You’re 50…Now What?
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
Ok, you’ve just turned 50… and your life didn’t turn out like your thought it would, so what do you do now? Hi I’m Ross Shafer and I want to thank you for finding the Relevant Leaders Club where each week I post a new video to help you grow your career or your business. Today, I want to talk to you about what’s going through your mind as you turn 50 or 60. Or, if you’re in your late 40’s… you’re close enough to get a lot out of this message.
First, let’s see if any of these scenarios sound like you: (Version 1) You’ve worked at the same organization for most of your life and NOW you wonder if that was the right decision. Could you have done more somewhere else? (Version 2) You’ve blown through a lot of jobs, some were great, and some weren’t and now you wish you had stayed with the first company because today your stock would be worth millions. (Version 3) How about your personal life? Maybe you got married. You became unhappy but you raised your kids until the nest was empty and then you got divorced. Or, you’ve been single all of your life, poured everything into your career and now wonder if your life would have been better if you’d had a partner. Do you see what’s happening here? At 50 years old you’re second-guessing a past you can’t change. I get it – I’ve done it myself. I used to fill my brain with the WHAT IFS and IF ONLYs and you know what it did to me? It made me crazy! Obsessing about the past paralyzed me from moving forward. Then one day it hit me – none of us can do-over our past decisions. We only get so much time here so we need to force ourselves to let go of the past and we should take lessons from other people who have had greater success and fulfillment AFTER 50. What people? First of all, Colonel Harlan Sanders was a failure in the restaurant business most of his life. Then, with his last $100, he started his fried chicken company at age 60. Ten years later, he sold his Kentucky Fried Chicken chain for $2 million. Frank McCourt was a schoolteacher, leading a pretty ordinary life, until he was 65. Then, he took a shot at writing novels. His book Angela’s Ashes sold over 8 million copies and Frank won the Pulitzer Prize. Socrates learned to play musical instruments at age 80. Michelangelo was sculpting into his 70’s. Mother Teresa of Calcutta won the Nobel Peace Prize at 69 and she worked until she was 87.
You can even be old and crotchety and be successful. At age 63, Winston Churchill was an outspoken journalist who was labeled a right-wing extremist, that is, until he was named Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. At 65 years old, he formed an alliance with the United States and Russia to defeat the Nazi’s. Churchill was so invigorated that he influenced world affairs until he was 90. Ronald Reagan became Governor of California at 57 and President of the United States at 69. Ben Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence at 65 and signed the United States Constitution at age 81. Here’s one of my favorites: Peter Roget suffered from OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). The only thing that calmed him down was making random lists of things. One of his lists contained words that meant the same thing. So at age 73, Peter Roget created a product we’ve all used – Roget’s Thesaurus. Look, I know you’re frustrated and you may not even know what you should do for your next 50 years but that’s ok. I want you to believe there’s no age limit on talent. There is no age restriction on wisdom. Don’t let anybody discourage your desire to remain relevant. Other people who were not as smart as you, or not as resourceful, as have made valuable contributions to society after they were 50. The difference between them and you is that they focused on what was possible and stopped entertaining the ghosts of their past.
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