in which this thing starts to fall apart .

Speaker 1 24:10

But getting to this notion that , hmm , even if we take at face value that these behaviors that we and mindset that we used to have , or that we may be currently still have , are the reason for our current success , even if that is true , if you look at the way that your life is unfolding and you look at some of the inevitable declines that come with aging , if you think that you're going to be able to run at the same pace and I don't mean that like literally , unless you are a competitive runner but if you're going to operate at the same pace as you continue to age , you're going to be a very rare individual and I hope it's you , I hope you are the exception that proves the rule . But for the most part , you know , biological organic matter starts to decline as it ages . Whether you're talking about DNA SNPs becoming less and less accurate as they replicate over time , or you're just looking at sort of the macro of well , yeah , bodies start to ache , cognitive processes start to slow down , we're losing it . So this notion that our future success is going to be contingent upon the behaviors that we used to possess or the capabilities that we used to possess , I think is a short-sighted strategy . And then , of course , there's even the notion of what is success . Quite frequently and quite frankly many of the clients that I have they begin to recognize that their idea of success is changing . Things that used to matter to them no longer really do , or at the very least , there's a meaningful decline in the significance of certain goals , and they find themselves in a place of exploration Okay , well , yeah , what's important to me tomorrow or next , which kind of dovetails into the next point about why this ability to shift one's identity is so difficult ?

Speaker 1 26:48

And there's all kinds of stigma against losing your edge and becoming irrelevant . Now there's that joke about those who can't do teach and then those who can't teach right , which of course , is patent nonsense , because there's all kinds of wisdom that's been conveyed by books or podcasts or teachers or what have you . But of course it's in the joke that we see the stigma that so much of it is connected to being the doer , being the person in the spotlight . I am the one who did this thing . Look at me , I can get it

Identity and Fear of Irrelevance

Speaker 1 27:26

done .

Speaker 1 27:26

And , quite frankly , so many of my clients struggle with that . I mean , I talked to CEOs who still desperately want to be able to do the thing instead of just sitting back and orchestrating everything and it's like , well , that's not your role anymore . I mean , if the CEO of a company is the one that's going to be trying to , like , get his or her hands on the doing side of things , well then , like , who's steering the ship ? All right . So it surprises me sometimes how many times I get into that kind of conversation , especially with CEOs . So , anyway , you know , there's this stigma and that stigma is often connected to that notion that , okay , yeah , we're going to be irrelevant , we're going to be insignificant , and we fear that .

Speaker 1 28:23

I think part of the reason why we fear that is if we look at tribal humans , ancestral humans , a time when your ability to be physically able was really actually important , and not important from an ego perspective , but important from a survival perspective , and I don't mean existential crisis , I mean your ass is going to get chomped by something big and you better be keeping up with the tribe or they're going to leave you behind , and I think sometimes in at least in the United States , we sometimes , I think , tend to romanticize some of these tribal cultures , and there's a lot of pressure in tribal lifestyle . It's not just all hanging around eating fruit , going on a little hunt , hanging out at the campfire . A lot of it is around keeping up , especially if you are in a hunter-gatherer band that migrates from one part of the world to another throughout the year . If you cannot do the migration , what do you think is happening to you ? So there's this ancestral fear I think that we have about the ability to continue to keep up , the ability to stay relevant , the ability to stay quote unquote valuable and I'm not saying that it is not a powerful force , I think it really truly is which requires us to face it head on , especially if we start to look at , okay , what could enable us to be better at shifting our identity .

Speaker 1 30:05

Well , for starters , asking ourselves are our fears truly substantiated ? Will you spiral off into irrelevance and insignificance ? If you are not the doer ? Clearly , it's possible , but , as the JS Bach example shows , there are other ways to remain relevant and significant , and so , then , a big part of that is recognizing the value in going from being in the spotlight as the doer to being sort of behind the stage , helping other people , mentoring , teaching , pouring yourself into the next generation and then being willing to celebrate and take real , true , authentic joy in what they create from their imagination . Right , and also recognizing , with a bit of I don't know just like kumbaya nostalgia , that there was a time in your life when you were unfettered by the conventions of your industry or the conventions of your field , just like the next generation is where they think about creative ways of breaking rules and not living by convention , and it's so on and so on . So I think there's elements of real joy that you can take there that , yes , might seem vicarious but that you can actually enjoy in a real sort of first person perspective . Additionally , when you think about the fear of spiraling off into insignificance and irrelevance cold prickly's when you think about that , well , what if it's not so critical that you be significant ?

Speaker 1 32:00

Over the last several episodes one or two of them I think I've been mentioning Peter Atea , peter Atea MD , and he is the host of the Drive podcast , and one of the things that he's talked about in a number of his episodes is this concept of finitude , and I don't want to sort of go rehash that here , but basically finitude , meaning the contemplation of your own finiteness , your own insignificance , in the grand scheme of the universe and where it is that for him and this may not be true for you , but given that this show explores different types of tools and mental models with which to I don't know have a greater sense of tranquility , have a greater sense of acceptance , have less stress , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . What if , accepting the fact that on the grand cosmic scale you are insignificant , you are like a speck , you are like the lowly ant , oh my , what if you were able to contemplate that , excuse me , pardon me ? And what if you were able to recognize , oh yeah , the grand scheme of things ? Not a big deal . Can that take some of the pressure off ? And this is , I think , one of the other tools that can help shift the identity , to contemplate what are the benefits that come from a new identity . One of them is probably , if you're able to achieve it , less pressure .

Speaker 1 33:52

So many of my clients have the weight of the world on their shoulders because they do view themselves as the one , the star holding it all together . Carry everybody on my shoulders , uh-huh . And then they tell me how shitty their life feels , and of course , they hedge it . They say , oh , I mean , I've got great opportunities and we still manage to get away for a vacation here and there , even though most of the time they work during their vacations . So they're not actually vacations and they usually come back more fatigued from their time away than they would have if they had actually sort of decompressed , truly . So they try to hedge , they try to tell me , well , it's not so bad , but that when they come to the call they're tired , tired to the bone .

Speaker 1 34:49

So , being in the center of attention , because you are the one , you're the doer , you're the shining star , yeah sure , there's a lot of benefits that come with that , but also comes with cost . That spotlight can get pretty hot , and so if you are able to recognize where it is that some of these physical attributes or natural attributes are starting to wane and you are able to reinvent your identity , we'll let take the pressure off . Will you allow somebody else to step into the spotlight to take that heat ? And can you still I don't know have fun , and maybe have fun , real , true fun , for the first time in your life ? Now I would like to say , and I would like to believe , because I do believe that having fun and having less pressure is also achievable while we are still in the spotlight .

Speaker 1 36:05

But really all I'm trying to present here is that when we look at how we might shift our identity , when some of those changes inevitably occur , seeing the benefits of an identity that carries less stress might help . So if you are in a position in your life where you are going through one of these changes , or you are maybe observing somebody that you care about go through those changes , I hope this episode would help . You would help them . Who knows If you have been enjoying the show , I would love it , love it , love it , love it . And if you would take your remaining cognitive skills and just smash that like button , subscribe , follow , do all the internet-y things and , of course , until next time , take care of each other .