What if your brain wasn’t too old to learn?
You are considering changing careers, but one thought keeps coming back: ‘At my age, I won’t be able to learn anything new,’ ‘I’m too old to train,’ ‘I’ll fall behind.’ Many people over 50 share this doubt. It is understandable. But it is not based on biological truth: it is an old belief that neuroscience has long since disproved. The adult brain is neuroplastic: it can still learn, reconfigure itself and create new circuits, even after the age of 40, 50 or 60.
It is possible to learn at any age!
Researchers Michael Merzenich and William Jenkins have shown that the brain retains its ability to adapt throughout life. When confronted with something new, it creates new connections, strengthens some and allows others to disappear. This process, known as neuroplasticity, enables learning at any age. It works after 40, 50, 60 and beyond.
Your brain is not a fixed machine. It is a living organism that learns when it is regularly nourished. The more you repeat a task, the more fluid it becomes. What seemed difficult becomes familiar.
That’s why what you enjoy doing matters so much. An activity that comes naturally to you will be easier to repeat. This is what the theory of appetence shows: the pleasure you derive from an activity promotes memorisation, automation and progress.
If you doubt your ability to learn, don’t focus on your age. Instead, ask yourself what really interests you. Attention, curiosity and consistency matter much more than biological age. What revives learning is not your initial level, but your commitment to what you do.
It is not a machine that wears out: it is a living network that reconfigures itself according to the efforts you put into it.
What is holding you back is not so much your age as your exposure to cognitive effort.
Claude, 57, said he was incapable of retraining in accounting. ‘I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to remember anything. But I started with simple exercises, and to my surprise, I made progress. It came more slowly, but it came.’
Denise, 63, had never dared to take a course before: ‘I thought I was too old to start over. But session after session, I saw that I was learning, in my own way. It was my fear, not my age, that was holding me back.’
These experiences show that the obstacle is not in the material to be learned. It is in the idea you have of your ability to relearn. And you can challenge that idea.
Changing careers is not about wondering whether you are still capable. It is about deciding to give your brain another chance to start afresh.
Three practical ways to boost your brain power
- Learn for 10 minutes a day, without pressure. Consistency is more important than intensity.
- Train your memory with simple tasks: naming, classifying, summarising.
- Look at a current difficulty as a muscle that needs retraining. It’s not ‘I‘m not cut out for this,’ it’s ‘I need to warm up.’
You are not behind. You are ready to start afresh in a different way. And that is enough to reactivate what your brain knows how to do.
👉 Take the aptitude test to find out what will be easiest for you to learn.
