I started out as a roustabout and would go on to work as a wool presser and eventually qualify as a wool classer. It’s a tough day’s work in the sheds but it was a life I loved. It allowed me to work in towns right across the country, from Esperance in the West, Yarram and Bairnsdale in Victoria, on the Hay plains in New South Wales, and up to Cunnumulla and Eulo in the remote parts of southern Queensland.
I remember a shearer pulling me aside when I was eighteen to give me a piece of advice.
“You should consider getting a trade under your belt,” he said. “It will give you options and it will mean you won’t get stuck in a job that you can’t get out of.”
He then went on to say, “It’s too late for me.”
He was 25.
If I view this through the eyes of my eighteen-year-old self I see a man who, at 25, seemed to me to be grown up and with the world at his feet. He was self-assured. He was well-liked. He carried himself with a quiet confidence that I hadn’t come across before. And, despite the impression he left on me, he believed that it was already too late for him.
Now I’m 56. I think back to that young man at 25 and I think of who I was at the same age.
With the power of hindsight I think that we both had time to play with. Time to do things differently. Time to pivot if things didn’t work out as we’d planned.
It’s too late for me.
These are words I’ve heard used by people in their 50s and 60s. In their 70s. It’s an expression that can settle into your bones and harden into a rule that we believe to be true.
This young shearer feeling stuck at 25 is a helpful reminder that these kinds of thoughts can occur to someone whether they are in their 20s or their 50s.
I think we can change, grow, pivot, and explore completely new ways of living at any age.
And I’m interested in how coaching can be deployed to challenge this thinking that the age we are right now is the thing that’s holding us back. It’s not too late for us!
