How to Start Where You Are, Even When You Think It’s Too Late

Mindset shifts you can use to start right where you are.

Have you ever felt like it was too late? Too late for your goals, traditions, or habits? Or, maybe you feel it’s too late to create better relationships? 

Feeling like it’s “too late” can bring up a lot of emotions: anger, guilt, or sadness. You feel like you should have known better! (“I should have started this last week or years ago!”)

How can you recover from these feelings when you can’t change the past?

Instead of being stuck in these feelings, I want to teach you how to start where you are, even when you think it’s too late! 

In this episode, I share my own experiences of feeling like it was “too late” for me to start certain things. (Don’t worry, I definitely understand this feeling!)

I then outline three ways you may be disqualifying yourself from starting over and cover mindset shifts you can embrace to move from feeling “it’s too late” to starting what you want.

(Hint: this means starting exactly where you are! You don't have to go back to the beginning . . . ) 

So, whether it’s a new habit, a different career, or more education (or, in my case, this is starting now to work on family scrapbooks!), it’s time for you to qualify yourself and start where you are!

If you’ve ever found yourself saying, “It’s too late,” then this episode is for you. Join me to let go of regrets to create more for your life!

About a few other things...

Reclaim your creative power and rediscover who you actually are! If you’re ready to come back home to yourself, to be able to say that you know who you are and what matters to you, take my foundation course, “Finding Me.” It’s OK that you’ve lost parts of yourself along the way; but as you learn to anchor back into who you are and align your life to what matters to you, you’ll find that you have more strength, more fulfilment, and more creativity to bring to your important roles and responsibilities.

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TRANSCRIPT

Are you feeling stuck in your progress? Are your goals at a total standstill, or are you feeling like it's just too late to do something you wanted to do and you are a lost cause? It's time to start where you are.

"It's too late." Do you ever feel that way about an accomplishment that you've been longing for in your life or even a tradition that you wanted to have in your family? Maybe a habit that you wished was already a part of your life? And you think, "It's just too late now. I can't start it." That whole thought came up for me recently, my youngest is about to turn four years old and I only just realized that a few weeks ago, and immediately following that realization, I had this flood of guilt.

My baby is not even close to being a baby anymore. And, yet, with him being the youngest during some of the most stressful years we've had as a family, including almost two years, which is half of his life, during a worldwide pandemic, that threw our whole lives in a total upheaval, he has missed some things that my other three kids got. Stability, peace, friendships, play dates, outings. And so much more.

But the thing that I was thinking of in that moment was that he had missed out on mommy school. This is something I did with all of my other three kids starting around two years old. We would just take a little bit of time each day to learn the alphabet and sounds and shapes and colors and read some books.

And it was never like about getting them to be excelling at school or any of that, it was just a great way to connect and also feel like I was, you know, having good stewardship over an important value I have with my kids and helping them learn how to learn. And again, he's almost four years old and he doesn't know his letters.

He knows a few shapes and colors, thanks to his older siblings and just being around. And he's read far fewer books with me because of the chaos that we've been living through. So, I just really felt sad in that moment. It felt like I was mourning this lost time that we had together and it felt like it was too late.

And even worse than feeling like it was too late, I felt like I'd failed my kid. And with that, my whole family too, for two years. So, when have you felt that way and kind of gone down that whole spiral of thinking, like "I knew better," "I wanted better," "I want this to be different, but it's too late now," or "I wanted this so desperately, it's too late."

Maybe this happened for you when you didn't meet this all or nothing extreme that you decided had to be a certain way in order for you to have a certain routine. Maybe this happened when you got halfway through a day and you felt frustrated over how little had gone to plan. So it was just too late to do anything you wanted to do that day or start the day over.

