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Helping
Your Life Work |
It's Never Too LateIn updating my web site recently, I tried to capture the essence of each of the services that I offer by incorporating some relevant quotations. For the career page, I found a saying by George Eliot that encapsulated the sense of hope and purpose that I wished to convey. She wrote: “It is never too late to be who you might have been.” Over the years, I have worked with scores of clients who have “fallen” into their careers. Asked at an early age to make major decisions about their future, they have often relied upon others to point them in a particular direction. Years later, they find themselves unhappy and stuck. Some are eager to reinvent themselves, but others (some as young as 20), tell me that it is too late to change career direction after investing time, money and energy in a particular field. They fear losing what they have gained and worry that they may be too old to find employment once they make the changes. I would like to counter these arguments with some evidence to the contrary. Dr. Ruth Borchiver, a former boss and mentor and current friend and colleague, attained her PHD in psychology when she was in her fifties. She became the resident psychologist at JVS, overseeing the psychological services in the career, educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programs. Now, some 20 years later, she is maintaining her status as a lifelong student by gaining advanced certification in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which she is using in her new private practice. Another friend and colleague, Patricia Parker, was also in her mid-fifties when she did an about-face from her work as a national director of a charitable organization to becoming one of the first Canadians to attain a Masters in Addictions Counselling and starting her own successful private practice. When my sister, Rhoda, and husband, George Wiseman, were looking for a new dynamic salesman to join their international computer systems sales team (http://www.mbiintl.com), they interviewed dozens of young people, but they chose a man in his sixties for his knowledge, expertise and the credibility he would have with clients. The man is now in his seventies and still proving that they made the right decision. When my great uncle Ezekiel was 70 years old, he decided to take up the piano, so that he could accompany himself on an album of folk music that he wanted to record. At the age of 75, he did just that. More recently, an old friend realized a similar dream. Steve Felix (steve@simplicate.com) is a successful businessman who travels the world developing new business, speaking at conferences and publishing a weekly column that is read by more than 7,000 people internationally. In his spare time, (hah) he moonlights as a musician, feeding his lifelong passion for writing and performing music. Over the past 40 years, he has written a considerable number of songs, hoping one day to record some of them. This year, he made his dream come true. He has produced a CD, entitled appropriately enough, “Felix…Finally,” which he will be performing live in Washington, D.C on October 25th. Proceeds will be donated to www.keys-4-kids.org, a charitable organization that donates musical instruments to schools and deserving youth. If you have a burning desire to do something different, go ahead and do it. It is never too late.
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