Episode 11: How to Overcome “I Really Want to Do This But I’m Too Old ” Thinking

What is it that you really want to do, but you feel like you just can’t because it’s too late, you waited too long, you should have started sooner, or you’re just too old to do it? Do you want to change careers, start a business, write a book, train for a marathon, get married, get a divorce, leave it all behind and travel the world….Whatever it is that you want to do, it’s not too late, you haven’t waited too long, and you are never too old. In this episode, Coach Stephanie will walk you through why our brains default to this “I’m too old, so I can’t” thinking, and walks you through 5 steps to overcome that mindset, so that you can get started today on whatever the thing is that you really want to do - no matter how old you are, or where you’re starting from!

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. I'm your host and coach, at least for the next 20 minutes or so, Stephanie Finnegan, and I recently had a birthday. So that is what motivated the topic for today's episode is about the problem with thinking, “I'm too old to start something new”. That is such a common theme, and while I am in my 40s, this is something that I remember girlfriends saying in our 20s. So this is not something that is specific to 40-somethings or above, but it's something that plagues all of us, because this idea of, “I can't start something new, I'm too old, I can't start it now, here's all the reasons why I can’t I've missed my window…”, whatever that specific thought is for you, that line of thinking is totally unnecessary. It's also untrue. So today we're going to unpack the problem with it and how to overcome it.

So this topic was definitely motivated by my birthday just passing, but it's really something that I think about a lot because a big portion of my coaching business is focused on helping 40-something women make big changes in their lives despite all of the voices telling them that it's not possible because it's too late. So this topic is super familiar territory for me and that's why I'm really excited to bring this to you.

The way that this type of thinking comes up it can come in the form of a lot of different types of thoughts: “I can't do this because I'm too old. I can't start now. I can't start over. I missed the boat. I should have done it sooner. “That whole line of thinking can come up whenever you're trying to do anything new. So whether that's a career change or getting married or having kids or divorcing someone, buying a home, losing weight, doing any of the things you want to do. These types of thoughts will come up over and over again, this“I'm too old to start something new”.

Here's the truth. Yes, there are things you're too old to start doing. Like let's just start there. This is not unrealistic la-la-land. This is not like unicorns and fairies. Like I'm not trying to sell you on something that's completely unrealistic. The reality is though, I am willing to bet, because I've seen this time and again with myself, my friends, my clients, that if there's something you truly want to do, it is within your reach. So here's the example. If you're a 40-something woman like me and you want to change careers and go play for the Celtics, then yeah, we can probably say you're too old to make that dream a reality at this point. It's highly unlikely and probably not a good use of time or effort, right?

But the fact is, most things in life that you genuinely want to do or try or move into or try again, most of those things are attainable at any age. Most of us don't want to go play for the Celtics or do something that's equivalent to that in terms of goals. Be honest with yourself when you're thinking about this. Whatever the thing is that you want to do that you keep telling yourself you're too old to do, again, whether that's changing careers, having a kid, losing weight, starting a business, learning a language, making new friends, falling in love, whatever it is, it's actually not playing for the Celtics. It's not that out of reach. How do we know? Because I promise you, whatever it is that you really want to do, someone else has done it before. And that's an incredibly important thing here, because your brain is going to always tell you not to do the big scary thing.

If you've listened to this podcast or worked with me or really worked with any coach, you've heard this before, your brain is designed to keep you safe and keep you alive. That's what your brain is always going to default to do. And because of that, if you try to do anything that's new or big or scary, whether that scariness is coming from a physical risk or an emotional risk, your brain can't decipher. It just knows, I feel fear and therefore, nope, we shouldn't do this. Your brain wants to remain safe and conserve energy and your brain does not realize that doing something like changing careers or losing weight or falling in love is not actually something that's going to kill you. It just knows, “I'm scared. This feels unsafe”. So your brain's always going to serve up reasons why you shouldn't try the new thing and God if “I'm too old” is not one of the easiest things in the world for your brain to reach for, because that is a story that we have been told for all of our lives! Your brain will give you a litany of reasons why being too old is the reason you shouldn't do things, why it makes sense to stay exactly where you are doing what you've continued to do. That is where your brain thinks you're safe. That's where your brain knows you're going to conserve energy.

So how do you overcome your brain? How do you quiet the voice that's telling you you're too old to do the thing you really want to do? I got five steps here that will help you overcome this.

So the first is this: recognize that it's not your voice that's telling you you're too old. Okay? So, too old is not a fact. We know this because what one person may think 40 is too old for, somebody else might not think that's true. Somebody might say, “You can't change careers at 40”, and somebody else might say, “No, I changed careers at 42, and I'm really successful”. So we know that too old is an idea, it's not a fact.

