As you age

It’s not always easy to hit middle age. You feel that your abilities start to slip and you’re not as sharp as you once were.

Aging has a huge impact on athletes who are at the top of their game between the age of 25-35—depending on their sport. A lot of athletes struggle with the transition from professional sports to retirement, and one of the most painful things to witness is a great athlete that stayed way beyond his prime and gets humiliated by younger, and often less talented athletes. The aging of our bodies is so obvious in the context of sports—but a similar thing also happens for the rest of us.    

Your cognitive abilities decline as you age. This is why you don’t see chess masters in their 50 winning world championships or great inventions from people in their 60s. Your sheer amount of horsepower and fluent intelligence fades as you age. This can be a tough pill to swallow if you’re a competitive person or someone who has based your identity around your career. Often, we refuse to acknowledge this ourselves, but in the eyes of our peers, we’re just like the athlete that is getting humiliated by younger and “stronger” peers.

So, what can you do?

In his book From Strength to Strength author Arthur C. Brooks addresses this question head-on. It’s a great book and we will not do it justice in this article, but the main theme is, that you’ll lose the abilities that got you this far, but you’ll gain life experience and crystallized intelligence. If we stay in the world of sports—then you’ll go from being an athlete to being a coach or mentor. Older individuals often have a harder time playing the sport or making original breakthroughs, but through sheer life experience and crystallized knowledge, they are often better at combining useful ideas, avoiding pitfalls, and seeing the bigger picture.

We often talk about diversity in teams and workplaces—and the scientific literature suggests that diversity of people often generates better results and more original perspectives. This makes good logical sense since a more diverse group of people often will have a more diverse set of ideas—right? This is also true with a more diverse age profile. There is a place for all age brackets in teams—so, instead of raging against your age and your declining abilities, you should instead move to the next step of your life and career path.

Be the one that helps younger generations make better decisions and help them avoid pitfalls. The world is facing many challenges and we need a diversity of ideas and the management of these ideas. We often see young, brilliant, and driven people come to wrong or harmful conclusions—this can be because of impatience or inexperience, and a small sprinkle of wisdom might have made all the difference. The same goes for older people. Be honest with yourself—is it time for you to be the mentor instead of the athlete? Maybe other younger people can carry the mantle better than you can, and this will benefit everyone in the process.  

So, the conclusion is that you can’t compete with the younger generation as you age, but you still have a lot to offer. Go from strength to strength and become the teacher or the mentor. Keep your motivation and strive for different things—training can go from performance to longevity and learning can go from mastery to innovation and teaching.

Age with grace and keep playing your part.

Until next time

Scott and Lennart  

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