Across increasingly longer lifespans, how do we continue to grow, contribute, and find purpose? Across more than 100 Fellows and three years of learning, LSI has generated powerful insights.
As Seth Green, Dean of the Graham School, notes, when the University of Chicago came into existence in 1890, the average life expectancy globally was around 30. In the US, it was around 47. “Today, globally, it’s around 73, and in the U.S, it’s around 77,” he says, citing the possibility of continuing to move toward the 100-year life. Along with lifespan, he adds, healthspan and wealth are also increasing for individuals over 50, enabling greater freedom than ever to do something meaningful with these additional years of life.
Now in its third year, the University of Chicago Leadership & Society Initiative has explored how we can move beyond simply living longer to actually thriving, growing, and making meaningful contributions to our world.
As highly accomplished, proven leaders in a variety of fields, LSI Fellows continue to lead by example. Their experiences and insights, along with those of LSI faculty members, have produced the following seven core principles of generativity: the mindsets and practices that enable individuals to remain engaged, curious, and impactful in mid-life and beyond.
Move From External Accountability to Intrinsic Motivation (And Don’t Live in Others’ Minds)
This concept comes from LSI faculty member David Brooks and another advisor to LSI, Rishad Tobaccowala. Typically, we achieve success in the early stages of life by meeting external accountability frameworks. We climb ladders created by others in order to accomplish and obtain those things that the external world defines as important. As David Brooks commented around the inception of the LSI, entering the second chapter of our lives presents an opportunity to connect with more intrinsic goals and personal motivations, perhaps sprouting from childhood interests we’ve given up, a desire to contribute to the prosperity of others, or efforts that just make you feel energized. From Rishad Tobaccowala’s perspective, this is about “not living in other people’s minds.” It’s about shifting from fulfilling the expectations others may have for us towards who we, ourselves, truly want to be at this stage of life, allowing for potential evolution.
This can be about returning to the desires that motivated us to follow a particular career path, but this shift can also take us in a very different direction.
Seth shares an example of a leader in the Graham School’s lifelong learning community who, after pursuing her passion for cooking by attending Le Cordon Bleu, wanted to help other people cook by working at a local Spice House. When a friend told her she couldn’t possibly do that, given all the elevated roles she’d played in her career, she felt even more motivated to go get the job. “So she’s worked there part-time since, and she has so much fun doing it,” Seth says. “It’s allowed her to live in her own mind, and be her own person, and live her own life, and realize that she can have multiple stages, and not feel like because she had a stage of being a warrior and had all these accomplishments, she necessarily needs to continue to live in that exact horizon.”
Travel Lightly
On setting out for new horizons, University of Chicago Booth Professor Harry Davis set forth this principle at the LSI kick-off through a personal anecdote. Harry was one of the world’s top marketing professors, but then he got very interested in leadership. He found that he didn’t have enough space in his office for all of the books that he had. So he decided to leave his marketing books behind. He ended up, after 30 years of marketing, thriving in 30 years of teaching and writing about leadership for individuals and organizations. Now, there is a Harry L. Davis Center for Leadership at the University recognizing his influence in that domain. By intentionally leaving some things behind, he made room for growth.
Entering into a new chapter is akin to traveling to a new destination. Just as we can’t take our entire wardrobe with us when we travel, we can’t take all of the assets we’ve built up over time into our next chapter.
As Seth suggests, giving in to the temptation to take it all along is like carrying the burden of too much baggage. “We can think, ‘I’ve built up all of these incredible wardrobes, I have all of these different ensembles. With where I want to go next, what are the couple of outfits I want to take that are going to allow me to build on my experience and all that I’ve learned, but not weigh me down and give me the flexibility to pick up a few new garments on my journey?’”
Knowing what to take along and what to leave behind depends on where we want to go and what we want to accomplish when we get there.
Contribute to the Lives of Others
This core principle, central to LSI’s mission, is not only an opportunity to apply one’s capabilities to creating a stronger world but also a scientifically proven practice for growing personal fulfillment, creativity, and wellness.
