Am I too old to start a business?
No. You are not too old. And I will go one further: the years you are worried about are the best thing you have got.
Let me show you why, with a snooker table.
The white ball is you. The triangle of reds is everything you still want to do. The line between them is the work it takes to get there. I call those three things Origin, Mission and Vision. Where you start, the route you take, where you are headed.
Now, the thing people forget about getting older is this. It means you have already broken the pack hundreds of times.
This is not your first break
Every job, every idea, every time you started something, that was a shot. Some went in. Some missed. But every single one taught you something, and every single one became part of your story. That pile of shots is your origin, and a twenty-two year old simply does not have it. You do. That is not a disadvantage. That is the advantage.
We pile so much pressure on the next move, telling ourselves it has to be the big one. It does not. What is your vision today will quietly become your origin tomorrow, and one day you will look back and talk about the mission it took to get there. You are not standing nervously at the start. You are mid-game, and you have more shots behind you than most.
What Ronaldo can teach you
I read the other day that Cristiano Ronaldo has missed more penalties than almost any player in the history of the game. One of the greatest to ever do it, and he has missed more than most.
So why is he a legend? Because he kept taking the shot, for years. He wrote his story a few magic moments at a time, and the misses are part of that story, not the opposite of it. You miss one hundred percent of the shots you never take, and the magic only ever comes to the people who keep stepping up to the table. Starting later just means you have had longer to learn how to line one up.
It is not about thrashing
There is a trap for the late starter, and it is this: you think you have to rush, so you thrash.
But no sport rewards thrashing. There is no game on earth where you smash the white as hard as you can and the harder you hit it, the better it goes. Golf, tennis, football, snooker. The winners set up, stay calm, and take the shot well. You do not need to make up for lost time by working yourself into the ground. You need to line it up.
So where do you actually start?
With the thing that keeps repeating.
What problem do you keep coming back to? What were you put here to solve? Look at your past breaks. What worked? What did not? What did you learn that someone coming up behind you would love to know? That is your origin, it is already done, and the older you are, the richer it is.
From pool to snooker
One last thing. When you move up, the game gets harder. Go from pool to snooker and the table looks massive, the pockets shrink, everything feels further away. It is a more technical game.
You can work it out on your own, in time. But a good coach gets you there quicker, and saves you a lot of missed shots along the way.
That is really all Finally Surface is. Someone to line up the shot with you, so you stop thrashing and start potting.
You are not too old. You are mid-game, with more breaks behind you than most. Now take the next one.
Come and line it up at finallysurface.com.
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