Hi there Reader,
Welcome to this edition of Meaningful eMail with the most recent takeaway and updates linked here at the top, and then a full article for your consideration.
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Recent Takeaways
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Top Takeaways: Flow
Subtitled The pyschology of optimal experience, this is a fantastic book for finding... creating!... the 'flow state' in our work and in our lives.
Read or watch to find out why.
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Let's Explore
Midlife birthdays
It’s been a banner week. After four straight years of wobbly birthdays, this one is holding up well.
You see, it was a birthday four years ago that sparked my mid-career meltdown. A bit dramatic, maybe, but it felt like my work, my business, and my life were going up in a cloud of dust. And not the dust created by fast-moving feet toward a bright future, but the kind that rises when something is being torn down.
I was caught off guard by the sudden unmooring of what had been a steady source of joy and purpose — my work as a creative director. I had loved being a creative director for decades. If this was shifting, what else might also be at risk?
Turns out, quite a lot. Over these past four years I’ve shifted my business more than once, wrestled with the voice in my head that said I was “too old” to start over, and even had to re-learn how to introduce myself at dinner parties. (That voice was wrong, by the way.)
If I’ve learned anything, it’s that change isn’t something to fear. It’s something to practice. The more we do it, the stronger we get.
And in midlife, change isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.
We’re watching kids turn into young adults in what feels like days instead of years. Parents aging before our eyes. And our own health shifting in ways we didn’t expect.
I could pile on politics, the economy, even AI reshaping our work but you get the picture.
Here’s the thing: the more change we face, the more skills we gain. Resilience. Presence. Courage. Wisdom. Tools we didn’t even know we had until change demanded them.
One of my favorite books, The 100-Year Life, reminds us that with longer lives, we get more chapters — not fewer. Instead of one tidy arc, we get to experiment and explore. It’s not always easy, but it is possible, heck it's even preferable!
Maybe you always wanted to be a zookeeper but landed in corporate life. Maybe you dreamed of teaching or starting a business but talked yourself out of it. Our parents and grandparents rarely had the freedom to explore those pivots. We do.
Which means the question isn’t: “How do I finally settle down?”
It’s: “What chapter am I writing now?”
And am I willing to let change carry me into it?
For me, this birthday feels like the first one in years where the answer is yes. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I trust the muscles I’ve built along the way.
And maybe that’s the real gift of change: it shakes us up, but eventually, it hands us resilience we didn’t know we had.
Here’s to the next chapter — yours, mine, and all the ones we haven’t even imagined yet.
