How Can You Know When Your “Best” Days Are Behind You So You Can Evolve?

I’m at that age where people ask me when I plan to retire. I continue to say I plan to evolve what I do—just like Serena Williams. Ms. Williams retired from tennis this week, saying she would evolve to what’s next. What does this evolution require? We must see our reality and assess our various capabilities. Then, we might know which best days are behind us and where we might evolve.

I suspect that elite athletes focus their reality first on their physical skills. Clearly, they also need emotional resilience and intellectual adaptability, but there are biological reasons pros retire from their sports way before normal retirement age.

Most of us are not and never have been elite athletes. We can continue to enjoy our activities and not worry if our “best” physical day has already occurred. But the totality of our “best” so we can evolve? In my experience, that’s a little more difficult to see and feel.

That’s because the more emotional and intellectual maturity we have, the more we can balance our physical declines. I now choose to optimize my emotional resilience, and intellectual curiosity, with my baseline for my physical abilities. You might decide to optimize differently.

I ask more questions to help me see my reality for all three.

Questions to Consider

Here are some questions I ask to see my reality:

• Physical reality: Am I too tired? Have I maintained my workouts?
• Intellectual reality: When did I last reject an idea without considering it?
• Emotional reality: How do I feel about the future?

The older I get, the more I need to maintain my physical capabilities. For me, that’s enough sleep and strength. That’s why I optimize first for health.

If I’m too tired, I reject new ideas. That’s not good for creating good days, never mind “best” days. When I optimize for health, I can consider new ideas—for my current and future work. That means I get even more ideas that might lead to my evolution.

And if I’m pessimistic about the future, I have trouble concentrating on creating that future. Current world events affect me, just as they might affect you. I ask what I can do to manage the risks of bad outcomes and then take those actions. Then, I’ve done what I can. I free myself to consider my evolutions.

Choose How You Will Evolve

If we don’t choose our next steps, our evolution, someone else will decide for us. That does not fit for me.

Instead, I choose to experiment with new consulting offerings, new ways and kinds of writing, and new ideas. I refuse to be a conservator, stuck in Old Status Quo. Instead, how can I choose which idea to experiment with and when?

The more ideas I consider, the more possibilities I see to evolve.

We often think about the best as something we did in the past. But what if we reframe our past “best” to answer this question: How can we create our future best? That might be the way to evolution.

We all know I’m no Serena Williams. But we can all start with seeing our reality, just as she did. And then we can choose how to evolve.

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Announcements…

I’m leading a session at the Leading Complexity series of masterclasses: Modern Management: Position Yourself to Take Advantage of Complexity. Yes, it’s about the ideas in the Modern Management books, but you’ll recognize many of the ideas. Use this coupon for a 20% discount: ROTHMANFRIEND20. The sessions start in September.

I’ve published Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer everywhere. The books are out everywhere!

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Till next time,

Johanna

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