Right? Maybe you felt this when you, when you've looked at a relationship that you have in your life and you wonder, wow, how did things get to be so bad? And it feels like it's too late to fix it. And, you know, comparison comes in a lot. Maybe you have felt this way when you've seen other women, your age and the achievements that they have, whether it's in the home or outside of the home and you feel left behind

So there's obviously a lot of scenarios that this thought comes into our heads with, that "it's too late" thought. And I've been thinking about it a lot and why we do that to ourselves and why we disqualify ourselves from starting when we already feel behind. And I have come up with three big reasons why we disqualify ourselves.

The first is we disqualify ourselves because of excuses. And when I say excuses, I also want you to know that I am saying valid excuses, valid reasons why it might feel too late. Like we feel like there's just no time or there's no money, or we have responsibilities that make it so we can't do this thing. And we're going to talk about that because oftentimes even valid excuses are still not enough to continue down that road of thinking it's too late.

And other times those valid excuses are, you know, something that we want to consider and do something different. So hold onto that if that's you. So the first is we disqualify ourselves because of excuses. The second reason we disqualify ourselves is because of self doubt.

We might say things to ourselves, like, "I don't know how," or "I don't even know where to start," or "I'm not an expert. I can't do that," "I'm not good enough at that." So self-doubt was the second one. And the third reason we disqualify ourselves is to avoid further disappointment in ourselves. Or a fear of failure, it's like we're protecting ourselves, right?

It already feels painful enough that we're not where we want to be in whatever capacity that looks like, but we want to disqualify ourselves from starting again or starting where we are, because we're trying to weirdly avoid the pain that can also come with disappointment or failure. So underlying those three excuses, self-doubt avoiding disappointment, underlying all of those three is this all or nothing mindset that is so easy to get trapped into.

Even though I teach about this, I get trapped into it all the time, myself. And it's something that I have to be aware of in my life and how it's playing in to what I'm trying to do and how I'm trying to do it.

So to help you, namely with this mindset, and also these ways that you're disqualifying yourselves I just want to give you a couple like beats, I guess of ways I want you to work on shifting your mindset away from all or nothing into repotentializing your life. This is something we talked about in the martyrdom episode in September of 2021: repotentialize, meaning giving yourself the options again, options either way.

So here's some mindset shifts that you can embrace. The first I'm thinking is there will never be a 100% good time. It will never, that will just not happen. There will never be the perfect time for you to do X, Y, Z to fix this thing, to start. It won't be the never, it will never be a perfect time.

There might be a better time though. So we're going to talk about that, if that's the case for you. Two, another thing I want you to do about mindset shifts is own that real growth happens when you're uncomfortable. Acknowledge that you're uncomfortable now in these feelings, that you're having a feeling like it's too late.

So, perhaps for you, you might be willing to move into some discomfort that can push you forward. The good kind of discomfort, not the ones where you're betraying yourself. Right? The third way I want you to shift your mindset is to think of, instead of going for all or nothing to remember that going for all usually leads to more of nothing.

All comes at a cost. And one of the costs is we end up doing more of nothing. So instead I want you to carry the mindset of I'm just going to do something. We'll talk on that too. The fourth way, I want you to switch your mindset is to look at failure differently. Look at failure as our greatest teacher and regrets can be a teacher, too.

Another way I want you to shift your mindset is to acknowledge that you are worth it. Your development, your fulfillment, your happiness are worth the time, money, and energy that whatever you want to do or whatever you want to fix might require. And the final mindset shift is it's okay to want things. It's okay to want things in your life.

It's okay to want to have it. And it's okay to want a certain achievement. It's okay to want a certain talent or hobby. It's okay to want things. So there are some mindset shifts, and now I want to offer to you a practical solution that will still play out differently for every single one of you, depending on where you're at and what you're looking at.

And it's this: start where you are. Do you remember in the fall, we did an episode all about momentum instead of waiting for motivation. You create momentum. The same applies here.

When we feel like it's too late and we have to go all the way back to the beginning in order for something to be worth it, or we can't go back to the beginning. So we feel like it's too late to start where we are. Instead, focus on doing something to start where you are.

