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It snuck up on me that night — the older man’s question to a little girl at a dinner party. He was well into his gin. She was suspicious when he tugged on her sleeve.
“Young lady, so, what do you want to be when you grow up?” There was a pause and the little girl relaxed. This was a safe question. A fun question.
Within moments, she rattled off a list of future selves: veterinarian, computer programmer, an artist. Oh, and did he want to see the picture she drew of a unicorn marrying a caterpillar?
He did not and moved on quickly to another conversation. I, however, couldn’t move on. The question was lodged in my brain, a hanging chad.
I was almost 45 at the time, with one foot firmly entering middle age. And with a clarity that haunted me the rest of the night, I knew this: Nobody was ever going to ask me that again. And I had stopped asking myself.
What transpired after that — and for the next eight years — lies at the heart of my new book: Not Too Late: The Power of Pushing Limits at Any Age. It’s a narrative about how I answered that man’s question in midlife (more on that in a moment), and it’s a guide to help anyone stretch themselves and prod the edges of what is still possible.
Before that party, I’d been trapped in my competencies as a journalist and author — someone glued to her screens, sitting a lot. I was married and generally happy enough, but there was a sameness emerging to the days as Monday blurred into Friday. Same friends. Same work routines. Same restaurants. Same conversations (increasingly about health woes).
It was like life slipping from A major to A minor. Maybe you know this feeling too.
The morning after the dinner party exchange, I woke with a sense of panic brewing alongside my coffee. An aimless online search of “What are the hardest things you can do?” led me to something called a Spartan Race. It’s a brand of sport called obstacle course racing, which combines cross-country running through difficult terrain with obstacles such as scaling walls, climbing a rope and carrying really heavy things.
As a scrawny kid last-picked for sports teams who had morphed into a mostly unathletic adult, such a pastime seemed utterly out of the realm of possibilities. This was as likely as my piloting a spaceship to Mars or singing at the Grammys (i.e., never going to happen). But before I closed my computer, I signed up for a free Spartan Workout of the Day email.
You know, just to see who I could be.
Flash forward eight years. I’m about to turn 53 and can now add “competitive athlete” to the list of descriptors family and friends use for me. It’s been a long road, with many twists and turns, moments of gripping joy and soul-crushing failure as I broke out of my competency trap.
This pastime has ignited in me a renewed “will to live,” something Yale epidemiologist professor Becca Levy has explored at length in her research on the “Fight Against Ageism." She found that people with positive perceptions of aging live 7.5 years longer on average. Central to a positive outlook is this will to live, which can be enhanced by pastimes that excite and engage us.
Obstacle course racing certainly won’t be everyone’s answer to the question, What do I still want to be? And my answer may need to change as I age — although I did meet a woman nicknamed “Muddy Mildred” who competed in an obstacle course race in her 80s. (Her sage advice: get low on the barbed wire and crawl so you don’t get your hair caught.)
But what can be the same for all of us is a willingness to push the boundaries of who we think we are. An answer that excites you can help ward off chronic boredom, which itself is thought to be a health hazard correlated with anxiety, depression and making mistakes.
Here are five takeaways from my journey and reporting:
1. Be okay with looking foolish: As we age, there’s a tendency to strive for dignity or believe we’ve got our hands on the master control switch. But as the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus put it: “If you would improve, be content to be thought foolish…”
I certainly looked silly crawling around my backyard learning mobility exercises on stiff middle-aged limbs while my neighbors gawked. And I often was the oldest person at my gym trying to master complex maneuvers. But the awkwardness was remarkably freeing. And eventually, it gave way to progress.
2. Don’t believe you’re too old to chase “firsts” or mastery: There’s a meme in our world that the pursuit of new, ambitious pastimes is for the young. Same when it comes to pursuing mastery because it requires a lot of time — time we might not have.
But there are powerful, positive cognitive forces at work when our brain engages in the process of practicing something in the right way to get better at it. And simply embarking on the road to mastery means waking up with something to look forward to.
Which brings me to the next point …
3. Be prepared to unlearn or relearn: I thought I knew how to run after nearly 50 years on this planet. But to get better at my pastime, I had to unlearn how and where my feet hit the ground and the length of my stride. It was deeply uncomfortable. But letting go of long-held behaviors also made me feel like a student again, which was empowering. Lesson: get comfortable with discomfort.
4. Find younger mentors: Most of my teachers were younger. My coaches could have been my daughters. And I got schooled in the art of crossing monkey bars at a playground by a little red-headed tike who could have been my granddaughter.
This reverse mentorship dynamic, if strange at first, ended up resetting my mindset well beyond my sport. The honesty and openness with which younger people spoke about their fears and anxieties opened my mind and heart to not presenting a facade of — “everything is perfect!” — all the time.
5. The sleep test: You’ll know you’re on the right path when your pastime becomes one of the last things you think about before nodding off, and one of the first you look forward to when waking up. What excites you enough to turn off Netflix and go to sleep an hour earlier or stop scrolling on your phone?
In short, intrinsic motivation — internal satisfaction — will get you further than extrinsic motivation like an award or money. For me, the answer to that man’s dinner party question is rooted in rescuing the weak version of myself as a little girl. That motivation, not a medal, is what keeps me pushing my own limits.
Have you pushed yourself to do something outside your comfort zone lately? What was it? Let us know in the comments below.
Kaitlin Brito
Follow Article Topics: Fulfillment
