It happened to me again last week. I was introduced to someone at a party and a little way into the conversation he told me he was too old to change. I nicely probed about what brought him to that conclusion, and there was no traumatic event, no physical calamity…he just didn’t want to work a little bit at something new.
Can I tell you how much I hate to hear that? Perhaps it is my own fear of aging. There are some things I do not do as well as I used to. My memory for names is way down. Google is my lifesaver on that when it is a celebrity. When it comes to normal folks, I’m really out of luck in less they are in my contacts. Some hours later the name will come to me in a totally useless moment. Hmmm.
I ache a little more in the morning, I ski slower, and I have to make myself focus more on stuff I don’t want to read anyway. I really balk at learning new software and have to order myself or fool myself into it. I’ve taking to asking for more help on the stuff I hate to do so I’ve got a buddy, coach or instructor depending on how balky I’m being.
They say as you age you have to get wilier to outsmart the young fast ones. I think you have to figure out new ways to stay in the game. BTW, this applies to you youngin’s, too. The world is changing so fast; we all have to allot more time to learning new things. We can do this alone, in a peer group, or a team environment. We can share best practices on a regular schedule.
This week, seek out someone who thinks differently from you and ask him or her to share something cool they learned recently. Who knows what great take-away you will get from the interaction. You may feel new path ways developing through the grey matter in your brain. How cool is that?
Illustration courtesy of www.huffingtonpost.com