I turned 40 this month, and I don’t feel 40. Honestly, I don’t feel any one age.
In the desert at Burning Man, in a ridiculous outfit, climbing larger-than-life art, I’m about 10.
Trying a wild new hairstyle just to see what happens, or traveling on my own and swapping stories with strangers in a random café, I’m easily 20.
And in a room with an executive team facing a hard decision, I feel every year of experience compounding into something closer to 60.
In leadership there’s an idea called situational leadership: the best leaders don’t have one style. They read the person, the moment and the context, and adapt. I’ve realized I do something similar with age. I’d call it situational age. Some moments ask you to be playful and fearless like a kid. Others ask for hard-earned wisdom. What matters is reading the situation and showing up as the right age for it.
This year gave me plenty of chances to practice. My inner 10-year-old trekked to the top of Mount Roraima (my biggest trek yet), launched Quest Collective, and finally got past the wobbly beginner stage in kitesurfing. My inner 20-year-old reached an advanced level in Portuguese, made new friends who already feel essential, and rescued a street dog and found him his forever home. And my inner 60-year-old shared her first book, Future Proof, with the world.
At 40, I know who I am, what I do best and what I want next. I wouldn’t trade that clarity for anything.
But clarity has a shadow side.
In 1969, Laurence J. Peter described what became known as the Peter Principle: in a hierarchy, people keep getting promoted until they land in a role they’re no longer good at. What made you excellent at one level isn’t what the next level needs, and somewhere along the way people stop learning the next thing.
It’s not just that we rise to our level of incompetence at work. We can age into our level of certainty. The more experience we have, the more we assume we know how the story should go from here, so we stop questioning things. That’s where growth quietly stops.
Don’t let experience become your ceiling.
The people I admire most, at any age, are still asking. They try, get it wrong, get back up and try again. For me, that’s where youth lives. It was never in the number. It’s in the spirit you bring to the next try, and in being willing to be a beginner, over and over. I teach that for a living, so I’d better keep practicing it.
Thank you to everyone who’s been part of the experiences, lives and lessons of these 40 years. You won’t always catch me acting my age. Now you know why ;)
What age are you in your best moments?
