Succeed in Life as a Late Bloomer - wikiHow

How to Succeed in Life as a Late Bloomer

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Not all of us are quick off the mark and succeed early in life. Some of us are like slow-boiling pots, who need time to gather wisdom and make sense of the world around us. But watch out when a later bloomer finally gets it - late bloomers are often the driving forces in the world because they have spent a long time digesting ideas, information and knowledge just to come up with some amazing solutions to the world's problems.

Steps

1. Determine if you are a late bloomer. There are many ways in which your blooming could be delayed:
   
   • Educational late bloomer. This could mean that your grades at school were so-so until the end of your school years, when suddenly you blossom and outstrip all the clever kids in one set of exams.
     
   • Career late bloomer. It could also be that you have spent the first 15 - 20 years of your adult life wondering what career you want. Then you suddenly fall into it and do brilliantly.
     
   • Social late bloomer. When everyone else was racking up their firsts, the idea of making new friends and dating was foreign--perhaps terrifying to you. That is, until one day, you realize that talking to people isn't nearly as scary as it seems, and your social circle unfolds.
     
   
   
2. Don't fret if you are a late bloomer. It means you are a deep thinker and you are connected to the world in a way that is different from the "rush-rush, achieve-now" crowd. When your clever, fast colleagues are suffering from burn-out, you are just on the rise and are ready to take over the helm. People tend to make poor decisions when they're in a hurry to keep up with everyone else's timeline; be glad that you were spared that and, as a result, can make better decisions and fewer mistakes.
   
3. Know your strong points. These include reflection, consideration and patience. Use these to build up your self-confidence and to tide yourself through life's low points when you feel that you are swimming against the tide.
   
4. Keep an "Ideas Book" handy - perhaps next to your bed or in your bag. Whenever ideas strike you (and late bloomers have many ideas), write them down. You may be wading in indecisiveness at the time but that idea has significance and may be very useful later on when you come back to it.
   
5. Try not to feel left behind or envious of friends and colleagues who have already "made it" or seem better adjusted to the world than you. You are just taking longer than them and your results matter a lot to you. For you, the journey matters as much as the outcome. There's no point in comparing yourself to others. Accept that you are an individual human being going on an individual route at an individual pace.
   
6. Recognize that others may turn to you when they need to calm down. Use that skill to boost your self-esteem as much as to help them. Also realise that this is an important skill and maybe use it to your advantage in choosing a vocation, career or lifestyle.
   
7. Enjoy your eventual success and build on it. It took you a long time to get there but bets are, you know what you are doing far more than those who got there earlier and people will start to come to you as they have great confidence in your experience, knowledge and the fact that you have thought so deeply about everything and reached your own conclusions rather than parrotting someone else's.
   
8. Record your thoughts. Your process of getting to where you are will likely help someone else, especially other family members. Traits like this can be easily inherited and if your children or another family member can be helped by learning about what you have gone through, then you will have made life better for someone else.
   
9. Always tell yourself that it is good to be a late bloomer. Trust in yourself and your abilities, for you are getting there and you will conquer the difficulties in ways that others can only dream of. Instant achievement is not always a fairytale come true - think of the people who are so afraid of being discovered for being a fraud because they don't know what they're doing. Late bloomers avoid that feeling by making sure they do know what they're doing!
   

Tips

• Be strong and aware of your strengths.
  
• Be honest with yourself. Take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself: "What am I doing that I want to stop? What am I not doing that I want to begin?" Even if you have no idea what your passions and gifts are, undoubtedly you're clear about something in your life. Start there.
  
• Don't feel blue about being slower to reach goals in life. Your journey is simply slower, more considered and probably you are gathering all the necessary experience to ensure that you get it right.
  
• Invest time in building friendships. Through friends you will grow more than trying to attempt life's journey by yourself.
  
• Be creative in overcoming obstacles. Don't let anything, even a lack of money or age discrimination, come between you and your dreams. If you're facing a wall you can't blast through, grab a shovel and dig under it or borrow a ladder and climb over the top! Better yet, just walk around the side. Take Evelyn Gregory, who became a flight attendant for US Air Express at age 71. After being rejected by three airlines, she accepted a job as a gate agent and let the corporate brass get to know her. Six months later, she was hired by US Air Express and flew for them for the next seven years.
  
