By Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Psychologist | Author | Social Philosopher
The Semaj MindSpa — Where Mind, Spirit, and Science Meet
From Michael James to Leahcim Semaj and Beyond
On August 17, 2026, I complete my 75th cycle ’round the sun. Seventy-five. I have been sitting with that number. It is strange. When you are 25, seventy-five sounds ancient. At 40, it sounds distant. At 60, it becomes imaginable. And then one morning you realize it is no longer somewhere out there. It is here. And, more importantly, I am here.
Not simply alive. Still thinking. Still writing. Still questioning. Still exercising. Still irritating a few people, I suspect. Still trying to understand human beings, including myself. So I don’t particularly want to celebrate this birthday by counting candles. I want to look around. Look back. Look within. And, perhaps most importantly, look forward. Because I have never believed that getting older requires us to become spectators in our own lives. This is my Anchor Leg. And I intend to run it.
From Michael James to Leahcim Semaj
I wasn’t born Leahcim Semaj. I started this journey as Michael James. That boy could not possibly have known where the road would take him from Central Branch Primary to Kingston College, to City College in New York, to Rutgers, to Cornell, to Psychology. Teaching, Consulting, Writing, Family, Jamaica, America, Organisations, Classrooms, Boardrooms, Mistakes and Reinventions. Life rarely gives you the map beforehand. Perhaps that is a good thing.
Somewhere along the journey, Michael James became Leahcim Semaj. The names themselves tell part of the story. Leahcim Semaj is Michael James transformed, reversed, reconsidered, reclaimed. But the change was more than linguistic. It represented something I have increasingly come to believe: we inherit an identity, but we don’t necessarily have to die with the identity we were given.
There comes a point when you have to ask: Who am I choosing to become? That question has followed me for much of my adult life. And at 75, it hasn’t gone away. I hope it never does.
LOOKING AROUND
When I look around today, I am struck by how much the world has changed during one lifetime. I grew up in a world without the internet, smartphones, Google, social media, artificial intelligence or Zoom meetings. Now I can sit in Jamaica, write a thought in the morning and discover by afternoon that someone thousands of miles away has read it, shared it, argued with it or used it to start a conversation. That still amazes me.
But technology is only part of what I see. I look around and see family, Friends, People I have taught, People I have coached, People who have challenged me, People who have disappointed me, and, yes, people I probably disappointed too.
One of the advantages of getting older may be that you gradually lose the need to edit your life into a heroic story. Real lives are messier than that. There were good decisions and bad ones. Roads taken that worked. Others that didn’t. People I should probably have listened to sooner. People I listened to for too long. That’s life. At 75, perfection seems a rather uninteresting goal. Wholeness interests me more.
LOOKING BACK
Looking back over 75 years is like standing on a hill and finally being able to see that roads which seemed completely disconnected were actually leading somewhere. Not always where I intended. But somewhere. The young student of psychology eventually became the psychologist. The teacher became the consultant. The consultant became the writer.
And increasingly, the psychologist became something else – an observer of life, culture, relationships, ageing and the strange things human beings do to themselves and each other. I have spent more than four decades working with people and organisations. After all that time, I am less certain about some things than I was when I started. That may sound odd. But perhaps wisdom is not accumulating more and more certainty. Maybe it is becoming more precise about what you don’t know.
Psychology gave me theories. Life gave me complications. The textbook says one thing. Then a real human being sits across from you and refuses to fit neatly into the chapter. That is where the learning begins.
The Mistakes Count Too
At 75, I don’t want to produce one of those birthday reflections where every hardship conveniently becomes a blessing and every mistake was secretly part of some magnificent plan. Some mistakes were simply mistakes. Some decisions cost me. Some opportunities were missed. Some relationships could have been handled better. There were moments when I knew better and didn’t do better. Most of us have a few of those. But I have learned something from them.
Regret is useful only when it becomes instruction.
Otherwise, it is just another way of wasting the time you have left. I cannot go back and advise the 30-year-old Leahcim. But I can listen to what he taught the 75-year-old one. That seems a fair exchange.
LOOKING WITHIN
This may be the most interesting part. After spending a professional lifetime trying to understand people, I remain one of my own longest-running research projects. Who am I now? Not who was I. Not what did I achieve. Not what titles have I accumulated. Who am I when those things are stripped away? Age seems to make that question harder to avoid. There is a freedom in it too. At this stage, I have considerably less interest in impressing people. That doesn’t mean I have stopped caring what anybody thinks. Anyone who says that is probably exaggerating. We are social creatures. Approval matters. It just doesn’t have to run the show. The older I get, the more I value the freedom to say: This is what I think. I may be wrong. Let’s examine it. That sentence contains more psychological freedom than pretending to have all the answers.
My Body Has Joined the Conversation
At 75, philosophy cannot be separated from biology. Your body votes. Ignore it and eventually it exercises its veto. So I train. I still lift weights three times per week. I walk three time per week for 45 minutes up hill and down hill in Zone 2. I pay attention to what I eat. Some mornings the body negotiates harder than others. But I keep moving. I don’t exercise because I am trying to be 35 again. I have already been 35. No need to repeat it. I train because I want independence. I want to continue to get up from a chair without assistance carry my own bags. I want to walk where I want to walk, travel, think clearly and remain physically capable of participating in my own life.
There is a difference between lifespan and healthspan, and as we live longer that distinction becomes increasingly important. I don’t merely want more years. I want life in my years.
LOOKING FORWARD
This is where I probably depart from the conventional script about turning 75. I am not winding down. I am becoming more selective. Those are not the same thing. I have fewer years ahead than behind me. Mathematics is mathematics. Oddly enough, accepting that does not depress me. It focuses me. At 25 you can waste Tuesday because you assume there are thousands more Tuesdays coming. At 75, Tuesday has acquired value. So I ask different questions now. What deserves my time? Who deserves my energy? What do I still need to say? What can I stop doing? What am I holding onto simply because I have always done it? And perhaps the most important question: What work still remains mine to do?
I still have books in me, ideas, questions, and provocations. The Semaj MindSpa continues to be my place to explore them with other people. Some will agree with me. Some certainly won’t. Good. A MindSpa should not be a place where everybody nods politely. It should make you think.
THE ANCHOR LEG
I have used the term Anchor Leg of Life for years. At 75, it is no longer simply a concept I teach. I am living it. In a relay, the anchor leg is not where you send the exhausted runner who has nothing left. Traditionally, you put one of your strongest runners there. Why? Because the race may be decided in the final leg.
I think ageing deserves a similar reconsideration. Society frequently treats later life as an extended departure lounge. Retire. Slow down. Stay safe. Don’t take too many risks. Behave your age. What exactly does that last one mean?
There are, of course, realities we should not romanticise. Bodies change. Friends die. Health can become unpredictable. Energy may need to be managed more carefully. The world can sometimes feel designed for younger people. But decline is not the entire story of ageing. There can also be freedom. Perspective. Mastery. A clearer sense of what matters. And, if you have done some inner work, less appetite for foolishness. That combination can be powerful.
CELEBRATING 75 – NOT OUT!!