So often, people place time limits on their ability to change their lives as they age. The truth is, reboots can happen all the way until the end. Whether it’s finding new love in your 90s or starting a new business in your 50s, anything is possible regardless of age.
Helping to illustrate this is a 59-year-old man named Richard. In a Reel posted to Facebook, he was asked the following question by William Rossy, who goes by Sprouht on social media: “What is the one thing that you put a lot of importance on when you were younger, and as you got older, you realized wasn’t actually that important?”
Richard pauses for a few seconds, truly taking in the question. His answers are thoughtful and concise. In retrospect, while there were things he wished he had changed earlier, he found it was never too late.
Rossy explains that Richard is about as “low-key” as they come, offering advice that could easily help everyday people. He writes in the clip’s description:
“Richard spent decades working a day job, retired in his 50s, and started his own business shortly thereafter. He went from living in poverty to making ends meet, raising a family, going through a divorce, and finally finding happiness with his current wife plus a side business that he built fully online.”
Mistakes, regrets, and secrets
Rossy introduces the viewer to the central premise of the video: “I’ll be asking a 59-year-old about biggest mistakes, most painful regrets, and secrets to living a more fulfilling life.” He also reiterates that while many guests on his show tend to be high-profile, Richard isn’t: “He’s a small-town guy who worked a corporate job for decades, decided to retire a few years ago, and soon after realized he needed to do a little bit more to live out the rest of his life on his own terms. And he did.”
Richard, after being asked what it feels like to be 59, shares that “it’s a lot of life behind me. But I like to look forward rather than back.” As he approaches his 60th trip around the sun, Richard notes that “it’s just a number” and that, fittingly, his new business is called “Kid for Life,” which reflects what he wants for his customers.
Positive mindset
But how did Richard arrive at the life he now leads? It started with a positive mindset.
“Every single day you get out of bed, you can choose to get out on the left side or the right side. And I choose to get out on the right side. I think it’s a choice,” he says. “I think things in life happen to people that bring them down and put them into a negative mindset. But I think every single day, it’s a choice how you want to proceed with the day.”
Richard describes a simple childhood filled with love and freedom. But that doesn’t mean those things can’t still exist today. “I think a lot of older people get this jaded view that things are getting worse,” he says. “I think in a lot of ways, things are getting better. The technology we have, a lot of older people get scared by it. I like it. I like embracing it and learning about it.”
His parents gave him invaluable advice as a child that later helped him reinvent his life: “They said you could do anything if you put your mind to it. They raised a household with a lot of love and they worked hard for all of us. And that actually passed down to my brother and my sister and me.”
“Just don’t get stuck”
He encourages even those who didn’t have as inspiring an upbringing as he did.
“Work hard at it. Just don’t get stuck, or get ‘unstuck’ from what you’re doing,” he says. “For anybody to be stuck in a job they don’t like, I would just say go looking for something that you do love. And you love to do it, day in and day out, and it’s no longer work when you do that.”
Richard did this for himself. He explains that because of his math skills, he settled into a successful career as an actuary. But when he retired, he didn’t feel he had fully accomplished his dreams.
“I always had a dream of starting my own business. And so I did!” he says. “Honestly, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have quit and started my own business a little sooner. It takes courage to do it. And looking back, I would say I didn’t have the courage to just up and quit and start my own business.”
So Richard took the bull by the horns. He wanted to travel and work for himself, so he made a career out of it: “My wife and I had the goal of traveling, and have been blessed to do a lot of that. And when we’d come back, we’d create designs on T-shirts. And the beautiful thing about it is we could take that business anywhere. We sell mainly through Etsy. Our store is called ‘Kid for Life Designs.’”
“Humility file”
He jokes that when he looks back at the T-shirt designs, he isn’t impressed, but that didn’t stop him from pushing onward: “They were just downright terrible. I call it my ‘humility file.’ Whenever I’m feeling too good about myself, I go back to that folder. If you’re not selling something you’re passionate about, it’s not gonna work.”
When Rossy asks if that mantra applies to life in general, Richard believes it absolutely does:
“I live by a principle to make other people happy. I mean that’s pretty fulfilling. For them and for me. I was so lucky and blessed to have the support of my wife and my family through it all. No one ever told me I couldn’t do it. I think that’s a nice thing when you’ve surrounded yourself with people who aren’t negative. To me, a person can work hard, but there’s no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. It takes a community. It takes a lot of love and support.”
It’s here that Rossy asks what differentiates Richard’s first marriage from his second. Richard places much of the responsibility on himself:
“A lot of it falls on me. When you’re young, I think you have a lot of pride. You have a lot of selfishness that you carry around with you. As I look back, I wouldn’t have been as prideful and as selfish. And we all carry that around our whole lives. We have one person to live with for sure, and that’s us. As you get older, I think you work through some of that stuff. You look for ways as you wake up every morning to give a little to your spouse and your family, as opposed to ‘What am I gonna do for me today?’”
“Love is a choice”
When asked to define love, as Rossy often does, Richard is clear: “Love is a choice that you make every single day. It’s not a feeling. It’s not an emotion. I think the world, the secular view of that, is that it is. But every single day, I choose the way I want to treat somebody. With love and kindness…or not.”
When asked what he placed importance on when he was younger that now seems less important, Richard says, “I think everybody worries about what people think of them. And as you get older, you do care less about that. It doesn’t have as big of an impact on you.”
While he admits that it’s usually impossible not to care about what some people think, he adds that it’s important to differentiate what truly matters: “When you’re younger, I think you care about what the wrong people think.”
Rossy asks Richard to read aloud the one piece of life advice he had written earlier in a journaling session. He reads: “Look forward in life, not backward. And stay positive. When you look back, you overanalyze. You spend too much time thinking about the past. Throw yourself into what you’re passionate about. Do that day in and day out, and all of a sudden, that past is history. It gets lost.”
Starting over
It’s that mindset that can make it possible for nearly anyone to make even slight changes as they age. In the piece “How to Start Life Over at 50,” Maggie Wooll notes, “It’s important to remember that starting over in life will look different for everyone depending on their situation. You may be embarking on a new career path while a friend of yours is packing to move to a new continent.”
Self-reflection, honesty about regrets, journaling, meditating, and taking a good, hard look at your finances are among the suggestions she makes for changing your life. She emphasizes that even small changes matter:
“You can’t reach a new destination without a road map. To create a new life, you’ll need to build new habits. Developing healthy habits, like managing new job anxiety with more exercise or making plans with your family to unwind in your free time, will help you stay on your planned course.
Identify your passions, strengths, and weaknesses and how they might fit into a new routine. Befriend people doing what you want to do, and look for job opportunities that match your skills and desired lifestyle. Bask in the challenges ahead because they are what makes life thrilling.”
