Do 40-year-olds and the workforce under this age bracket really have a place in the age of AI and the cloud?
Is it even a good time to change careers at this stage in life?
No, I did not ask these questions when I left my job at 43.
I did not really think much about my age when I decided to pursue the life of a backpacking, digital nomad, not until a close friend asked me, out of concern.
And that’s when I started to feel slightly uneasy about whether I had made the right choice or not.
I was in love with the dream of seeing the world, going off on adventures and getting to see new places and being outdoors.
My dream seemed childish to many, but I had the wisdom of the years, thanks to being 43.
I had this mindset, that there was no such thing as a right or wrong decision. I will eventually make it work regardless of what I want to do.
While my contemporaries were happily raising families, sending kids to school and buying furniture for a home, my heart was somewhere else.
My journey is not unique, others have done it before, but it is certainly uncommon.
If you're contemplating a career change in your 40’s, here is a summary of my journey that might help you with your decision.
Here are 7 Steps for Making a Successful Career Change After 40
1. Start with the proper mindset.
There’s a reason why self-help gurus like Tony Robbins or Joe Dispenza make millions. And this is because any smart person knows that the mind is our most powerful asset. People are willing to pay for brain programming and transformative information.
These life coaches and self-help gurus teach one thing, that the single most influential factor in our success or failure is ourselves. It’s not our parents, it’s not our unsupportive family or lack of money, it’s all us.
The power to change our destinies lies in having the proper mindset which leads us to make crucial decisions. Decisions lead to actions. Actions determine success or failure.
“Hands are merely helpers to the brain…”
It is easy to either jump into action without being clear about the “why”, or reversely, one can also become overly analytical about decisions and never act.
With the proper mindset, you get to ask yourself: Why do I want to make this change? What is the most important thing for me right now? What are my non-negotiables? What career path is meaningful to me? What habits can I incorporate into my daily routine to make sure my body stays healthy and does not get in the way of my plans?
If I was to achieve my childhood dreams, I had to ask some adult questions.
Age never came up when I was making these decisions.
If anything, being 43 allowed me to be in a better state of mind, allowed me to be more confident and relentless in my pursuit even if I was the only one who believed in my dreams.
Cultivating the proper mindset, through meditation and continuous learning, is like making sure you have gas in the tank first before you decide to take your car on a long drive.
You have to cover the basics first, so to speak. And this is true regardless of the age you’re in.
2. You need a strong WHY.
The reason does not need to be fancy or grand. It just needs to be strong.
When I resigned in 2021, my strong desire was to travel and work anywhere.
I liked the company I was working for and I formed wonderful friendships throughout my career.
But, a gnawing feeling was growing inside me for the last few years leading to my resignation. I had been living in a congested city for almost 10 years and longed for open space. I realized I was happy to be called “probinsyana” and missed my slow and crude life.
There was a BBC episode on digital nomads that I would watch every morning during the lockdown. Many of these digital nomads who called themselves “global citizens” were in Bali. I could build a network there.
The more I researched and learned about digital nomads, the more my desire grew. I started to see what a new life outside the conventional office could look like for me, and I was excited with the possibilities.
I deliberately fed my desire everyday until I reached the point of making the decision.
I did not know how just yet, but was sure I would be a digital nomad and resign from office work.
3. Outline a simple and short-term plan.
Yes, you need to plan out the steps you wish to take. Otherwise, you could be all over the place.
But, and this is a BIG BUT, do not make this too complicated.
I say this from experience that I almost lost my desire to move further because I was too detailed and listed so many steps I felt exhausted looking at it.
The internet will be full of advice, more than you can consume in a lifetime and it doesn’t make sense to do them all.
Having a plan makes you feel more confident. Being flexible with it, allows for serendipity and wonderful accidents to happen along the way.
There is no need to be too meticulous about this. A plan is a guide and does not have to be set in stone.
Trust that there are a hundred ways to get to your destination and the plan you made is just as reliable as the others.
I was once told that I needed to do these 10 steps to earn Php100k a month. I followed the advice and it worked. But I also got paid the same amount by another client just by generating a 5-minute report every day.
