So You Think You’re Too Old to Start Over? Think Again

After 50, building an aspirational life may not have to mean starting from scratch. Sometimes the opportunity sitting in front of you is something you created years ago.

There is something peculiar about turning 50.

The world begins suggesting, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly, that you should be winding things down at precisely the moment you may finally know enough to do something really interesting.

You are supposed to be thinking about retirement. Downsizing. Sensible shoes. Whether you have enough money tucked away. Perhaps a nice cruise.

But what if you don’t feel finished? Heck, what if you feel like you are just getting started?

More importantly, what if the thing that changes your life at 55, 58 or 65 isn’t something new at all?

What if it is something you made twenty or thirty years ago, put away, stopped thinking about—and suddenly realize deserves another look?

That happened to me this week.

Sometimes the Market Knocks on Your Door

Years ago, I wrote a little book called So You Think You Can Be President?

It wasn’t something I was actively thinking about. I certainly wasn’t sitting around plotting its grand resurrection. Then, unexpectedly, a couple of copies sold. Two sales aren’t going to finance anybody’s retirement. But that isn’t really the point.

The point is that the sales made me look. And once I looked, I thought: Wait a minute. This book still has life in it!

So in less than 24 hours, I went back to work. I updated it, refreshed the presentation and prepared a new edition for Amazon. Suddenly, something from my past had become part of my present business. And perhaps more importantly, it reminded me of something women over 50 don’t hear nearly enough:

You may already own something valuable that is literally the thing that is going to get you unstuck, or even change your life.

Before You Start Over, Take Inventory

When people talk about starting over after 50, the language can be exhausting.

Reinvent yourself.

Find your purpose.

Learn a new skill.

Start a side hustle.

Build a personal brand.

All perfectly reasonable advice. But before you start inventing an entirely new woman, perhaps you should take inventory of the woman who is already here.

What have you already done?

What have you already made?

What do you already know?

Somewhere in your house—or on an old computer, in a notebook, in a box, or simply buried in your memory—there may be something worth revisiting.

Maybe you wrote a manuscript that never found a publisher.

Maybe you developed training materials during a 25-year career.

Maybe you have recipes everybody has been asking you to write down for years.

Maybe you used to make beautiful jewelry.

Maybe you know everything there is to know about organizing complicated events, caring for elderly parents, decorating tiny apartments, navigating divorce, growing roses, planning European holidays or dressing beautifully on a budget.

Perhaps you once had a business idea that arrived ten years before the technology existed to make it affordable.

The question isn’t merely, “What can I start?”

Try asking:

“What have I already started?”

That is a very different question.

Your Age May Actually Be Part of the Asset

There is another advantage to revisiting something after 50. You’re not the same person who created it. You know more now. You can see what was good and what was ridiculous. You know what needs editing. You understand people differently. You probably have a much better instinct for what matters and what doesn’t.

And technology has changed the economics of bringing old ideas back to life.

A manuscript doesn’t necessarily need to sit in a drawer waiting for someone to choose it. An expert doesn’t necessarily need an office. A woman with decades of professional knowledge doesn’t necessarily need a corporation to decide that knowledge has value.

The tools available to us now can make publishing, researching, designing, teaching and selling dramatically more accessible than they once were.

That doesn’t mean success is automatic.

It means the door may no longer be locked.

And that matters.

Mine Happened to Be a Book

In my case, the forgotten asset happened to be So You Think You Can Be President?

Revisiting it also made me realize what a fun little gift it could be.

Politics in America can become terribly serious terribly quickly. This isn’t about telling anyone how to vote. It’s really a much broader principle. Its about a mindset you need to adopt to win in today’s harsh world. It is just packaged up with political wisdom, served hot by Donald Trump himself, the guy who brought us The Art of the Deal.

This book looks like a perfect gift, I thought. It looks like something a purchaser can give to the political obsessive in your family, the friend who thinks she could run the country better than everybody currently trying, the student fascinated by the presidency—or the person who simply enjoys American political culture. Or the person just trying to win against their opponent.

Whatever side of the aisle they happen to occupy. Because in the end, what does politics have to do with it?

But the larger lesson for me wasn’t about Trump himself or politics or any of that.

It was about the archive.

I had something sitting in mine. Actually, there were 46 others, it turned out. Just sitting there, collecting dust for years. And it seemed the time had come to finally do something with them.

Don’t Confuse Starting Over With Starting From Zero

This is particularly important for women over 50 because many of us have accumulated decades of things that don’t appear on a bank statement.

Experience is an asset.

Judgment is an asset.

A body of work is an asset.

Professional knowledge is an asset.

An old manuscript can be an asset.

A network can be an asset.

A reputation can be an asset.

Even a failure can become an asset if you understand something because of it that somebody else desperately needs to know.

Building an aspirational life after 50 doesn’t require pretending the previous 30 years didn’t happen.

Quite the opposite.

Use them. To your advantage. You know how to do that now.

Go Through Your Intellectual Closet

So here is my challenge.

Before you decide you have nothing to sell, nothing to build and nowhere to go next, spend an afternoon going through what I call your intellectual closet. Not your actual closet. We can deal with that another day. Look through old files. Old notebooks. Old photographs. Old business plans. Old writing. Old presentations. Old ideas. Think about the things people routinely ask you for help with.

Then ask yourself three questions:

Does this still have value?

Could I update it?

Who might want it now?

Don’t worry yet about whether it can become a million-dollar company.

My unexpected sales certainly didn’t. But they did something more useful. They made me pay attention. And sometimes opportunity doesn’t arrive with trumpets and a venture-capital cheque. Sometimes it arrives as two tiny Amazon notifications concerning something you had almost forgotten existed.

You look at them.

You smile.

And then you get to work.

Because an aspirational life after 50 isn’t necessarily about becoming somebody new.

Sometimes it is about finally recognizing the value of the woman you’ve already spent decades becoming.

---

Marion T.D. Lewis is the founder and editor of The Marion Chronicles, an aspirational lifestyle and brand-intelligence platform created with women over 50 in mind. Her newly updated edition of So You Think You Can Be President? is available on Amazon.