No, I’m not 45. I am older. That’s what the woman in the meeting said out loud to her colleagues.

There are a myriad of ways this is expressed:

“This is the way I have always been, I’m not going to change now.”
“My mother/father was this way, what do you expect?”
“I’m an old dog, I can’t learn new tricks!”
“I’m Italian/German/Jewish/Catholic/Southern…this is just the way we are.”
“I’m a millennial/Gen-Xer, this is how we do things.”
“I’m just a dumb jock, what do you expect?”

When I was in college, my mentor said to me, “At what point will you accept responsibility for your own actions rather than blaming them on your background/parents/education?”

What a powerful question. Have you stopped?