At 53, I Officially Quit These 7 Things Because Honestly, I Just Don’t Have The Energy Anymore
AaronAmat | CanvaIn our fifties, most of us pause and take stock of our lives: what's working, what isn't, and what we've been carrying around far longer than we should have. Instead of adding to your already jam-packed to-do list, look for what you've been doing that isn't serving you well. Then quit doing it.
Many people reach a point where life strips away their illusions and shows them the parts that aren't working. Wherever you're suffering — finances, lifestyle, relationships, spirituality — if you dig down to the root, you might find the problem is you've bought into a cultural narrative that tells you to hustle, grind, stay busy, and keep pursuing more.
Not only does blind pursuit of "the American Dream" not lead to happiness, it actively detracts from it. We need to slow down, take an honest look at our choices, and stop the proverbial madness. We are taught that quitters never win. Well, sometimes they do.
At 53, I officially quit these 7 things because honestly, I just don’t have the energy anymore:
1. I quit using money as a metric to measure how successful I am
You should not stop doing smart things with your money, but stop measuring your success by it. Chances are, many people have much more than you yet are still not happy. At all.
One thing I have discovered in my years of coaching wealthy people is that they never seem to have enough. They measure their success based on how much they have, and consequently, they never have enough. This measure itself leads to discontentment.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that financial stress is one of the most reliable indicators of depression, regardless of how much someone actually earns. This effect gets stronger the more someone ties their self-worth to their income, which means the metric itself becomes the problem.
2. I quit taking on debt
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Almost every person would like to eliminate all of their debt; however, most of those people will go deeper into debt in the following year. They will convince themselves that they need something enough that it is worth going into debt for.
Marketers will do whatever they have to to get you to buy their products and services, and they really don't care that you want to be debt-free. Make it a point to stop borrowing money. You will find that there are things you can actually live without, and it is the first step toward becoming debt-free.
Several studies have followed the relationship between personal debt and mental health, and the pattern is remarkably consistent: Carrying debt significantly increases the likelihood of depression and anxiety across all demographics, with 40% of people in debt reporting increased anxiety, while 34% said it had contributed to depression.
3. I quit trying to keep up with everyone
It’s a game that you cannot win! Whenever you compare yourself to someone else, you will always find someone who has something bigger, better, prettier, or newer than what you have. It’s a very slippery slope to be on. Instead, learn to be grateful for and content with what you have.
Keeping up with the Joneses often means keeping up with a pretty picture that doesn’t represent what is going on behind closed doors. The Joneses oftentimes finance their way to that pretty picture.
You don’t see the amount of work they do to maintain it, the stress they are hiding, and the dysfunction in their relationships that comes along with the pretty picture.
Unfavorable social comparison turns out to be one of the main indicators of depression and low self-esteem studied in behavioral research. The sneaky part is that the comparison feels like useful information when really it's just a story you're telling yourself about what someone else's life says about yours.
4. I quit surrounding myself with people who try too hard to impress
Most people are too busy worrying about their own lives to really care about you. That is not an indictment of people; instead, it suggests that the same insecurities that you may have about how you look, what you have, or how successful you are, may be shared by many. Make this the year that you surround yourself with people who have come to a place of contentment — those who aren’t trying to impress anyone.
Psychologist Nick Wignall explains that one of the clearest signs of emotional security is that you stop needing the people around you to perform. When you get genuinely comfortable in yourself, performative people stop being interesting, and you naturally start gravitating toward the ones who are just honestly themselves.
5. I quit taking financial advice from people who were not better off than me
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It is amazing how often people take advice from others who are doing no better, if not worse, than they themselves are. I’ve seen people get marriage advice from divorced people, and business start-ups getting advice about how to do things from struggling businesses. The only advice you should get from those who are struggling is what not to do.
A 2022 study found that financial worry is a huge influence on mental distress in adults, which means bad money guidance carries real consequences for your mental health and not just your bank account.
Getting advice from someone who is struggling with the same problems is a bit like asking someone who is lost for directions. The intentions might be good, but so is their ability to send you further off course.
6. I quit working like a dog
The most successful people work less, often make more, and love their lives. Their business complements instead of competing with their personal life.
They experience freedom and independence with their time, finances, and choices. According to clinical psychologist Erica Wollerman, by the time someone is feeling overwhelmed by ordinary daily tasks, acute stress has already quietly become chronic, and at that point, the healing process gets significantly harder than it needed to be.
Years of conditioning have us believing that hard work means working a lot. The truth is, short periods of efficient hard work are much more productive than “overdrive” 60-hour work weeks. And if you have young children, long work hours, and lots of business travel are especially dangerous. Now is when they need you in their lives. Work will be there later.
7. I quit putting off living life until I had more money, time, etc.
It's time to start experiencing life to the fullest. When you are trying to live life with money as the measure, you will never have enough. You will put off doing the things you could do right now in hopes that someday you will have more available to enjoy life. Live it today.
Dr. Judith Tutin, psychologist and life coach, claims that the people who seem most alive in their later years are rarely the ones who waited for the perfect conditions. They're the ones who permitted themselves much earlier to live as if what they wanted actually mattered.
The above approach is to change the rules of the game of life. Rather than playing life the way the world around us expects us to, we go against the grain and live life to the fullest. If you stop doing the things above, you will begin to have the space and time to do the things in life that really matter the most to you.
Steve Cook is the author of Lifeonaire: An Uncommon Approach to Wealth, Success, and Prosperity, available from major online booksellers.