• Remember that nothing you like to do is tiresome. From the outside looking in, it sounds daunting to go to medical school at 46, join the Peace Corps at 65, or become a flight attendant at 71. But the truth is that it isn't exhausting; it's exhilarating. It's far more tiring to do something you don't enjoy.
  
• Cultivate a sense of humor. Laugh often-especially at yourself. Researchers at Loma Linda University in California have discovered that laughter not only reduces stress and stimulates the immune system, but also lowers dopamine levels. (Dopamine governs our "fight or flight response.") In other words, a good laugh can ease the anxiety of risk-taking.
  
• Help other late bloomers to find their path in life. Reassure them that they are not left behind or less intelligent than other human beings. We're all worthy in this world and we all have a purpose.
  

Warnings

• On the downside, you can dither for life - avoid the temptation to drown your indecisiveness in drugs, alcohol or mere pleasure pursuits.
  
• Be careful with money - when it takes longer to get somewhere, you need to be more spartan in your lifestyle and be penny-wise.
  
• Many late-bloomers are perfectionists, afraid to try or do something until they are good at it. If this is the major reason that you are a late-bloomer, you need to deal with it. Remember that it is better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly. Seek professional help if desired.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Accomplish a Goal
  
• How to Build Self Confidence
  
• How to Make a Decision Using a Quantitative Scoring System
  
• How to Accept Being Shy
  
• How to Solve a Problem
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Succeed in Life as a Late Bloomer. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Untouched

Just remembered my dad's going in for surgery tomorrow to have a cancerous area removed. I've been feeling really on edge yesterday, to the point where I was driving my wife crazy, this probably has a lot to do with it. I'm glad that all the holiday festivities are done, for the most part - I mean there's NYE tomorrow night, but we're not planning a huge outing to a nightclub or anything, I think we're either staying home or spending it with my mom and dad at the hospital. House is still a mess, even after K. and I worked on it for several hours last night after I pouted about it and gave her a lot of shit for not helping around the house, which I realize now was not fair to her. Feel so out of balance right now. Work is going slow, I have not had a lot of extra time to spend on getting caught up at work. I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions, if I did then I'd have too many to keep track of - really apply myself at my job next year, apply for a new job maybe, read a book a week, train for a half marathon, record 10 songs this year. Probably out of all of those the one about my job is most important, that's the only way I'm going to get some extra income, move my family out of our current house, and finally be happy about what I do for a living. Things seem very hard right now, very solemn and grim. Maybe it's winter, or this fucking recession. I took a look at what 2 bedrooms with parking are going for in my building these days - holy crap that was depressing. Maybe I should set aside a couple of hours later this week, do some meditating and a weekly review. Maybe I should go out running again - it's warm out again, I better take advantage of that.

Anyways, other than this relentless grimness, N's first Christmas went really well. She partied with her cousin C. at my mom's house, then we got up early Christmas morning and drove 85 mph to make it to Christmas brunch at the Inn with all our family in MI. That side of the family is really nice, they all love N. We also went on a sleigh ride with my mom in law's employer's family, which was really fun. They had a huge bonfire out in the woods with hot dogs and pasties and marshmallows, I've never done anything like that before. Me and the father in law also went ice fishing with some of the uncles, that was a blast. I'm just glad my wife and N. had a good Christmas, our first Christmas together. It's not surprising to me that my warm holiday cheer evaporates the minute I go back to work and remember that my dad's going in for surgery again. K. was crying a lot last night. I must be delightful to live with these days. I really shouldn't take out all my career frustrations out on her, she doesn't deserve that crap. God our daughter is so cute, she's talking a lot these days, it's hilarious to hear her trying to hold a conversation. Soon she won't be a little babbling infant anymore, but a little girl that runs around and talks, at that point it'll really seem like the 3 of us and not just me and K. and this helpless baby that we have to fend for constantly. I wonder what she'll look like when her hair grows in, what her first word will be - stuff like that. You worry about them so much, you never want them to ever get hurt, or frightened. You just want them to be happy all the time.

