Mastering Your Journey at Any Age

Michael Hyatt wrote a review on Jon Acuff’s new book titled Start. In Michael’s review he called out 5 major phases we all go through in our, as Jon calls it, road to awesome.  The steps are as follows:

• Learning
• Editing
• Mastering
• Harvesting
• Guiding

What struck me most about the review is that Jon does not appear to link these steps to a person’s age.  The old maxim “Learn in your 20’s and earn in your 30’s” is out of date according to Acuff.

This breaks the tradition that those who have not found their way by a certain stage in life are doomed to obscurity.

What I find refreshing about Jon’s admonition and Michael’s ensuing comments is that learning can happen in one’s 60’s just as easily as it can in one’s 20’s.  The same goes for all the other steps including Harvesting.  So, for those of you who feel that life has beaten you down, or that you are in a continual loop of learning and editing without ever reaching the harvesting stage, let those chains of “I’m never going to make it” fall away.  You can achieve success.

Another thing that struck me about Hyatt’s review is the comment section beneath the article.  There are dozens and dozens of comments from people who describe being in the Learning, Editing and Mastering phases.  Lots of people who are just starting out. Many who are restarting after failure or setbacks.  Read through these posts and you will see where people report:

• “I’m now 61 years old…”
• “I decided to go back to school at 62.”
• “I’m now 36 and undergoing a complete career change.”
• “…I think I’ll start over at 50…”
• “At the beginning of my 40’s I am filtering out the fluff…”
• “I turned 40 this year.”

Most of these respondents really resonated with the Editing and Mastering phases of the journey.  There are a LOT of us out here who are trying new things, learning, willing to take risk, and willing to keep at it to reach Mastery.