40 Is Coming

How much of our lives, from the smallest everyday choices to the biggest life decisions, are impacted by our sense of what everybody is doing, or what nobody is doing?

Many of us first encountered the everybody-to-nobody spectrum at school, especially during our pre-teen and teenage years, when knowing who was included in the word "everybody", who was being referred to by the word "nobody", and maintaining (or moving) our position on that status spectrum was of life-critical importance.

Whether online or offline, how do you tend to react when you find yourself in an environment where everybody thinks or acts a certain way, or when nobody in the space thinks or acts the way you do?

For some of us, the idea of everyone is aspirational. A signal of the kind of people you want be associated with. The kind of people you want your kids and family to be surrounded by. The kind of person you're working to become.

Others of us find the idea of being in an environment where most people talk and dress and behave in similar ways to be uninviting and/or uninteresting, and would rather be in a place where nobody like that is around.
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How much of our lives are lived in the gray, somewhere between telling the full truth at all times, an "innocent" white lie when it's convenient, and outright deception to get what we want?

Do you find that your relationship with speaking the truth, about a situation or about yourself, changes based on the power/status/authority of the coworker you're interacting with?

Have you found that your willingness or ability to be your "full self" at work depends on the type of work you do and the part of the country where you do it?  

Even at our big age, many of us arrive at 40 telling - and being told - off white lies within our families. Do you tend to justify more off white lies when speaking to the elder members of your family who raised you, or the youngest members of your family who you are raising or helping to raise?

How many people in our generation are arriving at this stage of life having constructed an adult identity online built on a  few off white lies?

Do you find it easier or harder to acknowledge the truth in moments of solitude? Can you still find the truth when you look at yourself in the mirror?

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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Do you have enough space for your stuff?

A recent look around my kitchen after watching the latest episode of my favorite home design YouTube channel got me thinking about how our relationship between our living spaces and our stuff is a helpful metaphor for thinking about the space we have, or lack, for all the stuff that comes with entering this stage of life.

Is your life at 40 defined by the creative ways you have found to Tetris-fit the stuff of your life into the limited resources and space you have? 

Are you arriving at 40 with more than enough space for the stuff of your life?, with ample physical strength, quality relationships, stable mental health, emotional capacity, and a financial situation that gives you freedom and flexibility to take on and/or give away more stuff?

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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Survival is an interesting word to associate with turning 40.  Some of us arrive at this season of life having suffered, endured, overcome, recovered, fallen, struggled, and battled to make it.

Others of us have built, earned, discovered, acquired, protected, and preserved the pieces of lives that we are proud of, and pleased with.

Inspired by a good book I remember reading when I turned 30, and a frustratingly unpleasant recent battle addressing a pest issue in my home, I've been thinking a lot lately about survival.

What has enabled you to survive to 40?  

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Recently, I've been thinking about the saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it". And if turning 40 is about anything, it is about getting to a lot of life's bridges.

• family bridges
• health bridges
• relationship bridges
• career bridges

Are you arriving at 40 feeling hopeful and more free to build bridges, as many of the gates and gatekeepers that controlled access to bridges of opportunity are losing power and control?

Do you arrive at this stage of your life with a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment, after making life choices based on the advice of elders who promised that bridges of safety and security would be guaranteed if you followed a certain life path, only to find that those bridges are nowhere to be found anymore?

How are the bridges in your life? Do you have what you need to cross them?

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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By 40, for every feel-good story of the sacrificially kind, altruistic, good samaritan, whose generosity helped someone else get back on their feet and rebuild their lives; we've heard a cautionary tale of a person who also tried to be kind, and tried to help someone in need. Often a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a romantic partner, or a co-worker. Only to have their entire life turned upside down - or worse - by the very person who desperately needed and accepted their assistance.

This stage of life is a good time to ask some questions about how we've come to think about helping others.

Who do you help?
When do you help?

What prompts you to help?
How do you help?

In what ways will you not help?
Has the range of moments - and/or people - you're open to help changed over the years?
What crosses the line from help to enabling/weakening?

When do you ask for help?
How often do you allow yourself to receive help?


Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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Is anyone's face good enough?

We have arrived at a moment in society where the range of people who feel compelled to undergo signficant shape-shifting procedures to alter their appearance has expanded well beyond those in entertainment, and now includes people from all walks of life.

In some ways, the plastic surgery spectacle of many in ithe public eye is a funhouse mirror of the rest of us. Their dramatic facial and body transformations represent an exaggerated expression of the ways that our desires and fears lead us to shape shift in our private lives.

A lot of us have altered ourselves. What kinds of alterations have you made? 
What motivated/forced you to do it?

As you enter your 40s, how are you feeling about the changes you've made to your identity, tastes, and/or appearance? 


Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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How did the latchkey kid generations grow up to become helicopter parents?

On a recent drive home on a busy four-lane road during Friday evening rush hour, in a momentary break in the traffic, I saw a group of middle-school aged kids crossing the road on their bikes and it got me to thinking about the last time I had seen something that was such a routine part of our childhoods.

The societal shift in how and where kids gather and play, especially in many areas across the U.S., has happened in just half a generation...and it's our generation of 40-year olds whose collective decisions have disappeared some of the most formative aspects of our childhoods from the childhoods of our children. 

So how did we become these kinds of parents? And whether you have children or not, in what ways are our generation's ideas of protection and safety having side effects on the experiences of our youth?

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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At this stage in my life, I find it difficult to connect with anyone who hasn't dealt with deep disappointment, sobering setbacks, or recurring regrets, in some area of life.

In many ways, this podcast - and the upcoming book that accompanies it - is designed for people who are arriving at 40 with a life that has some scrapes, stains, and smudges...which is most of us.

Many of us have at least one aspect of our life where we are low on hope. Whether it's an intractable issue in our bodies, an ongoing saga with our loved ones, or a recurring drama with someone, or something, in our lives; we can find ourselves in a place where we've run out of the mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual fuel to manufacture hope for certain areas of life.

And once hope runs out, so does everything else that good and life-affirming. Including the will, ability, and strength to try. So this is a moment to check on your hope tank, and identify what's filling or draining it.

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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After a lifetime of positive experiences at the dentist, a throwaway comment about the structure of my teeth during a recent visit for a routine cleaning threatened to end my four-decade long run of good dentist visit vibes.

Which led me to think about the structure of our lives, the roots we have, the roots we are missing, and the roots we needed to be stable, secure, safe, and successful in this chapter of life.

Follow us on social media: @40iscoming_ on IG and @40iscoming everywhere else.

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