Behavioral researcher, midlife coach, and “The Uplifters” podcast host Aransas Savas is here to tell you—it’s not too late to do big, brave things, no matter what stage of life you’re in. That’s the theme behind her Ted Talk at our upcoming event: UNLABEL INTELLIGENCE on October 7 at the Triumph Stage.
She sat down with TEDxAsburyPark writer Suzanne Pisano to discuss her soon-to-be-published book, Courage Capital: It’s Not Too Late to Do Big Brave Things, and her work helping to uplift women off all ages, shift their belief in their own potential, and discover their “zone of genius.”
Pisano: Tell me about your work coaching midlife women.
Savas: The first 18 years of my career were at Weight Watchers, where I was responsible for innovation and coaching platforms. That work…gave me a deep mastery of understanding and researching midlife women’s experiences. When I was laid off, I was gifted the moment to say, if I could do anything what would I do? And the only two things that I knew for sure, were that I wanted to do something in coaching and I wanted to host a podcast.
I'm really interested in how the human mind works, and what gets people to move from inaction to action. That was the core of what we were doing at Weight Watchers and is deeply related to the work that I'm doing now. I knew a bunch of amazing women who had made big pivots in midlife, and I started talking to them. I wanted to interview other people and sit with their stories and hold space for them, and as a researcher, to synthesize those insights.
I realized, this is what I'm meant to do; I’m meant to talk to midlife women about their journeys.
Pisano: And that is the essence of your podcast, “The Uplifters.”
Savas: Yes. We called the show “The Uplifters” for several reasons. The first was that I knew I wanted to find my people. The people who inspired me, and, who were purpose-driven and really cared about having a positive impact. And who probably gave more to others than they gave to themselves. And very quickly, I realized that my mission was to uplift uplifters.
So I started the podcast, and then a Substack, which just began this extraordinary community of women who share some commonly held beliefs that we lift others as we rise, and so it's a matter of investing those same caregiving, purpose-driven tendencies into the community, but also having a safe space to ask for our needs to be met, which is the harder part for most of us.
I work with entrepreneurs and founders, one-on-one, to build their dreams out, which is just the privilege of my life to get to collaborate with these women, and we've had all sorts of extraordinary success stories from that. And then there is the community itself, that runs in tandem with the Substack. Every week I feature one story of a midlife woman who's doing big, brave things.
Pisano: You’re lifting each of those women up, and they in turn inspire others. That’s a beautiful thing.
Savas: It is! I’m on a mission to uplift uplifters, women who are driven to support and serve, women who want to make a big difference and live a rich, full life. They come to me because they’re stuck in the gap between thinking and doing. I use coaching paired with behavioral research to move them from thinking and indecision to action.
Pisano: Is that the idea behind the book as well?
Savas: Yes. I’m working with an editor, a total uplifter, who had come to one of our live events and jokingly said to me, This is crack! After a year and a half of sending proposals back and forth we finally nailed the concept—one that focused on what women needed, and what I learned. And so the book is called Courage Capital: It’s Not Too Late to Do Big Brave Things.
Pisano: I love that title.
Savas: Thank you. It was inspired by this community of women, and the idea that if we surround ourselves with women who are doing big, brave things, we're more likely to do big, brave things. Both my book and talk are based quite heavily on research. I am a researcher, and my brain works in constant synthesis mode; it's a pattern-finding brain. So the book is really a synthesis of patterns that I've heard in over 200 interviews with midlife women doing big brave things.
Pisano: You are also a midlife woman who’s done big, brave things—you exemplify your own concept!
Savas: My own story of finding myself in midlife, and then the stories of these amazing women…they have inspired me and inspired my work. There is research supporting this idea of community or creative contagion. When you say, “I talked to other women who were doing these things, and it made me realize, oh, I could do them, too.” You get inspired and then you turn around and aspire to do those things.
Pisano: Absolutely. It’s interesting to hear that research bears that out.
Savas: There's another piece of research that we rely heavily on in both the talk and the book. A recent Yale study found that nearly half of older adults improved physically, mentally, or both, over time, despite the common belief that aging is a time of steady decline. So we need stories and role models that help us believe, and give us positive associations. With my book and my talk, that's really the crux of it—to shift belief in our own potential. I build upon the work of psychologist Gay Hendricks, who introduced the concept of the “Genius Zone,” where one’s creativity flows freely. I propose that in midlife it’s even more powerful. We understand who we are, what we enjoy, what matters to us, and that becomes a filter. And so through our wisdom and life experience, we can tap into our zone of genius, harness the greater intelligence we develop as we grow older, and take action to do the big, brave things we want to do.
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