Alone in the chain, it remains to be seen how well you can play when the pawn takes a queen now

I'm at the office early today, the boss just sent an email saying no managers will be around today, but feel free to leave early this afternoon to get an early start on the holidays. Feel bloated already and the celebrations haven't even started. It's been sub zero blizzard weather around here for more than a week. I've been trying to keep the faith with watching my diet and going to the gym, but the past couple of days it's just been too cold outside and difficult to walk in with all that snow. The other night K. came home from a 'holiday cookie baking party' with her girlfriends with a TON of delicious cookies and fudge. So I've been munching on those for the past few nights. We're going to be bringing the rest to my mom's tonight for Christmas eve. Our plan is to spend Christmas eve in Chicago, then we're going to get up early tomorrow and drive to Michigan. We should be in Michigan until the 29th, visiting K's family. I get so restless whenever we go for an extended trip to Michigan - I feel like I just sit there and there's nothing for me to do. The weather seems to be warming up today - precipitation was coming down as a mixture of rain and snow on my way to work. Yesterday I thought I might just take the week off from dieting and working out, lord knows I haven't given myself a break since June when I really started training hard.

This blog will be 4 years old. I feel like this entire year has been about me settling down into a domestic situation with my wife, becoming more connected with my family, and having N, while the year before was about my whirlwind relationship with K. and moving in together. It's not like I've devoted all my time to focusing on my career with a laser like intensity. I think about Balzac, who swore off women and even when he broke down and visited prostitutes lamented that 'there goes another novel'. It just seems to me sometimes that science, art, literature, etc. is accomplished by geeks sublimating their sexual urges for their art. I don't think I could do this personally, I mean I tried and it worked for a time, but I guess I eventually cracked. There has to be a way, of course the answer is 'balance' - but has anything great ever been done by someone who stops working at 5 o'clock, goes home and walks the dog, and goes shopping at Target with the kids on Saturdays? That's the stupid shit that I worry about as I waste another hour of my life on something other than learning new things, creating a piece of software, starting a company, updating my resume and looking for a new job.

My friend Paddock sent me a bunch of awesome burned albums for Christmas and I've really been digging them. I'm starting to get back into following new music again, after being apathetic/indifferent to 'hipster' culture for a long time. I just discovered Stereogum and have been downloading zip files of their top 50 MP3s as well as the Pitchfork top lists - I also brought my terabyte hard drive to my brother's house and stole my brother's and cousins' MP3s off their computers. I'm going to fill this terabyte hard drive with all my old shit also and finally get my music collection organized. It's funny, I'm like the 'hipster dad' who 'reads all the music blogs' that hipsterrunoff makes fun of. I just like music, I need tunes for running and driving around town with my wife.

It doesn't feel like Christmas, despite all the snow. The country is in the midst of a huge recession, I'm constantly worrying about money - not that we're bad off or in danger of losing our house or anything. I still feel the need to smile and keep up appearances. Last year felt more like Christmas and we spent it at the hospital with my dad while he prepared for his heart transplant. Honestly I feel really stressed out, every time I look at my wife and baby I'm reminded that their well being and happiness is my responsibility. The truth is they deserve a bigger house and only the best in life, but I'm not sure how I'm going to provide it for them. The answer of course is that I have to place the appropriate value on my life, concentrate on my career, believe in myself, and the universe will respond to the positive energy that I'm putting out into the world. It's very difficult though, I feel like all my free time is taken up with the baby. K. bought this 'christmas stocking needlepoint kit' - you know, the felt christmas stocking with embroidered angels or reindeer or something that your mother made for you when you were a kid. My mom made me one a long time ago with a picture of Snoopy on it that still hangs in her house every Christmas. Well I guess K. felt the need to make one for N., the thing is K. is very slow at things like sewing - so it's been almost a month and she has not finished it yet. But I have to hold N. on my lap and play with her and talk to her and feed her etc. while K. does her sewing. It's driving me batty. I can't even play freaking guitar, and I can't get extra stuff done for work. How am I supposed to be excellent at life when there's no time to do anything? I've found an answer, sort of. The past few weeks I've been getting up a couple hours early during the week - to get extra work done - which frees me up a little more in the evenings. It's a brutal schedule though, I get so tired, especially with all the exercising, last week with the blizzard like weather I guess I just gave up trying to follow this schedule. After Christmas I will try again. This is really my only option, otherwise I will never improve at my career/record more guitar songs/earn more money. Time is the most valuable thing you have in life, and I've squandered so much of it - I feel like I'm past the halfway point already in terms of living a vital life. But the thing is, you have to deal with your life now, especially now that I have my family to look after. There's enough time to do everything I ever wanted to do, I just have to find the resolve inside myself to make these things come true.

I've played the spades, I know I'm a jack of all trades

I haven't written in a while, things have been really crazy the past month. So many cool things have happened - I should've been writing as I went along but you know how it is.