As we move into later life, we often feel like we lose our relevance and our purpose. Typically, we no longer have the same work or family that we might have been motivated to support and provide for. “We find that people always need to feel part of a greater whole,” Seth says, “We are social animals, as Aristotle said. We can find great meaning and joy in having the opportunity to support the people around us. So we really want to make sure that, as we enter into these next chapters, we’re embedding ourselves in community and being part of these greater wholes. This not only contributes to collective good, but has significant personal benefits for cognition, psychological well-being, and other health indicators.”
LSI Fellows, for example, have chosen to contribute to an array of issue areas – from food insecurity to violence prevention; public health to economic opportunity – and at an array of scales, with some focused on systems-level change and others looking to make a difference in their own backyard. In all cases, Fellows report feeling deeply rewarded by helping improve the lives of others.
Invest in Relationships, Including Intergenerational Connections
As most of us learn over the course of our working lives, peer relationships are essential. Building and maintaining professional and personal networks lays the foundation for success and fuels generativity and growth. This continues into our second chapter. Over the past few years, the generative power of the relationships formed among each cohort of LSI Fellows has become increasingly clear. Beyond the sheer joy of connecting with other accomplished leaders across a variety of fields, Fellows have formed what they feel will be lifelong friendships as well as professional collaborations and extended networks that continue to fuel their generativity.
But a variety of recent studies reveal that intergenerational connections can also be essential to maintaining the mental and physical health essential for continued generativity. “It turns out there’s a lot of generativity across generations,” Seth says. “There’s a lot of research that even things like Alzheimer’s and dementia are reduced significantly by social relations in general. And there’s special power when those relationships occur across generations. One interesting study found that grandparents having time with their grandkids led to significant benefits across a whole range of protective factors.”
Be Curious. Be “A Learn It All.”
The generative power of lifelong learning is the bedrock principle of The Graham School and LSI. But it’s as much a mindset as an endeavor. In order to truly learn something new, we need to fully embrace our curiosity, our beginner’s mindset, and our vulnerability.
“It turns out that just like our physical muscles, our mental muscles are only activated by challenge,” Seth says. “So even if you get to be the best in a certain area, you actually want, across life, to constantly put yourself in situations where you are not the best, where you have to learn from others.”
If we’ve mastered bicep curls, he suggests, we’re probably not going to get as much out of doing them anymore. We want to start activating other muscles to build a full body. The same is true with mental agility. “Sometimes people get into a place where they’re coasting on the expertise that they have, and certainly that can be really great for a career. But in terms of constant growth across a longer life, you want to be putting yourself out in more situations where you’re challenging yourself, and you’re explicitly what Mellody Hobson calls the ‘learn-it-all’ in the room, and not the ‘know-it-all’ in the room.”
Prioritize Wellness. It’s Your Future Impact.
Especially as scientific understanding of wellness grows, we have the opportunity to make intentional decisions about our long-term health. When we do so, we have access to our full selves and can unlock our greatest possible potential. Looking after ourselves holistically, prioritizing our physical, mental, emotional, and social wellbeing, we’re not only extending our lifespan, but also, as LSI faculty member, distinguished instructor at the Graham School, and gerontologist, Dr. Kerry Burnight puts it, our joyspan. Our happiness is important, especially if we want to have a positive impact on society. When we’re happy and well, we’re far more powerful and effective in everything that we do.
Look Forward
“This is my favorite suggestion,” Seth says, quoting Madeline Albright, who said, “I want every stage of my life to be more exciting than the last.” Seth recounts a story where, as she was leaving her job as Secretary of State, a journalist asked her what her legacy would be. “I don’t want to be remembered,” Albright answered. “I am still here and have much more I intend to do.” Seth explains that “was her way of saying that, as proud as she was of being Secretary of State, she was always looking forward, always thinking about all of the exciting things in the front view, rather than in the rear view mirror.”
For more information on putting these principles into practice, request information about the Leadership & Society Initiative.
