You Need a New You. They Decided.

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Someone decided when you hit your 60s you're supposed to be a whole new person.

[00:00:06]I'd like to know who that someone is.

[00:00:10]New face, new hair, new hobbies.

[00:00:14]A whole new you.

[00:00:15]So what's wrong with the old one?

[00:00:19]Let's [music] discuss.

[00:00:24]Let's talk blatant.

[00:00:26]Your looks.

[00:00:27]>> [music] >> You're supposed to start thinking about facelifts.

[00:00:31]A little sagging [music] here and there.

[00:00:33]We can fix that.

[00:00:36]I don't do lifting. [music] But I do go and get my hair cut every once in a while.

[00:00:41]>> [music] >> And they want you to have a hairdo that's perfect [music] for someone with wrinkles and the silver [music] stuff up top.

[00:00:53]Oh, maybe you'd like to cover it up a bit >> [music] >> and restore something that maybe used to be there or maybe wasn't.

[00:01:02]But you should look good >> [music] >> at being old.

[00:01:06]Not so much for guys, let's be real.

[00:01:09]They can be old [music] and distinguished.

[00:01:12]I have a problem with all of this in general and [music] it leaves no room for doing nothing at all.

[00:01:20]Nothing. [music] Last time I saw my hairbrush was in the airport restroom in Lyon, France.

[00:01:29]I was there for my father's 80th birthday.

[00:01:32]How many years ago?

[00:01:34]Well, he would have turned 100 and then some by now. [music] And since I couldn't find another brush like it cheap though it was, it worked for me.

[00:01:46]I skipped it altogether after that.

[00:01:48][music] Nothing bad happened and I hardly created a whole new me.

[00:01:55]I just [music] became what I already was.

[00:01:59]Someone with graying hair and a [music] batch of curls.

[00:02:08]You get to 60 >> [music] >> and you're supposed to need all kinds of advice.

[00:02:14]So you can have a whole new life for the whole new you.

[00:02:19]Financial planning, cultural pressure to do this and that.

[00:02:24]And tips.

[00:02:25]The world is so good with tips for 60-somethings.

[00:02:31]By 70 they've kind of given up.

[00:02:34]They tell you how to downsize, how not to spend anything, how to organize your kitchen countertop.

[00:02:42]But I tell you if we really needed tips we would have figured the world out millions of tips ago.

[00:02:52]It's not about tips.

[00:02:55]It's about who you are.

[00:02:58]And the whole point is you can't change who you are.

[00:03:03]Thank goodness.

[00:03:05]Reinventing yourself with tips.

[00:03:08]Please, let that not happen.

[00:03:12]And all of those tips can never [music] touch reality.

[00:03:17]Me?

[00:03:18]I would have been led astray if I followed them.

[00:03:21]In the end my downsizing journey was none of this gives me joy, [music] I'm going to get rid of it.

[00:03:28]Yeah, I paid two of them and the rest I [music] took to the dump.

[00:03:33]Things that have been my treasured possessions for years.

[00:03:37]But they didn't apply [music] to my older years.

[00:03:41]The reality of who I am now.

[00:03:44]I'm so pleased with the results, but reinvented?

[00:03:47]>> [music] >> No.

[00:03:53]Once you retire [music] or when you're just about to all of a sudden there's a buzz in the air. You're going to turn into this new person [music] that the world imagines, maybe just not [music] you.

[00:04:09]And you'll want to embrace the freedom to [music] do exactly that.

[00:04:15]I doubt a new you blossoms out of nothing.

[00:04:18]>> [music] >> There was something there before.

[00:04:21]Now, I can't hold myself up as an example here.

[00:04:25]I did start a YouTube channel. [music] Totally unexpected to me or to anyone else.

[00:04:32]I've also found myself running a business.

[00:04:36]Mostly because I didn't consider this complication when I started making videos.

[00:04:43]But yeah, it's a big complication.

[00:04:47]Not just little videos.

[00:04:49]That doesn't mean I reinvented myself.

[00:04:52]I'm not a different person.

[00:04:55]I discovered different aspects of myself that were already there. I can see that now.

[00:05:01]I'm a more capacious person than I was before.

[00:05:05]I have room for more different parts of myself that I wasn't familiar with.

[00:05:10]Were they there?

[00:05:12]Yeah, obviously.

[00:05:15]But it so happens in my later years with so much stuff pulled out of my life and more space to experiment, to play to do what I feel like doing in the moment.

[00:05:31]I'm simply more me.

[00:05:33]Not a brand new me.

[00:05:36]My talents and drive didn't come from nowhere.

[00:05:41]I'm just more in a place to take advantage.

[00:05:46]Frankly, I'm in awe, but I'm not a new person.

[00:05:53]Many of you will recognize this one.

[00:05:56]Now that you're free of all your work obligations >> [music] >> you're encouraged to volunteer.

[00:06:02]That's a stereotypical senior thing.

[00:06:06]I mean I love volunteers.

[00:06:09]They do so much for us.

[00:06:12]And it's the perfect [music] fit for so many people for a lot of reasons.

