Ep155 Transcript: Late Starters’ Wisdom – Quotes to Inspire Your Next Chapter

Andrea Vahl: Hey, late starters. It’s your host, Andrea Vahl and if you have been following this podcast for any length of time, you know how much I love quotes.

In today’s episode, we’re going to put a compilation of some of my favorite quotes from my guests. Enjoy and get inspired.

Intro: Hello, dreamers. Welcome to the late starters club, giving you the inspiration, mindset, and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Andrea Vahl: And that is a perfect segue into your favorite quote. One of your favorite quotes. Why don’t you share that with us?

Michael Stelzner:  If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Albert Einstein.

I love this quote because I think it’s a lot of work to try to convey things in a clear and concise fashion. And I think too many people aren’t willing to do the work. If you can do the work and process and think about how others are going to receive your message and whether it actually makes sense whether it’s coherent, whether it’s focused, whether it’s interesting to your target audience these are really important things. So work on it, practice it, because if you cannot communicate it clearly, you got a lot of work to do.

Gina Schreck: I heard this somewhere and I have it on a board at home next to my coffee maker. So I could see it every day. And it just says “Amor Fati” and it means love your fate.

And I don’t know why that just. I love that saying so much Amor fati instead of complaining about our history, our failures, our rough upbringings whatever love your fate because that built you to be perfectly equipped. It’s prepared you for such a time as this.

Lauea Stack: I use a quote and my email signature. It’s just something I happen to say to somebody randomly one day in an email. I said, “I have to forge ahead, despite my pain, and give some meaning to my loss.”

And she highlighted that cause it was just buried in an entire paragraph. And she said, I think this is really what this is all about, that, it’s healing for me to do this work because I can’t imagine what I’d be doing. But knowing that it changes lives, that it’s saving people, that it’s making a difference is far more important and more valuable than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

Barbara Brooks: So I do have this one. So I do try to give myself a quote and even though that one’s simple, I do a weekly and I just put it on my desk.

Andrea Vahl: Yeah. So we’ll just say what that is.

Barbara Brooks: Oh, sorry.

Andrea Vahl: People might be listening.

Barbara Brooks: Yeah. “Life is so beautiful. Live it, Barbara!”, because I literally want to talk and I don’t refer to myself a third person ever, except for this time, I say this because I have, sadly, I have a friend who’s experiencing a very sad diagnosis. And so I’m remembering to live my life in this moment.

But the one that I say to myself, “Get up, dress up and show up!” so even though I work from home and I also have coworking offices, I try to do those things. I try to put on my face. I put on the clothes I have shoes on, even though again, I’m sitting in my home office. I literally need to do that because that puts me in the right frame of mind and it gets me excited for the day.

Dr. Phil Merry: These are on the front of my book and they are original quotes, which I want to share. The first one is “Open the doors to possibilities that are all around you, hidden in plain view.” we often when we’re looking for solutions go all over the place and actually they’re in front of us.

That’s the first quote. And then the second quote, why I believe synchronicity is so important because “Behind every synchronicity is a miracle waiting to happen.” So in your day, when you are prompted, if you meet somebody or your heart tells you go this way, not this way, don’t ignore it because that’s the synchronicity knocking at your door and behind that synchronicity is a miracle that’s going to open its way for you to lead that sort of life that you’ve been longing to lead.

Jenny Neale: As you mentioned, I’m a pretty diligent person when it comes to training. I am very focused. And I have a quote that I think I picked up somewhere in college. That’s a little bit more of a stick kind of quote where it’s, “Somewhere out there. Your competition is training harder than you and longer than you. And when you meet them head to head, you will lose.”

And I’m like. I want to make the percentage that I’m going to actually meet that person as minimal as possible. Like I want to be that person to my competition. So I always believe in practicing harder than I play.

Kimberley Pember: have a couple, but the one that I tend to lean on the most is the yes theory. At the studio We have “yes, and …” The yes theory is a theory that like, if you don’t ask, you don’t know. Right?

There is a group I think they are on YouTube called the Yes Theory. And this is my son shared it with me. So this is where I got it. It’s a total rip off, but I appreciate you guys because I live by your YouTube channel anyway, so it’s like, finding an agent. If you don’t ask, then you don’t know. If you ask and they tell you no, what have you lost but some time?

But if they tell you yes, it’s a whole new door they just opened.

Lori Crete: So I had one in my twenties and thirties and forties for the longest time, and it’s recently just changed. So I’ll tell you the one looking back was always “She believed that she could. So she did.” And I would go to that when I needed that little bit of motivation.

Just believe in yourself, Lori, just believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter if this person has more than you and knowledge or money. What matters is you believe that you can do this. You can accomplish something.

