A few years ago, I started to notice that I was becoming one of the “older” employees at the company – so many others were at the opposite end (in their 30’s and 40’s). It was an odd realization for me, I had been involved in the financial services industry for a few decades (another shocking realization).

When I came out of college – it was during a recession, finding any type of job was the task at hand. I held several positions – accounting, customer service, insurance sales, investment sales. At that point, I was interested in financial services/investments since my parents had gone through some challenging financial struggles.

I had a good career and in different years earned a good income, and other times a fantastic annual income. I cared about the clients that I served, but I was only impacting one area of their life. I also realized that I needed to take control of my career and not let a corporation decide when I needed to retire. There is existing data that suggests that more than half of older U.S. workers are asked to leave their jobs before they want to retire. That means more than 22 million workers have no control of their future. I did not want to be in that statistic – DO YOU?

I also knew that “retiring” was not something I wanted to do – I had so many different ideas of  new career paths swirling in my head. I had clients that tried early retirement, only to tell me that they needed to go back to work because they felt that they were not as sharp (mentally) as they were when they worked.

The Stanford Center on Longevity is beginning a research project to identify potential mediators to age- related cognitive decline. The goal is to identify new knowledge about the factors that modify cognitive performance changes during the transition to retirement. It seems that every time I read a paper (I know, old school – but I like newspapers!), more countries are studying the relationship between retirement and diminished cognitive function.

Decades ago, my very wise small-town family doctor said he was working until his 90’s – which he did. He noticed that his colleagues who “retired” didn’t really live a long healthy life. That has always stuck in my head, and I plan to take control just like our family doctor.

It is never too late to change careers, make a new transition. In fact, a lot of us baby boomers have the financial resources to do so. Unfortunately, what we also have is decades of thinking why we can’t. We are unaware of what gets placed in our subconscious mind during these years; but those thoughts come roaring back out when we start to dream “what if”?

I know, because I battled those voices in my head, even co-workers who were shocked that I was leaving my job. Believe me, I had my own party in my head: “Why would you give up medical insurance? What about the retirement plan? What about the stock from the company?”. Ever have those thoughts? If we listen to those voices, we won’t ever take a chance.

There is an abundance of motivational channels and podcasts to listen to; have you ever noticed that the message is similar – take a chance on yourself, believe in yourself, do the hard work? The message doesn’t change from our 20’s to our 60’s – come on with me – take a chance on yourself, believe in yourself. What have you got to lose?