Ep90 Transcript: The Risk of Staying Inside a Mistake – Top Takeways from Kathleen Adams

Andrea Vahl: What is the risk of staying inside a mistake? In episode 89, I interviewed Kathleen Adams, who started her new business in her fifties and chose a platform for her business that she was going to run it on. Found out that it was a mistake, and in this interview we dove into how to deal with moving through that mistake. Pushing through and choosing something different. But I think there is more that I want to dive into in this episode of top takeaways.

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When you make a commitment to something, it feels easier to stay inside that commitment rather than go through all the pain and heartache of moving into something new. In episode 89, Kathleen talked about the software she chose for her new business, this platform she chose. They had invested a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of work, into getting this platform up and running, and she realized it was a mistake.

But I think there are so many things that we do that are related to this, whether it be a job, a marriage, a business venture, a partnership, a decision that we’ve made on where to live even, and we realize that that might be a mistake.

We’ve made a commitment to that and it feels risky to move into something else. There’s inertia. There’s all the things that we’ve done to get settled in that. And there’s all these unknowns on the other side of it. Will it actually be better? And how do I really know that it’s going to be an improvement? But at the same time, you can’t sit and stay in that mistake.

And I think even at this time of our lives, there are different pieces that we have to unpack with that. We might weigh how long we’ve been committed in that marriage, we might weigh how much we’ve worked on a marriage or a job or a business venture. And it’s really hard to know. And as Kathleen talked about, she really leaned on the communities she was a part of and talked through some of the things with her community, realized that she could move through it, move forward.

It was going to be painful as any change always is. Change is painful. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it. And what is the risk of not making that change of staying in that mistake? It’s regret. Regret is the biggest risk. And I, for one, definitely do not want to get to the end of my life having regrets about what I should have done much, much earlier.

And so if you are feeling like you are doing a gut check. Maybe you checked with your communities and really realizing that something in your life is not right, it’s not, it’s a mistake. Then it might be time to start making that move and realize that there is going to be pain with it and you’re going to be able to push through. You’re going to have your communities that you can lean on during that time.

The other thing that Kathleen talked about that I really liked was really just kind of acknowledging that, yes, we are getting older, but we don’t have to be old, whatever that might mean to you. I was actually talking to a friend that we’ve got this label around old, we’ve got a lot of baggage around the term old.

And yeah, we are old in age, but for sure we don’t have to be old in attitude. We don’t have to be old in mind. And it’s really about just embracing the fact that we can be young in our approach to life. And I think that’s the best way to be, to have that beginner mind, have that willingness to fail, having that willingness to be curious about life and open ourselves up to new experiences.

So those were some of my top takeaways from Kathleen’s episode. Definitely dive in and listen to that if you haven’t already.

Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide, Top Tools for Late Starters on the website at latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.