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It’s never too late for anything! To change your mind, to change the course of your life, to decide not to carry someone else’s diktats around with you, to be more balanced, kinder, more relaxed ….etc. etc. You get the picture. However, if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. So if you don’t like it, start changing.
We humans have a remarkable ability to change and reinvent ourselves. Many of our most successful and well-known people have started out with very poor prospects—Stephen Hawking— he could have hung up his scientific hat and given up when he got motor neurons, thinking I’ll live the average 35-45 years that people with MND generally do. Instead, he got to 76 and expanded our knowledge of cosmology and black hole theory. Einstein was believed to be back as a child as he was unable to read until he was 7, Paul Bettany busked on the streets, Stephen Fry was in jail aged 17, Richard Branson was caught evading VAT and charged with tax evasion in his youth. None of these successful people allowed early indiscretions, set-backs or being labeled to pigeonhole what they later became. They learned from their previous experiences and decided what they would become for themselves.
Who are you? Are you who you imagined you would be when you were growing up? It’s easy for us to drift into a job or lifestyle without really thinking about how it reflects our personality. Did you take on a whole lot of outdated ideas or restrictions whilst growing up? Did your parents persuade you to study to be a lawyer instead of an actor, or to be a musician instead of an electrician? You'll know if things aren't right—you'll keep getting sick, have headaches, feel stressed, feel out of kilter. Really think about how you want others to see you and then behave accordingly. Match your inside to your outside, match your personality and values to your actions.
A very good exercise is to imagine people you know, love and respect at your funeral. What would they say about you? Would that accurately reflect who you are? Do you want to be that person or is there more to you? An underdeveloped artistic side, an altruistic person hidden behind your professional and family responsibilities? A friendly, chatty, light-hearted fellow who is worn down by work and responsibilities? It’s not too late to change.
It is very bad for our mental health to have a mismatch between our inner selves and our outer reflection of that self. This is what causes mental instability and dissonance. It also causes problems for those we communicate with, particularly children who pick up on inauthentic expressions of who we are. If you pretend to like a child it definitely won’t work and they will be puzzled by your overtures to them—they sense your discomfort and pretense. Most humans don’t lose this ability to detect fraud as they grow up but it becomes buried in layers of conventional behavior and cultural and professional expectations. However, many of our miscommunications start from this mismatch—an attempt by one person to project a persona that is not wholly authentic. We can call this “instant dislike” or feel uncomfortable or in some cases just feeling the other person is a fraud or fake.
So if you are not wholly comfortable with who or how you are, you need to take steps to change. If you want people to think you are generous—you need to be just that—generous! It could be generous with your time, generous with your knowledge, generous with your kindness and friendship. One of the greatest services I had done to me was when I was working for a head of industry as his secretary. I was moaning about helping out the graduate recruits again. Saying I could easily do their job and get their salary and that they were relying on my brains to help them out. This man told me to go and do it then. He said, all these graduates have gone and got a degree, they’ve proved they can assimilate knowledge and that’s why they’re the graduate intake and you’re not. I started my degree that autumn, it took me six years whilst working and bringing up my children as a single mum. I then went on and got my TA masters in my 40s. The rest, as they say, is history! But my inner and outer selves started to match—I was who I thought I should be and how I thought I should be—I feel comfortable in myself which is a very good feeling. So don’t waste time like I did moaning or being envious, take action and change.
It may interest my readers to know that the greatest prediction of longevity is how well you are embedded in your community and whether you have people to rely on and give comfort to you. It is certainly not how rich or successful you are or how many handbags or watches you have. What this means in real terms is do you chat to the postman, wave to your neighbors, know the guy who serves you coffee each day. Do you thank the ticket collector and smile at the newspaper vendor. These are the people “embedded” in their community by their very humanness. Second, do you have people to rely on? Someone who would take you to the hospital. A friend who would sit with you if you were bereaved? Someone who cares how you are and what you are feeling? This goes with the territory when you are being authentic—your true personality shines through and you attract “your” sort of people.
So you will have these things if your focus is on people and feelings, not just possessions and goals. If your focus is on authentic emotions, both their expression and the recognition of and response to those feelings in others, you will flourish. So if you are not who you know yourself to be and it is not possible for people to see “your true colors shining through”, then know that your actions, your deeds, your words and how you express your soul out in the world are how you are known. It’s never too late to change the small stuff—your job, your home, where you live but neither is it too late to change the real, fundamental, big stuff that is you; start living and breathing who you are right now.