These methods lean toward opposite directions, but both got me the same result.
It was not about the effort, it was about the output.
4. Learn Marketing and be comfortable with selling yourself.
Being able to get your message across, having the ability to influence people and their buying decisions is an important life skill that has practical applications in both business and personal life.
And I don’t just mean learning how to sell goods and services. Putting yourself out there in a way that compels people to listen and impact their lives is a meaningful way to earn a living.
I used to be averse to selling myself or making people like me. Trying to please other people is one of the things that I hated the most and I equally dislike those who try very hard.
Yet, marketing is more than about selling.
When you study marketing, you study human behaviour, their fears, desires, their guilty pleasures and you begin to understand the different factors that make people behave the way they do.
You begin to understand that every human decision is really based on emotions and the brain merely looks for evidence to support the emotion.
For example, I learned that prospective clients like to see work experiences that include numbers. Instead of just saying “I know how to write email campaign sequences”, it makes more impact to say “My email campaigns have resulted in a conversion rate of 10%”, because the brain perceives numbers as solid evidence.
It is a fun process and a lifelong education, to study people and their behaviour, and it is a crucial skill to have when you’re changing careers regardless of the stage of life you’re in.
5. Observe how others are doing it and take inspiration from their success.
When you’re afraid to do something new, it gives some comfort to see some evidence that others before you have done it successfully.
When I decided I wanted to become a digital nomad, earn a living online and work from anywhere in the world, I immediately sought out digital nomads who were on the same journey.
I joined several digital nomad communities who were based in Bali, became active in conversation threads involving freelancing and location independence and learned as much as I could about how these nomads live and work.
How did they manage moving from place to place while working online? What essential things do they carry with them? Did they get insurance? Do they pay taxes? I tried to imagine what it was like to live like one of them.
There weren’t a lot of Filipinos who chose the lifestyle, and even fewer who were in their 40’s. Most of the examples I had to go by were either Europeans or Australians.
I quickly learned that many of them were freelancers, virtual assistants, content creators, or coaches, business owners who sold either physical or digital products online, some were online teachers.
I had my sights on Bali where many solo travellers like myself were living. There was a simplistic approach to life in Bali and there was a thriving digital nomad community on the island that I could be part of.
6. Have enough in the bank to tide you over for the next 6 months.
I had faith in my decision but a part of my brain was still in survival mode. A bit of cash stacked up for the next few months helped me to stop worrying about the future and helped me to focus on my creative endeavours.
You can’t start something new if you’re constantly worried about the future.
I had a plan, an exciting one.
None of my friends had done it before, and I was going to do this on my own. I was going to live in Bali for a while or in Davao or anywhere. I had x amount allocated for accommodations, flight tickets, food, etc. to tide me over for a year while I was figuring things out.
I ended up resigning only after I had landed a client as a Virtual Assistant.
Still, the money saved in the bank allowed me to travel without a steady source of income back in 2021.
7. Remove the age factor from the equation.
Back in the day during the industrial age, or what I like to call the “age of factories”, it was important for factory workers to be young and agile so they could put in the required hours and produce x no. of goods.
But now, in the age of the Cloud and AI, this is no longer the case. Brain function is key, analytics and creative thinking have become the most valuable factors in any business model.
We have entered an age where productivity is no longer measured in terms of effort but in terms of output.
Many of the clients that I work with, do not care about how young or old I was to be able to put in the hours. They do not care if I worked hard or not. They were more interested in what I can do for them and how my services translate into a measurable business goal that is meaningful for them.
In conclusion, deciding to make a career change or any kind of life change is not about age. It is about young and fresh ideas that can only be conjured by a brain that has been trained to think beyond the limitations of the body and its environment.
A lot of studies will support the theory that by age 40, people will have acquired a hard-wired mindset and will find it difficult to learn new things because the brain has become so attached to its old way of thinking.
This is true for some, but not true for all.
More than concern or fear of the unknown, people in thier 40's should feel lucky to be alive and strong enough in today’s age.
The shortcuts provided by AI work to our advantage and the supposed physical limitations of a less agile body is no longer a hindrance.
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