#3: I don’t worry about nothin’, no...
How to reframe your age when you're feeling old
Axl Rose turned 60 last week.
Would you believe it? It only seems 5 minutes since he was running up and down the stage of their stadium gig in Paris in the early nineties - in some questionable hot pants and a bandana, going on about his cha-na-na-na-na-knees, knees. I remember watching it on a crappy VHS.
Basically looking like he’d forgotten to put his trousers on.
After Slash quit the band in October 1996, and Axl had pissed everyone off, Guns n’ Roses went into the doldrums. For two decades, Axl’s singular output was the $14m, 10 year project that was the immensely over-produced Chinese Democracy album - eventually launched after multiple false starts, line-up changes that included a guitarist with a KFC bucket on his head, and a reputation for rocking up late for their concerts.
I managed to get to see the Buckethead line up play at Leeds Festival. They turned up late. It was a bizarre experience, but amazing at the same time.
Roll the clocks forward some 20 years later….in 2016, and after much talk of a reunion, they were back. Axl, Slash and Duff McKagan, on the same stage. The tour that no one thought would happen in their lifetime, came together and kicked off and lasted 3 years. Cleverly titled the “Not in your lifetime Tour” Axl had got the band back together. My brother and I got to go and see them at Donington, home of the legendary Monsters of Rock festival (now called Download).
The tour grossed $584.2 million, making it the third-highest-grossing concert tour of all time (according to Wikipedia).
Was Axl playing the slow game? The 20 intervening years actually ended up paying significant dividends. Axl’s resurgence even saw him turn up as AC/DC’s temporary frontman when Brian Johnson had to leave the band because 40 years of rocking had made him deaf.
Now at 60, Axl has a stadium tour planned with the band in 2022, which if I get the chance to go, should be awesome. It’ll be awesome even if I don’t get to go, just a little bit less.
So what?
I work with lots of clients in their mid-late 50s and many, if not all have felt like their careers were hanging by a thread. They’ve carried devastating mojo loss.
If this sounds like you, I’d encourage you to exercise your inner rockstar and remember all the contributions you’ve made over the last 20 years. You’ve not been sat on your arse trying to work out how to get the band back together, wasting time. You’ve been showing up, day in, day out, doing your best work, gathering experience, and rocking the stage.
It could be that all this time has been leading to your Third-Highest-Grossing-Concert-Tour Moment.
Get your mojo back, get back in the ring, reframe your Over The Hill self talk with real confidence and have start making connections and applications again - These clients did and felt a ton better for it. Particularly when the interviews rolled in.
The Take Aways.
- Don’t let age be a barrier to doing what you love or what you’re good at - whether it's work, play or both.
- Set your thinking to “open wide”… You may end up doing your equivalent of fronting AC/DC. It’s never too late to change direction.
- Don’t waste your own time on this planet worrying about what isn’t happening for you right now or what could’ve been. As Nike would say, Just Do It.
Some questions for you:
- What other skills do you have that other people would pay for?
- Which relationships have been sour for too long? What could you achieve if you were the bigger person and apologised for your part in it?
- How have milestone birthdays been for you? What have you encouraged yourself to do before or after them? What do the next 10 years look like?
Need some help getting that mojo back? Mail me back or comment and we can talk through how I might be able to help.
Rock n’f’n Roll,
Phil
Here’s some stuff you might not have seen on LinkedIn this last couple of weeks. Head over there and hit Follow and tap the bell in my profile for more tips every week:
A short one about the only thing between you doing what you want and actually doing it.
Another one about becoming self-employed or a contractor - from two people with first-hand experience.
And this quick tip for prepping for an obvious interview question.
Oh, and after sharing and subscribing below, Google Colonel Sanders and find out how old he was before he set up KFC. Without him, Bucket head might have been wearing one of those orange builder’s buckets from B&Q.
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