16. HENRY OLIVER: Your Next Starts Now

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

Henry Oliver: It’s not about I’m gonna change everything right now and get it all done. It’s like, what’s the one thing you can do to make progress? today we’re excited to share with you our conversation. Henry Oliver. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: So this is such a great conversation. You are going to love it. Henry May be somebody that you haven’t heard of before, but he is a prolific writer and journalist with contributions to many major publications and he has this really interesting, fascination with cultural analysis and personal development.

So, and kind 

Michael Hyatt: of a contrarian 

Megan Hyatt Miller: and kind of a contrarian. I mean, he would describe himself as a grumpy. Englishmen who are, are a pessimistic Englishman. I think that’s what he said. Um, I didn’t actually find him pessimistic. I found I didn’t do it to be a realist, but he has a very interesting point of view and he’s the author of the book Second Act, uh, which focuses on the concept of late blooming.

So if you are someone who. Even as somebody who’s probably excited and enthusiastic about achievement, maybe you feel disappointed sometimes that you haven’t accomplished as much as you wish you could have at this point of your life. This conversation is gonna be very interesting and relevant for you.

He talks about some themes like, um, reinvention and success throughout, uh, one’s career, and he talks a lot about some kind of, um. Almost mundane ingredients to doing that well, but in ways that you’ve never thought about it before. I just felt like, you know, the little emoji that’s like your, the head exploding emoji.

I felt like that was my brain during this conversation the entire time. You 

Michael Hyatt: know, I felt incredibly optimistic because I felt like, oh, my best days are ahead of me. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Right? 

Michael Hyatt: So if you feel like maybe you’ve peaked, I promise you you haven’t. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: So enjoy this 

episode. Henry, welcome to the show.

Henry Oliver: Thank you for having me. I’m obviously thrilled to be here.

Megan Hyatt Miller: This is gonna be such a fun conversation, I think for our listeners. And I just wanna start at the beginning and ask you, can you kind of share some key milestones in your journey that led you to where you are now in talking about this idea of the second act?

Henry Oliver: About six years ago, I had cancer and it was like, not very serious, but I had to take some time off work and, and get chemo. And the doctor said, look, everyone comes back and says, doc, it changed my life. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I finally, you know, did what I wanted to do and he said, you know, you’re, you’re gonna end up writing your book or something.

And I looked at him and I said, that’s not what I’m like. I’m, it’s not gonna change my life. Uh, let’s just do the drugs. Go home. Forget the, forget the big transformation. Okay. It’s like Larry David, but more grumpy. You know what I mean? And then with all this spare time, I was sitting at home and I was like, I’m, I’m gonna do some blogging ’cause I don’t feel like I can get up and do anything, but I’m gonna do some blogging.

And it, it like gradually turned into writing this book. So I had to grudgingly admit yes, the doctor was, you know, yes. Okay. I had a, I had a, a moment in my life when these things changed. but it’s, I, I prefer to think of it like that because rather than like I had this big revelation, I had this big milestone.

It was like, I’m sitting here, I want to do some writing, I’ll do some writing. And it builds and it builds and it builds. And I think that’s really important. I love the phrase, a torrent is made of drips.

Cross: Mm. 

Henry Oliver: We all are waiting for this great moment when you like. Fall off the horse and have your conversion on the road to Damascus.

But there are many years of preparation that go into that. Right. And actually, the, the sudden process, I think is always a slow process as well.

Michael Hyatt: What was it about late bloomers that captivated you and made you wanna write about ’em?

Henry Oliver: So while I was, uh, at home recovering, I read the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald, who no one here will have heard of. She’s a fantastic English novelist, and I love, I love her work. And she didn’t write her first serious novel until she was 60. And so her, her story is fascinating, right? And she lived in a houseboat and it sank and they were homeless and her husband was an alcoholic.

And it like this very difficult, very interesting life. And I was then listening to the Economist, Tyler Cowan on a podcast and he said something like, people who haven’t achieved anything yet, but maybe they will. I. I thought, oh, well that’s Penelope Fitzgerald, right? Like her whole life, that’s her. Uh, so I started just blogging about that, and then I thought, oh, that’s Margaret Thatcher.

And well, kind of Winston Churchill and just names kept coming to me. And I thought, that’s like a thing here. And I, so I was just blogging about it. And then when I was at work, my clients were saying to me, I was like, in marketing, where’s all the talent? We need to recruit people. Where, where are all the people?

And I was saying, well, if you look at the data, they’re all like 50 plus. That’s where the action is. That’s where the talent’s sitting in the market. Uh, we’re not interested in that. You know, they were kind of reluctant about it. And I was saying, yeah, but no, but these, these guys are great. This is a wonderful group.

They’ve got experience, they’ve got expertise. Like, uh, and I’m standing, then I start talking about Penelope Fitzgerald, and it’s like, what the hell is he going on about? But I had this like big crazy idea in my head that I was gonna pull it all together, right? Um, and so gradually I did, and I, I got into this concept that the late bloomers are out there and we’re not paying them enough attention.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Hmm. So did your ideas about late bloomers change during this recovery process as you were, you know, thinking about it, writing about it, did you have kind of a, a perspective pre-chemo that was very different than what you had post-chemo and all this research and thinking and writing? Or had you just not really thought much about late bloomers in general

Henry Oliver: I hadn’t, I hadn’t thought about it enough,

Cross: Hmm

Henry Oliver: and I would’ve maybe reflexively being one of those people who says, oh, writers do all their work when they’re young, or whatever, right? 

Which is just completely untrue. Um, so yeah, no, I was, I was one of those people who was stuck in this culture of, of not thinking about it.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Of kind of privileging youth and, and all of that. Yeah. 

Henry Oliver: one of the interesting things to me is that it is changing right now. Like I think it was two years ago. Best actress and best supporting actress, both women in their sixties, uh, whatever you think of the whole Joe Biden thing, a very active and lauded president who’s like, what, 80 plus while he’s in

office before any quit. Right? Uh, the average age of the American workforce has crept up a little bit. There are many more people over 65 working now than there were in the nineties. Uh, you go on TikTok, you see videos of like, there was this woman, she was a park ranger. She started in her eighties and she retired at a hundred.

