Why it’s not too late
Ever get a new idea, a glimmer of something that excites or intrigues you, then dismiss it by telling yourself “it’s too late”?
If you’re somewhere between your early 40s and early 60s, Gwendolyn Bounds would tell you that’s your “midlife assassin” talking.
Bounds is the author of the fantastic book Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age. It’s her story of taking up competitive obstacle-course racing in her late 40s.
This is how she describes the conditions that give rise to the assassin, the killer of your midlife dreams:
“It’s when [the] momentum slows, when all the learning and box checking begins to feel no longer progressive but increasingly repetitious (rise, work, eat, family, bills, chores, bed; rinse and repeat) that we become most vulnerable. We sense it when we wake up and when we try to fall asleep. We’re unsettled, slightly bored but too busy to know it, and something is now off-key. Like a drop from E major to E minor. Yet it’s hard to hear, or to fix, amid the white noise of narratives that tell us that after a certain age, there’s no point in pushing the envelope. That the time for ambition is over. That certain pastimes are only for the young. That we shouldn’t try something new, particularly something hard, because the days of testing our limits have passed and there’s simply not enough time left to get good at it. ‘What’s the point?’ the assassin whispers.”
Sound familiar?
It does for me, too.
This is because so many of us in midlife are running a continuous script of limiting beliefs. I can find six in that one excerpt:
After a certain age, there’s no point in pushing the envelope.
The time for ambition is over.
Certain pastimes are only for the young.
You shouldn’t try something new, particularly something hard, because the days of testing your limits have passed.
There’s simply not enough time left to get good at it.
What’s the point?
You probably have some additional go-tos when glimmers of possibility float your way. Here are a few of mine:
If I was really interested in that, I would have pursued it by now.
If I try and it doesn’t work out, I will have wasted time.
I’ll probably injure myself.
The reflex to dismiss things that fall outside our comfort zones is not our fault—especially in midlife.
We live in a culture where the word most commonly associated with “midlife” is “crisis.” We’re running a collective program that reinforces the instinct to play it safe and stay small.
How to defeat your midlife assassin
The first step in overcoming this unhelpful programming is recognizing it for what it is: One big fairy tale!
Someone somewhere made up the term “midlife crisis” (Bounds gets into that in her book). Then other people in other places started talking about this chapter of life in a derogatory way. Word spread, and before anyone knew it, we were all accepting a word-of-mouth story as objective truth.
Only, it’s not true.
It’s just a story. And the great thing about stories is you have the power to rewrite them.
Here’s an exercise you can try:
Write down three things you would like to attempt or achieve. Don’t censor yourself. You’re not committing to anything, just documenting what you would like to do if you had no limits.
For each item, ask: What assumptions am I making that stop me? Even if you feel like your assumptions are irrational or boring, write them down. If you find one that’s “just the way it is,” challenge yourself to see if there are some underlying assumptions that are making it feel like objective truth.
For each assumption you wrote down, ask: What is an alternative assumption that would make me more willing to try? You don’t have to hold these assumptions yet. Just write down the assumptions you would hold if you were someone who was willing to attempt the items you identified in step one.
For each alternative assumption, ask: If I knew with 100% certainty that this assumption was true, how would I proceed?
If you took the time to do that exercise, you are already rewriting the narrative of your midlife assassin.
See? You can try new, hard things.
What’s next?
