I just finished up Late Bloomers by Rich Karlgaard, a book that was referenced in Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk which I am finishing up.
As I continue on my path at a brand new career at 32, the title alone made me purchase the book. The reference by Shetty:
Putting all of this pressure on people to achieve early is not only stressful, it can actually hinder success. According to Forbes magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard, in his book Late Bloomers, the majority of us don’t hit our stride quite so early, but society’s focus on academic testing, getting into the “right” colleges, and developing and selling an app for millions before you even get your degree (if you don’t drop out to run your multimillion-dollar company) is causing high levels of anxiety and depression not only among those who haven’t conquered the world by age twenty-four, but even among those who’ve already made a significant mark. Many early achievers feel tremendous pressure to maintain that level of performance.
But, as Karlgaard points out, there are plenty of fantastically successful people who hit their strides later in life: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first novel, wasn’t published until she was thirty-nine. And after a ten-year stint in college and time spent working as a ski instructor, Dietrich Mateschitz was forty before he created blockbuster energy drink company Red Bull. Pay attention, cultivate self-awareness, feed your strengths, and you will nd your way. And once you discover your dharma, pursue it.
So that was enough for me to purchase Late Bloomers. Here are some of the gems I picked up from it.
Christine Hassler's 20 Something Manifesto is an anthology that explores the experiences of young adults, including what she calls the Expectation Hangover.
"It's somewhat terrifying;” said a twenty-five-year-old named Jennifer, "to think about all the things I'm supposed to be doing in order to get somewhere successful: Follow your passions, live your dreams, take risks, network with the right people, find mentors, be financially responsible, volunteer, work, think about or go to grad school, fall in love and maintain personal well-being, mental health and nutrition? When is there time to just be and enjoy?" A twenty-four-year-old from Virginia lamented, "There is pressure to make decisions that will form the foundation for the rest of your life in your 20s. It's almost as if having a range of limited options would be easier."
Right? When do we just stop the hustle and bustle and just live our lives?
Additionally, many self handicappers rely on what psychologists call the tomorrow fantasy. This fantasy is that we will give our full effort tomorrow, down the road, when it suits us. When the time is right, we will give our genuine best which of course will produce success. “I don’t care that much about this project so whatever. But when it’s something I’m passionate about, I’ll work hard at it. Then people will see what I can really do.” This illusion allows us to avoid putting our ability to a true test. Self-handicapping works as a security blanket for fragile egos, but it carries with it the cost of never experiencing true success.
Oof. I’m definitely guilty of this one.
In Chapter 7, he talks about the power of self-doubt. He starts talking about self-talk which particularly caught my attention, especially because I talk to myself all. the. time. Jay Shetty also talks about the benefits of talking to yourself. Here’s what Karlgaard had to say:
Self-talk shapes our relationships with ourselves. We can use it as a tool to gain distance from our experiences, to reflect on our lives. In a sense, when we talk to ourselves, we're trying to see things more objectively. In a world that so overtly favors early bloomers, this level of objectivity can be enormously beneficial for late bloomers. It can help us overcome the negative cultural messages we receive from family, friends and society.
Self-talk is often looked at as just an eccentric quirk, but research has found that it can influence cognition, behavior, and performance. Positive self-talk can improve our performance by helping us regulate our emotions, thoughts, and energy. It can increase our confidence, improve coordination, and enhance focus. Motivating ourselves through positive self-talk works. Whatever our skill level at a particular task, self-talk can help all of us increase our self-efficacy and perform better. The power of self-talk has been conclusively demonstrated in a host of fields beyond sports.
Ethan Kross, director of the Self-Control and Emotion Laboratory (sounds like a very cool place to work) at the University of Michigan, has found that people who speak to themselves as another person, using their own name or the pronoun you perform better in stressful situations than people who use the first-person I. When people think of themselves as another person, it allows them to give themselves objective, helpful feedback. This is because they self-distance, they focus on themselves from the distanced perspective of a third person.
What’s most fascinating here is the use of the term you or your own name vs. using I. It’s about stepping back and viewing yourself as an objective observer. Really powerful stuff considering all of the benefits you get from it.
If we made all our decisions based on the actual odds of success, we’d rarely attempt anything risky or achieve anything significant. The reality is, stories can keep us going because of their inaccuracy.