Like

Jerry. Yeah. No, she’s really, you should Google it. She’s really cool. Uh, Jerry Seinfeld directing his first movie when he is 70. It’s just, it’s just a bit more in the culture now. That like, oh, you’re 60, you’re gonna do something new and exciting now as opposed to, well, you’re going to retire dear.

Right. Which kind of was kind of more of the default. Um, so I do think I’ve come out of the book and been like, oh yeah, more people are thinking about this now. This is great. Ageism is, is gradually declining? I think

Michael Hyatt: what is it culturally that’s, that accounts for that shift A, there’s more appreciation for people that are older and B, people that are older don’t just wanna retire and play dominoes for their rest of their life.

Henry Oliver: so. I think there are two things. The first is that we have, um, an aging population, right? And what that means is that there are a lot more people of that bracket who have a lot more cultural influence, a lot more income, whatever. The second thing is that we’ve just made lots of really good progress. Uh, so you have a longer life, a healthier life.

Uh, you just have way more options available to you. You can reeducate, change careers, whatever. So, uh, people have been rethinking the like, educate, work, retire model into more of a like, educate, work, reeducate change, do other stuff, have a portfolio go part-time while you semi-retire. But like everyone can travel more now.

And so the, our expectations of our lives, like if I think about my grandmothers, it was like they stay at home. They’re very respectable. They watch some tv, they go to the shops on Tuesday, that’s their retirement, right? My mother is like going all over the world. Uh, she’s, she’s picking up new sports. Like it, the, the baseline is just so different.

Um, and so as you just get a lot more people like that, your default perception of age and, and just the quotes older people, you, there are no old ladies anymore.

Megan Hyatt Miller: It’s true. You know, there’s these funny memes you see on social media of love like that American television show, the Golden Girls, you know, one of those women

Henry Oliver: Right, right, right. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: next to like J-Lo, and it looks like your great grandmother next to your sister. You know, like 

Henry Oliver: Yeah, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: dramatic and you’re like, how can these people be the same age?

I mean, Botox for sure, but among, but other things. Anyway, I mean, I, I do think that that, um, you know, 40 is the new 25 like, or 60 is the new 40. Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I think about my, my grandmother when she was your age and she seemed. 

Michael Hyatt: Ancient, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: ancient, you know, she was getting her hair set on Saturday mornings for the week yeah. you know, all that kind of stuff.

She wasn’t like playing pickleball and traveling the world, to your point. So I, I really do think our sensibilities have changed, our expectations of age have changed.

Henry Oliver: Totally. So that makes it much harder to look at a 50, 55, 60-year-old and be like. They’re on the decline. It’s not gonna be the same. Like actually many more of those people are just as vigorous as their younger counterparts, 

uh, and are still competitive. Right.

Megan Hyatt Miller: So you talk about this idea in the book of persistence and how important persistence is. Can you share an example that illustrates this and just kind of talk about that idea a little bit?

Henry Oliver: Let’s talk about Catherine Graham because she’s like an American hero, right? Um, she took over the Washington Post when she was 45 1 day because her husband killed himself

Cross: Hmm.

Henry Oliver: her confidence had been eroded day after day in this terrible marriage. Her mother had been very bad for her self-esteem when she was young.

Her husband was, was domineering and bullying and she’d ended up unable to get herself dressed with any confidence to go to a, like an event or a dinner party ’cause she’d been really diminished. And all of her friends and people around her are saying, well, you’ve gotta sell the paper. Right? You are not gonna take it over.

And most of us in that position, I think, would say, my God, what am I, what am I gonna take over this business? ’cause it’s not just a newspaper. They own Newsweek, they own tv, they own radio, like it’s a media organization, right? But she had this deep set of beliefs from her childhood. It was, it had been her father’s paper.

She’d been brought up with amazing privilege like servants in the house. She’d been very well educated and she loved the news. I mean, she just, we think we are obsessed with the news today. She just could not get enough. So her response was The hell, am I gonna be the one that sells my family newspaper? Now? This is rock bottom for her and what she’s relying on more than any like skillset. Or anything like that. What she’s relying on is fierce determination, right? She has 

been through so many difficult things in her life, and she’s like, well, why would I quit now? And this is really what saw her through decades of becoming the most successful CEO in America.

Huge, huge financial returns. Warren Buffet invests and he said to her, I didn’t invest in all those idiots out there. I invested in you

Cross: Hmm.

Henry Oliver: right now. This is Warren Buffet. This is not some throwaway remark. Um, and underlying all of her ability, obviously very well educated, very capable woman. But underlying that is this huge determination.

Uh, she saw down a really, really fierce strike that would’ve bankrupted the company. She decided to publish Watergate. They were doing an IPO, and the government was giving them very heavy hints If you publish this stuff. Will take away your license to do TV news and that will sink your IPO. Right? So she is making these decisions.

These are not decisions for like a major intellect or someone with great strategic genius. These are decisions for someone who is made of steel

Cross: Hmm

Henry Oliver: that’s what she had. And she just persisted for years and years and years. And she went from being this, this diminished person and it to being like, if you want to be someone in Washington, you have got to go and see Catherine Graham and get anointed.

You know what I mean? That’s just, there’s no other way. There’s no other way. So she’s a great example of that. Yeah.

Michael Hyatt: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Arthur Brooks, professor at Harvard who wrote a book called From Strength to Strength, and he talks about, fluid intelligence and crystalline intelligence. And so he says that it, it’s like two different ways of being and of working.

And, and usually a lot of the innovation comes in your early years, but a lot of wisdom comes in your latter years. So I don’t, I, I’d love to know your opinion of that. And also I’d love to know how that kind of integrates with your concept here of late bloomers.

Henry Oliver: So I argue against Brooks in the book, but I don’t do it super openly ’cause I don’t believe in having those like, those sections where you’re like, oh, this guy is wrong and I’m gonna take, I just, I’m very much though putting forward the opposite point of view. I think there are a couple of things, um, like yes, that is what the graphs about intelligence show us.