I think the last time I sat down to write any personal stuff about my life it was the end of last month when I was worrying a lot about my career but was suddenly told that I'd soon be assuming more responsibility. That's actually still in progress and like everything here at work it seems like changes happen at a very gradual pace. We had a company picnic last week - one thing I noticed is the huge change in my relation to coworkers. Last year I felt a lot of hostility from a few people while this year I get along pretty well with most people I work with.

I told J. the other day about how grateful I feel for all the good things that have happened in my life, ever since we got married - maybe even as far back as a year ago when we first started dating and talking about moving in together, it seems like things have been changing at such a rapid pace in my life. I'm constantly amazed at how happy I am, and I know K. feels the same ways, as she's always saying stuff like 'I love my life'. I told John that perhaps K. is the main reason for all the positive developments in my life as they seem tied in my mind, but he told me that I deserve some credit too for letting all the good things into my life and having some self respect, which is valid I guess.

Family and friends are the most important things in my life, with my wife and my baby coming first, my immediate family coming second, and my friends third, although I have to admit my friends are a lot more entertaining than my family sometimes while my wife is probably the most entertaining person of all. I can spend days on end with her doing hardly anything and be perfectly content. We do this practically every weekend, although I manage to get some guitar playing, working out and hacking in. Last Saturday we sat around, watched tv, I played guitar, worked out, went to therapy, we went out to eat at Wishbone - we ran into C. from work there, a nice surprise - got rained on, came in, dried off, I went back out and got dinner, then I read to her in bed before we went to sleep early. Weekends are frequently like that. Sometimes we go out and hang out with friends or hang out with my mom and dad. My mom loves K. and loves to have us around.

K. graduated last week, me J. and C. attended her graduation at Navy Pier, took pictures and went out for ice cream afterwards. Yesterday my family took K. out to celebrate her graduation - my parents, brothers and even cousins all got her presents, which is a lot more than even I did for her. I'm really blown away by how much my family loves her, although it's not surprising to me really. We went to Marcello's for brunch, which is awesome - but I always feel bloated for the next 2 days after I go there.

Probably the most important events of the past month were my bachelor party and our wedding reception in the UP. This has been a very memorable month, probably one of the best in my life, which came as a little bit of a surprise. I had actually not really been looking forward to my either my bachelor party or my wedding party - for a long time they just seemed like these events on the horizon that we always talked about in the abstract. I didn't feel ready for them because I was 'fat'. and they always just seemed like something 'planned', but when they actually happened, they were much more enjoyable than I thought they would be and brought me a lot closer to my family.

We got so hammered at my bachelor party - it was funny, we kept talking about how we were 'going to make it rain' but we actually only spent about a half hour at the strip bar. J. J. P and D. came as well as my cousins and brothers. There were about 11 of us in all. We started out at Smith and Wollensky, which was awesome, then went out to this club Moda - J.'s hs buddy was a bouncer there and got us in free. Me and J. went around approaching girls just for fun again and I did really well - bringing some hot latinas over to talk to my family and friends. I haven't lost my 'magic' - and actually I think the wedding ring actually helps, it's sort of a disqualification and dhv all in one. Later on everybody agreed we should have stayed at the club we were having so much fun, but since it was a bachelor party we all decided to drive over to the strip club, which sucked. We went to VIP's which is this club next to Crobar - what sucked about it was that it was really crowded and there seemed to be very few strippers - there were like 10 of them for 300 guys. So we got a few dances and everyone went back to L.'s, P. in particular was blown away by L. and M.'s swank pad. The wedding party was pretty awesome, everyone had a great time, I was actually surprised by how well the two families got along. We were there for 5 days. My dad and bros played a lot of golf while K. and I went around and visited relatives. I won't be able to write enough to adequately describe all the cool things that happened last week. There's just not enough time right now. One thing - when Uncle Tod called me and K. out to dance our first dance in front of our family and friends, that was probably the best moment of my life.

There's not enough time for me to write today. A couple of things - I've started on a cool software project outside of work, using the Google Data API, J.'s bbq last night was cool, I'm learning Bury Me by SP on guitar, we talked to a mortgage officer at the bank last weekend to refi our mortgage, and we came up with a really good plan to deal with our impending housing problem with the new kid coming, which I'll probably go into in detail later on. I have to get to work.

Dave Ramsey on never having car envy again

http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/lms/drive_free/player.cfm