Like football games, life’s 4th quarters rock

Celebrating at tailgate parties. Cheering on favorite players. Enjoying high-energy halftime shows. Buying snacks at the concessions. Hooting and hollering from the stands.

These are just a few things diehard sports fans like best about football.

Not me. I am partial to the fourth quarter.

The reason has little to do with the game itself.

Instead, my preference stems from the conviction that entrepreneurs, executives and entrepreneurs, just like football teams, can turn around losing careers and achieve resounding wins late in the game.

“Major life changes are never easy,” writes Rebecca Taylor at www.psychologytoday.com. “But it’s never too late to reinvent yourself professionally or personally.” Fourth quarters rock! I have made several fresh career starts over the years, beginning at an unusually young age.

My first reinvention occurred when I was about 30. Wanting to expand talents I used during my first 12-year career in print journalism, I landed a job as a TV producer. In the process, I learned the fine art of shooting and editing videotape.

About a decade later, I joined a major company where I worked on a multi-media project about health and wellness. In that role, I became knowledgeable about medical advances and adept at graphic design.

A few years before turning 50, I changed careers again and began giving seminars on a wide range of communication topics. As a result, I have traveled all over the world and met thousands of diverse audiences.

At 60-something, I continue to speak far and wide on topics such as resolving conflicts and uncovering your creativity. But I already have plans for yet another switcheroo when the day comes that I can no longer bear the unpleasant nature of modern air travel.

Think you may need an overnight pet sitter a few years down the road? Sign up now as ground-floor client of Sleeping with Dogs, my next venture.

Before then, I will be giving a week-long seminar on personal or professional reinvention – or both – later this year at the Lifelong Learning Institute (LLLI) at Immaculata University. Featuring fast, fun hands-on projects, the workshop is targeted specifically to older adults.

My message: If I can do it, so can you!

Have I mentioned that, when presented with every single unwanted change of my life, I initially have responded by crying, yelling, kicking, screaming, cursing, moaning and groaning?

And yet, despite myself, I eventually moved forward. Some tips on reinvention: • Grieve your losses. Few people decide to reinvent their careers without a precipitating event. In later life, many individuals are eased out of their jobs to make room for younger

employees. Ouch, ouch, ouch. If you have suffered this indignity, rant, rave and throw things until you make yourself sick. You’re better off going temporarily insane now so stifled anger doesn’t come out later on unsuspecting people. It rarely looks good to lose your cool at fellow worshippers praying too loudly in church or at other shoppers squeezing the tomatoes too hard at the produce stand.

• Analyze early decisions. Back in your first quarter of life, parents probably greatly influenced your career choice. If your father was an engineer, you may have felt duty-bound to follow in his footsteps. But, if the truth be told, you have always been dissatisfied with your occupation. So recognize internally that you no longer are a child and move on as an adult. In later life, still trying to please your parents, who by now may be deceased, is a colossal waste of the finite time you have left.

Identify flow experiences. This term means activities where you have become so engrossed that you have lost all sense of time and place. This sensation usually is an indicator of a natural gift or innate passion that makes you forget everything beyond the moment at hand.

Make a list of everything, including hobbies, that has thrust you into that mental state. Suppose your flow list contains playing with your car, knitting sweaters and writing nonfiction. Perhaps you could set up a copywriting business creating ads for the innumerable pet supply shops in the area? While you’re there, try selling car sweaters to the same clients.

• Look realistically at finances. If you recently inherited $50 million from a long lost aunt, you can reinvent yourself without the money pressures of less fortunate mortals. You may want to consider volunteering for the first time in a cause you strongly believe in. Older men and women who need income may succeed by setting up a small business where age is an advantage rather than a detriment. A venture aimed at your contemporaries may be just the ticket. How about acting as a technology coach for individuals who want to keep up with their kids and grandkids?

• Master technology basics. I recently attended a speech illustrated with unreadable flip chart pages yellowed and tattered with wear. Cringing with embarrassment for the 80-something speaker whom I had never met, I considered volunteering to convert his so-called visuals into PowerPoint slides. Although I don’t think you must master computer coding to show your grasp of high tech, I highly recommend learning the basics of Microsoft Office. It will bring you up to moderate speed writing documents, preparing presentations, keeping books and managing email. Dump your flip cellphone, too,

• Create a team. Ideally, it should include trusted men and women of various ages. Ask the 20-somethings in your life to update you on sports, music and entertainment. Get the 30-somethings to coach you on social media such as LinkedIn. Enlist 40-somethings-plus to give you feedback on your hairstyle, clothing and body language. To underscore your commitment to change, schedule regular meetings with your team. At the first gathering, hand out T-shirts imprinted with a slogan such as “Reinvention Convention.”

• Expect setbacks. “Reinvention is neither easy nor smooth,” writes Melissa Kirk at www.tinybuddha. com. “Often, we encounter a lot of resistance within ourselves. We don’t want to let go, even of things that cause us pain and that are obviously out of our grasp.”

OK. So here’s a deep, dark confession about keeping a stranglehold on lost causes. When I was in my mid-30’s and living in Seattle, my then husband and I split up in what I saw as a temporary separation.

When he later filed for divorce to marry another woman – younger wouldn’t you know – I became utterly distraught. Later, having returned to the East Coast to help care for my dying father, I got in the daily habit of searching the news for events in Washington state. Whenever the media contained a story about a plane crash, mass shooting or other random fatalities in the Pacific Northwest, I would immediately telephone my sister.

After fielding a half dozen such calls over the years, she knew exactly what I was going to say – even before I had a chance to splutter my ex-husband’s name into her ear. My sister’s well-rehearsed comment following every disaster anywhere near Seattle: “Oh, Kathleen, you don’t really wish that he and his new wife were killed.”