Okay. But how important is intelligence? There’s really, uh, interesting data. Not like brilliant data, but really interesting data that the political leaders who become the most eminent, right? The most significant names like Harry Truman, are often the least educated.

Cross: Hmm.

Henry Oliver: And part of that is because you can, you can be really, really clever and become a leader like Woodrow Wilson with his PhD and, and everything, but there are other qualities that are important to leadership that intelligence cannot solve.

And one of those is being a really good decision maker. Now, Truman was a great decision maker. He’d been in the army, he’d been in business, he’d been in the Senate. Uh, he dealt with the very dirty politics of his home state. Like he had a lot of experience that made him really good at, you know, sniffing out when someone was full of it and when they weren’t.

Um, so I would just say like. Does fluid and concrete intelligence matter very much in that context? Probably not. The second point, and this is a much more direct response to Brooks, is these are averages, okay? And we live under the tyranny of the average. Um, and what his book, which was originally an article basically says, is look at this average curve.

It dips, I can’t remember, like in, in midlife. And it goes down. That’s gonna be you, you need to think about what you’re gonna do. And I have data in the book where I show, um, it’s fascinating. A group of people in Scotland, the same people were given the same IQ test 70 years apart. Now some of them got lower scores ’cause intelligence declines as we age.

Like the graph says. Some of them got the same score and some of them got a higher score.

Cross: Huh.

Henry Oliver: And in a way, the actual thing you want to take from this graph is yes, on average there is a decline. Obviously at some point before you die, you lose executive function and you lose memory and you lose all of these things.

But there is also a lot of variation around the curve and you don’t know where you are on the graph. No one has measured you. No one can point you to where you are. Right? So this like big generalizing idea he has where he’s like, that’s the curve guys. Make your choices. I’m like, ah, that might not be your curve actually.

That’s quite a big statement. We didn’t, this isn’t like we discovered a law of thermodynamics, like this is an average. So yeah, some people will look at themselves at 55 and say, you know what? I am a little bit further down the curve. I shouldn’t be the CEO. I am gonna rethink the way I like split my time or whatever.

Some people will look at themselves and think, if I could. Partner up with a 25-year-old colleague and they bring all the fluid intelligence and the sparks, and I bring decades of knowledge and experience. We could be a phenomenal team. Why isn’t that his answer? Right? I just, so I just think like, be aware of it, but make your own choices and have like honest understandings of, of what you are like, and be aware that there’s a lot of variation around the average.

Michael Hyatt: Well, it seems like those thoughts could become limiting beliefs. Like Hmm. Then I’m gonna decline cognitively, then I’m gonna probably see myself decline cognitively. Right. I mean, the limited belief is gonna have an impact. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Well, your behavior and your choices could follow that belief. Yeah, exactly.

Like you stop doing things that would keep your mind sharp, that would be interesting to you, that would be innovative, and therefore you do listen things that are innovative forward thinking,

Henry Oliver: So the way I see it is this like. I’ve consulted with lots of organizations and I’ve met lots of people at c-suite level, right? A lot of them are of an age where they should be skidding down that slope, but when you are in the room with them, it’s like the dude’s at the top of the, the curve. He’s fine.

You know what? Like this, I’m not worried about this guy. He’s pretty sharp. It would be insane for someone to say to this person, oh, well, according to the average, you should be retired. Like, what? Whoa. Crazy advice. Like make your own judgment about, about who you are. I really, really object to this. Like, um, as I say, the tyranny of the average.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I think that’s a fascinating perspective, and I like that there’s a little bit of, of room and flexibility in that Mm-Hmm. That we can use our own judgment and, and factor in the unique, um, ingredients of our own life to assess ourselves well, and I, 

Michael Hyatt: know, not to toot my own horn, but like, I’m 69 and I taught in the last two year, or the last two weeks, two four hour workshops on artificial intelligence.

And like I’ve really done a dig deep dive into that and I feel like I’m at my peak cognitively. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Well, just to further that point, I was, um, I was in the car last night with mom. Your wife, obviously father, daughter, just in case you didn’t know. Uh, and we were on our way to a yoga class and I said, man, don’t tell dad this because, you know, he’s just gonna get like a big head about it.

But he is freaking genius about this AI stuff. Like, I can’t, like, I think he takes for granted what he already understands. And I had this realization as I was building something with AI yesterday. I was like, oh, and I texted you about it. I was like, oh, I think we actually need to like dumb this down a little bit because you’ve taken for granted some of the, the steps here that our team who are by the way, all under 50, you know, and most of whom are between probably 35 and 40, are struggling conceptually to wrap their head around.

Whereas to you it’s like, oh yeah, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s easy peasy. Hmm. and so I mean, I, I think that’s a good example of there’s nothing right now that’s happening that’s more innovative than what’s happening with. Generative ai.

Cross: Mm-Hmm. 

Henry Oliver: Yeah. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: And you’re just like, yeah. You know, I got it.

Well, and so I, I think, anyway, I’m not, I’m not saying that to toot your horn, but I think it’s a good example, Henry, to your point, that the averages in this case do not apply for actually all of the experience that you bring to the table. You uniquely positions you to understand it because of your programming background.

You’ve always been interested in technology. So like your, your age is actually an asset. Mm-Hmm. Maybe not, maybe not actually your age, but your experience is an asset. But also you have the cognitive ability to think about it, you know, as a new

Henry Oliver: Right, and I, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: think 

Henry Oliver: this, this is, this is, kind of, I, this, this is such a good example ’cause like the, that curve of fluid intelligence is one thing, but clearly one of the other important things is that you are high in openness and you, you must love ai, right? These are two other factors that Dar Brooks like can’t take into account because what he’s trying to do is take this one narrow thing and give you like a straightforward, it’s this smart thinking genre.

Here’s a study, it explains something about your life. Push the button and it will change your life. And you are like, yeah. In your book where there’s no other consideration, that’s fine. But in my like life, which is a really messy, complicated thing, with loads of other factors, the button might just not work.

Right? Um, and if you are high in openness and you, and you are like really interested in something, maybe this curve is just completely irrelevant. And so that’s the message I want to get across. Totally.

