Mindset: Noise, Order, and the Person We Hide

Photo by Nghia Le on Unsplash

Most of my friends have started to talk about getting older. The knees that no longer heal as fast. The small injuries that seem to linger. The sense that certain doors close once you reach a certain age. They laugh and tell me I cannot keep throwing myself down BMX tracks or hammering downhill trails forever.

Maybe they are right. But maybe they are not.

I still chase that thrill of being half in control and half out of it. I no longer find myself in nightclubs at three in the morning, but I still stay up late. The energy has not disappeared. It has simply moved.

BMX and the Community of Noise

I often think about BMX because it captures this tension better than anything else. Most of my music taste are drawn from ropey BMX videos we used to borrow from each other on old VHS, fast punk over fisheye laden video, often shot at night, or by your mate who borrowed his dads camcorder.

Watching old BMX videos still brings it all back. The edits were shaky. The tricks were loose. The style was personal.

The top photo is of me and my friends standing by our bikes, the headline above us in the local paper:

“BMX riders appeal for soil to give their track a facelift.”

That headline says everything. BMX around the late 90's was not polished or professional. It was community. It was saving for parts that were American made, digging trails in the woods, sometimes with permission, often without. It was summers spent shifting dirt one spade at a time. It was piling into the back of a smelly transit van, seven of us jammed between bikes, the air thick with petrol fumes, crisps, and damp kneepads.

It was not athletics. It was alive. No judges. No medals. Just the rush of being airborne for a few seconds, not knowing if you would land, hanging around . The soundtracks were could be hip hop, seventies rock, punk or hardcore. Parents thought it was noise. For us it was freedom.

As Matt Hoffman once said:

“If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it.”

That was BMX in a single sentence. It was never about avoiding pain. It was about pushing through it to reach something higher.

Business Wants You to Fit In

That is the contradiction I live with now. In business I am expected to dress the part. To present calmly. To reassure people with the right tone.

Yet part of me is still that kid digging trails and blasting Descendents. And the truth is, that part of me is not a liability. It is my core, and it brings with it an advantage in my opinion.

Marcus Aurelius once wrote,

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.”

Yet most of the corporate world encourages the opposite. File down the edges. Conform. Fit the mould. We call it professionalism. But often it is simply a quieter form of compromise.

Epictetus offered a different standard:

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

That could just as easily be a punk lyric as a stoic maxim. Because progress has never come from the people who blended in. Look at the stories we celebrate. Apple betting on the Macintosh in 1984. Netflix moving into streaming while Blockbuster scoffed. Tesla ignoring the dealership model.

Steve Jobs put it plainly:

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

Noise is rarely welcomed at first. It looks disruptive, even foolish. But over time it often proves to be the spark that moves everything forward.

The Soundtrack of Contradiction

Music brings that contradiction into focus. One evening I might listen to Bach cello suites. The next day it is the Descendents.

At a recent gig I saw them play “When I Get Old.” A song they wrote in their twenties about becoming the age they are now. Men in their fifties, belting out a lyric that once mocked the very life they are living today.

“When I get old I’ll be real cool. I’ll sit around and talk about the old days.”

It was funny. But it was also brilliant. The lyric had folded back on itself, turning into a mirror. Their documentary is worth a watch. It shows what happens when youthful energy refuses to be boxed into nostalgia. Punk is not just noise. It is a mindset carried forward.

Age is an achievement?

My business friends tell me something else. They say I am still young, that in time I will settle. Perhaps they are right. But both sides cannot be. Either age is a funnel that narrows who you can be, or it is irrelevant and mindset is what matters.

History seems to choose mindset.

Henry Ford was in his forties when he started Ford Motor Company. Reid Hoffman was 35 when he launched LinkedIn. Colonel Sanders began franchising KFC in his sixties.

The myth of the twenty-one-year-old prodigy is powerful. But the reality is far more balanced.

Einstein once said,

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

And Seneca warned,

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”

Youth offers speed. Age offers depth. Neither is a guarantee of success. Both can fail. What makes the difference is mindset.

In the modern world we confuse conformity with professionalism.

We believe the right clothes, the right jargon, the right presentation will bring success. But often these are just costumes of safety.

And safety is the most dangerous bet of all. If everyone looks the same, talks the same, thinks the same, then everyone fails in the same way. Punk and BMX taught me otherwise. The first trail you dig will collapse. The first trick you try will throw you over the bars. The first song you play will be off key.

None of it matters. What matters is that you tried. That you refused to let the fear of being wrong keep you silent.

Life is not about locking into a single identity, it is about holding contradictions. I can be the adult in the boardroom and the kid in the woods. I can listen to Mozart and the Descendents without betraying either. I can stay up late and wake early to work.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote,

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

Fitting in feels easier in the short term. But the long-term cost is high. You sand off the edges, and one day you realise you have disappeared.

When I stood in that photo years ago, appealing for soil to fix a track, I had no idea that the real lesson was about mindset. We just wanted to ride.

Looking back, it was never really about the track. It was about creating something together, refusing to wait for permission, making noise until someone noticed. It does not always fit into enterprise rooms. It does not always look professional. But it is often the thing that makes the difference.

Because age is not the barrier. Mindset is. And sometimes the noise is exactly what the system needs.