Good morning. Monday, the start of a new week. How exciting. I don’t know about you, but I like Mondays because it’s a refresh, it’s a restart. Everything’s new again. It’s like a new season, Mondays. New beginnings. Love it. Love it, love it. I wanted to talk about age. You know age, and crinkles and stuff. And I want to talk about this thing that we have, where we feel like we’re running at a time or we’ve left it too late, or I’m too old to do that. All that stuff. And I myself have been totally guilty of this.
In fact, even the last week I was thinking to myself, “Oh my God, I’m 46 this year. And I haven’t done X, Y, and Z.” I did manage to talk myself out of that, which was great. Because I just did a little bit of work about how I was feeling and why I was feeling that and whether it was actually the age or the fact that I hadn’t done this particular thing. Of course, it was having not having done the particular thing, which felt worse than the fact that I was going to be 46 this year, because age is just a number.
And guess what? Yesterday there was an incredible concert. If you haven’t watched it, I think you can probably still get it on channel seven catch-up or something like that. At [inaudible 00:01:17] stadium Allianz stadium, I forget the names. Wrong, oh my God, I’m so sorry. But I wanted to talk about how incredible a lot of the performers were and how they are, many would say, at the top of their game. And they’re not young. They’re really not young. I just wanted to bring up a statistic. And we’ve heard many people tell the stories about, what’s his name? Colonel Sanders didn’t get KFC started until he was 70, that kind of thing. There many occasions where people first actually get success when they’re a lot older.
And gone are the days when you got one career and you stuck with that career in your whole life. Some people do and they get better and better and better and better and better. And a lot of the performers that I’m going to mention are those people. They’ve been performing for decades and like a good wine they’re getting better and better and better with age.
And they improve and their tonality, and their tenacity, and the way they own the stage, gets better and better. But then there are other people who may have had three, four, five careers in their lifetime and they get that absolute final step and that best career for them later in life, it might be in decade four or five, six, seven. You never, never, never, never know. I posted earlier today, the video of k.d. lang singing Hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah, however you want to say it. To me, that is absolute perfection. Her voice, the tonality, the way she just owns her presence, her body, the stage, everything. She just is incredible. And Hannah [inaudible 00:00:03:05], one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to my life was one of hers, just her and her piano. Incredible. 58. Amazing. Alice Cooper 72, Olivia Newton-John 71, Brian May 72, Roger Taylor 70, Taylor Reeve 52, Daryl Braithwaite 71. John Farnham 70. Harvey Davis 64. That’s just a few of the performers. And to Simone thank you for posting those ages because that made me think about this.
They are at the top of their game. They’re brilliant. And they’re 20, some of them 30 years older than me. What the hell am I panicking about? As long as you’re doing what’s true to you, age is completely bloody irrelevant. Until you’re no longer breathing, it really, really doesn’t matter. Look at the model, look at Iris Apfel. Look at, oh my God, so many people, Sean Connery. Oh, okay. There’s a couple of them we might not want to mention, but they’re still going anyway. A lot of the Rolling Stones, apparently they all live healthy lives these days, which is great. But it’s like Stanley who passed away. He was still in his nineties doing things. And I don’t think he started… Oh, I’m trying to remember now, should have Googled it. I don’t think he got a big, big break with his comics until he was in his forties or fifties it might’ve been.
I mentioned Vera Wang a few weeks ago. Hasn’t been designing wedding dresses all that long. And she’s the queen of wedding dresses. There is no problem with it. There really, really, really isn’t. Some of the best actresses in the world at the moment that I really, really look up to are in their seventies. You have to admire them and we have to stop focusing on the age. And I looked when I had this issue last week and I was I missed my boat, got over it. Had my pity party, got over it. And I allowed myself to feel that because that’s the important thing. I didn’t grab a block of chocolate. I didn’t grab a bottle of wine. I just worked out why I was feeling the way I was feeling.
And at the end of the day, as I said, it had nothing to do with the age, it had to do with how I felt about letting myself down because I hadn’t finished this particular thing that I want to finish and get that done. And that’s all about me and how I feel about where I am in life, not my age, really nothing to do with my age. I was just using that as an excuse. I want you to question how you feel about age. Now, as I said, I’m 46 this year and my memory growing up, at 46, my mum was that middle aged. Well, she was never really that middle age, but it felt so much older.
I had lunch with a great friend Pete, yesterday, we’ve known each other 25 years, something like that. And we were saying how we still feel there’s some things we can’t do that we used to do 25 years ago, but we still feel energetic and have that zest for life. It’s not, and I don’t know if ever actually has been a truly limiting thing, age. It’s just what we make it mean. I challenge you to question what you’re making your age mean. Are you a sprightly 22 and you feel like you’ve got the whole world at your feet or are you like J.Lo and you’re 50 and going, “Man, I’m just getting started.” Have a think about how you think about it and question why you feel the way you do. Is it about the age? Are you feeling not healthy? You feel like you missed out on something and see how it feels because it’s not bad people. I’m excited about turning 46 this year. Okay.
Have a great day and go watch the concert if you can. It’s just goosebumpy incredible, incredible, incredible, incredible. And again, encourage it. Go see live acts of any kind. Any kind, anywhere, anytime of the day or night, go see live performance. Bye.