Michael Hyatt: That’s good. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: I love that. I mean, I think that’s really hopeful. Okay, so you’ve mentioned openness a couple of times, Yeah. love for you to talk about that idea and what that has to do with being a successful late bloomer. You know, somebody that really has a second act. 

Michael Hyatt: Just to add to that, you talk about this explore exploit

Henry Oliver: yeah, yeah. yeah. Okay. So I’ll start with explore exploit. ’cause I think that leads to openness quite nicely. the, the explore exploit thing is, is. It comes from a paper that said, why do people have hot streaks? Right? Sometimes a sports person or an artist or a scientist, they go into this 5, 10, 15 year period.

Everything they touch turns to gold, right? Why does this happen? And the conclusion they came to after looking at a very large group of people across all these disciplines is first they’re in explore mode, which is just looking around, trying stuff out, being interested in different things, not necessarily trying to achieve anything, just just borrowing away at your own thing and, and, and looking at different stuff.

You then choose what it is you’re gonna work on, and you go to exploit mode. So if you say you are a research scientist, there are people in AI like this, right? They spend 20 years at the university doing their research, like just getting into their thing. And then at some point they say, I. I’m going to a business, I’m going to a, a corporate lab.

I’m gonna make something, I’m gonna have a team around me. They’ve got a logistics operation. We can do delivery. Like the infrastructure is not, I’m doing my thing and writing my papers. It’s when are we shipping? Yeah. The paper says the key thing is that you make that switch from explore to exploit. And that’s like, that’s what gives people a hot streak.

And I was like, oh, that’s kind of what my book is saying. Actually, I found this paper at the end and I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, this happens so often with late bloomers. And I think it tells you that openness is a good thing, but it can be a trip,

right. If you stay in. you, before you get into that, will you just say what you mean by openness? Just in case anyone is

So openness is like, is like, I’m interested in lots of different things. I’m a curious person. 

I’m not just gonna stay with what I already know. And like if you come to me with, with different ideas, different experiences. Um, I’m, I’m like, so, so a good example is, um, I went to Dublin recently and, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t say this.

I didn’t know that there was much of cultural interest in Dublin. Um, and I, I went to the National Gallery and I was like, can you show me where the Irish art is? ’cause I don’t, I don’t know anything about Irish art. I was blown away. And some of the stained glass was just life-changing. Good.

Cross: Hmm.

Henry Oliver: That is an example of like, openness to this new type of art that previous, that’d have been like, I don’t know, do they have any art?

I don’t know, whatever. Um, that’s so rude. I’ve got lots of, I am like part Irish. I’m not just being an awful English colonialist. so this can be really good, right? ’cause openness brings you to new ideas and new thinking. But it can be a trap in the sense that you can become one of those people who lives entirely in explore mode and sort of dabbles around in different things and like gets lots of different experiences but doesn’t do anything with it.

Right? And like, if you want to achieve something, if you want to make, build, create whatever you do, in fact need to sit down and like do the logistical stuff, think about when you’re gonna ship, all that kind of stuff. And that’s not really openness, that’s something else. Um, so you have to use openness as a driver, but like set deadlines, get stuff done, right.

Um, and that’s a very different part of your personality. And I think we are very keen on openness in modern culture, but we’re less keen on, on the, the more prosaic side of delivery.

Michael Hyatt: It’s almost like openness that doesn’t, know, flip into exploitation of some sort is kind of dabbling,

Henry Oliver: Yeah, exactly. But you talk about the idea of networking numerous times in the book. So can you talk about what that means and how it helps us to build leverage later in our lives?

We think of networks as all being about connections, right? Partly because in the tipping point, Malcolm Gladwell talked about connectors, and I think that idea really broke through and people still retain that in their minds. Um, those, those people who can always give you, oh, I know someone who can help you with that.

I know a guy. I can put you in touch. Right? And online, you’re always making connections on, on social media and stuff. What the latest research shows is. Connections are like obviously important, but what really matters is influence. Are you connected to the person who can actually influence you? So you guys, if you recommend something to each other, there’s like a good chance you’ll take that recommendation seriously, right?

Cross: mm-Hmm. you go one degree removed, two degrees removed, how seriously you take, the recommendation starts to drop off quite quickly. And what we talk about is we talk about six degrees of separation in a network being the, like the magic number, you are not listening to anything anyone says at 3, 4, 5 degrees, right?

Henry Oliver: So you have to really think, who is it in my network that has the influence that I need and the mistake. ’cause we have the connection mindset is like, I need to know the person at the heart of the network, the most important person, someone senior, something like that. But actually the most influential person might just be.

Like if you said, oh, I’ve got a friend and she can recommend this great book on AI to you, you’ll be like, well, I trust you, so your friend’s probably an okay, right? That’s maybe she’s not a very significant person in anyone’s network, but she actually is the one person who you wanna send your AI book to in this instance.

And so thinking about that is a bit more subtle and a bit more difficult, and it’s not so easy to like make LinkedIn posts about why that’s the magic, but that is the magic. Um, and what it means, if you’re looking for like a takeaway on that is you might be the most influential person for someone in your life right now in a small but significant way, even though you’re not like a big shock.

Um, there’s, there’s George Elliot in her, in her wonderful novel. Middlemarch says this at the end, she says. Things are not so bad with you or I, as they might be, depends on the un historic acts of all the people who’ve gone before us. And what she’s saying is you go around and you are like, uh, a good person or a bad person just in your daily life.

You’re nudging the world one way or the other. And that’s pretty influential. And that does in fact make a difference to people. And it turns out networks are a bit more like that and a bit less like I got 10,000 connections on LinkedIn or whatever. ’cause like, just ’cause you do that doesn’t mean you get invited to the White House party or you know, some other, like, that’s not how it works.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I think that’s kind of hopeful because most people are not influencers. Most people are not wildly charismatic, um, or wildly extroverted. And what I hear you saying is that’s fine, because that doesn’t even matter. This is really like on a smaller, more human scale anyway, because Yeah. have a real relationship with these people, their value, you know, just because you’re friends with someone or you have a connection with somebody on LinkedIn or another social platform, or you’re in a a, a group that of the same person as somebody or the same group as somebody else you’d like to get to know if it’s too big and you don’t have the opportunity for a real connection with them.

