REFLECTION
I saw this poster this morning. It was 5:25 AM as I was heading in for my weekly weight training. It caught my eye. You are capable of amazing things. Yes, you are.
I want to yell this from the mountaintop every time I read my LinkedIn feed, which is flooded with woe-is-me posts from the age 50+ set about long-term unemployment and agism in hiring. I’m not about to minimize anyone’s predicaments: unemployment when you want to be working is a tough situation to be in.
And, yes, agism is real and it really sucks. I started feeling agism in my early 40s in the SaaS / high tech workplace! Waking up one morning with a few gray hairs and the sinking feeling that you’re no longer the golden child at your company isn’t fun. Spending more than a year out of work while kids 20 years younger than you are still hopping jobs at their leisure is disheartening. All of this happening while your kids are flying the nest, you have reading glasses in every coat pocket and glovebox and your memory is starting to fail can be downright heartbreaking.
But just what if agism is the corporate world’s way of saying:
- You are capable of amazing things, but a corporate career job isn’t the place for amazing.
- You can do so much more than what corporate America allows, so go be free and amazing.
- Amazing doesn’t happen in a cage, you need to get out of here if you want to do amazing things.
You are at a pivot point in your career and your life. You can continue to genuflect to your Fortune 500 logo daily and fight continuously to prove relevance in your career field, all while looking like a tired, gray-headed fool. Or you can slam the door on that corporate gig that never loved you back in the first place and set out on a bold, authentic journey that lights a fire in your soul.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Fellow fifty-something, there is a whole, exciting, beautiful world of opportunity out there for you. You need the guts to shove corporate America out of your way so that you can devote the time and energy needed to develop this new life for yourself. Like George Straight in Amarillo by Morning, “I ain’t rich, but Lord, I’m free”, maybe you’ll earn less, but you can FINALLY be yourself. Or, who knows: You might start a journey that ends with you owning a company or turning your side gigs into earning potential you never dreamed of, all while having much more fun than your current job provides. You won’t know until you cut the umbilical cord to Mega Corp and venture onto a different path. Don’t you owe this to yourself? Haven’t you given corporate America enough of you?