Dreading your 40th birthday? I did. But I survived and even thrived because I practiced one of the most critical leadership skills: framing the problem or issue so you can better cope with it, learn from it and grow because of it.

What if I saw myself at 40 stepping onto a launching pad rather than onto a guillotine?

A launching pad? How absurd!

Tell that to Jules Verne, the visionary author who saw deep into the heavens (From the Earth to the Moon), deep into the sea (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), deep into the center of the earth (Journey Into The Center of the Earth) and deep into the center of me. At least it seemed that way.

(This is adapted from Mint 3 in
THINKING Like a Leader,
Featuring 77 Leadership Mints).

Jules Verne helped me see the 40-year-old version of me in a more refreshing and reinvigorating new and different way.

On page 117 in his book From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne describes the first manned moon launching 104 years before Neil Armstrong.

Significantly, Jules Verne launches his man to the moon (actually three men) with a count UP 37…38…39….. You guessed it. At the count of 40, the rocket ignites, propelling the three fictional astronauts to go higher, faster and farther than any other human has gone before.

Now I thought of myself as forte not simply forty.After all John Glenn became the first man to orbit the earth when he was 40. Forte! And at 40 Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record in major league baseball. Forte!