It’s not. Even if it sounds great, it’s not that valuable to you. Um, it’s really about the people that you can actually know.

Henry Oliver: Think about like when you get, when you think about what book am I gonna read, what movie am I gonna see? Anything like that. It used to be that you would read reviews by like major critics in the paper and if they said good, you went and see it. Right? Whereas now there are just some people, some of them are famous, some of them is like your aunt or whatever, and like you just take their recommendations.

’cause you kind of vibe with them. 

And if you see them tweet like, oh, I read this book, it was cool. It doesn’t matter who they are to you. That’s the influential network connection. 

And so that is much more how it works now. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Another idea that you talk about is resilience. That’s something we resonate deeply with. It’s like the thing you don’t wanna actually resonate deeply with, but you do because you know, at a certain point in your life, you’ve, you’ve been through a lot, right?

Um, but you talk about that resilience is built through adversity. And the question I have is how can somebody cultivate resilience when they’re facing their own challenges? I mean, I think one of the truths about being in midlife or beyond, like I just said, is you are going to have adversity. I mean 

Henry Oliver: Hmm. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: there’s just kind of no way to escape it, but whether or not you become resilient is not a given.

I mean, that’s, that’s not the, um, definite outcome. So how can we make good use of that adversity, I guess?

Henry Oliver: Which bit are you think, are you thinking of like Audrey Sutherland and, and resilience? Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

yeah, this is a really interesting question and I sometimes say to people, the book sounds more optimistic than it is because, uh, it tells all these stories about people like Audrey Sutherland, who I’ll explain in a minute because she deserves to be world famous. but actually the thing that keeps coming up is hard work.

Cross: Mm-Hmm.

Henry Oliver: like, in a funny way, the answer to your question is you build resilience through hard work. I. And like, I don’t have a better answer. I don’t have a happier answer than that. Right. Uh, it’s graft, it’s grit, it’s it’s toil, it’s whatever the word is.

Like it’s everything you don’t want to hear, I’m from England and I’ve got bad news, right? Um, the British are here and they’re pessimistic, but like, uh, like, I think, I think hard work makes some kind of appearance on every page of this book, and that’s what re resilience is like getting to the end of doing a lot of stuff.

Um, there’s a lot of people say a lot of high, high, high sounding things and wise sounding things about resilience. And I always think, isn’t it just like 20 years of doing it? If you, if you stop, you won’t build the resilience that’s obvious if you don’t stop, right? Like if, say you are a cook and you have to take hot stuff out of the oven every day.

And you’ve got the oven gloves, but like the oven is hot. You open the door and it, and you pick it up and it’s ugh. Right? The first few times you do it, it’s not a fun thing and you burn yourself and you spill something and you swear in front of the children and it like you get in a flap. But when you make dinner every day for 15 years and there are people in the kitchen irritating you, you just do it right

Cross: Yep.

Henry Oliver: this is a trivial example, but like that’s how resilience happens.

You just do it. My daughter’s doing a sailing course at the moment and she’s very good at building resilience because she will just do it and she’ll go 

back the next day and do it again. And I honestly, I, 

think it’s that simple.

Michael Hyatt: I think if you boil this down, this is really profoundly simple and thank you for this insight. Yeah. It’s basically, if you wanna be more resilient, just don’t stop. Yeah. Just on grit your teeth and keep doing it until it’s less difficult. This is so 

Henry Oliver: British like 

stop complaining. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: I, I love it though, because I think it rings true. You know, I just had a conversation this morning. I, I was in the kitchen with our nanny. We’ve had three weeks of sickness, some weird virus covid. Now we got some people in our family walking pneumonia. We thought one of our kids was finally, after two weeks, gonna go back to school.

We started school. We basically haven’t been to school yet. You 

Henry Oliver: No. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: of in that thing. And I’m, I’m talking to her and one of, uh, one of my family members had said to me, oh gosh, this is just terrible. It’s gotta be so hard. And I said, you know what? The thing is, I, you know, I’ve, I’ve been a parent for 15 years, 16 years now.

at some point you’re just like, this is just another day at the office. Of course, the kids are sick and they, they woke up with a fever after they didn’t have a fever and you thought they were gonna go back to school. Like, you just roll with it and you just flex and you move a couple things around and you don’t get all in a huff about it.

You just do it. And I think that that is resilience. That’s a very mundane. Kind of pedestrian example, but it’s, that’s the, that’s kind of what we’re talking about. Once you’ve logged enough miles that you aren’t shocked by, oh my gosh, the everyone’s sick at the beginning of school. Like, this is such a crisis.

like, now this is just what happens because they, the kids are dirty and they lick everything and 

Henry Oliver: Oh God, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: never wash their hands. Like it’s to be expected and we’re just gonna keep on going. You know, this, 

Michael Hyatt: this may be also sometimes where hope doesn’t serve us. 

Henry Oliver: yes. All my, yes. 

Michael Hyatt: you know, we’re gonna get to the place where we won’t have any problems 

Henry Oliver: Yeah, 

Michael Hyatt: that be great?

Henry Oliver: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Cross: won’t. 

Michael Hyatt: That just basically builds in even more disappointment and more frustration and probably you’re gonna be more likely to quit. Yeah. Yeah. ’cause your expectations aren’t met. Whereas if you just expect things to go wrong, it’s just kinda like, oh yeah. Like you said, another day at the office.

Yeah. This 

Megan Hyatt Miller: is just what me through it, this is how life 

Henry Oliver: Yeah, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: and then it’s like actually weirdly hopeful, less stressful and empowering. just being a realist about it.

Henry Oliver: but like I find it so odd, like, Americans ask me this a lot and I’m like, but you all live in the land of resilience. American history is the history of like, we have to keep going. We have no other choice. Like Yeah. you are, you are all so good at this. It’s, it’s the, it’s the British over here who are complaining about all these minor problems all the time.

