Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rich Karlgaard<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were about thirty employees. I\u2019d never managed anyone. Now I had to. And I did okay – much, much better than expected. Do you know what I learned? I learned the most important part of leadership is showing up. Could have fooled me. That wasn\u2019t in the books I\u2019d read. I sure didn\u2019t learn it from my father. Turns out eagerness is infectious. I moved the CEO\u2019s office to an open-glass conference room where everyone could see it and me. I made it a point to be the first there every day and the last to leave. I took employees to lunch every day and to dinner every night – at cheap diners but I gave them my time and interest. I wandered around endlessly talking to them, focusing on every single one and what they thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The effect amazed me. And them. That I cared made them care. Suddenly I felt what it was like to lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the opposite end of the success spectrum is the early bloomer, the fast starter. Five-foot-one-inch Riley Weston was spectacular; at age nineteen, she landed a $300,000 contract with Touchstone, a division of Walt Disney, to write scripts for the television show Felicity<\/em> – the coming-of-age story of a UCLA freshman. Weston\u2019s fast start in major league television landed her on Entertainment Weekly\u2019s <\/em>list of Hollywood\u2019s most creative people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Margin note: Younger<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There was only one problem. Riley Weston was not nineteen. She was thirty-two, and her real identity, until this profitable ruse, was Kimberly Kramer from Poughkeepsie, New York. \u201cPeople wouldn\u2019t accept me if they knew I was thirty-two,\u201d she said in her defence. She was probably right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If we or our kids don\u2019t knock our SATs out of the park, gain admittance to a top-ten university, reinvent an industry, or land our first job a ta cool company that\u2019s changing the world, we\u2019ve somehow failed and are destined to be also-rans for the rest of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This message, I believe, creates a trickle-down societal madness for early achievement. This has led to very costly mistakes on the part of educators and parents in how we evaluate children, inflict pressure on them, and place senseless emotional psychological burdens on families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider how, in high-pressure cities, some elite preschools<\/em> play on the fears of affluent parents of three- and four-year-olds. The Atlanta International School in Atlanta offers a \u201cfull immersion second language program\u201d – for three-year-olds. Just pony up $20,000 for a year\u2019s tuition. But that\u2019s a bargain compared to the fees at Columbia Grammar School in New York, which will set you back $37,000 a year. Your three- and four-year-olds will get a \u201crigorous academic curriculum\u201d dished out in three libraries, six music rooms, and seven art studios. Writes Parenting<\/em> magazine, \u201cColumbia Grammar School\u2019s program is all about preparing kids for their futures – attending prestigious colleges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah, the truth spills out. For what else would motivate parents to spend $40,000 to give their three-year-old a head start? According to these luxe preschools, there is one goal that justifies the cost: Get your toddler into a prestigious college fifteen years later. The message could hardly be more direct – or more threatening. If your kid doesn\u2019t ultimately get into a \u201cprestigious college,\u201d his or her life will be needlessly hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pressure doesn\u2019t stop with gaining admission to a proper preschool. \u201cI\u2019m contacted by a lot of parents who are completely freaking out that their 14-year-old is not spending the summer productively,\u201d Irena Smith, a former Stanford University admissions officer, told the Atlantic<\/em>. Smith now runs a college admissions consultancy in Palo Alto, California, where clients typically spend $10,000 more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A recent sports story makes the point. In the 1028 Super Bowl, neither the Philadelphia Eagles nor the New England Patriots had many five-star recruits in their starting lineups. Translation: Only six of the forty-four starters were top-rated prospects in high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now look at the quarterbacks. New England\u2019s Tom Brady didn\u2019t merit even a humble two or one ranking in high school. His ranking was NR – \u201cno ranking.\u201d The victorious Eagles quarterback, Nick Foles, winner of the 2018 Super Bowl\u2019s most valuable player award, had a three ranking in high school. But for most of the season, Foles was actually the Eagles backup. He got to play only after starting quarterback Carson Wentz hurt his knee toward the end of the season. Wentz, like Brady, had an NR ranking in high school. No surprise: As a high school junior, Wentz wasn\u2019t primarily a quarterback. His school\u2019s football program listed him as a wide receiver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With his lowly NR rank from high school, no major college football program had recruited Wentz. He went to North Dakota State, a small-college powerhouse. But while he was there, he grew to six-five and 230 pounds. Wentz literally blossomed in college, which is late by football standards. Now let\u2019s ask ourselves. How many of us are potential Carson Wentzes in our own way? How many of us were tagged with \u201cno ranking\u201d in high school, or dismissed early in our careers, or are dismissed