But talking about that confidence in our fifties, I have a whole new saying and it’s Joan of Arch, “I am not afraid. I was born for this.” And that is my new one that I literally tap back into that when I need that little bit of inspiration or motivation and I guess they go hand in hand. Both of them are really about believing in yourself and feeling like you were born for something. So that’s my favorite little saying now.

Dennis Yu: My favorite quote, which I heard from my pastor and I’ve said it lots of times is “If you don’t quit, you win.” Which is weird because you would think like I’m not smart enough to win. I’m not some crazy genius.

I don’t have the connections. I don’t have the charisma. So I don’t like hitting a home run or scratching the lottery ticket and getting the right numbers like that’s just seems like a really hard thing to do. But one thing I do know is that I’m a stubborn cuss. I will keep at it and I know that I don’t quit.

I don’t see myself as some kind of amazing superstar who just hits home runs all the time.

I see myself as someone who I fail all the time, but I just keep learning. So as long as I keep going, as long as you don’t quit. You win.

Susan Frew: I’ve always loved Les Brown. He’s one of my favorite motivational people. I also love Joel Osteen. Like he’s my Tony Robbins. But Les Brown says, if you can look up, you can get up. And I know that’s really simple, but there were times where I literally was like in the fetal position and I could hear Les Brown in that powerful voice going, so you can look up, you can get up and I just started looking up and that was all one foot in front of the other.

Dierdre Wolownick: I’d wear many hats. I’ve been a writer. I’ve worked in the airlines. I’ve been a publisher. I’ve been a conductor of an orchestra and founder of the orchestra. I’ve done a lot of different things. So they all have different inspiring quotes, but the main one that kind of be applied to anything comes from Isaac Asimov. The grandfather of quality science fiction writing, but he says something like, if a doctor told me I had only six months left to live, I wouldn’t mourn, I would type faster. In other words, go out there and do it. Go do what you want to do. Get it done. Move on to the next thing. Get it done. Don’t stand around lamenting just go do it. And I think it was Nora Roberts. This is a very telling piece of advice. You can’t fix a blank page. You gotta write something. Just sit down and write it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about doing it.

Join clubs. Join this. Just sit down and write it. And that applies anything you wanna to learn to climb. Don’t spend your life looking online at how to climb and then it’s go climb. You wanna get healthier. Go visit Mother Nature. The source of all health. It’s so simple.

Tanya Smith: It’s the mantra that I told myself when I first started doing video and it was the reason behind it. It’s what keeps me propelled. It’s what happens or what I say to myself when I see trolls and people that are trying to keep me and prevent me from doing what I know I’m supposed to do.

The statement that I tell myself. And now I get to speak this life into other women is “When you do the things that others won’t, you get the opportunities that others don’t.” So I knew that doing video was going to be something a lot of people won’t do. And I knew that it would open up, or I suspected that it would open up doors that I had not had yet been privy to be able to open, and it did just that. So I feel like we have opportunities, especially as we get older, to open more doors, to adapt, right? To be able to be open to the experiences that can come, even when other people are saying, no, I’m not going to do that. We have the chance now to make a decision about being more brave, experience the gifts and the rewards that come from that bravery.

Jim Fuhs: One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Braveheart. And I don’t, like I said, I don’t know if William Wallace actually said it, but to me it’s pretty deep and it’s every man dies, but not every man really lives. I think it applies to all people. I know he says men, but also women, when we look at our lives are we really living life?

Or do we get caught into the rut, right? All that work in the nine to five job and they’re just, they’re working and they’re working and they’re working and then they retire. And then the sad thing is you see a lot of times there’s even a statistic too, that like military folks that do 30 years, a lot of them don’t live that long after they retire because it’s, that was their whole life.

Wow. Because I got so focused. And I think that’s probably true as well with folks like I even noticed to me when my parents retired because they didn’t really necessarily have a lot of hobbies, I could definitely see where that took away from that vitality. So I think living every day to the fullest, don’t dwell on your past. Can’t change that.

Heather Lutze: I’m a huge fan of Coco Chanel. And one of her sayings is “You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.”

Jessica Kupferman: I have two actually two female comedian quotes. The first one is Lucille Ball and her quote is, “I’m not funny. What I am is brave.” And I thought, how true is that? Because yeah, anybody can write a joke, right? But not everyone can stand up there and tell them. And then my second quote is Joan Rivers, actually, who said “I made my living saying what everyone else is thinking.” And people tell me that I do that all the time.

Andrea Vahl: You just say it. You just say it. If anyone wants like an honest opinion, just talk to Jess. She’s she will lay it out there for you.

Jessica Kupferman: Even with a compliment sandwich. I will lay it out for you. That’s it. Yeah. But I’ll lay it out for you. Yeah. So I love that because. It’s it’s my aspiration is to make my living saying what other people are thinking like she is the master of doing that, but I would like to incorporate that more. I think.