I don’t even want to look at the acceptance rates for the PA schools I’ll be applying to. They’re not going to change my plans.
In Chapter 9, he talks a lot about grit and persistence:
Grit, or our ability to persist, increases as we age. As this graph shows, persistence, experience, and age go hand-in-hand (the graph shows a “Grit” score on the Y-axis from 3.4-4.0 with an increasing grit score in the age groups of 25-34 (3.45), 35-44 (3.55), 45-54 (3.65), 55-64 (3.7) and 65+ with a staggering 3.95). Angela Duckworth believes the data suggest that our level of persistence increases as we determine our life philosophy, learn to rebound from disappointment, and realize how to tell the difference between low-stakes goals that can be abandoned and higher-stakes goals that demand persistence, all emergent traits of late bloomers.
There’s a big difference between hoping that tomorrow will be better and deciding that tomorrow will be better. The faith that persistent people have, and that we as late bloomers need, has nothing to do with chance and everything to do with intent.
Again, some powerful stuff. This book was so refreshing to read at 32, because it reinforces that nearly everything about life and your power to succeed gets better as you get older.
Later on, there is a passage from author Kimberly Harrington (who published her first book at 50) where she talks about how she was always a late bloomer as a kid, not learning how to ride a bike until she was nine. This struck me instantly as I was the last kid in my friend group to learn how to ride a bike at the age of either nine or ten. I was embarrassed that the other kids would see my dad teaching me on our street. I was left to either run or ride my Razor scooter as the other kids rode their bikes down the hilly drives of our suburban neighborhood. Eventually, my dad’s persistence paid off and I finally learned.
I was also the last to learn how to swim, always having to reserve myself to the shallow end or clinging to the wall for dear life in the deep end. I ended up in group swimming lessons, with kids much younger than me, and then eventually in private swimming lessons. My wonderful instructor Jason from the local YMCA finally had a breakthrough with me and taught me to swim. During a group swimming lesson, Jason gave us an opportunity to yell at the top of our lungs, to show the importance of taking deep breaths. I was shy and barely made an effort when it was my turn, speaking at barely higher than my normal quiet speaking voice. But the time the second round came along, I was mentally prepared. I was ready to give it everything I had. But when it was my turn, as I was taking a deep breath to belt out, he cut me off and said “No contest!” He expected the same from me because I hadn’t tried. I had lost my chance. What an unbelievably important life lesson Jason taught me that day.
My late-blooming continued throughout adolescence and early adulthood. I didn’t hit puberty until the age of 14, right before freshman year. I was one of only two kids who had to ride the bus home as high-school seniors. I was one of the last to get a cell phone, having to call home from the high-school office if I missed the bus. I didn’t learn how to drive until I was 18 and didn’t experience a first kiss or a girlfriend until I was 19. I didn’t try alcohol either until 18. So it sounds like I’m pretty much the poster boy for late-blooming, as I continue my streak and pivot my career in my 30s.
In the final page of Late Bloomers, Karlgaard writes:
My run (he described a personal success story where he ran up and down a mountain, a total of 52 miles in a matter of 7 hours) made me realize that I’m a different kind of person. I’m more driven by curiosity, exploration, discovery, and less by goals, competition, and winning. That’s the path to success I now pursue, whether in business, life, or hobbies. It fuels me, this pursuit of curiosity and exploration. And ultimately, it’s more productive because I never burn out on curiosity. The way I burn out is by pursuing rigid goals on rigid timetables, and by trying to be a fierce competitor only for competition’s sake. The outside world would call me a slacker for that. But I’m not a slacker. I’m simply not wired like early bloomers. And since you’re reading this book, I suspect you aren’t either.
So there it is. And I resonate with that entire final paragraph. When I was in my post-bac I never treated other students as competitors, I treated them as teammates. And yet my grades were my own; that success was my own journey independent of anyone else’s. And I think I’ve always had a burning curiosity for the world around me. The exploration and discovery of why organic chemistry was the way it was, was much more important to me than ensuring I get an A at all costs. I wanted to know why, I wanted to learn, I wanted to enjoy the subject. And enjoy it I did. And that curiosity approach got me an A-.