If not me, then who? If not now, then when?
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” – Martha Graham
After our grandchildren went back home and after I’d done the ‘destiny’ exercise with them, I was left feeling very out of sorts. I’d had over 30 years of a very successful career speaking at conferences on all manner of HR topics. Inevitably people would stay behind after my sessions and ask me to help them with in-house issues. I earned a very nice living; I got to travel all over New Zealand, occasionally to Australia, and had even spoken at conferences in Hong Kong, Singapore and Belgium.
And then I wrote a book about Donald Trump (withdrawn).
Almost overnight my phone stopped ringing; four conferences were cancelled and my income vanished. I was stunned. I was writing about an appalling leader; a liar and a bully, and no-one wanted to know. Left with no work and no income, I wrote the second book about Leaders Behaving Badly, a follow-on from the Trump book, but also a book about people who were standing up to him and leaders like him. Not a lot changed; I did find a bit of work with a couple of my older clients, but I had certainly hit a brick wall both work-wise and financially.
I pondered my age; I was no longer a spring chicken. Perhaps potential clients were viewing me as old and possibly past it. I began the usual self-talk of ‘time to slow down and ‘time to accept the fact that you are over the hill’. And then I did the destiny exercise with our grandchildren. You see, I’m an 11. One of those master numbers. I’ve always felt I was here to do something powerful. I thought for years that nursing people was my ‘calling’ — that didn’t work out, so clearly that was not my destiny.
After joining the Women’s Royal Navy I had a ball; I had no regrets about the change of career. I chugged along, got married, had my children, started a speaking career, set up my own business. Life was good. However, for several years I had been feeling unsettled and I had no idea why. I put it down to age; I blamed the economy; I kept doing everything I’d always done, but brick walls seemed to be everywhere.
Being reminded of my destiny number being 11 was actually a giant wake-up call.
I started having what I describe as ‘funny little dreams’. I’ve had them all my life, mostly the ordinary clearing-type dreams that everyone has, but every now and again I would have a dream that would literally wake me up, and strangely enough when having one of these funny little dreams, I always seem to wake at 3.33 or 4.44.
Within a couple of weeks of our grandchildren leaving I had the first of several dreams. The first was a dream where I was actually watching myself trying to hack my way through a really thick hedge with very blunt shears. I’m part of a woman’s group and I jokingly told them about my dream and of course, as women do, one of my female friends asked me what I thought the dream was about. I confessed I wasn’t sure, but thought it was probably to do with this unsettled feeling I’d been having — basically trying to go forward when nothing seemed to be working out. Mmmm.
In my second dream a few days later, I was driving my car the wrong way down a road. Interpretation, I was going the wrong way in my life? And my third dream literally the very next night found me in my car yet again, driving down the wrong road, only this time I got out of the car, looked around and over to my left I saw the road I needed to be on.
I’d been working with mostly male leaders for all of my life. My unsettledness was actually my frustration that they just weren’t ‘getting’ what I was trying to teach them. In my humble opinion, they too were on the wrong road; this endless quest for profits frustrated me, and when their solution to everything was cut costs by laying people and the savings in wages and salaries would make the bottom line healthier.
For now!
Very few companies really live their values; they espouse them, they put them on a brass plaque on the wall in reception, but when push comes to shove and they’ve had a bad quarter, it becomes sell all the rubbish you can because we need to make our quarterly results look good. And I was getting increasingly disheartened with this thinking.
So reminding myself that I am an 11, admittedly a very old 11; having the conversation with my lovely neighbour about Gladys Aylward and her heroism; watching all the amazing women right now who are saying ‘Enough!’, feeling in my bones that what is happening isn’t right, that we’ve lost the plot, is what got me right here, writing this book about women and for women.
If you’ve been reading this book thinking you are too old to pick up on any of the challenges I’ve put in front of you, please think again.
In the UK, USA and EU alone, 6.5 million over 50s are unemployed. According to The Age and Employment Network, ‘If you become unemployed in your 50s and remain unemployed for more than a year, you are more likely to die or start drawing your pension than ever get a job again.’ How depressing is that? What a tragic waste of talent, knowledge and experience.
As humans we are designed to live for 120 years, so 45 isn’t even halfway through our life span. I know some 70-year-olds who have more passion and energy than many 18-year-olds. Yet companies tend to recruit the 18-year-olds over older workers, even knowing that young people have no life experience and may even arrive with that ‘you owe me’ attitude so many young people seem to have these days.
I’d like to start a revolution around rethinking ‘age’.
Organisations need to re-evaluate their negativity to older workers and factor in all their wonderful experience. Can an 18-year-old manage a team or a project? Can you send them out to chat to angry customers? Can you safely trust them to manage a budget? And do we really want a society where all these amazing older people are languishing on benefits at the most productive times of their lives?
Sadly, a lot of older workers quietly slip into what I call ‘quit and stay’ mode — the body shows up each day to do their job but the heart, soul and passion are elsewhere. Sooner or later that kind of thinking takes a toll: it takes a toll on their health and it takes a toll on their boss’s perception of them as being ‘dead wood’.
So to the 45/50-year-olds, male and female, reading this, here are my thoughts:
- Volunteer for anything and everything.
- Develop a ‘pick me’ attitude.
- Be totally on top of technology.
- Get those five-year goals sorted and work towards them every day of your life.
- Work out what your real passion in life is and if need be, turn that into your very own business because if you own your own business, no-one (except your bank manager) can ever make you redundant again.
- Buy a franchise with your redundancy money. It may not be your long-term desire but you will be taught how to run a business and given the coaching and mentoring required to make your business successful. Then you will be ready to start your own business.
- Start a gathering of like-minded people who want to tackle an issue no matter how small.
If ever there was a group or tribe that could pick up the reins of some of the social issues we are facing and make a difference, it is this group. We’re older and more mature. We’ve seen and survived all manner of crises; we’re a group that can absolutely start a revolution. Ask a few people to join you for a coffee and see if whatever is concerning you concerns them. See if you can start your own small group of change makers.
Don’t ever give up hope. Believe in yourself and others will believe in you, because you really are never too old and it really is never too late.
“I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” – Helen Keller