Change – It’s never the wrong time to start anything.. You are always the perfect age and at the perfect place in your life. Any sort of change takes planning so start NOW.
Whether you are 25- 85 or any other age, it is never too late or the wrong time to start something or change something.
I never really knew what I wanted to do when I left education and was constantly unsettled and dissatisfied – feeling there must be something more.
At about 25 I was toying with the idea of changing my direction and getting qualifications as an osteopath, but felt it was too late. I didn’t want to think of another 4 years of study.
Then in my late-30’s my world view changed (I was unable to have children) and I realised that I needed to find a career that was fulfilling. So – 4 years of studying and planning later, I was in my 40’s and loving my work. So it goes to prove it’s never the wrong time to start.
This post is not purely focused on career change, it is about the fact that it is never the wrong time to start anything.
We predominantly use ‘wrong time’ to say we are too old or too young, but there are so many other situations that apply.
I had been unhappy in my work for ages but as I also wanted a family I thought it was the wrong time to think about changing career. That could wait until after I’d had my children!!
If there is something you feel needs changing – today is the day to start that change.
Covid 19
For some time I had been feeling that my goals were no longer aligned with the way I was working. Commuting all over the place to run workshops and meeting clients was exhausting. I still loved what I did, but the pace needed to change.
The opportunity to do this came in the name of Covid 19 and virtual working.
The option of virtual training was never my first choice – possibly age-related resistance as I’m not an early adopter when it comes to technology. However, I had no choice but to get on board and – guess what – I really enjoyed the freedom it gave me.
So I started to wonder what else I could do next and decided to take advantage of some of the virtual training I had not had time for previously.
I was attending an absolutely wonderful workshop from MindValley a very well-known online coaching/training organisation.
It was great and I was fully engaged, or so I thought, to start with. Then halfway through I got derailed because one module put me off.
Bias – unconscious or not
I know one of the many common questions I get asked as a careers coach is ‘will they think I’m too old’? – but age is only one way we feel excluded from things. Also, I get a lot of exceptional candidates who are overlooked for roles because they are deemed to be too young, or don’t apply to roles because they might appear too young!
Over the last 5 years or so, I have become so much more aware of the need to think consciously of the possibility of unknowingly excluding someone in my audience, whether it is simply the way I address people in a group – the old-fashioned Ladies and Gentlemen is no longer inclusive – or part of the syllabus . No matter how hard I try to get even the introductory statement correct in any workshop I realise that I could get it wrong for someone and they will feel excluded and disengage before it even starts.
Deep seated
Without experiencing a withdrawal for myself it would have been easy for me to think people are being petty. After all, how can I be expected to know how they would prefer to be addressed? – especially when it comes to gender identification etc.
It is, however, not petty, it is often something very deep seated and fundamental to our identity which hits home and hurts our sense of belonging or being part of the collective journey.
The designer/facilitator of the workshop can never take absolutely every individual situation into account – but I would say we should try our best.
The workshop I was attending was on personal development and goal setting. All the stuff I love teaching and learning about for myself, but then one module came up on ‘parenting’.
I had accepted I was unable to have children but …
Buttons were pressed
Looking back, I can see it pressed so many buttons:
Anger: how dare they assume that we should all be able to be wonderful parents, god-parents, aunts or uncles etc.
Low self-esteem: reminding me of feelings of inadequacy, failure and grief.
Annoyance: this workshop was not age limited, so I felt the designers should really be more careful and maybe, as with many exercise classes, have suggestions of how to modify the sections if they don’t apply.
Withdrawal: to stop being hurt and angry I have the tendency to bury my head in the sand by procrastinating. Use all the above as excuses to give up.
As I have said, the workshop really was wonderful and luckily, being on-line, I was able to lick my wounds and get back on board at a later stage.
What I realised was that I had already been primed to withdraw because a lot of the language was aimed at people in the 20 – 40 age range (I’m well beyond that!).
Logically I knew that some of my goals would be more short- to mid-term rather than long-term, but the exercises were still awesome and thought-provoking.
Little did I realise just how insidious my thoughts were until ‘that module’ came up. I can see now that I was already thinking it was pointless for me because I was older than most of the other attendees and the group discussion around goals was not relevant to me at all.
Somewhere under all the logic, I was carrying around the belief that I was too old for this workshop.
After all I had already make a complete career change as I turned 40, so surely it was too late and too exhausting for other major transitions.
What changed my mind?
Quite simply, it was asking myself what the alternative was.
Hopefully I would have another 20+ years ahead of me. Did I want those to be interesting, healthy and fulfilling or was I ready to write myself off already.
It was a question of dropping comparisons and finding common ground with others on a similar journey. To some of the younger people on the course I had advantages they didn’t but in other ways we were in the same boat.
I started looking for inspiration from other people in my generation and found some incredible stories about people in their 60’s and above who had started new things from businesses to running marathons.
How to do it
What I learned is that the hardest thing is to start and there is one questions to ask yourself that will keep you going.
There is a whole list of things that will make you more likely to succeed:
- Setting the right goal
- Managing your expectations so you can set achievable daily targets.
- Finding Mentors or Coaches
- Sharing your journey with other people
- Creating a plan
and the list goes on …..
See previous post on career change mistakes
But the question to ask yourself every time you are tempted to skip out on you tasks today:
‘What is the cost to you if you don’t do this now?’
Since Covid I have become far less fit and, believe me, it is harder to regain this after a certain age.
I kept setting myself goals to get fit and do certain exercises, but it never happened. My goals were just too logical.
Now, I will be going abroad at the end of the year and plan to be very active, so I have a reason to work on my fitness, but it goes way beyond that when I ask the question
‘what is the cost to me if I don’t do this now?’
I then get an image of myself being unable to do all the things I love: walking, dancing, sharing in activities with friends and family.
Am I ready to say I will only be fit to sit in front of a television in a few years?
‘**** NO’ – It will always be the wrong time for that.
Remember – It’s never the wrong time to start anything important to you.
I plan to be living life to the very end, not watching it pass me by.