Right? Um, you, you guys, it’s, I, I was in Wisconsin last year. It was April, which for us means like spring is coming, it maybe it’s getting a bit warmer in Wisconsin, it was zero. It was sleet, it was icy, like the sky was dark. And I went downstairs and I said, wow. Guys are having some bad weather, huh? And they went, we’re so thrilled it didn’t snow and right.

And it’s like 7:00 AM and the roads are full. And I was like, well, I guess you never get to Wisconsin and like create the state unless you’re prepared to be pretty resilient and just keep going, right?

But Wi Wisconsin doesn’t exist if you can’t do that. So I think it’s a very American thing actually. 

Michael Hyatt: we’re close to being out of time, but I wanna ask you this question, I wanna talk about midlife crisis as a pivot point or a catalyst for late bloomers. So what did you discover there in your research and in your thinking?

Henry Oliver: midlife crisis is often described as a bad thing. Like these bad things will happen to you. You will have this bad mood, you will feel inadequate, you know, you will be unhappy with your life. And, uh. Psychologically, we often say like, get a hobby and ride it out. You know what I mean? Do some woodwork. Um, or there’s this new idea, uh, that a couple of economists came up with that like, it’s a natural thing, okay? The data patterns are clear. Your life is like a, you bend and you know, it happens to chimpanzees and stuff, and it’s just like, it’s just biology. It’s not because you have teenagers and a job and a mortgage and your hairline is receding and like you thought you’d be the boss, but you are at like grade 17 or whatever.

It’s nothing to do with any of that. It’s just nature. And I, I read this research and I was like, this has to be complete rubbish. The idea that, what is it, like the unhappiness hormone, gimme a break. And it turns out that that research is actually quite flawed. I. And that you can make the data fit almost any pattern you want depending on how you, 

Cross: Huh. 

Henry Oliver: this gets beyond my understanding, but people have said statistically like this is not actually very, um, robust.

And like I’m very interested in literature and what literature can tell us about life. And there are other studies where they take the story patterns from literature and put those on an arc and say like, so some stories are like, a person has good life, bad thing happens, story resolves happily, right?

And there are lots of different variations, and I think that’s a better model. Like your life could be any number of different sort of curves and therefore your midlife crisis. It might not just be a natural thing. It, it might be ’cause you’re unhappy with your job and that you should change it actually, yes.

Like, not in every instance, but this blanket advice of like, you know, get a tool shed and make a salad bowl out of. Oakwood or like, that might be a terrible idea for some people. Maybe, uh, maybe the signals are all flashing that Yeah. Change your life. You’ll be happier for it. It’s like being a teenager, right?

Your body is changing. You feel very differently about yourself. It can be confusing. And when you’re a teenager, we say, good, good. Go and explore. Go and discover us of all this rubbish. Right? Go, go and go and make your place in the world when you’re 50 or 45 or whatever. We say, oh, just ignore all that.

Just ignore. Don’t worry about that. That’s not a thing. And I’m like, yeah, no, that might be, if there are a lot of lights flashing on the dashboard, sometimes that’s a thing. Um, like, and again, it’s the tyranny of the average for a lot of people. Maybe they should get a hobby or like whatever, whatever, whatever.

But for some people, that is the wrong advice. And I just want to have this more individual conception of how people should think about their lives, uh, and less of this like system.

Michael Hyatt: what is it that you want to take away from the book? People who maybe have thought maybe they’re in a midlife crisis and maybe they think that that signals the end and it’s gonna be a long downward slope to, to their demise, but what do you want people to take from this book? What is your hope that the reader would get?

Henry Oliver: Let me answer that with Audrey Sutherland. ’cause I said she should be famous. And this is why when she was 40, she looked out of the window of a plane and saw some Hawaiian coastline and said, I want to explore that. And so she left her kids to fend for themselves. One of them was like an old teenager, so they could, and she went off doing this exploration and she nearly killed herself.

And it, I, I don’t say in the book that she had a midlife crisis, but like going off on a, almost on a whim and like nearly killing herself. You could make that case. She spends years. Developing her kayaking skills, developing her exploring skills, going all around different Hawaiian islands. And then when she’s 60 she says, she looks out of another plane window and she says, I have to go down there.

And it’s British Columbia and Alaskan coastline. So it’s like Arctic. So she goes from the lovely warm waters of Hawaii, right of Hawaii on her own age 60 solo exploring in the Arctic. We’re talking bearing encounters, cabins where the roof has fallen in, like all this stuff. And she goes in a bright orange inflatable kayak.

Then obviously all the, all the high up kayaking people mock her about. So she becomes famous for this and she starts giving talks at mostly about how to inflate your kayak and how to paddle them, whatever. But at the end she says she does this wonderful advice thing and this, I want to like tell your listeners this advice ’cause it’s really good.

She says, close your eyes. Okay, you guys obviously don’t have to close your eyes. That would be weird. Close your eyes and think about like what is the one thing you want to do? Someone’s going to give you $5 million. This was the eighties, so adjust upwards accordingly. But what will you do with that money now?

And she lets them sit for a minute and do the, right now, open your eyes and tell me what’s stopping you. Why don’t you just do it? And obviously people love this and it’s very inspiring. But then one day this guy stood up, this grumpy guy and he was like, I’ll tell you what’s stopping me. I’ve got a wife, I’ve got three kids, I’ve got a mortgage, my parents, right?

You get all this stuff. Now Audrey Sutherland is the wrong person to say this to because she had four kids and she was a single mother and she didn’t earn very much money. And they lived in this like remote house near the beach. And for a long time they couldn’t get TV reception and like she had to forage some of her maif.

She saw like someone was throwing out rope. She would get out of her truck and go and look and like, is this good rope? I can use this rope. I’ll take this home. Like that’s how she was getting her stuff. So she looked at him and she was like, okay, well you have to think what is the one thing I can do today?

It’s not about I’m gonna change everything right now and get it all done. It’s like, what’s the one thing you can do to make progress? So Audrey Sutherland was always checking her equipment, studying the maps, uh, thinning food that she could take with her going out and practicing ca capsizing herself, right?

