HBD - and yes to all 40! I’d add these because I am 42:
(41) The point is to love and be loved. Don’t be afraid to love bravely, unapologetically, and generously 🩷
(42) Don’t get attached to favorites (people,places, things, approaches), let them grow and diminish the way the sun rises and sets - enjoying all the stages of attachment for their own charm (similar to #26, but slightly different)
Brad. Forty is nothing. I've been a stepfather longer than you've been alive. 😀
Three daughters came into my life over forty years ago. I thought a family was a house you built once and then lived in. I was wrong. It's a fire you tend. Turn your back for a season and it goes to embers; feed it every day and it warms a room forty years long. I learned that at kitchen tables, and in hospital waiting rooms where the form asks "relationship to patient" and there's no clean word for what you are. Not father. Adult figure? So I stopped hunting for the word and settled on the only one that held: the one who shows up. Turns out that's its own kind of fatherhood.
Two summers ago I turned 65 in Santorini, climbing a thousand stone steps to a room above the Aegean. Halfway up, my legs shook. I grabbed the railing, not from habit, but need. Strength doesn't leave like a door slamming. It leaves like a tide going out, so slow you swear the water hasn't moved, until one day you look down and the boat is sitting on sand. You reach for the railing and understand: the body keeps its own calendar, and it does not consult you.
Most men my age read that as an ending. I read it as an assignment. At 63 I did something I'd never done in a life of solving other people's problems: I hired coaches for my own. One to keep the body honest, one to teach me to put words on a page. For thirty years I'd been the expert at the head of the table. Now I was the kid at the back of the class again, on purpose, and I'll tell you, going back to the bottom of the ladder was the most alive I'd felt in decades.
Here's what nobody tells you. I used to think the mountain had a summit worth reaching, and I climbed toward it for years. Then I got old enough to stand up there and see it for what it is. Narrow. Cold. Room for one. All the warmth is lower down, on the slopes, in the switchbacks, at the tables, in the forty years nobody photographs. My daughters live down there. My father, for the fifteen years I carried him before he died, lives down there. The book my coach pulled out of me, sentence by sentence like splinters, lives down there. Everything that ever mattered happened on the sides of the mountain. Never the peak.
And the strangest part, is the hunger. I expected this stage to be a slow exhale. Fewer plans, smaller rooms, the lights going down like the end of a film. Instead the projector's still running and I've never leaned in closer. More mornings with Suzanne. More stone steps, railing and all. More words while there's still a page. This isn't the wind-down I was promised. It's the chapter where you finally learn to read, and every line is a hand pulling you into the next one.
From where I stand, the ink is still wet on the page and the book runs longer than you think.
Happy birthday. Go easy on the candles. There are more of them coming than you know, and you are going to want every last flame.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get (Feb 2027)
Love this. If you think you've learned a lot at 40, give it another 20 years! But seriously, the fact that you are reflecting on these things now, means your reflection will deepen with time. All good!
I agree with quite a lot of this, but I would look at it through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) -- our most comprehensive, evidence-based theory of human motivation, personality, and psychological well-being. It argues that healthy motivation, sustained engagement, and psychological well-being depend on the satisfaction of three basic and universal psychological needs:
Autonomy: the need to experience your actions as freely chosen and genuinely your own.
Competence: the need to feel capable, effective, and able to meet meaningful challenges.
Relatedness: the need to feel connected to others -- to belong, to care, and to be cared for.
And STD distinguishes autonomous motivation (which includes intrinsic motivation and personally endorsed forms of extrinsic motivation) from controlled motivation (in which behavior is driven by external demands or internal pressures such as guilt, shame, fear, status anxiety, etc.)
So, your point #4 is very much aligned with SDT -- a demanding and unpleasant activity can satisfy autonomy (I have chosen and endorse this), competence (I am using and developing capacities), and relatedness (it connects me with people I care about). So it may all be tiring and frustrating while still being psychologically nourishing.
Points #9 and #33 are also excellent -- they distinguish between intrinsic aspirations (relationships, growth, health, contribution, etc) and extrinsic aspirations (status, image, fame, wealth, etc.). And the latter can be pursued obsessively without satisfying basic psychological needs.