Sigrun Gudjonsdottir: When I was actually only 10 months into my business, I’m finally figuring this thing out. One of the people I talked to was on the TEDx board in Zurich and invited me to speak. And as I was preparing my talk, I also wanted to have a quote and my talk was very much about having a vision, following your dreams, and I found this beautiful quote by Oprah. “You’ve got to follow your passion. You’ve got to figure out what you love, who you really are, and have the courage to do that.”

Mark Schaefer: here’s the quote that had a huge impact on my career in my life and it was from Peter Drucker. When I was in graduate school, he would teach in the Harvard case study method. We’d have these complex problems. We’d have to try to figure out how do we get out of these situations.

And he would say, “A great leader doesn’t need to have all the right answers. A great leader needs to have the right questions.”

And that has guided me. That has completely formed my consulting style. I think that’s why a lot of people think I’m humble because I honor people. Everybody is an expert in their own way.

I don’t tell people what to do, but I listen and I ask the right questions. And what I find is when I ask the right questions, people usually already know the answers. They’re just not listening to themselves. So that, that has been a powerful influence on my style, on my writing and on my consulting.

Suzanne Blons: So my favorite quote, since I came out here, I actually have it next to my computer on a little sticky note. Cause I’m like sticky note girl. It’s, “How good can it get?”

So, if I get down, I think, wait a minute. How good can it get? And it just takes you to another place. And the book I got it from is this one. It’s called reality shifters guide to high energy money. This was a guest on one of the shows I worked on Cynthia Sue Larson wrote this. And that’s her quote throughout the book is how good can it get?

If you can imagine it, you can create it. So go there. So I, I do that all the time is how good can it get? Oh my gosh, it can get even better and allowing that, I think sometimes we have a resistance to goodness. Like we don’t feel worthy. We don’t feel like we deserve it. That’s been a big thing for me to overcome is I just actually just deserve and not in an entitled way, but in yeah I’ve paid my dues in life. Like I deserve. So how good can it get?

Tina Brandau: I actually have one that is from an author. Her name is Hillary DePiano, as I said it correctly.

“We all get the exact same 365 days. The only difference is what we do with them.”

Julie Cairns: I have one and it is from Rumi and let me just give it a bit of context quickly, if you don’t mind, because when it comes to the question of how can I get wealthy?

The most automatic response is I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that and I’m going to do the other thing, right? People go to knowledge or I need to learn this or learn that, right? So they go to knowledge and action. Instead of going to, what do I need to change in my belief system so that I can do things more easily so that I can have better flow so that I can be more congruent with my goals and not sabotage them.

It’s not natural to go to, it’s not what I need to do differently. It’s what I need to believe differently. And that is the core message. So this quote sums that up. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

Alisa DiLorenzo: This is one that we post from time to time up on our Instagram and it says “If her bra and her panties match, it wasn’t you who decided to have sex.”

Andrea Vahl: I love that. So great!

Tony DiLorenzo: And mine is “Be intentional and take action.” And it’s something that we have shared. Be intentional, no matter if it’s in your marriage, in your business, wherever it may be . You gotta be intentional and then you gotta take action ’cause without action, we’re just gonna sit in the same spot.

Phyllis Khare: There’s one that I really like a lot and it’s, “Life is what we make it. Always has been always will be.” – Grandma Moses.

Grandma moses was a very famous americana painter. She didn’t start painting until she was 78. Oh my gosh 78 and she’s an icon Of the in the painting world for this particular genre. So I just think it’s great and that whole thing is life is what we make it. Always has been. Always will be.

Jolene Park: I want to share from a coach that I had a couple of years ago that, that it’s such a great reflection that I go back to at least once a year, sometimes a couple of times a year, but her question to me was. What are you not doing that you want to be doing? And that question moved me across the country, moved my business, moved everything.

And then the other quote from Anaïs Nin. I always have a hard time with her name, but I’ve always liked this “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” And to bloom.

Mira Canion: So a friend of mine who was helping me out many years ago, back in college, gave me this quote from a movie and I use it and it fits into what I was telling you about the assumptions that people make about me.

So here it goes. “You could never fall flat on your face if you’re bending over backwards. To help somebody out.”

David Otey: I think a quote that has meant a lot to me appalled me the first time I heard it.

I thought that can’t be right. It’s the quote by Albert Einstein that says, “Imagination is ,more important than knowledge.” And when I first encountered that I was at a stage in my life where, I put a lot of stock in my knowledge. I thought that the value I brought to what I was doing was having a lot of answers.

And later I came to realize. That often the most valuable person in the room is not the one with all the answers. It’s the one who’s making sure we’re asking the right questions.

And so I’ll share a longer version of that quote with you from Albert Einstein, because I really love this quote now. I’ve come to embrace it.

He said, imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be, to know and understand. And I love that because I feel like I’m on a journey of learning to embrace more things, more knowledge of myself, more knowledge of the world and more knowledge of how my interacting with people in the world can make a difference.

Saundra Boyd: My favorite quote at this point in my life is by a writer. Her name is Audrey Lorde and it says, “Self care is not about self indulgence. It’s about self preservation.”

The reason it resonates with me is because a lot of times when you hear people talk about self care, they talk about getting their nails done, or getting a massage, or going shopping. And those things are awesome. I love those things too.

But when you think about this quote, it says self care is about self preservation. Preservation means keeping something alive. It means preventing decay. And so, getting a massage and a manicure and all that, it’s not going to keep you alive.

Mary Barbera: So I have two, so can I give you two?

Andrea Vahl: Yes, two is good.

Mary Barbera: One of them is, oh, actually I’ll give you three.

Andrea Vahl: Okay. Bonus.

Mary Barbera: Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. That’s one.

Choose the hills you will die on carefully.

And the third one is better done than perfect. I am not a perfectionist, thank God. And so I think I’ve heard people talk about B minus work, B plus work. People need your work, so get out there.

I heard James Wedmore say this once is. Your people are out there drowning and they need your work and they don’t have time for you to build a yacht. So you get in the rickety rowboat and go out there. They will be so happy to see you. And so let’s go get in our rowboats and go get them.

Sandra Angelo\: I just came across, I can’t, I must have been living under a rock because I’d never heard of her before. But Jamie Kern, and I can’t remember her last name, but

Andrea Vahl: Oh yeah, Lima

Sandra Angelo\: One of the things that she said really resonated with me, and I’m not gonna get this exactly right, but it was something like “Rejection is God’s protection.”

And I would add the word. And “Rejection is God’s direction” because when you’re told no, it’s God sending you in the right direction. So don’t get upset.

When you hear no, and then the next quote that comes from me and I’m, I haven’t memorized it. This is my own quote and I haven’t memorized it yet, but during the time that I went through the fire aftermath, I had to change who I am because you have to change who you are before you can grow and become bigger.

You have to be bigger so that you can serve in a different way.

Kwadwo: So one that I heard in the past three months, and I’ll just read it from my notes for you. It says, we have to learn to let our work, work on us until we become the person for whom it can work. Don’t play at your work, work your work. We have to let our work work on us because We’re going to work regardless, right? Either we’re going to work and we’re going to have success or we’re going to work and we’re going to have failure. But if we don’t let that failure work on us and sort of work away or work out the things that need to be worked out so that we can be successful at the thing we were meant to be successful at.

Then we’ve wasted that failure, right? So don’t play at the work, work the work either way. It’s good work.

Lori Bush: My very favorite quote is by the late Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes Fame. And it’s that everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the growth and happiness occurs while you’re climbing it. And that’s really what happiness is about. It’s about the experiences.

And the other thing I always want people to keep in mind, and there’s been a lot of studies on this. Sean Aker, who wrote The Happiness Advantage, has pointed out that happiness is more likely to lead to success than success is to lead to happiness. And so that’s why I love that quote so much.

Sarah Scott: And the other quote I really love that I don’t actually know who said it, but I wrote it down cause I really loved it was create the story that you want to live. And I think that even now, like in this phase of my life where that’s really what I’m trying to focus mostly on is. Not letting everybody else dictate who I am, what I’m doing.

I don’t want to find myself in that position again, where my whole identity is wrapped up into one piece of my life. I want to make sure that I am writing the story, that I’m doing the things that I love, the things that are challenging, and maybe even the things that scare me once in a while, because I want to have a story that’s worth telling.

I want my kids to know that there’s something worth talking about with their mother and if nothing else, that I have interesting things to talk about to other people. So that’s where I love that particular quote as well.

Okay. And so our last and final question as always. So you have gotten more than your fair share of favorite quotes, but what is your favorite quote? What is your motivational saying that keeps you going when times get tough?

Andrea Vahl: So I have a couple of favorite quotes. One is shorter from Abraham Lincoln, let no feelings of discouragement prey upon you. And in the end you are sure to succeed. And I love that because I love the idea of the feelings preying upon you there you know, discouragement is the enemy. You can just keep going and you’re going to succeed.

The other one I love is from Theodore Roosevelt. It is far better, it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory or defeat. And I think that for me is about just getting out there and trying. And there have been plenty of failures that I have had that it just didn’t go right.

I’ve launched courses that just took crickets. I’ve put things out there. I’ve thought, Oh my God, I’ve taken it too personally. What it’s about is just continuing to get out there and try things and put things out there and not worry and not be tied to that outcome and to say, this life is one big experiment, right?

We’re out there in their arena doing things and not just sitting watching other people.

outro: Hope that was helpful and make sure you grab the free guide top tools for late starters on the website at late starters club. com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.