The question is, when you think of the thing that you really want to do, and you hear the, but “I'm too old for that” voice in your head, ask yourself, whose voice are you hearing? It's not yours. It might be your mom's voice. It might be your partner's voice. It might be your kids. It might be the collective voice of all the people around you who aren't choosing to make any big changes at this point in their lives. No matter what it is, just notice that that voice, it doesn't belong to you. Name who it does belong to. And it doesn't mean you have to go out and point fingers and say to this person, you told me this, and you're wrong, and it's not about that. It's just about you recognizing that that thought,"I'm too old”, didn't come from you. That thought, “Hey, I wanna run a marathon, I wanna write a book, I wanna launch a podcast, I wanna start a business, I wanna change careers…”, that thought came from you. But the other thought saying, you're too old, you can't do it it's not yours and since it was never yours to begin with there is no reason for you to own it now. So that's step one.

Step two, and this builds off of what we just spoke about a bit in step one, is about separating the thoughts from the facts. Like I said “too old” is just a thought. Who says what's too old? We have literal senior citizens running for president of the United States this year. Okay, are they too old? Maybe, I think so. But the Constitution doesn't say that. You could argue both sides of it. They're too old, they're not too old. So me thinking the men that are running for office are too old, it's just a thought. It's not a fact because there are other people who don't agree. So just notice for yourself if you think about the goal that you want, the thing you want to do, that you think you're too old for. Just think about that and then think, “Okay, what are the facts of this situation versus what are the thoughts?” The facts are the things you can't argue, that you absolutely can prove, right? So the facts might be, I'm 42 years old. That could be a fact of yours, right? It's not a fact of mine, but it could be a fact of yours. So you could say, I'm 42 years old and I am currently in sales. Those are facts. Saying, “I want to change careers and become a full-time writer. I want to move to a new city. I am too old to go after the fitness goals that I want because I've had too many injuries and I'm just too old for that right now. I'm too old to become a full-time writer because it's not responsible….” Those are all the thoughts because we can argue either side of it.

Once you separate the facts from the thoughts, what you're going to see is the facts are a lot fewer than the thoughts are. There are probably a handful of facts and there are many, many thoughts you have about why you're too old and why it doesn't make sense and what you wish you could do but you can't. But the facts are very few. And this is really good news because while your facts aren't changeable, you can't change your age, your thoughts are changeable. And so if you believe, “I'm too old” right now, okay, because we know that's a thought, not a fact, it means that you can change that thinking. It's totally possible. And that is very good news if you're somebody who wants to be doing something different. Okay, so that's step two.

Step three, now that you've separated the facts from the thoughts, what you want to do is start to build more new, useful, helpful thoughts. “I'm too old” is just not that helpful. If you want to actually go after something new, if you want to actually go after a goal, thinking “I'm too old” is just not helpful. What thoughts would be helpful? What about focusing on all of the experience that you do have?

We think things like, “Well, I can't start over at 40, or I'm too old to try something new”. What if you're not starting something new? What if you are starting with all the experience you do bring? You're not a beginner, you're not a little tadpole. This is not your first trip around the block. You bring a ton of experience, professional, personal, whether it's super relevant, or even experience that's indirectly related to your goal, you bring that experience to the table. That's an advantage to being slightly older and trying something new. You've got so much more knowledge and experience that can be useful if you harness it. What if all the skills you have and the things you've done up until now, what if that was your superpower? What if that was your distinct advantage? What if those experiences were the reason you'd be good at doing something new? What if all your years in corporate and all the skills you've learned are exactly why you are going to be successful as an entrepreneur or as an author or as a podcaster, even if you're in a totally different realm, but you've learned so many things in your corporate life. I'm just using that as a quick example, but you could think of this wherever you are right now, just let your skills and experience be a secret weapon that will power you forward as you're going after your goal. Stop thinking of it as, “I'm brand new to this, I've never done this before”. Okay, maybe you've never done this one specific thing before you're going after, but what have you done that's even tangentially related? What have you done that could have allowed you to build some skills that are now transferable? I promise you, put your brain to work starting to think of those things, all of a sudden you're going to come up with a whole bunch of reasons why you actually are skilled and experienced and ready to take on this new goal because actually it's not that new. You've done similar things before.

The other part of this thinking is how many new things have you done before in your life that you didn't have a lot of background for or that you came to with not a lot of direct experience? I promise you a lot. You have a ton of evidence that you can do new things and I say this all the time I've got clients that want to go from corporate to owning their own businesses and they'll be like, “I don't have any experience doing that”. I'll say to them, “Okay, what have you done now? What do you do now in your life that at one point you didn't have experience doing?” Many of them point to like, “I had no idea how to be a parent until I actually was a parent,” because the reality is nobody knows how to be a parent until you start doing it. So that's one thing. “I didn't know how to buy a home until I actually bought one. I can Google stuff, but I didn't know how to buy a home. I didn't know what the process was”. Okay, that's another one. “I didn't know how to lose weight in a healthy way until I actually got some help and actually started to do it….I didn't know that I could give this massive presentation at work or be in this high-level VP position at work until I got promoted into it and then I did it….” There's a lot of things that you've done in your life that you've never done before!