When you do something to start right in this moment where you are, that will create momentum. And as we talked about in the fall, that momentum creates more momentum.

You don't have to go back to the beginning. You also don't have to do something perfectly or even the way you used to do it, or the way you wanted to do it in order to start where you are. That was the case with me and doing mommy school. I could not, I could not go back. So that, that was not an option. I also couldn't do it the way that I did before.

We're kind of, you know, we're experiencing a lot of flux in our family still, there's a lot of things are different now than when my other three got to do mommy school. So I can't even do it the way I used to. But I could still do something to start where I was and in that moment create momentum. So that's what we did with mommy school.

The way this looked like for me is I decided to just spend 10 minutes with my almost four year old a day. And, you know, the old me would have thought that that's not enough because with my other kids, I spent like 20 or 30 minutes with them each day. No, I I'm going to start where I am. And right now things are a little crazy, still, around here.

So I am going to do 10 minutes a day. We're just going to do one letter a day and we're going to review the other letters we learned leading up to it, do a new shape and read a book or two. And doing something that, to start, has not only been a gift to my son, it's also been a gift to me. I can't change the past, but I can start where I am right now.

And that has been weirdly healing and also empowering. So I'm really glad I did. And I I've been thinking about this and other ways too. Another thing that I do all or nothing to, and it's too late, is scrapbooking. I'm 14 years into my marriage. I've done a couple of Chatbooks. I have never done an official scrapbook for our family.

It's something I've always wanted to do, it's something I've started many times. I've never finished one. And now 14 years in, I feel like it's too late because in my mind, I'm like I have to go all the way through. To the time you were dating and I have to document it then and make a scrapbook from then. Oh, that's a tricky mindset to be stuck in.

So I'm going to take my own advice and start where I am. And I get to decide what that looks like. Whether it's doing Chatbooks again, and that's good enough, or it means I just don't do a scrapbook for this year period. And it's okay that I don't have 14 years prior. I still get to decide. So what is this for you?

Where do you say, to yourself, it's too late, but really there's this longing in your heart for it not to be that way. Then I'm urging you to take my advice and do something to start

I tend to resist being part of a community. I know it's kind of terrible to admit. I have never really been one of those people that needs a lot of accountability. I don't like feeling beholden to people, but I have been learning that I am wrong about this. That everyone can benefit from a community. And I have learned this from leading the Strive Hive.

This is our online membership group for strivers who are ready to strive for daily progress and fulfillment in their lives. And I as the leader of this group have benefited so much from this amazing community of women who are striving together, that I now can tell you that everyone can benefit. We right now have open enrollment for the strive hive.

We will be closing February 1st and I want you to consider joining the Strive Hive and joining in the progress with us. You can go to about progress.com/strivehive to check it out. We have so many benefits, including weekly discussions by monthly challenges, by monthly masterclasses, with experts on things you care about.

Right now, we have a sourdough class coming up and we have so much more beyond that. So I'd love to have you take part, go to aboutprogress.com/strivehive.

So I was curious if I was the only one who felt like it was too late to do something. I shared about my whole scrapbooking issue. And I asked on Instagram stories, "Hey, what, what do you feel like it's too late for you to do." And I was flooded with responses that amazed me and they were so diverse too. Included things like fixing my son's picky eating, to starting a business, to going to get my bachelor's degree.

Some fun ones I really thought were really cute were like learning girly stuff, like doing my hair and nails. But my personal favorite was where one woman shared that she felt like it was too late for her to learn sports that involved balance, like surfing. And reading through all of these responses. Ah, they just, it just connected with me because I could see myself in you and yourself in me, that we want more, but we often disqualify ourselves from reaching for it, for all those reasons that we shared in the beginning of the episode.

And I, I went through those responses and I divided them into four categories of ways that we tell ourselves it's too late. Or things that we tell ourselves it's too late to work through. I'm messing this up. Let's just keep going.