Anything she could do to keep herself ready to make a little bit of progress today. And you see people say this advice again and again and again, and I think that is the heart of it.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I, I that because I think it makes achievement in general so much more, um, doable and so much less overwhelming. I think sometimes, if, if we had some of our listeners in this room with us right now, they might say, gosh, when I think about the rest of my life and what am I gonna do with it? I mean, it just feels so existential and it feels this huge thing and I’ve gotta do something really grand.

feel like what you’re telling us is like, just go do the next right thing and don’t overcomplicate it. You know, like it’s not actually that hard. You’re making it harder. Than it is.

Henry Oliver: totally. I think that’s really hopeful. 

Cross: Mm-Hmm. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: That’s like bad news. That’s good news.

Henry Oliver: She didn’t know she was going to the Arctic when she started, right. She just knew she wanted

to do exploring, wanted to do kind, and she builds it up, builds it up, builds it up, and she becomes that person. And I think that’s the, we all now, we want to visualize ourselves, we want to express ourselves, all this, like, just do the thing you need to do today and, and

Megan Hyatt Miller: yeah. 

Henry Oliver: yacking about the rest of it. that. is a great, great advice, a 

Megan Hyatt Miller: great takeaway. Okay. So we have several questions that we ask all of our guests, 

Henry Oliver: Okay. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: we’d love to ask them to you. So the first one is, your biggest obstacle in getting the double win? This idea that we talked about, you know, before we started recording of winning at work, but also exceed, uh, uh, succeeding in the rest of your life.

Like what for you is tough about that.

Henry Oliver: Uh, we, so I’m a, I’m a writer and my wife is a stay at home homeschooler.

Cross: Mm.

Henry Oliver: So we have made two very big decisions with like, uh, significant financial consequences. And so, uh, I sometimes, I sometimes have to be busy,

Cross: Yeah.

Henry Oliver: But on the flip side, I am in the house a lot of the time in the flat a lot of the time, and my kids are, ’cause they don’t go to a school.

And so that helps me balance it out. But it is easy for me to like, get up, go straight to my desk, work for five hours, get some food, and go back to my desk. And that’s obviously not a good pattern, uh, on, on the regular. Yeah. Right. But I’m at a stage in my life where like they’re growing a lot and they eat a lot and it’s quite motivating.

Megan Hyatt Miller: That’s right. I hear you. I’m, I’m right there with you. Okay. So how do you personally know then, on the days when it works well and you’re like, feel like I’m winning at work and succeeding at life. How do you know?

Henry Oliver: One of my favorite. Modern poets is called Jack Gilbert. He’s an American poet. I would encourage you to look him up ’cause he’s not as famous as he should be, and he has a wonderful poem. It’s called Highlights and Interstices, which is just not the sort of title that’s gonna make anything famous, but it has this line. The best is often when nothing is happening.

Cross: Hmm mm.

Henry Oliver: I think about this all the time. I like the other day, I, I don’t remember where we were, but I had to walk home with my son. It’s like a 20 minute walk. We did some chatting, we did some walking in silence. We pointed things out, we walked quietly. We went into a shop.

It wasn’t like quality time or whatever people say, but it was great and that would like, that’s what you want, right? The best is often when nothing is happening. So I, that’s what I try and bear in mind.

Megan Hyatt Miller: I love that. That’s a great answer. Really good. Okay, last one. Um, what’s one ritual or routine that you have that helps you do what you do?

Henry Oliver: I don’t believe in that stuff.

Michael Hyatt: Oh, 

Cross: okay. Okay. 

Michael Hyatt: Say more.

Henry Oliver: I, I, well, probably my wife would be like, you’re totally insane. You have more rituals than anyone alive. Um, but I, I, I see myself as like, you just have to get to your desk and do it. Rituals. I wrote, I wrote a post about this. ’cause I, I blog about literature and one of the things people love to do with writers is be like, what’s the routine?

What’s the ritual? I need a special pen. Oh, and I need this particular tea. And it, oh, and there’s like all this stuff. Um, and I said like, if you read writers’ diaries and you think about like, what does screen writers say and whatever. There’s this line from a professor at U-C-L-A-I think of screenwriting.

He says, you sit your ass in the chair and type. Okay, that is it. That is, that is it. Um, and like maybe some people need the routines and they need it. Like, I have coffee, whatever. But that’s what it is, isn’t it? You just, you just have to get it done. And I don’t, I don’t, 

Cross: Just 

Megan Hyatt Miller: do it.

Henry Oliver: I don’t believe in the magical power of, of whatever.

Megan Hyatt Miller: How do you make yourself do it

Henry Oliver: Well, you’re like, I don’t wanna go sit at my desk. How do you, how do you get your butt in the 

so I no longer have those days ’cause like I just want to be a writer and I am a writer.

Um, 

Michael Hyatt: it. 

Henry Oliver: I’ve like joined up my motivation with my work and I think I interviewed 

an economist called Robin Hansen. He’s very interesting. He’s very interesting on like a whole range of topics, including aliens. Um, you should check out his blog ’cause he’s like just generally fascinating.

But he said this wonderful thing. To me, motivation is the closest thing we have to magic.

Motivation is the closest thing we have to magic. Once you get motivated for your own sake, not because like I have to pay the bills, I have to do a report, but like, that’s what I wanna do. You will have zero problems.

Everyone knows this. Uh, you will have zero problems. Now, obviously, if you can tie it to some kind of feedback mechanism where you get paid, you get praised, you get whatever, that’s all good. But I, that’s, that’s, I think the, the only real answer to that question,

Cross: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: You know, one of my favorite authors is Steven Pressfield and all of his content, you know, about the war of art and right? you know, just the exhortation to just sit down and do it.

Henry Oliver: Yes. 

Michael Hyatt: You know, I found it enormously refreshing. 

Cross: Mm-Hmm. 

Michael Hyatt: Because he kind of cut through all the BS and got right to the point.

Henry Oliver: Right. And it’s what we were saying earlier. It’s a really simple answer. It might not be the answer you want, but it, it is actually that simple. Right.

Michael Hyatt: Henry, this has been a delightful conversation. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Cross: Yeah.

