Trust your gut
and don't leave it with 'what if?'
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
When I first had the idea for ‘Older Not Over’, I wanted to try and share as many stories as I could to inspire people who felt at 40 plus that opportunities and new adventures were out of reach and that it didn’t need to be that way.
I released a batch of interviews around this topic at the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020 and although thrilled with the response I just couldn’t keep up the momentum. Quite simply, life got in the way, a new baby to add to our existing brood of 3, starting a new job, and helping support my wife’s new business. It all simply became too much to spare the time to push ‘Older Not Over’ to where it needed to be.
2 years later, I still can’t shake the feeling in my stomach that I should in some way continue with the mission of helping people get unstuck, maybe changing careers or reaching long-standing goals later in life.
So I’ve decided to log back in and publish a weekly newsletter with links, tools and stories that hopefully inspire you to maybe, just maybe address that ‘feeling in your stomach’ that just won’t go away.
Alan
3 stories to inspire you this week
‘I didn’t want to be an invisible old lady – so I became a yoga teacher’
After decades in hairdressing, 65-year-old Sharon McAllister was ready for a change rather than a rest. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jul/25/a-new-start-after-60-i-didnt-want-to-be-an-invisible-old-lady-so-i-became-a-yoga-teacher
Don’t get your knickers in a twist… start something new!
In 2013, at age 52, Dunaway and her wife, Naomi Gonzalez, cofounded the gender-neutral underwear and loungewear company TomboyX out of their garage to make quality button-down shirts. In 2016, they listened to customer requests and made their first boxer briefs, it became a major success. https://www.forbes.com/sites/elanagross/2021/06/02/the-forbes-50-over-50-share-their-best-advice-for-supercharging-your-career-after-50/?sh=70f11ee441a3
Four big lessons for getting the most out of a career change
“Quitting journalism to start again as a 50-something teacher taught me the value of timing and being radical” https://www.ft.com/content/22e6b8ee-1376-49c9-8a16-f3c47cb6e209
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Tweet For Your Thoughts
Every week I choose a tweet that contains an amazing thread or question to ponder around the themes of this newsletter. This week is an amazing tweet from Dr. Jennifer Cassidy. What’s fantastic about the thread is the number of real-world responses to the tweet. From leaving nursing to becoming an air hostess, from putting a career in carpentry on hold to working in tech sales, from working in biomedicine to joining the police force. All the examples are inspirational yet achievable.
You can read the full thread here
Recommended Read
As always every book I recommend I have read from cover to cover. My recommended read this week is The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel H. Pink.
'No regrets.' You've heard people proclaim it as a philosophy of life. That's nonsense, even dangerous, says Daniel H. Pink in his latest book. Everybody has regrets. They're a fundamental part of our lives. And if we reckon with them in fresh and imaginative ways, we can enlist our regrets to make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and deepen our sense of meaning and purpose.
In The Power of Regret, Pink collected regrets from more than 16,000 people in 105 countries and identified four core regrets that most people have. These four regrets, Pink argues, operate as a 'photographic negative' of the good life. By understanding what people regret the most, we can understand what they value the most. And by following a simple, science-based, three-step process that he sets out, we can transform our regrets into a positive force for working smarter and living better.
I’ve always been a fan of Pink’s work and what I love about this book is the raw honesty of the 16,000 people who sent him their regrets. When you strip it back, we’re all the same and that should give you hope. Our problems and regrets sometimes seem so huge but when you find that most are universal themes you should really reframe those regrets as lessons. You’re not alone. An opportunity to try again.
'Older Not Over' Podcast
As I work on my next batch of conversations, be sure to listen back to past chats with Richard E. Grant, Roz Savage and Lee Child.
Until next week….
“The great thing about getting older is that you become more mellow. Things aren't as black and white, and you become much more tolerant. You can see the good in things much more easily rather than getting enraged as you used to do when you were young” ― Maeve Binchy
Thanks for reading! Before you go, if you have found value in this edition of the newsletter, or just want to support the content I’m producing, you might consider buying me a cup of coffee!