even now? What gifts and passions might we possess that haven\u2019t yet been discovered but that could give us wings to fly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most people, paying to get an edge on standardized test scores is not only worth it – it\u2019s necessary. As long as high-stakes tests remain an important aspect of competitive college admissions, there\u2019ll be no shortage of people looking for an advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We see the same pressure cooker for early measurable achievement outside academics. Consider sports. According to a recent Washington Post<\/em> story, 70 percent of kids quit sports by age thirteen. Why? The kids have a ready explanation: \u201cIt\u2019s not fun anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A kid in the United States is now fourteen times more likely to be on medication for ADD compared to a kid in the U.K. A kid in the United States is forty times more likely to be diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder compared to a kid in Germany. A kid in the United States is ninety-three times more likely to be on medications like Risperdal and Zyprexa used to control behavior compared to a kid in Italy. So in this country and really in no other country, we nowe use medication as a first resort for any kid who\u2019s not getting straight A\u2019s or not sitting still in class. No other country does this. This is a uniquely American phenomenon, and it\u2019s quite new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s stop and ask: Is the sacrificial expenditure of money, wrecked family dinners, and kids exhausted from organized activities producing better, more productive, or happier people? Is it helping people bloom? For the majority of kids, it\u2019s doing the exact opposite. This pressure for early achievement has an unwitting dark side: It demoralizes young people. By forcing adolescents to practice like professionals, to strive for perfection, and to make life choices in their teens (or earlier), we\u2019re actually harming them. We\u2019re stunting their development, closing their pathways to discovery, and making them more fragile. Just when we should be encouraging kids to dream big, take risks, and learn from life\u2019s inevitable failures, we\u2019re teaching them to live in terror of making the slightest mistake. Forging kids into wunderkinds is making them brittle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This topic is of particular importance to Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, author of the bestselling 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success<\/em>. On a late summer day, I sat down with Dweck to discuss the changes she\u2019s seen in her years of teaching college freshmen. \u201cI think society is in a crisis,\u201d she told me. \u201cKids seem more exhausted and brittle today. I\u2019m getting much more fear of failure, fear of evaluation, than I\u2019ve gotten before. I see it in a lot of kids; a desire to play it safe. They don\u2019t want to get into a place of being judged, of having to produce.\u201d And these are the kids who were admitted to Stanford – these are the early \u201cwinners\u201d in life. The optimism of youth, it seems, has been warped into a crippling fear of failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These two Harvard revolutionaries, James Conant and Henry Chauncey, promoted the SAT as a weapon against the lazy aristocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between the 1950s and the 1990s, the SAT replaced membership in old-money aristocracy as America\u2019s official gatekeeper of elite university admissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeffrey Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University, is urging society to recognize what he calls \u201cemerging adulthood\u201d as a distinct life stage. Arnett believes that social and economic changes have caused the need for a new, distinct stage between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Among the cultural changes that have led to Arnett\u2019s concept of emerging adulthood are the need for more education, the availability of fewer entry-level jobs, and less of a cultural rush to marry while young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arnett, who describes himself as a late bloomer, says that emerging adulthood is an important period for self-discovery. Emerging adults often explore identity, experience instability, and focus on themselves during this time. Exploration is part of adolescence too, but in the twenties it takes on new importance. The stakes are higher as people approach the age when their possibilities narrow and they need to make long-term commitments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arnett proposes, controversially, that prolonging adolescence actually has an advantage. If this sounds like coddling, rest assured; that\u2019s not what he means. Rather, he argues for a super-adolescent period involving continued stimulation and increasing challenges. Maintaining brain plasticity by staying engaged in new, cognitively stimulating, and yes, highly demanding activities can actually be a boon, as opposed to falling into repetitive and more predictable jobs and internships that close the window of plasticity. In other words, delaying adulthood may actually be desirable. It can foster independent thinking and the acquisition of new skills. More than that, it can boost motivation and drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a compelling neurological rationale for taking a year or two off before, during, or after college. People who prolong adolescent brain plasticity for even a short time enjoy intellectual advantages over their more fixed counterparts in the work world. Studies have found that highly accomplished people enjoy a longer period during which new synapses continue to proliferate. The evidence is clear: Exposure to novelty and challenge while the brain\u2019s frontal cortex is still plastic leads to greater long-term career success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andrew J. Martin, researching 338 students, discovered that young adults who take gap years tend to be less motivated than their peers before<\/em> the gap year, much like Kyle DeNuccio. But after<\/em> their gap year, most of them find new motivation. In Martin\u2019s words: \u201cThey had higher performance outcomes, career choice formation, improved employability, and a variety of life skills\u2026 The gap year can be seen as an educational process in which skills and critical reflection contribute to an individual\u2019s development.