What To Do If It Feels Too Late to Chase Your Dream

So many of us are afraid that it’s too late to start after our dreams or too late to leap towards the life we want, that we end up stuck in place. I get this or similar questions a lot: “Julie, I have a lot of dreams. Is it crazy to make the leap later in life? I’m feeling frozen…”

I think it’s never too late, and let me tell you why.

Once, I had a 72-year-old client go back to law school because he regretted not having done it in his youth. For years before that, however, we would talk about it. I would ask him, “You know, what are you going to do with all this money? Get busy living or get busy dying,” but for years, he put it off.

He kept coming in for his appointment and I’d ask him if he took the LSAT yet, or if he’d gotten into law school yet, or if he’d started taking classes yet. Not attending law school was one of his biggest regrets, but for a long time, he felt like it was too late to change anything about it.

Then one day, about three years later, that client walked into my office and slapped his acceptance letter into law school on my desk. He hadn’t even told me that he’d taken the LSAT or that he’d applied. But he got accepted, and then he continued to practice law until he was 86 years old, taking full advantage of what time he did have rather than regretting the time passed.

I really, truly believe we go through different chapters in our lives where different things are meant to happen. The question we all have to answer for ourselves is, “What will make me giggle in this part of my chapter?” And then we must strive for that and not worry about all the distractions.

You see, I could beat myself up all day about how I’m paying alimony, how I’m the only one paying for my kids’ private education in Chicago, or how I’ll be the only one who’s going to pay for their college. I could beat myself up for all of the things in life that haven’t gone perfectly, but heck no! What a waste of time and energy. Instead, I’m going to live exactly the life I want to live and continue to grow and expand, because that’s life and that’s truly loving yourself.

It is absolutely never too late to go after the thing you want. The only way it’ll be too late is if you don’t do it, and you keep not doing it, because then you’ll allow disease to develop in your body from not aligning yourself with your dreams. For women, it so often shows up as breast cancer, and for men, colon or prostate cancer.

Deepak Chopra, a powerful alternative-medicine advocate, once said, “A cancer cell develops because that cell has lost its sense of purpose.” Stop putting off your purpose because you’re convinced it’s “too late.”

So often in life, we don’t live up to the life we love as our lives evolve, and disease is the physical aspect of this misalignment and is often the last to show up. It shows up in your money as well, trust me!

If you hate the job you have, then chances are you’re not going to get the pay raise you want, or the bonuses you need. Instead, you’re going to be the one worrying about layoffs and at some point, if your life is really supposed to move in a different direction, your boss will do it for you, getting you to resign at 57-years-old. Then you’ll really be worried about getting a job but deep down you’ll know you should have quit ten years ago.

Life always finds a way, just like Nature finds a way to heal with a pandemic. Either you’ll find the courage to take a leap towards what you want before the crisis hits… or the crisis is going to come. You get to choose your path, so choose from a place of empowerment.

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