For me, I didn't know I could be a caregiver to someone who is aging and unwell until I did it. I did not think I had that in me. There's so many things that I promise you that you've done that you had no idea you could do. Make a list. Make a list of 30 things that you do now on the regular that at one point you didn't know how to do. By doing that, you're just going to start to provide your brain with evidence that you can do new things, and that's going to start to build those more useful thoughts as you move forward. So instead of thinking, “I'm too old for this”, you can be thinking, “Yeah, I'm older than I was, but I also have all this experience”, right? “Yeah, I'm starting this new goal at an age that's older than most of the other people in my class or in my running group or whatever it is. But what does that matter? I'm bringing a ton of other experience to this”, or, “Yeah, I've never done this before. I've never launched a podcast before. I've never launched a business before. But you know what? I also didn't know how to cook for a long time and I figured out how to do that. I didn't know how to handle a toddler who was throwing a tantrum and I figured that out….” So just think of all of the things that you know that you can do now that you at one point didn't know how to do and just let that guide you to come up with some more useful thoughts to talk back to your brain when your brain is telling you that you're too old.

Alright, step four. This is “just a year from now” thinking. A year from now you will wish that you started today. That is true and I don't like it because it's got this kind of negative finger-wagging tone to it. But also, it's true! If you had started a year ago, you'd be a year ahead today. So, what the fuck are you waiting for? Just get going. Who cares? If you think you're too old now, guess what? Next year, you're gonna be like, “Shit, I wish I started it last year. I'm a year older now”. So just get started. Don't spend a lot of time wallowing in that, but I throw that out there just to say, like, that might be a little nudge for some of you that are still on the fence about trying something new or still hung up on the I'm too old. It's like, you know what, a year from now, two years from now, you will wish you started today whatever it is.

I get a lot of people that come to me and they're like, “I haven't saved enough for retirement and I'm in my 40s and what do I do?” Okay, you can start now, right? You can panic about it for another year and then and be one more year behind, or you can just fucking start now. You know, it's okay. So you're not where you wanna be. All right, well start taking action right now to change that. And in a year from now, you'll be so glad that you chose to just get started today.

All right, and then step five is start spending time around people who will support whatever it is your goal is, who will support you going after it now at whatever age you are, and avoid those who won't. This is really important, and I've said this before, but I think it was Tim Ferriss I heard from, that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. I think there's a lot of truth to that, and whether those five people are people that you spend time with in person, every day, at the office, at home, or whether it's the people that you follow most on Instagram, whatever it is, if you are surrounding yourself with people who are like, “I'm too old, I can't, you know, I hate my job, but I'm too old to change it. And, you know, I wish I could leave my husband, but I can't, I'm too old. And I wanted to take that vacation, but I feel like it's not responsible now…”. Or whatever it is, right? Just spending time with people with that attitude and that line of thinking is not going to help you defeat that attitude and that line of thinking in your own brain. And as we talked about, your brain wants to default to that.

So instead, what you want to do is start spending time around people who will support this idea, who have belief you can change and do something different in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever, that there's no such thing as “too old to try something new”. Start spending time around people who believe that, who have the energy behind it, who've done that, and even if they haven't, maybe they haven't themselves, but they hold space for you and support you in doing it. Spend more time around those people. And if you can't physically spend time around those people, find them on the internet. You don't even have to know them, start following them on Instagram.

This is also, of course, a great place to hire a coach. Yes, this is a plug, but also it's a fact. Coaches' jobs are to hold space for you and to help you build belief where you don't have it. So if you want to do something different after a certain age or you're letting this story of “I'm too old” get in your way, okay, surround yourself with people who don't think that way, and hire a coach. Get around a coach whose job it is to believe that. I

t's a lot easier to move yourself forward when you've got people around you who can help you get there in the moments where your brain wants to take over and say, “This isn't for me”. It's just a lot easier to have people in your corner, and it's totally possible to have people in your corner, even if you physically aren't around people who support this line of thinking. You can totally go find those people. They are out there. I know them. I coach them. I am one of them. Go find them. It's a huge and probably the most important step to changing your mindset is just getting around people with the mindset that you want to have, even if you don't have it yet.

And that's what I have for you today. I strongly, strongly believe, you might be able to hear it in my voice, but I strongly, strongly believe you can make any change or do anything you want at any age. As someone who has made two career pivots in her 30s and then 40s, who got married and became a parent long after the average age to do those things, someone who's still running marathons in her 40s, someone who coaches many people on this specific topic, I feel entirely comfortable telling you that this is totally possible. I am fully confident in that. If you need help believing it or making a big pivot, let's talk, okay? You can sign up for a free consult over at makeyourpivot.co and I'm currently offering, if you're listening to this in real time, during the month of April, I am currently offering a 25% discount on my one-on-one coaching package to anybody who is on my newsletter list. So sign up for that newsletter. It comes out every Friday. It's full of great information. Sign up for that over at makeyourpivot.co. If you're interested at all, just get on board with it. It's a great deal. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. I will talk to you all next week.