The first category was aspirations. Underneath this category I saw things like getting a new career or career altogether, going back to school, whether that's for the first time or a master's degree, learning a new skill, like a language or how to cook or having an experience like living abroad, was on there. That was an aspiration someone had was to live abroad and they'd never done it.

So it's too late now. So you have aspirations, any of those ring true to you? Is there an aspiration that you think is too late for you to do? The second category was under relationship. Things like that, and included under that, were like traditions, certain traditions, they wanted within their relationships, teaching their kids to do chores, marriage, having a really deep and loving marriage, having friendships and learning how to be friends with people.

And boy does that one ring true to me because that is something that I struggle with a lot. So relationships. The third category that came up a lot was hobbies, things like voice lessons or another kind of music lesson, interior design, painting, things like that, working out, any kind of hobby that we would love to start, but we think is too late.

And the final one that came up a lot had to do with the category of habits: journaling, exercising, going to bed, meal planning. You get the picture. So aspirations, relationships, hobbies, and habits. What is coming up for you? Maybe you have several things under each of those categories, or maybe just one under a few, and I know it can be painful to bring these up, but I want you to, I just want you to bring to mind what comes up for you under those categories.

And then I want you to just choose one of them. One in particular, doesn't have to be the right one or the biggest one. Just any of them. And as you're thinking about that thing, I want you to bring up the thoughts that you tell yourself about it. How do you disqualify yourself? What do you say to yourself?

I asked this online too, and some of the common responses about what women are telling themselves include, "It's not worth it," "It will fail just like the last time," "I'm not educated enough," "It would be too hard on my family," "I'm already spread too thin," "What's the point, who cares?" And again, those are just a few of the many, many responses.

So when you are carrying something around like this or several things, and you're also carrying with them, these thoughts that are pretty heavy and also very disqualifying, kind of in an all or nothing way, right? How do you start where you are? How do you get past this and start where you are. I'm going to just give you two steps.

The first is to ask yourself a question. This is the question: In 10 to 20 years, what will I regret more? Starting now or not starting at all? Ask yourself that question. And I'm going to tell you that you are, are free to say, I actually would not regret starting. Or to say, yes, I would regret not starting now.

So you get to answer that. And the second step I have for you is to qualify yourself. Now, before you automatically disqualify yourself, disqualify yourself from qualifying yourself. There are two ways to do this. And it also does not have to look like the all or nothing way of qualifying yourself. So in order to qualify yourself, it doesn't mean that you have to perfectly start that thing right away.

Or, you know, like say, you wanted to be a rocket scientist as a child. And now you're like in 10 and 20 years would I regret that. And you're like, yes, but also, am I ready to go back and get a doctorate? Maybe I'm 55 years old and that's not practical for my life right now. Maybe I have young toddlers and that's not really what I want to do, but I would regret it still.

What do I do? Don't worry. I got you. Here are two ways you can qualify yourself. The first way is that you raise your hand for yourself and you do something to start where you are with that thing you want. So let's say you do want to go and get that doctorate, and you're still going to do something now to start where you are, where you are right now to move towards it, you are going to move towards that thing.

But the second way you can qualify yourself. And I think this is going to be the most common and also the most life-giving for you. You qualify yourself by honoring the roots of what you wanted in other ways. I'm going to say it one more time for you. You qualify yourself by honoring the roots of what you wanted in other ways.

So let me give you an example of this. Okay. Let's take the school example because when I went through those responses, the most common one was women wanting to go back to school or to start school, like to get their college degree or to finish their degree or to get a graduate degree. So the first way of qualifying yourself, when you raise your hand and you do something to start where you are to move towards that very thing you wanted.

So let's say going to school is in your sight, you are ready to start where you are to go to school. The way that you can start, where you are, could include things like researching programs, just doing that. Maybe you interview other women who have gone back to school around your same age or stage of life.

Maybe doing something to start where you are is auditing a class to see if you're still interested in that subject, starting where you are can look like, looking into financing, talking to your partner, your family about it. Start where you are. Okay. That was the first way of qualifying. But let's say, you know what?

