Career at 50s

A few months back, I wrote a small piece about how our relationship with work changes across the decades. Now in my 50s, I often think about the decade and a half of employable life still ahead of me and the quiet fear beneath it: Will I stay employable?

If I do nothing with what I’ve learned, all the experiences, the mistakes, the insights, the stories I’ve gathered over thirty years could simply disappear. Not useful to me. Not useful to anyone else. Just… gone.

Every time someone retires without an avenue to share what they’ve learned, society loses something precious. Young professionals miss out on mentorship not the formal kind, but the human kind. The wisdom about work, life, relationships. The small workplace stories that carry big lessons. The history woven into lived experiences. Unless people write a book, most of it vanishes.

I genuinely believe that our 50s is when we should start chronicling our careers. We have enough distance to reflect honestly and enough vulnerability to tell the truth. We may not be chasing huge dreams anymore, but we are ready, maybe for the first time, to help the younger generation become who they want to be with a little more clarity and a little less pain.

When I started my career, almost everyone around me was my age. But being in sales I remember my customers in their 50s and 60s, business owners who carried decades of stories. I would sit with them for long hours, just listening. This was the early 90s… no mobile phones, no social media, no podcasts. Just conversations that stayed with me long after.

Today, professionals in their 50s have so many avenues to give back or simply to document their journey. A podcast is a beautiful place to start. Forget who will listen. Sit in your pajamas, switch on the mic, and just talk into it.

Tell your professional story. How did you get your first job? Who were your earliest mentors? How did you find them? Where you struggled, where you grew. What failures shaped you. The near misses. The things you would do differently and so many more things that only you can say.

Everyone in their 50s is a treasure chest waiting to be opened. A storyteller. A mentor. A keeper of lived wisdom. Maybe this is the decade where we don’t just work but we start giving back by telling our stories. Someone will use it sometime and we might never know. We live it for anyone in the world to use.

Tell stories because we are all are best at it.

I am trying to do that as part of my Podcast Penpositive Outclass on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 🥰🙏