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I 100% relate to your question and feeling. I too am in my early 30s, and overcame those same thoughts. Those thoughts plagued me from about 26-years old to about 30-years old. I remember endlessly googling, "Is 26 too late to start programming?", "Is 27 too late to get rich?", etc., etc. Now, my age doesn't worry me one bit. My perspective has changed dramatically when I truly realized a couple of things: 1. 30s is not old. If you live until you're 65 or 70, that means a career change right now would amount in 30+ years in that field. I felt like my life had passed me by at 28. Now I look at a 28-year old and think, "That dude doesn't know how young he is." So now, I have enough experience to know that right now, I am very young, within the grand scheme of things. 2. My thinking was heavily influenced by social media. All it takes is seeing a kid who is 10-years younger than you making double or triple your salary for you to feel like you're too behind. The reality is most people are not making those types of salaries. 3. Do research on people for whom success came later in life -- there's a bunch of them. And we're only talking about public cases; not cases of late success that never made it into the public eye, which I'm sure there's even more of. 4. I've learned to focus on my quality of life (health, financial security, relationships, learning, growing, pursuing things that I'm into, traveling). My goals are not "getting rich", but rather, getting to a point financially where I don't have to work. That will probably take me 10 - 20 more years, and I'm okay with that. I just don't want to have to work when I'm 65. 5. When we find ourselves in this situation, feeling that life has passed us by, we have to throw time out the window. The problem is, we start thinking of ways we can "remediate" the situation quickly. But progress takes time. So do your best to just stop thinking about doing something quick, and really try and change your thinking to putting in the work daily (even if just a little bit), but being consistent. I feel like I'm ranting, but I relate a lot to this question, and after really coming to an understanding of my personal situation, I was able to truly free myself by coming to grips with the truth. |