How To Navigate The Dichotomy Of Age

There’s a weird phenomenon I experienced recently that I now refer to as the Dichotomy of Age. And it may be affecting you, too.

First off, let’s take a quick detour to the dictionary to wrap our heads around that fun word, dichotomy.

Basically, a dichotomy is “a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.”

So what’s the Dichotomy of Age, then?

Basically, I went through this weird phase not too long ago where seemingly overnight, I jumped from feeling too young to suddenly feeling too old.

A couple of you just laughed with me, am I right?

While talking to a friend and fellow high performance coach, Basia, I was telling her about this concept and shared a conversation I had with one of my mentors a couple years ago which kickstarted the whole thing.

See, I was telling my mentor what I wanted to do with my business but that I didn’t quite feel old enough to do it yet. I had this fear that I would be perceived as just another twenty-something calling themselves a coach.

(Hands up if you’ve ever felt too young to do what you wanna do!)

Anyway, as all good mentors do, he completely called me out with some tough love:

“Dude, you’re not f**king young. You’re talking like you’re 21, but you’re not.”

He went on to rightfully point out that I had more life experience by the end of my twenties than most people who are double my age.

But here’s where things get really weird.

Not long after that conversation, I started noticing that a lot of the online entrepreneurs I admired were actually younger than me!

Thanks, Reticular Activating System…

And when that started to happen, guess what Bryan’s mind started to think? Yup, you guessed it:

“You’re too old to start now. You’ve missed your chance. Too many people are already doing what you wanna do.”

The Dichotomy of Age. It’ll get ya. 

Side note: I sometimes wish we didn’t know our ages at all, because all it does is make people feel like they’re not where they should be by a specific point. 

Here’s the thing…

There will always be people younger than you and older than you who are doing what you want to do. That doesn’t mean you can no longer do it.

In fact, you should be more worried if no one else is doing it, because that usually means there’s no demand. If there’s competition, it means people want what you have.

And, you might be the exact teacher they’ve been looking for.

The best part about that?

They don’t give a damn how old you are.