Henry Oliver: Hey, I had a great time. You asked really good questions. I was so pleased to be here.

That was such a fun conversation. First of all, let’s just talk about his fabulous accent and all of his amazing, like British iss. I just love it, you know, 

Michael Hyatt: I know I’m fascinated by British culture and I automatically think if you have a British accent, your IQ goes up by like 10 points, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: but also. He’s really smart.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, he is really smart. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: He’s really smart and one of the things that I appreciated about his perspective. Is that he’s not just drawing on social science or um, psychological data. He’s really looking at history. He’s looking at all of these, um, stories of historical figures or maybe people that are lesser known, but as examples for what he’s talking about who are late bloomers.

And I don’t know about you, but I found myself in a lot of those stories that he was telling. 

Michael Hyatt: I did too, and I was fascinated. By his sort of analysis of Arthur Brooks’ perspective on fluid versus crystalline intelligence or crystallized intelligence. Mm-Hmm. Because I love Arthur and you know, I’ve, I’ve loved his books and obviously we’ve had him on the, on the podcast.

But the thing I thought that was really interesting and nuanced was Henry’s kind of critique that yes. He called it the tyranny of the averages. Mm-Hmm. But the idea that, yeah, that explains the averages, but it doesn’t explain the individuals within the set. So there are, we don’t have to follow the law of averages.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: You know, the average person, the average, uh, male in America dies at 78, but that doesn’t mean I have to die at 78.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah, please don’t.

Michael Hyatt: Right. So, uh, I’m planning to live God willing much longer than that. I thought that was kind of refreshing. It’d be really fun. In fact, I’d pay money to see this, to have Arthur and Henry.

In the same room and talk about this debate. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah, let’s, let’s do it. We could host a debate. That would be so exciting. Um, I loved what he said about resilience. 

Michael Hyatt: I did too. Basically 

Megan Hyatt Miller: just ’cause we’re living that we’re, we’re living that. I mean, I feel like if I had a story of my life or like a, you know, a subtext, it would be just don’t quit.

You know, like any success that I’ve had has really been attributable to the fact that I just. Don’t quit. I just keep going. I have a lot of tenacity and, and that’s not very sexy and that’s not like, you know, we always love to know like, what’s the secret? Like it’s some magical thing that if we knew it would eliminate the need for all that.

And gosh, I wish that were true. It’s just not. Um, but there was something that was kind of refreshing about it. And like I said while we were talking, it feels freeing to me. It’s like I can just eliminate the expectation. That this should be easier than I, than my experience. Yeah. And actually that That’s okay.

And redemptive and a good thing. 

Michael Hyatt: Yeah. And we’re probably gonna need to draw on resilience till the day we die. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: It’s not, it’s not like we’re gonna get to this plateau where all of our problems are behind us and we can just coast on into eternity. Uh, don’t think that’s gonna happen. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Well, and I think for you guys who are listening, as you’re thinking about being intentional with your life, as you think about pursuing goals as if you think about pursuing a vision for your life, because contribution matters and you don’t wanna just drift, you know, you wanna design your life, I think that this is heartening because as you’re doing those things, what, what your expectation shouldn’t be is that, well, it should be easy.

Mm-Hmm. Or. You know, it should be easier than it is. Like that’s not what we’re, that’s not what we’re selling here. That’s not what our experience has been. It’s just that like, if you’re, if it’s gonna be hard, which I think is true, it’s gonna be hard. It might as well be hard going somewhere that matters.

You know, it might as well accomplish things that are meaningful, if it’s gonna be difficult, rather than just pointless difficulty. 

Michael Hyatt: Well, and if you think about it, it’s the hard things that teach you the lessons that you remember. If it makes life rich and meaningful. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: You know, when you’re just sitting around on the beach somewhere, you know, I, I could barely remember those kind of vacations where everything was easy.

Right. But it also wasn’t that meaningful. Right, right. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: Okay. One last idea that I wanted to talk about. You can have another idea too, but I like the idea of openness where he was talking about exploration and being exploitive in a positive sense. Taking what you’re open to and what you’re learning, and then using it.

In some way. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. And 

Michael Hyatt: I think this is a good indicator, uh, whether you’re gonna have a great second act to your life. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: Or not, if you’re open and curious, that can lead to an amazing, uh, set of circumstances and an amazing life. But I think as some of my friends who have kind of shut down, they’re no longer open, they’re no longer curious, and they’re just stagnating.

Megan Hyatt Miller: Yeah. 

Michael Hyatt: And it, and after a while, it’s a little bit, I mean, hate to say this, but it’s like bananas that are, you know, a little too old. 

Megan Hyatt Miller: Oh, there you go. That’s such a visual. Well, what I was just thinking as you were talking was it’s kind of like that fixed mindset, growth mindset idea. 

Michael Hyatt: Yes. I thought of that too and, 

Megan Hyatt Miller: and I think growth mindset is pretty easy when you’re young.

I mean, you don’t, you don’t really have any models for how the world works yet. That’s the whole point. You’re figuring it out, but, but our brains, what we know from our own research is that our brains like certainty so much and they default to what’s comfortable. I mean, that is sort of the gravitational pull neurobiologically that if we’re going to be open it, we actually kinda have to challenge ourselves to be that way as we get older because we have a lot more things that we could just kind of rest.

And be certain in Mm-Hmm. Even if they’re not really certain, you know, like we, we could feel confident in that and that’s gonna keep us from making our greatest contribution. I think one of the things I always respect when I meet people who are older is those people who are willing to challenge.

Closely held assumptions and belief. They’re, you know, they’re, they’re willing to entertain new ideas. You know, they’re not, they’re not just doing what they did 30 years ago or 20 years ago. They’re willing to, to have flexible thinking. And I, I mean, I think that becomes more difficult as you get older, but man, it’s like a superpower.

’cause then you get to match that with all your experience and expertise. 

Michael Hyatt: Well said guys, if you would do us a favor, and that is review the show, uh, recommend it to your friends, review it. Give us a five, five star rating if you possibly can. That helps us get the word out and brings visibility to the show.

So we’d be so grateful if you do that. And thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next week.