Author: Chris McCarthy

The Annual Physical Every Man Over 50 Should Be Getting and What to Make Sure It Covers
By Categories: Longevity & Health, Preventative Health Tags:
The annual physical that most men over fifty are getting is not the annual physical they should be getting. This is not primarily a criticism of the healthcare system, though the system has genuine limitations. It is a description of a structural mismatch between what a reactive, symptom-oriented medical visit is designed to detect and...

Preventive Health for Men Over 50: The Screenings and Tests That Are Not Optional
By Categories: Longevity & Health, Preventative Health Tags:
There is a pattern in the stories that oncologists and primary care physicians tell about men over fifty who receive serious diagnoses. The pattern is not the disease itself. It is the timeline. The man who felt completely well. The man who had not seen a physician in several years because nothing hurt and nothing...

How Men Over 50 Know When It Is Time to Reinvent and When It Is Time to Recommit to What They Have
By Categories: Career & Professional, Reinvention Tags:
Every man over fifty who has been at something for long enough reaches a point where the question surfaces: is this still the right thing to be doing? Sometimes the question arrives quietly, as a low-grade disengagement that makes the work feel heavier than it used to. Sometimes it arrives as a specific moment of...

Professional Reinvention After 50: How to Change Direction Without Throwing Away What You Have Built
By Categories: Career & Professional, Reinvention Tags:
There is a belief that shapes most men's thinking about professional reinvention that is wrong in a specific and costly way. It is the belief that changing direction means starting over. That the experience, the reputation, the judgment, the relationships, the hard-won knowledge of how industries and organizations work, all of it gets set aside...

How Men Over 50 Stay Connected to Adult Children Who Have Their Own Lives and Their Own Direction
By Categories: Fatherhood at 50+, Relationships & Connections Tags:
The transition from fathering children to being the father of adults is one of the least-discussed adjustments in a man's relational life, and one of the most consequential. It happens gradually, without a clear marker, and most men navigate it without ever consciously recognizing that it has occurred or that the approach that served the...

Fatherhood After 50: How to Be the Father Your Kids Need at Every Stage of Their Lives
By Categories: Fatherhood at 50+, Relationships & Connections Tags:
Most men arrive at fifty with the core work of raising children behind them or actively underway, and a relationship with those children that reflects everything the first half of their lives demanded and everything those demands cost them in terms of presence, attention, and investment. That cost is not unique to any individual man....

The Physical Cost of Chronic Stress on Men Over 50 and How to Stop Paying It
By Categories: Mental Performance, Stress Management Tags:
The story most men tell about their stress is a psychological one. They are stressed because of the demands at work, the pressures at home, the complexity of managing a life at full capacity in the second half. They feel it as anxiety, irritability, mental fatigue, difficulty concentrating. They address it, when they address it...

Stress Management for Men Over 50: Why the Strategies That Worked at 35 Are Not Enough Anymore
By Categories: Mental Performance, Stress Management Tags:
The man at thirty-five who was under significant stress had a reasonably effective recovery system. Push hard for two weeks, take a long weekend, sleep it off, get back at it. The body absorbed the stress, cleared the cortisol, and returned to baseline with a reliability that felt biological because it was. The recovery was...

How to Wind Down After 50 Without Losing the Hours to Screens and Passive Consumption
By Categories: Evening Routine, Habits & Daily Systems Tags:
There is a version of the evening that most men over fifty know intimately. The day ends. The obligations release. The body lands on the couch. The television turns on, or the phone comes out, or both happen simultaneously in a half-attentive combination that occupies the next two to three hours with something that does...

The Evening Routine for Men Over 50 That Makes Tomorrow More Productive Before It Starts
By Categories: Evening Routine, Habits & Daily Systems Tags:
Most men approach the evening the same way they approach most things that are not on fire: without a plan. The workday ends, or more accurately the workday continues until something else demands attention, dinner happens, the couch beckons, the phone takes over, and somewhere between the third hour of passive screen consumption and the...