This season of your life is still not right for you to go back to school. And I'm raising my hand because this happened to me 14 years ago when I was trying to decide if I was going to get my PhD or not. And it was a huge and hard decision for me. Right. So let's say though, this season, it's not the right time.

And it truly isn't, this isn't you disqualifying yourself. It's simply not the right time. Or it might never be the right time for that. You can still qualify yourself and honor your season. And the way you're going to do this with school is you're going to honor the roots of what you wanted from that school experience.

But in other ways. Maybe you really wanted to be a doctor or get your PhD in that. And I feel like that. So, perhaps, you're not going to do that, but the roots of what you wanted from that was maybe you loved science. Maybe you loved learning. Maybe you loved serving. Maybe you loved climbing a ladder, or maybe you loved making a difference.

Find the roots from that thing and do something now to honor those roots in new ways. You can do that. You can do that. And that means, yes, technically it might be too late for you to do that exact thing, but it's still, never late. It's never too late for you to honor those roots and to bring them into your life now, in new ways.

I just want to spend a little time on one more thought that came up for women. When I asked what are the thoughts that come up when you say it's too late, what other thoughts come up when you think of that thing you want to do? And it was this, "Moms don't do that." This is where I want you to challenge yourself and say, says who? You can if you want.

You can qualify yourself in ways that are right for you, and the season you are in, that means you can raise your hand and go for it by doing something to start, it means that you can qualify yourself by honoring the roots and doing it in different ways. You can, and you can start where you are.

Just think of what will happen for you when you do, you'll get more clarity, you'll make progress in your life. Like in the clarity, by the way, it's like you might decide, "Huh? I don't like this thing anymore." Even as you're moving forward and you can cross that regret off your list, you can make that progress.

You can find fulfillment and you'll just feel alive. You need this. Sodo the people who love you, they need a living, breathing, whole you. So, take courage and qualify yourself. Start where you are.

I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick in the pants that you need to grow. Let's review the progress pointers from this episode. And this is like the cliff notes version of what I talked about today. You can get this as in a graphic form in our weekly, Go Getter newsletter.

 Number one, when we say it's too late, we are disqualifying ourselves because of excuses, self doubt, and avoidance of disappointment and failure, coupled with the all or nothing mindset.

That was a mouthful.

Number two, work on mindset shifts first by valuing what you want and need. Ask, "What will I regret more, starting now or not starting at all?"

 And number three, qualify yourself by raising your hand and doing something to start to move towards that thing, or qualify yourself by honoring the roots of what you wanted and other ways that can be just as fulfilling.

You're Do Something challenge this week is to name one thing you are ready to start where you are. That means if you do the Do Something challenge, I want to hear about it. You can comment on a post. You can DM me, but today I want to do a progressor spotlight of a listener named Lee. I shared a post recently where I was like, you know how I shared about nighttime routines a couple of weeks ago.

Well, I totally failed mine and my whole day went to pot and that's okay. We can learn from it. And I love what Lee wrote. She said, "Do you know, you can literally restart your day anytime you want? Neuroscience tells us that neurons that fire together wire together. When we continue to think certain thoughts, our neurons create patterns and the more energy we give to those thoughts, the stronger those patterns become."

And then she also said, "So in a way, for you to unwire, this is ask yourself this question, 'Are there any thinking patterns that may not be serving me well?' You may not even realize it, but you have the power to reprogram your thinking and you too can start your day over anytime you want." She's so nice. I love it.

Thank you, Lee. I love this community. I love what you offer. I love that you're here and listening and sharing the show. I want to, again, invite you to consider joining the Strive Hive. Before we close enrollment, February 1st, you go to aboutprogress.com/strivehive to sign up. Thank you so much for listening now, go and do something with what you learned today.

Number two, work on mindset shift. Oh, sorry. Work of blah.