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A late-forties peak period of innovation is supported by the average age of U.S. patent applicants, which is forty seven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazingly, there are twice as many entrepreneurs over fifty as there are under twenty-five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea that one\u2019s forties are a peak age of entrepreneurship is supported by the work of the twentieth-century developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. Erikson believed that ages forty to sixty-four constitute a unique period where creativity and experience combine with a universal longing to make our lives matter. Starting a company is how many people pursue what Erikson called \u201cgenerativity,\u201d building something that has the potential to make a positive contribution beyond our mortal lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We need ways to start a career later, to have more flexibility in mid-career, and to taper off gently at our own pace near the end of our careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Margin note: Lindsey<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For the sake of argument, let\u2019s say that people in industry X peak in their forties or fifties. By peak, I mean the acme of a person\u2019s technical skills, team building and managerial skills, and productivity and communications skills, along with their willingness to work long hours, hop on airplanes for a week of sales meetings, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The traditional up-and-out career path would dictate: You\u2019re gone after fifty-five. We, your employers, can\u2019t afford to keep you, a fifty-five-plus employee, on the payroll<\/em>. A kinder career arc would acknowledge that nearly all employees peak at some point, but even \u201cpast peak\u201d senior employees can make valuable contributions. So why not fashion a career path in which at some point the pay raises stop and salaries may even decline, and the titles stop accruing, evolving from \u201cgroup vice president\u201d to \u201csenior consultant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such a career arc includes no forced retirement age. Why should a sixty-five-year-old or a seventy-two-year-old not work if they want to and their employer finds their contribution to be valuable, at the right level of pay? (Note to CEOs: If your human resources and legal departments can\u2019t figure this out, replace them with ones that can.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another good reason for a career arc replacing up-and-out is age diversity. A valuable older employee on the arc\u2019s downslope has no need to defend his or her turf. They are now free to offer counterintuitive advice or words of caution: \u201cThis is a brilliant idea, but let\u2019s be sure to identify your base assumptions about sales, and talk them through, so we don\u2019t make any costly missteps.\u201d That\u2019s a different conversation from one that begins with an older employee defending his or her turf. The worst thing a company can do is kill off the creative energy of its young and talented people. The second-worst thing is to allow young people to blindly walk into avoidable traps that a wise senior employee can help them foresee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Margin note: Lindsey<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So let\u2019s pivot to the bountiful world of late bloomer strengths, which don\u2019t get the attention they deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curiosity <\/em>is the first late bloomer strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People should consider it a moral obligation to be curious about things. Not being curious is not only intellectually lazy, but it shows a willful contempt for the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The London-based science journal the Cube <\/em>writes that \u201ccuriosity is a cognitive process which leads to the behavior perceived as motivation. From the human perspective the relationship between curiosity and motivation creates a feedback; the more curious one becomes about something, the more motivated one will be, and the more motivated one is the more one learns and the more curious one will become.