36: Climbing Your Second Mountain: Creating Joy and Leaving a Legacy In the Second Half of Your Life

Does success breed happiness?  And how do we live for a cause larger than ourselves, as we’re often encouraged to do? Today we are diving into answering these questions and exploring the concept of preparing to find true joy in the second half of your life, or as has been referred to as your “second mountain”. In this conversation, we talk about how natural it is to be longing for more at this point of our lives, and the importance of investing in relationships instead of accumulating more possessions and higher social status. 

In today’s episode, we explore what we can do to show up right now to live our values and experience life in a more meaningful way, for ourselves and others. Longing for more out of life is not uncommon and you’re definitely not alone in that longing. Through our conversation, we hope to provoke your thinking about the life you want to create and the joy that is possible, and remind you that you can’t leave it up to chance.  

As always, we love to hear your feedback.  If you have a question or topic that you’d like us to discuss in a future episode, please go to https://www.respectcircles.com/voicemail/ to leave us a message. 

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In this episode you’ll hear:

• A look at what the “First Mountain” and “Second Mountain” of life is, and the critical lie that people are telling themselves about success and happiness [4:54]
  
  
• How we can begin to fix what has happened over the last few decades to the cultural and moral structure of our society [7:26]
  
  
• The unhealthy habits that AJ is shedding and the person that he is becoming as he approaches his second mountain [10:27]
  
  
• What Stephanie sees in the clients that she coaches who are in the second act of their lives [13:29]
  
  
• What surprises most people as they reach the peak of their first mountain and being the descent towards the next one [28:37] 
  
  
• How Stephanie navigated the phase of her career when she recognized she had reached the summit of her first mountain [29:40]
  
  
• Some of the common pitfalls of always chasing “more” [37:10]
  
  
• What you can do to prepare to ascend your second mountain and how to develop a plan versus just letting it happen [38:45] 
  

Links & Resources: 

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks 

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières