Episode 15: Starting Law School At 50: Proof It’s Not Too Late, with our Guest Ron Mayer
In this episode, Brent and Rob sit down with longtime friend and guest Ron Mayer to explore what reinvention really looks like in midlife. Ron shares his remarkable journey—from college football and Division I basketball refereeing to financial services, building a successful barbershop business, and ultimately starting law school at age 50. Along the way, they talk openly about doubt, identity shifts, and the courage it takes to move toward something meaningful rather than running away from what no longer fits. This conversation is for anyone wondering if it’s too late—and looking for proof that it’s not.
Links, resources, books mentioned:
How to Think Like Einstein - Scott D. Thorpe
Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
(This post includes affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links—at no extra cost to you.)
Topics we are covering in this episode:
Life can go down many different paths.
You can pivot at any point in life.
Early experiences shape our willingness to explore new paths.
It's important to move towards something meaningful.
Managing doubt is crucial during transitions.
Self-reflection helps in navigating career changes.
Trust yourself and your decision-making process.
Engaging with others can alleviate feelings of loneliness.
Identifying limiting beliefs is key to personal growth.
You have the power to write your own story.
Transcript:
Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.
Lena: What if 50 was just the beginning? What if the script you've been following is overdue for a rewrite? Today on Midlife Circus, Brent and Rob sit down with longtime friend Ron Mayer, who decided that his next great act was law school at 50. From college football to finance, barbershops to the courtroom, Ron's story proves that reinvention isn't reckless. It's possible.
This episode is about courage, curiosity, and refusing to let age decide what's next. Before we begin, remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Let's dive in to starting law school at 50, proof it's not too late.
Brent: We have a special guest today. So for background purposes, Ron and I actually went to college together at CU Boulder, and we're also fraternity brothers and roommates. And why we bring Ron into the conversation today is his life reads like a story, a case study on reinvention. Ron and I have known each other for so long, so I've got to see the different paths that he's taken. So in college, he was on the football team.
Back then, we were national champions. Congrats, Ron. And after college, he built a career in finance. And then he was a men's basketball referee, division one. Later, he created a successful barbershop concept that became a staple in Kansas City.
You know, I forgot to mention, he's done a few things in between those main highlights. In true fashion for Ron, a few years ago, he decided to take a pause on everything. Think about his next great act. And at the age of 50, he decided to go to law school. That was his next great act.
He graduated, he excelled, and now he's stepping into the public sector as an attorney. So his path proves that wherever you are in life, at any point in time, you can pivot, you can make a change. So to kick things off, Ron, before the age of 20, how many jobs did you have and which one was your favorite?
Ron: Okay, real quick. Let me level set this so that you can appreciate the number that I'm going to give you here, why it's that number. My parents got divorced when I was about six, and we moved in with my grandparents. And my grandparents were depression era individuals, and so there was no sitting around. There was no watching TV.
So my grandfather, at about eight, realized that I would be a very good helper with all of his construction projects. And what he impressed upon me at the same time is that if you help, you get paid. And so I started earning money at about eight. And I remember him taking me down to the local savings and loan company. He opened an account for me.
We deposited my first $100 In the feel of that, they put them on little books back then so you could see the balance. And every time you made a deposit, they run the book through it, and then it would change your amount. And to see that number was intoxicating to me. And it started this process where I learned if I do something for somebody that's valuable, they're going to give me money. It gave me a telescope almost looking for other opportunities.
And at twelve, the neighbor across the street had a paper route that they were retiring from because they were graduating from high school, and I took it over. So my first official job was at 12 and then I held a job every year, a different one every year until I was 21, sometimes two jobs that year. So before the age of 21, 12 jobs, something like that. My favorite one was probably my college, one of my college jobs. I was a bar back, and that was the best because it was money, but it was a nightlife, and it gave me access to cute girls.
Brent: So, Ron, before we jump into some of the reinvention stories, I have to ask you a question because I don't know if the two of you know this, but you have a commonality. In the intro, I mentioned that you were a division one basketball referee. The way you've described it to me in the past is it almost establishes some of your framework for who you are today and why you chose to do that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I don't know any other division one basketball referees.
Ron: Yeah, I had just graduated college and the job that I was going to take in the financial sector wasn't to start for six months. So this was the beginning of the summer job wasn't starting until January and I needed to do something. I needed to make a little bit of money, but I really just needed to do something. And so I got in the newspaper, started looking around, and the job was to be a referee for a men's rec league. And I thought to myself, okay, I've never done this, but one, I'm going to be able to make a little bit of money of it out of it.
Two, it'll keep me physically engaged running up and down the court. Three, I'll learn something new. And then fourth, it was a community. I liked that athletic competitive environment community. And so I did it.
I learned. I realized I could not completely screw a game up in the beginning. And so then that led to asking more questions. I found out you could actually get into the high school system and become a sanctioned referee. So I did that in Denver over the next couple of years.
I made my way up from JV to varsity. And I was working varsity conference games, and before I know it knew it, I had a state tournament game. And then I had learned some other stuff about how to leapfrog in particular endeavors that we do. And one of the ways to do that is move to a new location. That new location didn't see you learning.
It didn't see you when you were a baby messing everything up. You just sort of show up, and you've got these credentials. And they give you the benefit of the doubt. And that was a time frame when we moved to Kansas City. And Kansas City is the heart of basketball, Lawrence, Kansas.
So I had an opportunity to try out for a college conference. And they couldn't tell I didn't know anything. They thought I looked professional and I made the right calls at the right time. And before you knew it, I got Division three games, then Division two. And at about ten years into it, I was working with division one in a couple of different division one conferences.
Brent: I love that. It's fun to see the journey because you start out at such a low level. And I actually like how you described when you went to a new location. And that often happens in life. When you change kind of proximity or industry, they don't know you from anybody else.
And so you can showcase your skills and all your mistakes that you may have made in the past are no longer relevant. It's into a new space. So the commonality, you guys may have not known this, and I've been holding the secret back is Rob was also a division one referee. It just happened to be in soccer.
Rob: As you started telling the story, Ron, the progression pretty similar. I started maybe a little bit earlier. I actually started refereeing while I was in high school, junior little kids games, and had fun doing that. Was pretty good at it. And while in high school, I actually started refereeing men's soccer games.
So I was refereeing 30 and 40 year old men while I was 16 years old. One of the benefits I brought to the table is I was a chippy soccer player, so I was never fantastic. I was always pretty good. And so I knew what to watch for on the field, and so I could catch the guys that would be played like I did and would be a little chippy. I wouldn't call a foul, but I walk over and just say something to them.
And they'd nod their head and they go, okay. Now I know I can't do that during this game today because he gets my game. He knows exactly what I'm going to do. And that progressed into while I was in college, refereeing college soccer games, including some d one soccer games. You got paid really well for just a couple hours worth of work.
You got yelled at a lot, but for just a couple hours worth of work, you got paid a ton.
Brent: That's why both of you guys have such thick skin. You got yelled at a lot. So alright. So set the stage for our conversation, Ron. I think as we approach midlife, a lot of times people get stuck in their ways and they're not willing to explore new things, which leads into your storyline for us and why we're so excited to have this conversation with you is life can go down many different paths and you can have different chapters in your life and you can even create new books.
For a lot of people that can't imagine making such significant shifts in maybe the industry. So you went from financial services and then you did a barbershop concept. Now you went to law school, you're going to be an attorney. How did your early experiences in life, such as football, college, a couple dozen jobs, shape your willingness to explore different paths in life? And how is that a part of your DNA?
And to me, a lot of these are big bold moves that you've taken. How did you learn that? And then what can we learn from that?
Ron: Well, Bren, it's a great question. You know, I think the first thing that comes to mind is the idea that I've always thought of these changes that I've made. I haven't thought about them as reinventing myself as much as I've thought about them being an evolution. I'd learned something in the past from a past experience. I enjoyed it for natural reasons.
I'd leave it or it would leave me. Then I come across something where I could draw up on that experience. For example, that paper route that I had, it was a little bit of a distance to get there from where I lived. Not far, if it snowed, it took a minute. My grandma, being Depression era, wasn't very high on rules, the law.
So she would let me drive at 11, 12 years old to the paper route, which was inside of a retirement community. So I'd drive there and then park the car and then drive back. And that experience of driving allowed me to be her chauffeur couple of times when I was 12 and 13 years old to drive her to Nebraska, 600 miles away, although while learning. But fast forward, that experience, when I got my first job out of college in financial services, it was a sales job, and I wasn't doing well, and I needed to make some more money. That driving experience allowed me to get a position as a high speed driving instructor.
And I came in with a predisposition toward it. And they showed me the rest. And I ended up teaching bodyguards and law enforcement how to do high speed driving maneuvers. And so the idea of things scaffolding and maturing but also evolving is how I've always thought about it. And so I try to look for past experiences where I have some knowledge, some predisposition toward what's coming up that will allow me to succeed in it.
But more importantly, those past experiences show me what I'm interested in. And so that's kind of the first thing that I've always hone in on. Am I interested in learning about the system that I'm about to move into. And each one, each move that I've made, it's been about that. It's interesting to think about it that way for me because I can see in the spaces where I didn't do well, it was because I didn't have a deep interest in the system.
I had a deep interest in how much money I could make. I had a deep interest in who was going to notice me for doing it and then pat me on the back because it was a title or a prestigious position. But I didn't succeed in those particular roles because I wasn't deeply interested in the system. And so the involvement in those systems then started showing me what my particular values were.
Brent: When you think back at some of these transitions, or as you said, the evolution, I think one of the easiest things to do for me on my side, when I observe it, it's like almost this romantic reinvention. It's amazing what you've been able to accomplish. I remember when you made the shift from even within financial services, you're working from one of the largest financial services institutions in the world. Then you went to
Rob: a
Brent: smaller startup, they gave you a big challenge, you were successful there. Then you went back to another different large one. And then you made this change that was so dramatically different going into building this barbershop concept. When you look back, I mean, it's interesting, your own self reflection to say, Wow, those are some pretty unique changes. But what are some of the biggest challenges that you faced financially, emotionally, identity wise, when you would actually leave something behind?
I just think of some of those changes are just so different.
Ron: Well, yes to all of those. All of those things you just gave as an examples are challenges. The nature of being in a role in a particular position in a certain industry and because the industry downsizes, where you get fired, you're dealt with what change always incorporates, which is loneliness. You no longer have that identity. If somebody asks you what you do and you stammer and the best thing is right now I don't do anything.
Well, who wants to hear that? Conversation, stopper right there. So we tend to then think, oh, I can't be vulnerable. I can't be honest. So I kind of need to make something up or I need to get myself in something quickly so that I have an answer to give because we don't, you know, we don't like that space naturally, and it's unfortunate.
I also think that there's a lot to be said about being very clear that you are either moving away from something or you're moving towards something, or it's a combination of both, even though each one is different. Not every one of my changes in fact, most of them have not been about being in a great position. And I had endless resources, and I was just going to go decide what I wanted to do. The transition from the barbershop business to law was like that. But everything else before that wasn't.
One of the things for me that you and the other listeners don't have, but each of us have our own thing as I was born with a rare genetic blood disorder that causes me to be extremely sensitive to the light after a certain amount of time. So I can do about two hours in the sun. And then after that, I need to find a shade. I'm essentially a vampire when it comes down to it. But that decision is what drove me out of pursuing an NFL career as a punter, which I had the physical athletic ability to do.
But I couldn't be outside on the field just even for a game for three and four hours without getting completely scorched. And so it pushed me away from that. And in doing so, I lost identity. I lost camaraderie. I also lost a little bit of being able to be honest because I couldn't, at that moment, I couldn't be totally transparent about why I was making the move because at that time, I hadn't been diagnosed.
I didn't know. And so I think that there are a number of things that show up with what the challenges are when we make a move. But at the end of the day, it's about moving away from something or moving towards something and just being clear what those two are. When I had the barbershop, one of my main questions I would ask directly, sometimes indirectly, as I was trying to figure out if the person applying for the position to cut for us was just moving away from a bad former boss. And if they were, we weren't going to bring you on.
I needed to hear something about what you were moving toward. You referenced it, the move from the large financial institution I was at to the smaller shop. My job proposal that I made to him was not about I didn't like it here anymore and I've had enough. It was all about here's what I'm going to come in and do for you. This is what I'm moving toward.
And you can feel that as an employer. What are you moving toward? What do you want to accomplish?
Brent: That's a really important point. My father-in-law and I talked a bit about that just over the years and around some of the changes that he made just in his career decisions to retire at one point in time. And he shared almost the same thing, Ron. My father-in-law was highly accomplished. He had really big roles in different organizations.
And I always looked up to him. He said, the first scenario, if you're just running from something, then that's the hardest thing to do as a human being, because you don't know where you're running to. But sometimes you are running from something because you have an itch to maybe go try something new. He goes, that's a healthy transition. Or if you're just running to something without really knowing why you're leaving something, that's unhealthy as well.
So what you described is have a little bit of that tension between the two. But if you leave one without the other, he would always say, it's really hard as a human being to re navigate yourself because you didn't close a chapter, you didn't properly open a chapter, you're a bit stuck.
Ron: They're sort of running from the grind, but they're getting they want to get away from the grind. They, you know, they don't want the problems anymore. Their business is great except for the people, you know, a lot of folks say. And so it's a running from energy and truly, they wither quickly, really, really quickly unless they've got something to move toward. Traditionally, that's described as meaning or purpose.
I don't think it has to be that meta. But you need something to move toward. And in moving toward that, for me and what I've seen, have three reasons for moving toward it. It's one thing to experiment, you know, just to try something out, but it's probably I typically don't see it stick for folks unless you've got three solid reasons. And then when one or two of the reasons are sort of waning or you're really not into it, you've got that third reason that you can continue to show up for that thing and continue to learn, which then turns into success.
Rob: One of the things I got really excited about with this podcast and getting to meet you is and you guys have used the kind of the metaphor, new chapter in the book. Right? But I'm not hearing a new chapter. I keep hearing new books in your life. They keep getting launched.
I think about the next chapter is you were in financial services. You could have stayed just in a different role within financial services. And I followed that path. Right? I didn't have new books.
I just kept having a different chapter in the same book of work, which was in financial services, but various roles within an industry I was very familiar with. And what I got excited about in interviewing you was you didn't stay in the same chapter. You wrote new books each time. You went from having a good career in financial services and actually a successful career as I've talked to Brent about it. Your background in financial services was very successful to then going and starting a barbershop.
That's a whole different path out of left field to go do something new, and I love what you just said about chasing something, chasing what's interesting, chasing what's exciting. And I want to hear more about those early learnings in the new books and how you applied that to this big giant pivot. If I think about the next big book, which is leaving a successful barbershop and then saying, I'm going to go back to college. I'm going to get a law degree, and I'm going to start practicing law. That is a dramatic pivot.
It's a brand new book. What were some of the learnings you had early in life in terms of writing chapters that you then applied to say, you know what? I'm going to stop. I'm going to sell this business that is successful, and I'm going to go down this complete other path. I'm going to lose the income stream that I've been living on for a while, go back to college, and launch a new career.
So what were some of those learnings early in life as you wrote new books that you applied at midlife at 50 to go back to college?
Ron: Well, I do think while they are different for books, for me, I have never felt as strong of a disconnect as I think a lot of people that have looked at my choices have felt. I saw a connection from financial services to barbershop because what I had learned in financial services was in stocks and bonds trading. I had a connection to the floor. And what that experience gave me was how good companies can have bad stocks and how bad companies can have good stocks. And so what that did was dove it forced me to dive into, well, what's a good company with a bad stock?
And then what's the opposite of it? And so I got really interested in how businesses were run, how they're started, economies with scale, the difference between a service business, a product business, a teaching business. And so I just had this fascination with business formation. I got to Kansas City. I was done with the financial services business.
And I had just read a book called How to Think Like Einstein. And it's essentially an approach where you step way back with a problem and you morph the problem in your head. You change the colors of the image. You exacerbate the characters to make them cartoonish. You just start really playing with the ideas.
The book goes on to explain this process of how to reverse engineer career pivots, not by choosing specifically what to go to first, but reverse engineering through a process of looking at your values, your beliefs, your predispositions, your financial resources, all of it. Then sort of using a funnel to bring it down and let the last thing that it all comes down to be the choice that you need to go forward with because everything else was decided based upon these principles. And so that's what I did with each one of these stages. As I was getting ready to visit with you guys, I was just thinking back through the different choices, the different career positions, jobs that I've had, and each one parlayed into the next one. So the business experience leads me into the barbershop because I'm interested in starting my own business and trying to extract value from that.
I'm in the barbershop for fifteen years. I have a conversation with a guy who's in artificial intelligence. He starts telling me about where the algorithms are in 2016. That reminds me of my early days of trading. So I do a deep dive into AI because of that past experience.
And then that connects me to original computer coding and logic gates if then statements are the basis of the legal profession. And so each one for me piggybacked on the other one. And I always found that important. Every time I tried to do something new, like really reinvent myself, it didn't work. I didn't have the background for it.
It was too much of a disconnect. And even though other people might have thought a move from the barbershop to law school was not connected, in my own mind it was. I saw that sequence of events and they all connected.
Brent: How about that shift to law school? You're at the young age of 50 and you decide to go into law school where everybody is half your age. How did you navigate those first few months, maybe the first two semesters of being a student again, but being a student where you're demographically just very different than those around you?
Ron: My main concern going into law school wasn't so much my age because of the comparison between the people that I was around. Going into it, was really excited actually about being around that generation, learning their style, their vocabulary, what they were into. I knew I'd get something out of them. My main concern was when I was an undergrad, my focus was not on academic excellence. It was on kicking a football and networking.
And so I didn't have the credibility, the confidence in my own head that I was going to be able to do what law school required, which primarily is memorization. Vast amounts of information that needs to be recallable in pretty quick order. That concerned me. But I had, a couple of years before been introduced to a book called Moonwalking with Einstein. Essentially, book's about a guy that, competes in the World Memory Championships that didn't have a memory, but he did this process.
And it really intrigued me when I read the book, but I didn't have anything at the time to apply it to because I didn't need to remember anything massively. So again, I kind of had two legs of the stool. I was interested in it. I liked the system, but I didn't have a domain to apply it in. And so going into law school, even studying for the LSAT, I'd use this domain as a proving ground for this memory technique.
And I knew that I had the type of memory that the book talks about, which is a visual memory. If you ask me to explain how to cut an apple, I literally see that process and then I just explain that. I guess there are some small percentage of people that can't get images like that. But I had that ability. And then I go into law school, I go back, reread the book, understand the techniques and I got some early success in my first year that I remembered so much stuff from the subject that I was taking the test on.
I don't know, was like shocked. So once I had that early success in very civil procedure, it's a complicated course, lots of rules, numbers, and I did well in it. It gave me the next boost of confidence, swagger that I needed to go on and make the next set of decisions. That was how I approached it. The difference in age didn't bother me.
It bothered folks that I did internships for at the beginning. It was always a question that I got. Your manager's going to be half your age. How are you going do it? That I did well with because it's really just a matter of respect.
It's a matter of if they're better at something, you listen, you follow their lead, you do it over and over again, you keep asking questions, and before you know it, they trust you a little bit more. Experience. And so I just transferred that to the internships that I had in the legal domain, my first two summers where my supervisors were younger than me. It was the same thing. Show up, they give me an order, I go and do it.
And over time, they recognize like, oh, this isn't an old guy coming in here telling us what to do. So those the two main challenges that I had going and coming out of law school.
Brent: Through all these different shifts that you've made or new endeavors that you've taken on, how have you managed doubt? Because I find for me, when I try new things, the early stages are just self doubt. And I've always had the entrepreneurial confidence that we'll get to where we need to go. But the doubt for me sometimes comes in when there's not early successes or there's not things that it's very clear to see where the path is going to take you. How did you manage that?
Because I'm assuming through some of these journeys that you've taken, that you've reflected back to say, Wow, that was really interesting. Or you're right in the middle of it, What am I doing? How do you navigate that?
Ron: I'd never had a panic attack in my life until I was in my first year of law school, second semester, and I woke up in the middle of the night. I'm like, what am I doing? What am I doing? Who am I trying to kid that somehow I'm going to graduate past the bar and then actually get hired someplace? And I'd never had a panic attack like that.
And it was as real anybody that has it was as real and as discombobulating as anything I'd experienced. The doubt topic hasn't really been a big issue for me because the slow process that I take before I actually make a move. And like I said, I try to get three reasons for doing something new. The first one is always I have to be interested deeply in the system of the new thing I'm moving into. We were talking a minute ago about broad refereeing soccer.
Soccer was the transition that I made into kicking a football in college. And it was primarily because in soccer, I was interested in how you could kick the ball and get it to spin. And you could do banana kick from a corner kick and actually get it to go on the goal. I was just fascinated with a system of those different things. And so that's been the number one that I always look for.
Number two, there's always got to be a physical element to the endeavor. So the physical element like in refereeing was because I got to exercise. Sometimes the physical element though can also be where it positions you geographically. I've been in the middle of a move back to Colorado and that's my physical element. I'm not going to be working out being an attorney, but it physically gets me back into a space that answers that.
And then the third one of that three legged stool in making decisions and getting over the doubt can be different for different people. It tends to be the third one can be money, or it can be connection, or it can be because it solves a problem that your life is currently handing you. But there needs to be a third reason that you have for that. So when I put all of those three together, I would find anytime I'd even get a feeling of doubt, I was able to go back and say, Hey, Ron, remember, you made this decision based upon three solid reasons. They were there, you walked through a process, trust in it, just show up the next day and go
Brent: to do it. How you describe that is there's different stages of when you try something new, and there is going to be doubt, there's going to be loneliness, but if you keep powering through. What I picked up, what you just described though, is when you've got your three legs of the stool is there's a component of trust and the trusting yourself to say, you made a good decision to get to where you're at. You made a good decision to go try something new and trust yourself that this is the right thing. And also trust yourself that maybe it isn't the right thing.
And in life, you can make another pivot. You may get down a path where you're like, I thought this was going to be a lot different. And trust in yourself, I made the best decision at the time with all the information I had, and I was thoughtful in going into it. So how would you, as we think about giving advice to others, a lot of what we talk about on this podcast is your next great act. And we're all in our midlife.
And we're trying to think about how do we help people navigate their next great act, whether it's a career change, whether it's a shift into semi retirement, whether it's stick with what you're doing, but maybe think about it a little bit different. The things that Rob and I hear a lot is things that people get held back from is fear. You've kind of squashed the whole age limiting belief and there's other things. So how would you give people advice and knowing that they're contemplating something different, their next great act?
Ron: I think sit with yourself, quiet, maybe take a road trip is a great way to do it. Get out, see things, take a hike, bike, get out in nature, and just start thinking about the things that you naturally like, your values. Think about what you can do, so your predispositions and your propensity toward things, and also what you're not good at. So I've got this blood disorder, I can't do certain things. And that's really helped me narrow down what it is that I wanted to do.
And so in that stage, this is what I learned from that How to Think Like Einstein book was I just started making a list of values, beliefs, what I can do, what I can't do. There was no specific formula. It wasn't matrix. I just started listening them. But I realized that begin with that, and you'll be surprised.
You'll sort of get pointed toward what you need to do. I listened to a episode that you guys recently did where you're interested in maybe incorporating a surf camp into midlife circus and doing that. Well, I will never be at your surf camp because I can't be outside. So what it does for me also is while you go and do your stuff, I live vicariously through you. And I'm excited for you.
And I listen to your stories. And I try to learn about surfing even though I'm never going to go be able to surf. There's an energy released by just allowing they can go do that. They need to go do that. I can't do that, but I need to go do something else.
And so it causes you to really focus on your story. There's also, what are your financial resources? Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have to stay in a geographical location?
All of a sudden, your choices get narrowed down into where I believe you can get down to two to three choices that will just tell you, these are your two or three choices. Decide which one of those at this particular point in your life you want to go pursue. And you'll find that when the doubt comes up, when the fear comes up, can go back and remember that decision making process. And you've got motivation to go back out, do it some more, stick with it. And oftentimes, even if that one pursuit doesn't work the way you thought it was, it leads to the next thing that you're pursuing, which then turns into the next pivot.
And that's what I would say. Don't try to force yourself into something, sort of reverse engineer it and see what the last thing on the list is once you've listed all the things that are important to you.
Brent: Can I challenge you a little bit on that? Of the things that I see, I want to see how you think about this, is a lot of people create limiting beliefs based on their past experiences saying, I'll never be good at that. I could never do that. I could never go to law school at 50. My mother-in-law became a nurse at age 60.
So she went to nursing school in her late 50s and she did it for ten years. She just always had a belief, I'm going to do this. And I think where I'm getting is there are certain things in life that you are not built for. Just accept reality. But how do you coach somebody through or give advice to people that are creating limiting beliefs that are just a limiting belief?
And it's like, really? Is that the case? Really? Is that holding you back? Like, come on.
Ron: I think you just demonstrated what actually the process looks like. The process is involved either through a friend or through yourself continuing that conversation. One of the questions being exactly what you posed, that real? Can I really not? So for example, one of the things I love to do is be outside.
I love to be outside, but I'm limited by this blood disorder. And so the limiting belief for me has been, well, I can't be out in the sun for four hours at a time. So obviously, I can't go on a four day golf trip. I started thinking about that. I'm like, is that true?
I can't do it the way I've been thinking about it. But what if I was to cover up like Casper the Friendly Ghost? What if I was to wear gloves and armbands and a hat and a mask for that? Okay. Well, I don't like the idea of people staring at me.
I don't like the idea of having questions. But is that more than the enjoyment that I would get out of a two or three day trip doing one of those things? And the truth was, yeah, it is those sort of limiting beliefs. And so in the last couple of years, I've started doing that. And you know what, anybody that thinks something or says something, they are in one ear and out the other or they're gone in two seconds.
It's like, why did I spend so much time worrying about that? And here I am. I'm doing things now that I really have never given myself a chance to do.
Brent: I saw that firsthand because you and I play golf typically once a summer. And you'll come up to my house and we'll go play for a couple of days. In the past, you actually would say, can play one day and then I need a couple of days and I can play another time, you know, a couple days later. So in this year, you actually said, I said, Hey, we could play this day and then we could go do something else. He goes, Why not play?
Can we play back to back? And I was surprised. And then you just said, Just be aware, I'm fully covered up. And you sent me a picture of what that'd look like. And of course I get a chuckle, but I'm like, you did something so cool with that because you actually took your own limiting belief.
And I think more importantly for you, Ron, I think what you did is you stopped caring about what other people think in that situation because what you wanted to do is be outside. In Colorado, usually the fall is beautiful. And you're like, I actually get more out of doing this than worrying about what other people say. And all it is is in the clubhouse. And I saw you, you and I connected with a mutual friend.
And all you did is just slide the face mask down and you were normal like you were looking like everybody else. And guess what? He didn't say a single thing. He was so psyched to see you because I don't think you guys saw each other since college. And so it was one of those things where you got over your own kind of self beliefs and past experiences and biases and so forth.
You just said, I actually want to go play golf back to back. So what could I do to do that? So congrats for you. I saw that shift.
Ron: Your point also, I realized the point that you're bringing up here is reinforced in that. It's been years since I've read it, but it was reinforced in that how to think like Einstein. It's essentially a process of getting you out of your habit of thinking that you've got to have a certain job. You've got to live in a certain community. You've got to look a certain way, whatever it happens to be.
There are actual techniques of how to brainstorm as you're in the private space and the security, but just your own thoughts. So that's an important point really play with the idea that you're not you're not locked into just a limiting belief because those can be, you know, I've seen a couple of people lose jobs midlife and their belief was they had to have the same job or more importantly, they had to have the same level of income. And these individuals just couldn't imagine themselves making 300,000 as a salesperson, let's say, and they just couldn't see themselves going to work for Home Depot, helping somebody out. And so they didn't. And so that's a really important point.
Brent: I just want to say two things, and I have one final question for you. The first is thanks for sharing your story, because I think this is super inspirational, and I think we all can learn a lot from it. The second is what you did for me today in this conversation is really helpful because it's the way that I look at Midlife Circus is what is my three legged stool? And I can tell you, this is something that is so different than I've done in the past. But that's part of why I like it so much is I've always been a person that likes to build things.
I like to challenge my intellect on trying something new. And I love the opportunity of seeing what it can be. So when I hear your stories and how you have built kind of this building blocks over time, it's really important for me to hear that because it reconfirms a lot of the things why we're doing what we're doing or I'm doing what I'm doing. And so thank you for that because it gives me that greater conviction to continue doing what I'm doing. So my final question, then Rob will wrap it up is, if you could provide our listeners with one piece of advice about their next great act, what would it be?
We've
Ron: talked about what we've talked about. I want to mention something slightly different. But I think it is part of we get a little calmer as we get older. We tend to listen more. We sometimes seem to be a little bit wiser.
And so I would say this in folks going into their next great act. Don't be myopically consumed about your own gig. Don't make it about you. Making it about you can lead to depression. It can lead to worse things when it's always about your own stuff.
What am I doing? What do I look like? What's my next thing? And so what I would say is, Oprah Winfrey talks about it, so did Maya Angelou, that the greatest experience for all of us as humans is to feel felt. To be in the company of somebody else and to feel like you've really been seen and heard, but you feel felt.
They may not even say anything. It's through eye contact. It's through questions. It's definitely not through telling somebody your problem and then they immediately go into how their problem is bigger, giving you some piece of advice. That's not the essence of feeling felt.
And so what I would say is as everybody's going through this, just make sure that you are deeply connecting and making somebody else feel felt. When I had my worst days at the barbershop because every employee was stealing from me and nobody wanted to work. Just everybody was against me. The tactic that I used is I went into the shop and I did the thing that nobody else wanted to do. I swept hair for everybody.
And I just served. I just served. I got out of my head. I stopped thinking about me. And I just went and served other people.
And I think that's critical for us as we go through this stage of thinking about what we're doing and what we need to do and how are we going to be happy is don't lose touch, that you always can show up for somebody else and try to make them feel felt. I, you know, hats off to you guys for what you're choosing to do with this podcast because at its core, that's what you're doing. You know, the nature of this is to experience your own journey through this, but it's also to share out loud in a format where other people can hear you and they can listen. And there's a tremendous value in being able to hear other people's stories because through, as you know, through this podcast form, there's a sense of feeling felt even though you're not talking as a listener, but you're not contributing. The stories that the folks tell on these in this medium really can give you a sense of like, okay, I'm going through that.
I've been through it. They're doing it too. I'm not the only one. That's what I would tell folks is find a way to pay attention to other people as well.
Brent: Thank you. I really appreciate that.
Rob: It's been fun listening to this conversation between the two of you and interjecting a little bit. I'll just make the comment here before I jump into closing this out. You started talking about the anxiety or the panic attack that happened in second semester. Well, while you guys were talking, I started having a little bit of an anxiety attack thinking to, oh, if I was going back to college right now, we wouldn't be using Blue Books to take tests. We would actually have a computer, actually a laptop, which we didn't have laptops when I was in college.
We had to go to the computer lab to write a paper. I started to have, like, all this anxiety about how dramatically different college would be for me today and could I actually survive in that environment. And it was really neat, Ron, talking about how you not only survived in that environment, you took us a chance to go back and learn and think about how do you approach this world while you're while you're learning from the 25 year old you were in school with, but there are opportunities for you to learn from them and apply the things that you were doing in your life from things that they taught you in that process. So thank you for sharing that. As I as I think back to a lot of the key themes today, the first one is, and I think it's the biggest one, is to find something you're interested in.
While we're in midlife, that's the opportunity we have to really hone in on what are our true interests right now. And in finding our true interests, Ron talked about the three legged stool. If you find something you're interested in, that's a lot of times going to lead to something that is enjoyable for you to follow and likely something that'll turn into something meaningful for you. If you find something that's even just slightly difficult for you, just on the edge of difficulty, it's going to put you in a different mental state to get really stimulated in that environment to want to fully engage. So just a little bit of difficulty, something that is interesting, something you want to learn more about doing, that's going to really help you as you try to navigate what that next step is.
From there, it's identify what limiting beliefs you might have. So what is the internal story that you're telling yourself that may or may not be true? So I just gave you example. I my limiting belief is I don't know that I could go back to college today because I don't know if I could keep up with the with the information and the volume of information. And just the sheer thought of having to memorize stuff the way you did run, I started getting, like, the hair on my neck stood up.
My heart rate started racing. That's all limiting beliefs. I could take the time and truly sit in what is that limiting belief to sit in that limiting belief for a little while and identify, is it true or is it something that you can overcome? Beyond that is to start to take action. And what is that next step?
And the and the taking action could be as dramatic as something that Ron talked about where leaving a very successful barbershop to go back to law school. When you think ten years from today, what do you want to tell yourself ten years ago? So I think about what would your ten year forward self tell you about this moment in time that you have today? Are those limiting beliefs stopping you? What is the next book that you want to write for yourself?
And it truly is writing a next book. We have the chance to do that. You get to write this next script, write the next book for yourself. You're the director of this next great act.
Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder, the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice.
This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.