A Facebook birthday reminder for an old colleague popped up today. He died a few years back. No need to post balloons on his wall. Maybe that’s why I’m in a reflective mood. Here’s the thing about facing challenges in midlife: the remarkable thing is usually unremarkable. You get up. You try again. You repeat.
Resilience atrophies without exercise.
The problem: we’re being sold a frictionless fantasy
Everywhere you look, someone’s flogging a life with no rough edges. Save time here, order from your bed, never worry about that annoying thing again. Scroll your way to a new business. A template for ten thousand followers by tea time. An AI agent that will spit out your YouTube channel for you, frictionlessly.
None of that prepares you for the reality. Friction is not a bug. Friction is how you build capacity, skill and confidence. It is the reps. It is the point.
Think about those sliding door moments. The right call often felt like the harder one. The Greek myth of Hercules talks to this. At a crossroads he chose Virtue over Vice, labour over applause, the long road over the shortcut. He picked the path that forged character.
Friction is not the enemy. Often it is the point.
The reality: getting up again is the work
What has this got to do with our regular programming here at Faark I Hope It’s Not Too Late? Everything. Reinvention is not frictionless. Starting again never is. And yet if you only watched Insta Reels you’d think a new life was one click away.
I've been watching Frances Cook build out her business "Making Cents". She is everywhere, all the time. I’ve no doubt she’s using smart tools. But I’m sure of this: she’s working incredibly hard. There will have been knocks, rejections and quiet days in the analytics. And then she got up and went again.
So no, it’s not too faarking late. But it is going to take a tonne of work. That’s not punishment, it’s the training plan.
The solution: a simple playbook for the next knock
When you get flattened, don’t wait for motivation. Build a tiny, boring system that moves you anyway.
Shorten the gap. Reduce the time between knockdown and first tiny action. Email one person. Edit one paragraph. Ship one post.
Set friction on purpose, make the easy thing slightly harder and the hard thing slightly easier. Remove apps from your phone. Put your tools on your home screen. Schedule the work like a meeting with your boss.
Count reps, not vibes. Track actions you control, not outcomes you don’t. Ten outreach emails, three draft pages, one video recorded. The scoreboard is behaviour.
Choose useful difficulty. Pick challenges that stretch you without snapping you. Five podcast pitches, not fifty. One pilot client, not a full rebrand.
Make it a part-time job, not a spare-time job . Part-time is a commitment. Give your pivot real calendar slots, targets and reviews.
Not too faarking late. Just not frictionless.
Try this
Write down three times you were knocked down and got up. What did you actually do in the first 24 hours each time? Steal your own playbook.
Pick one project and define ten reps you can complete in the next seven days. Put them in your calendar now.
If you need cultural proof this works, it’s everywhere. Rocky didn’t win on the first bell. Bowie didn’t reinvent himself once; he did it relentlessly. What looked like genius was a thousand tiny, deliberate turns of the wheel.
The next time a slick ad promises ease without effort, remember Hercules at the crossroads and the friend whose birthday still pings my feed. We are lucky to get another shot. Take it.
And when you get knocked down, get up again. Then do it tomorrow.
The act of going again is the most important thing you can do.