#16 is 1:1 with SDT in that competence is one of the three basic psychological needs -- experience yourself as effective, capable and building toward mastery. What matters is having some domain in which challenge, practice and visible progress allow you to feel that you can act effectively in the world.
But then it seems quite a lot of the points turn self-autonomy into self-coercion, because a lot of them mention: "Just. Get. Started", "Get it done", "Give them your all", "Do hard things", "Work hard", "Keep showing up", etc.
These are not inherently wrong, but they are all motivationally unspecified. A person may "keep showing up" because the activity is interesting, they see a deep value or importance in it, etc. Or because they fear shame, they seek recognition, are frightened of losing status, etc.
And points #1 and #13 valorize total commitment with "Give them your all" and "If you never give anything your all, you sacrifice so much of what makes life worth living." This is an all-or-nothing rhetoric that may lead to extremes and is not a defensible general principle. Plus it's at odds with your principles of multiple-room identity, trade-offs, consistency over intensity and rejection of perfectionism. You simply cannot give your all to your marriage, children, work, friends, physical training, community, etc., simultaneously. Something has to receive "enough", not "all". It's simply a healthy allocation of finite life resources.
These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Thanks for the stimulating post :)
Thanks for this Brad and indeed all your writing. Happy Birthday!
It’s fantastic you have worked this out (are continuing to work this out) at 40.
I’m turning 70 soon and have really only become aware of it mostly through your writings. It’s transforming my thinking about life and how to approach it. It’s never too late to change one hopes. Thank You.
HBD - and yes to all 40! I’d add these because I am 42:
(41) The point is to love and be loved. Don’t be afraid to love bravely, unapologetically, and generously 🩷
(42) Don’t get attached to favorites (people,places, things, approaches), let them grow and diminish the way the sun rises and sets - enjoying all the stages of attachment for their own charm (similar to #26, but slightly different)
Great additions! Thank you!
Happy Birthday and keep doing what you’re doing, helping people perform at their best!
Thank you Sebastien, for the kind words and ongoing support.
is today your birthday?! If so that makes my day because we share a birthday! Going on 41. Appreciate these and your work!!
Thanks, Dave! And Happy Birthday! Mine was this past weekend!
Happy Birthday! Some fine wisdom here!
Thank you, Sherri!
Happy birthday!
Thank you!
Wise words from a wise man. Happy 40th!
Becoming wise, or at least wiser. Thanks Evan!
Happy birthday! Thanks for this list.
Thanks for reading and being here!
This was great, Brad! Happy Birthday and thanks for sharing.
Than you!
Happy Birthday!
Brad. Forty is nothing. I've been a stepfather longer than you've been alive. 😀
Three daughters came into my life over forty years ago. I thought a family was a house you built once and then lived in. I was wrong. It's a fire you tend. Turn your back for a season and it goes to embers; feed it every day and it warms a room forty years long. I learned that at kitchen tables, and in hospital waiting rooms where the form asks "relationship to patient" and there's no clean word for what you are. Not father. Adult figure? So I stopped hunting for the word and settled on the only one that held: the one who shows up. Turns out that's its own kind of fatherhood.
Two summers ago I turned 65 in Santorini, climbing a thousand stone steps to a room above the Aegean. Halfway up, my legs shook. I grabbed the railing, not from habit, but need. Strength doesn't leave like a door slamming. It leaves like a tide going out, so slow you swear the water hasn't moved, until one day you look down and the boat is sitting on sand. You reach for the railing and understand: the body keeps its own calendar, and it does not consult you.
Most men my age read that as an ending. I read it as an assignment. At 63 I did something I'd never done in a life of solving other people's problems: I hired coaches for my own. One to keep the body honest, one to teach me to put words on a page. For thirty years I'd been the expert at the head of the table. Now I was the kid at the back of the class again, on purpose, and I'll tell you, going back to the bottom of the ladder was the most alive I'd felt in decades.
