Old dog — new tricks?

An excerpt from my latest writing project — destined to be a course on Teachable.

“People around my kind of age, in their 50s, can feel they are too set in their ways to make any new and potentially big changes.

Sometimes we feel that we are just too old, we want to be slowing down rather than starting new stuff — pretty soon we are getting ourselves gloomy and depressed and dragging in to work again…

Here is the good news, ‘set in your ways’ is just a thought, a feeling. It is not really true that at a specific age that your brain locks down and change becomes impossible. Being ‘set in your ways’ only lasts as long as the thought does. We keep such thoughts alive by practice and then confirming their truth by looking back at our history.

See, I’ve always been that way… told you. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

As soon as you let that thought of, ‘set in my ways’, pass, it allows space for new thought.
The new thought might be a little playful…

…might have a little more zest.

Might have a little, ‘what if’.

Well what if I blocked out twenty minutes a day to learn new vocabulary, or to practice a card trick, to do some yoga, read about nutrition — the choice is endless;

Well after a while of twenty minutes a day, you are going to have a larger active vocabulary, or be showing your card trick to friends.

Wow! I didn’t know you could do magic!

And you can, step by step.

Old dog with a new trick — who could have figured! “

Any thoughts, comments?