Late Bloomers - I Finally Read a Book that Understands Me!

 

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In the present world, where precocious or early bloomers or wunderkind people are revered, it’s getting difficult for rest of the population to cope with the mental stress and higher level of anxiety brought upon by the hype of such early blooming phenomenon. We are in the midst of the chaotic world, over flooded by the information, and living our lives in a rat race which doesn’t seem to end at all. Instead of making up our own mind, knowing ourselves and taking decision solely based on our preferences, we are taking life decisions on the basis of a sense of competition that we experience. This competitive feeling is not our novel feeling; it’s laden upon us by the society and culture that we are living in. We live in the era where people become billionaire even before turning 30, where early achievers are celebrated like they are invincible creatures; magazines and popular cultures focus on 30 under 30 or super teen or similar other taglines. However, it seems to have forgotten the rest of the mass who are moving ahead in their own pace and rhythm.

Rich Kaalgard in his book Late Bloomers has put on the same idea in a great depth and width that we can fathom of. He’s done an extensive research and come up with numerous examples on the subsequent failure or downhill of early bloomers and uphill journey guided by the inner pace of the late bloomers. He’s very cautious on not blaming early bloomers or their extraordinary achievements; however, he’s stressed over the fact that such rare stories are being made a chant of the society and children are getting pressurized at the early age to achieve the same feat. Depression or anxiety is common among children, and it’s on increasing trend.

Even if we consider the time period of half a century back, the level of stress that people felt at that time was significantly lower than that the average person feel at present. Due to the fact that society has made demigod out of the early achieving wunderkinds, a tremendous amount of pressure for the rest of the world has been created. People often forget that even the wunderkinds have gotten tremendous amount of help in various forms, and often such help comes from the late bloomers as well. The fact that, taking time to absorb things, learning and unlearning things, and getting wide variety of angles for years have lots of positive spectrum than being left out from the rat race of early bloomers. Emotional maturity comes from the experience and age, wisdom comes from knowing what we don’t know, and courage comes from surmounting tons of difficulties along the way. Achieving something in single shot is not bad, but it deprives us from all other facets of one’s character that can only be built by the experience. However, it doesn’t mean that we deliberately fail – rather, it suggests that our organic growth will make us a complete human being instead of the never ending race that we are on.

Parents, schools, employers, the media, and consumers of media are now crazily over celebrating early achievement as the best kind of achievement or even the only kind.

Simply put, a late bloomer is a person who fulfils their potential later than expected; they often have talents that aren’t visible to others initially

Let’s pause. We’re not wrong to recognize and congratulate early bloomers. Their achievements deserve acknowledgement. But our culture’s obsession with early achievement has become detrimental to the majority of the population—to the multitudes of us who develop in different ways and at different paces

One might say that twenty-first-century society has turned a college rejection into a clinical disease

For the twenty- something among us, the message is clear: Succeed right now or you never will.

Creativity is not the sole province of the young. Some of us simply need more time, experience, and experimentation to develop a path and realize our talents

Campbell’s Law, which asserts that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social process it is intended to monitor.” In other words, the more important we make the SAT and its ilk, the more corrupt and distorted the results become.

No one has yet been able to devise a test that can accurately measure the potential or talent of an individual

We have to invest in our health, in our curiosity about the world around us, and in our learning. When we do, we can enjoy multiple brain peaks in our lives and multiple personal blooming

We have to invest in our health, in our curiosity about the world around us, and in our learning. When we do, we can enjoy multiple brain peaks in our lives and multiple personal blooming

Ages forty to sixty four constitute a unique period where creativity and experience combine with a universal human longing to make our lives matter.

“Curiosity is a cognitive process which leads to the behavior perceived as motivation.

The problem for late bloomers is that many of the standards and expectations pushed through mass and social media can work against us

“Society prepares the crime, and the guilty are only the instrument by which it is executed.”

When it comes to cultural norms, breaking up is hard to do.

We do it by quitting. Quit the path we’re on. Quit the lousy job. Quit the class we hate. Quit the friends and associates who hurt us more than help. Quit the life we regret.

Research shows that when we quit pursuing unattainable goals, we’re happier, less stressed, and even get sick less often

If we’ve put ten years into a job—even though we despise that job on a daily basis—we’ll convince ourselves that we love it.

The good news is that self-doubt, odd as it may sound, is actually a secret weapon for blooming

The good news is that self-doubt, odd as it may sound, is actually a secret weapon for blooming

Frame the defeat as you would for a good friend you’re trying to help

Reframing isn’t about turning off our negative thoughts. It isn’t about suppressing concerns or fears. It’s not about turning untrue negative thoughts into untrue positive thoughts.

If you somehow do better than the people around you, it makes them question their own achievements and lives. They start to feel like they’re being left behind, so they try (consciously or not) to keep you in our place

Studies have shown that “higher levels of satisfaction and mental and physical well-being will occur when there is a good fit between the person and the environment.”

Persistence, along with talent, emotional regulation, and all other psychological traits relevant to success in life, is influenced by experience.

Success skills like self-regulation, deep focus, and pattern recognition come with time and experience

Every time I’m frustrated with things or feeling like a failure, it’s because I’m trying to fit into a mold I can never fit into—never in my whole life, not once.

Skepticism is necessary in every endeavor that we take on, be it listening to our own parent’s suggestions or the feeling of love. Thus, while reading this book, please be skeptic and absorb what empowers you, and discard the rest. Since, we have limited amount of time to make sense of this life, and we must take what empower us and discard the rest while reading books and researching for materials. We must not take subjectively to the contents of this book; rather we must look it in a broader and wider perspective. The issues that Kaalgard has presented in this book are real and pressing, and our attention is necessary before it’s too late to recover from the years of depression and anxiety.

Personally, I’ve felt that I can relate the content of the book with my surrounding, peers, and life that I’ve lived so far, and I got hooked immediately towards it. Some other person might not feel the same; moreover, some people might find the content of the book offensive on the ground that it had tried to defame the early achievers who work day and night to achieve greatness in their own sense. The most pressing thing that I’ve a concern over is the fact that most of the precocious person fail to maintain the same level of greatness over the course of their lifetime, and most of them and their success get faded away as quickly as they’ve become famous. The same has happened to some of the persons I know personally, and the dumb kids like us are now getting a hold of our own pace on our own time.

What’s it worth if we can’t maintain our success for the longer period of time? It’s better to maintain our tortoise like pace rather than sprinting and taking a long break or even moving downwards. Isn’t our quest in life is to find some balance? Yes, and if that is the answer then why do we get carried away by the aberrant race that our society is on? We must find the answer of these questions ourselves; however, this book will shed some light on the path towards that quest.

Rating: 4.5/5