How Mid-lifers have more courage to enter the Wonder Zone

A 2-part series on creating next-life chapters in your 40s, 50s, and 60s

Image: Ionut Caras

To stand at the edge of your creative capacity when you’re 40-something or 50-something or 60-something feels both awe-inspiring and terrifying. In a word, sublime. In The Wonder Zone.

At least that’s the description I hear and read among the people whom I interview, study, and work with.

Lee Rankin knows the Wonder Zone many times over. Lee is a leading activist force in agritourism, owner of Apple Hill Farm with beloved alpacas that roam atop an Appalachian mountain, and author of the stirring memoir Farm Family. But not so long ago, Lee broke her ankle in three places, then her farm profits and the entire community got waylaid by Hurricane Helene.

She could’ve shut down. But instead she rallied her team, served the community, and kept opening up to possibility.

Here’s where the saga takes a couple of turns: On the side, she stole hours or weekends to do something creative - start a novel. She’s never written a novel. But then 20+ years ago, she knew nothing about farming when she started Apple Hill Farm. She had never written a memoir either. That curiosity, and creativity kept her cognitive resources and social resources open to opportunities.

I think of her when I hear stories from people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s - people who, like her, are answering a long-postponed call.

The art critic who publishes the book they’ve held close for 15 years. The corporate consultant who trades PowerPoint decks for a screenplay. The designer who turns lived experience into a memoir that finds its way onto bestseller shelves.

There’s something quietly powerful happening in the middle decades of life.

This generation isn’t the first to take creative risks. But, for better and worse, an increasing number of people in the middle decades are claiming their creative space. Why? Why are more people in their 40s, 50, and 60s in the early 21st century rising to what calls them and producing valuable work?

The answer might have to do with the very factors that make taking the rise challenging to begin with.

Each week I work with entrepreneurs, leaders, creatives, and teams to navigate change and leverage ideas into sustainable business growth and live with more meaning and possibility. Many of them raise age-related doubts.

In this first of a two-part series, I unpack how intimidating it can be to exercise new creative intelligence or shift domains in these decades, and yet how doubt becomes the fuel and launchpad for your next creative chapter. In part two next week, we will consider how upheavals become a catalyst and how midlife minds can be advantageous to take more courageous steps.

And if you're not yet a premium paid member, you can sample this essay—and I’ll see you for this Sunday’s Wonder Dispatch, always free. Maybe I’ll see you at this month’s Deepen Your Focus and Flow at Work Cohort, too, that begins May 19.

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