[00:06:17]>> [music] >> It helps them develop talents, learn new skills experience contributing to a higher cause, all of those things.

[00:06:28]But when they do that, I'm not convinced they're reinventing themselves.

[00:06:33]They're running [music] with something that was already there.

[00:06:38]>> [music] >> Now, much as this is great for so many folks for others not so good.

[00:06:46]That would be [music] me.

[00:06:48]I wanted to be needed.

[00:06:50]I wanted to go out there and enjoy myself.

[00:06:53]And I wanted [music] to draw off my talents which have been developed over the decades.

[00:06:59]Last time I tried volunteering mostly it was [music] Breckie that got reinvented and not me.

[00:07:07]We went out together as a team on the trails in a national park.

[00:07:12]Breckie's job was a bark ranger.

[00:07:16]Yeah, I said bark ranger.

[00:07:18]Cute.

[00:07:20]His job was to get stroked for 3 hours.

[00:07:24]Oh, he loved [music] it.

[00:07:26]Could have handled 2 hours more. He loved [music] it that much.

[00:07:31]Best thing, it exhausted him.

[00:07:34]Absolutely [music] toast.

[00:07:36]Thank goodness.

[00:07:38]Me?

[00:07:39]>> [music] >> Well, I was worn out, too.

[00:07:42]Very worn out and very [music] cranky.

[00:07:46]Absolutely impossibly cranky.

[00:07:51]No reinvention there.

[00:07:53]We fall into bed every week like clockwork after our shift and we'd be there for hours.

[00:08:05]If you'd like this kind of conversation to show up again in YouTube it's very easy to make that happen.

[00:08:12]Just hit subscribe. It's free.

[00:08:16]And that way it'll show up on your browse page >> [music] >> right where you can see it.

[00:08:22]It also lets YouTube know that we seniors really appreciate authentic content that applies to our lives.

[00:08:29]And it helps me out, too.

[00:08:36]If that weren't enough reinvention pressure >> [music] >> what else do we get?

[00:08:42]Find your passion.

[00:08:45]As though you weren't familiar with it already.

[00:08:48]You could take up painting, >> [music] >> learn Italian collect stamps.

[00:08:53]Find the thing you didn't ever have time for and you were so busy >> [music] >> you didn't know you were interested.

[00:09:00]It's as though the life you were living didn't have any interest in it that were worthy of continuing. [music] As though your curiosity had an expiration date.

[00:09:12]But what if your passions were lurking all along?

[00:09:17]You just didn't have time for them.

[00:09:18][music] And now you do.

[00:09:21]That's not reinvention.

[00:09:24]That's self-knowledge. [music] Here's what I mean.

[00:09:29]For decades now I had decided [music] I would reinvent myself as a fabulous cook.

[00:09:37]Oh, I'd have to wait till my schedule was a little bit lighter [music] because realistically well, I had so much going.

[00:09:46]You know how it is.

[00:09:48]I knew I had [music] to be a fabulous cook.

[00:09:52]Well, as you can guess I couldn't reinvent myself as a fabulous cook.

[00:10:00]Evidently, I was never intended to be.

[00:10:03]No matter how much I tried.

[00:10:05]No matter how much I fantasized all those years, it was never going to happen.

[00:10:12]All the space and time in the world, it doesn't make room for that.

[00:10:17]This is self-knowledge.

[00:10:20]The kind you get in your 60s and 70s.

[00:10:23]That's a wonderful thing, too.

[00:10:26]But, it's not reinvention. [music] We come to our later years, have to say goodbye to so many people, friends, relatives, close family, [music] people we cherished.

[00:10:42]We might have been part of a tight social circle, or we might have been in the groove of just a few people in our lives.

[00:10:51]But, when we're done with work and those busy hours, people expect that we're going to get social, newly social.

[00:11:01]We're going to join groups.

[00:11:03]We're going to travel places on tourist buses and have a good old time with everyone else who's riding along.

[00:11:10]We're going to make all kinds of new friends.

[00:11:13]Many times, we do find connection in new places.

[00:11:18]We do.

[00:11:20]But, not for a reinvented self, >> [music] >> a self we'd already become.

[00:11:25]Our new choices and people we hang out with satisfy parts of ourselves very often that have been there all along.

[00:11:32]And now we simply have room to foster them.

[00:11:36]Let them bud and blossom.

[00:11:40]That's not for everyone, either.

[00:11:43]So many of us are introverts.

[00:11:47]We have had to act extroverted to survive our work [music] years or busy home lives.

[00:11:55]But now, we can reconnect with that other us.

[00:12:00]The one that shies away from a lot of social presence.

[00:12:04]That's not reinvention.

[00:12:07]That's recognition of who we are and what we need.

[00:12:13]I hope you find a special [music] place for you, whether you make changes in your life or whether >> [music] >> you carry on the way you always were.

[00:12:24]And that's it for [music] now.

[00:12:25]Don't forget to subscribe, and we'll talk soon, all right?

[00:12:30]See you then. [music]