Here's what nobody tells you. I used to think the mountain had a summit worth reaching, and I climbed toward it for years. Then I got old enough to stand up there and see it for what it is. Narrow. Cold. Room for one. All the warmth is lower down, on the slopes, in the switchbacks, at the tables, in the forty years nobody photographs. My daughters live down there. My father, for the fifteen years I carried him before he died, lives down there. The book my coach pulled out of me, sentence by sentence like splinters, lives down there. Everything that ever mattered happened on the sides of the mountain. Never the peak.
And the strangest part, is the hunger. I expected this stage to be a slow exhale. Fewer plans, smaller rooms, the lights going down like the end of a film. Instead the projector's still running and I've never leaned in closer. More mornings with Suzanne. More stone steps, railing and all. More words while there's still a page. This isn't the wind-down I was promised. It's the chapter where you finally learn to read, and every line is a hand pulling you into the next one.
From where I stand, the ink is still wet on the page and the book runs longer than you think.
Happy birthday. Go easy on the candles. There are more of them coming than you know, and you are going to want every last flame.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get (Feb 2027)
Love this. If you think you've learned a lot at 40, give it another 20 years! But seriously, the fact that you are reflecting on these things now, means your reflection will deepen with time. All good!
40? Crazy how young that seems now at 62.😝😎
I agree with quite a lot of this, but I would look at it through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) -- our most comprehensive, evidence-based theory of human motivation, personality, and psychological well-being. It argues that healthy motivation, sustained engagement, and psychological well-being depend on the satisfaction of three basic and universal psychological needs:
Autonomy: the need to experience your actions as freely chosen and genuinely your own.
Competence: the need to feel capable, effective, and able to meet meaningful challenges.
Relatedness: the need to feel connected to others -- to belong, to care, and to be cared for.
And STD distinguishes autonomous motivation (which includes intrinsic motivation and personally endorsed forms of extrinsic motivation) from controlled motivation (in which behavior is driven by external demands or internal pressures such as guilt, shame, fear, status anxiety, etc.)
So, your point #4 is very much aligned with SDT -- a demanding and unpleasant activity can satisfy autonomy (I have chosen and endorse this), competence (I am using and developing capacities), and relatedness (it connects me with people I care about). So it may all be tiring and frustrating while still being psychologically nourishing.
Points #9 and #33 are also excellent -- they distinguish between intrinsic aspirations (relationships, growth, health, contribution, etc) and extrinsic aspirations (status, image, fame, wealth, etc.). And the latter can be pursued obsessively without satisfying basic psychological needs.
#16 is 1:1 with SDT in that competence is one of the three basic psychological needs -- experience yourself as effective, capable and building toward mastery. What matters is having some domain in which challenge, practice and visible progress allow you to feel that you can act effectively in the world.
But then it seems quite a lot of the points turn self-autonomy into self-coercion, because a lot of them mention: "Just. Get. Started", "Get it done", "Give them your all", "Do hard things", "Work hard", "Keep showing up", etc.
These are not inherently wrong, but they are all motivationally unspecified. A person may "keep showing up" because the activity is interesting, they see a deep value or importance in it, etc. Or because they fear shame, they seek recognition, are frightened of losing status, etc.
And points #1 and #13 valorize total commitment with "Give them your all" and "If you never give anything your all, you sacrifice so much of what makes life worth living." This is an all-or-nothing rhetoric that may lead to extremes and is not a defensible general principle. Plus it's at odds with your principles of multiple-room identity, trade-offs, consistency over intensity and rejection of perfectionism. You simply cannot give your all to your marriage, children, work, friends, physical training, community, etc., simultaneously. Something has to receive "enough", not "all". It's simply a healthy allocation of finite life resources.
These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Thanks for the stimulating post :)
Thanks for these Brad. Some of these are so powerful and really resonated.
Happy birthday 🥳 I like that list, I especially like no. 11. I wrote about those multiple rooms here: https://michaelakrimmer.substack.com/p/many-lives-one-self
Thanks for this Brad and indeed all your writing. Happy Birthday!
It’s fantastic you have worked this out (are continuing to work this out) at 40.
I’m turning 70 soon and have really only become aware of it mostly through your writings. It’s transforming my thinking about life and how to approach it. It’s never too late to change one hopes. Thank You.