There are many lies that we tell ourselves every day. We especially tell us these lies when it comes to something we want to accomplish. We let these lies that we perceive as truth stand in our way as an excuse of why we can’t do the thing instead of just going after it. One of the lies we tell ourselves is “I am too old to go after my dreams.”

This has been a constant lie I’ve told myself. I’m only 29 and this is young in the grand scheme of things; however, when I see teenagers excelling in life and I compare myself I can start to feel small and like maybe I missed my window of opportunity. I see people around my age and feel like they seem to have their life more together or are more accomplished than me at their age. I then get in a spiral of comparing myself to everyone.

The reason I am sharing my experience is because I know that others, like me, feel this pressure to do something by a certain age. We feel like we have to accomplish certain things in our life by a certain age or we feel like a failure. The truth is though is that there is no certain age that we have to accomplish things by. We feel this constant pressure by society that we have to reach a certain accomplishment by a certain age, and we have this idea in our heads that if we don’t accomplish it by then we are a failure.

I’ve meet people older and younger than me (just like me) who feel like they cannot pursue their interests, go back to school, go after their dreams because of a number. I just want to let you soak that in. We are letting a NUMBER define our lives. We are telling ourselves that because of a number we cannot go after our dreams and that is just not simply true.

It wasn’t until I meet some people who inspired me that I realized this timeline we put on ourselves isn’t how it has to be. One of the most inspirational woman that I have personally meet was a woman I worked with at my last job. This woman was a mother of older children and decided that later on in her life that she would join the military. Then after she accomplished that she went on to go to college and then did a program for college students. Many people her age would probably tell themselves “I am too old, I cannot do this.” She was incredibly inspirational to me because she just lived her life doing what she wanted to do and didn’t care what others thought. She didn’t care that she was put into these opportunities where the people were significantly younger than her. She could have let that stop her but she didn’t. She did what she wanted to do and didn’t let an excuse stand in her way. She was able to break these barriers that many of us let stop us from accomplishing anything.

This message is for all of you reading this feeling like you are not where you should be in life at your age. I don’t care if you are older, my age, or younger. I want you to know you have those dreams inside you for a reason. Don’t let the excuse of “I am too old to do this” stop you or any other excuse get in the way. You are meant for greatness!

I want to leave you all with one last thing to think about and that is:

Isn’t it much better to go after things later than life than to never go after something at all and wonder at the end of your life what could have been?