It is Never too late to Change Your Life
“…old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
One of the many blessings of being the father of nine is that it has helped me stay young.
Sustained by the innocence and enthusiasm of young children and adolescents, I have refused to submit to the deceptions of an ageing life.
But I also understand how easy it is to be seduced into thinking our time is running out. That we are trapped or just drifting. We all can get stuck in a rut from time to time, becoming tired, complacent, cynical or just feeling there is no exciting future ahead.
It is a snare that all of us can succumb to irrespective of our age.
And it happened to me a while back.
With my children growing into adulthood, and some of them leaving home and starting their own families, I began to question my future value and how much time I had left to make a difference.
Although I felt relatively youthful and engaged with the world, I did have concerns about what might happen next, particularly as I had left the corporate world 25 years ago to become a stay at home dad.
And with our children growing up and moving away, there was a looming sense that this happy part of my life was coming to a close. I felt something needed to change if I was to continue making a difference in the world.
It is easy to recognise the need for change but still to stay adrift and do nothing about it. Feeling frustrated just isn’t enough.
Action is necessary.
We are all familiar with situations that call for decisive action to be taken. This is what separates successful people from those who never quite make the grade. Successful people see they need to change and then crucially, take action.
But what action?
In my case I felt it was important to choose one thing and focus entirely on that. The second worst thing you can do after doing nothing is trying to do everything. I’ve tried it and can confirm it’s a recipe for underperformance and likely failure.
That’s why we need to decide on a specific goal, any goal, in order to forge a new pathway to a higher level.
This is “the Base” we then use to begin other new challenges and expand our strengths and capacities and re-invigorate our life experiences.
My Base was to get fit and stronger and importantly, to enjoy the experience.
In January 2023 I set about doing this.
I gave up alcohol, became more conscious of what I ate, and took up resistance training with kettlebells. I also walked a lot more, and started practising meditation again.
One of the most important lessons I have learned in life is don’t do things vaguely. You need to measure where you are and how you are performing so that you can adjust and see where resistance arises and where you are performing well and progressing.
You have to be intentional and allow the process itself to become the actual goal rather than some end point over a distant horizon. This is a journey with no end.
It is not a quick fix. Instead, it is a life change that needs to become embedded in your daily schedule rather than a guilt-inspired add on to do when you feel you have time.
You will never have time unless you pre-allocate it and keep this space sacred.
This training work has transformed my life and has helped me set in place a strong physical and mental base to start the next phase of “becoming new”. I am now the fittest and strongest I have ever been and my mental capacity and enthusiasm for life have also dramatically improved.
I have given just over a year of very focused attention to this. That is not a lot of time. Now that I have a system embedded in my daily life, a system I will continue to adjust and experiment with, I can add a new challenge.
The next focus for me is a return to daily writing and content creation, which was my profession for ten years before I became a stay at home dad.
Instead of being concerned that my role as a father is being upended as my children grow up, I have decided to use the experience and knowledge I have gained to try and help others by explaining, through writing, some of the important lessons I have learned over the past 25 years.
Lesson number one is that taking dominion over our thinking is crucial for a happier life.
We must take command of our thoughts and how we react to the world and not allow notions about age, competence, capacity or inevitability define or control us. This is true irrespective of how old you are.
As I said earlier, this requires taking action. It is not enough to consume self-development or spiritual content, claim to be passionate about something or feel enthusiastic for five days before you move onto the next big thing. You have to DO something, and do it consistently with focus and discipline.
For example, I am our family cook — or as one of my sons said, the “home chef” — and have been for more than 30 years. Over that time I have made around 35,000 meals for our beginning family of three, to our complete family of 11 when all our children lived at home. Imagine starting out knowing you would have to plan and make 35,000 meals for so many people over a period of 35 years. I would stop after meal one!
It only worked because I love cooking and focused on the meal I had to make for my family, whatever its size at the time, at a specific time of the day. There was obviously no plan to reach a distant end-goal of 35,000 meals, or indeed to have nine children. The goal was to make that meal at that time, and do it to the best of my ability. Each meal was an end in itself and then I would begin again from the beginning every day.
This can be applied to everything. Part of my healthier lifestyle is walking five days a week, averaging around 15,000 steps a day over the week while listening to podcasts or videos. Just walking five days a week added up to 202 miles (342 km) last month. I’ve walked around 2,500 miles in the past year because I take our dog Buddy to the park every weekday, rain or shine.
Every day is a new day and all things become new again. Every day we can begin again from the beginning.
Don’t ever feel you cannot start again.
It is the actual doing in the moment that is fundamental, not the far off goal. If you truly want to transform your life you have to take action and do it now.
You need to cast from your consciousness all the reasons why you can’t start now. We have been hypnotised into believing we have no time. If change and transformation is your urgent priority, you will most definitely make time available.
I used to be a meditation teacher and one of the main excuses I heard from people “passionate” about learning a meditation practice was that they struggled to find the time to be still. Work, the children, money issues, relationships, illness etc. An endless list.
It’s all about your priorities. How much do you want this? To do anything great and with talent requires time and consistency. We are addicted to the instant fix, the physical and metaphysical pill that will immediately remove our problems. It doesn’t exist.
Real and sustained transformation requires focused work over time.
This can be off-putting for many people and a discouragement against even starting.
If you don’t have a sense of urgency to begin with, a good technique is to focus your complete attention on the activity in the present moment, just as with cooking a meal. You just need to start. The steps can be very small at first, but it is the taking of them, consistently, that leads to progress and a positive compound effect.
By putting your full attention into the activity, whatever it might be, this removes distractions and thoughts about the future or the immensity of the task ahead. Or why you might have failed in the past.
This is not supposed to be torture. It must be enjoyable enough to integrate into your everyday life and hopefully then share with others.
It helps to see this work as a progression. Progression is a law of life to those of us who strive to improve and overcome the inevitable bottlenecks and challenges that arise on this complex journey.
If you embrace the process of daily progression for yourself; and act on it, I guarantee you will emerge from weakness into strength from darkness and pessimism, into a new morning of clarity and hope.
Then you will see how all things can become new.
It is never too late to begin again.
“For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be steadfast, and shalt not fear: Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away: And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning.” Job 11: 15–17.