\u201d Curiosity is a dopamine hit, says the Cube<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compassion<\/em> is the second late bloomer strength, the ability to put ourselves in others\u2019 shoes and in doing so understand their challenges and how best to help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shimul Melwani, of the University of North Carolina, has found that compassionate managers and executives are perceived as better leaders. Compassionate leaders appear to be stronger, have greater levels of engagement, and have more people willing to follow them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third strength that late bloomers tend to have in spades is resilience<\/em>. As defined in Psychology Today<\/em>, \u201cresilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resilience is not a passive quality but \u201can ongoing process of responding to adversity with concerted action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reframing adversity in the life stories we tell ourselves in another key strategy that people tend to learn over time. A Harvard study showed that students who acknowledged the adversity they faced and reframed their challenges as growth opportunities performed better and kept their physical stress levels lower than students who were trained to ignore their adversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their stories illustrate another late bloomer strength. The best descriptor I can think of is equanimity<\/em>. Equanimity means a \u201cmental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n UCLA and Stanford psychologists Cassie Mogilner, Sepandar Kavar, and Jennifer Aaeker report that excitement and elation are emotions that move the happiness needle for younger people, while peacefulness, calm, and relief drive it for those who are older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research has long established that calm leaders are more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His great strength – one that is available to late bloomers in particular – was insight<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our insights are the result of us drawing on our full mental library of experience, patterns, and context, yielding an idea of extraordinary value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we age, we collect and store information. That, and not a \u201cfuzzy memory,\u201d is part of the reason it takes us longer to recall certain facts. We simply have more things to remember. Older people have vastly more information in their brains than young people do, so retrieving it naturally takes longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s right. Just quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ended the previous chapter by asking, \u201cHow can the curious and creative, the searchers and explorers, jump off the dominant culture\u2019s conveyor belt and begin shaping our own fates?\u201d We do it by quitting. Quit the path we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Was Daniel J. Brown a quitter in the normal sense? Did he lack courage? Did he lack ambition? Should he have stuck it out in high school, miserable and ostracized and perhaps doomed to a mental breakdown? I would argue that quitting was the best possible option for young Dan Brown. By saying no to the expectations of others, including his parents, he set his life on a much healthier track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite our cultural enthusiasm for determination, there are situations in which perseverance is actually maladaptive. Research points to three awkward truths about our determination not to quit: (1) tenacity, or willpower, is a limited resource; (2) quitting can be healthy; and (3) quitting, not doggedness, often produces better results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first problem with our cultural obsession with determination is that applying single-minded resolve to something that you don\u2019t really believe in actually makes you less effective. Tenacity misapplied erods our ability to summon willpower or persistence when we really need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My point in bringing up Bowerman\u2019s story is this: Saluting the benefits of tenacity only makes sense to a point, because each of us only has a certain amount of resolve, both mental and physical. If social norms encourage us to apply our determination in excess, or to the wrong endeavor, we\u2019ll only run out of it. Perseverance applied in meeting others\u2019 expectations – whether family, community, or society – will deplete our reserves of willpower. We\u2019ll finish our days exhausted, yet unable to sleep. And then when we really need determination and resolve, we may not have enough left to pursue a new pathway or a genuine passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The notion that we can somehow strengthen our willpower \u201cmuscle\u201d is misleading at best, and detrimental at worst. Conventional wisdom suggests that if we do certain exercises or practice certain habits, we can strengthen this muscle. But science and research tell us that this isn\u2019t true. We can\u2019t simply apply determination like a jelly spread to everything we do in our lives – we\u2019ll burn out. When we force ourselves to do things we\u2019re not naturally inclined to do, or that don\u2019t fit our passion or purpose in life, we pay for it with reduced motivation and drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second problem with the cult of tenacity is that quitting is actually a healthy thing to do at times. Many of the things we desire – thanks in large part to culture – are unattainable. Research shows that when we quit pursuing unattainable goals, we\u2019re happier, less stressed, and even get sick less often. That\u2019s right, quitting is actually physically good for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A number of studies tracking subjects ranging from adolescence to young adulthood to older adulthood have shown that goal disengagement – quitting – strongly and positively affects physical health. Three studies found that people who were able to quit pursuing unreachable goals had healthier hormonal patterns and greater sleep efficiency. Not<\/em> quitting was associated with higher levels of depression, stress, and emotional upset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These biases can best be defined through two economic concepts: the sunk-cost fallacy <\/em>and opportunity cost<\/em>. The first, sunk cost, deals with the past. Sunk cost is the money, time, or effort we\u2019ve already put into a project or direction in life. The more and longer we invest in something, the more difficult it is to let it go. The sunk-cost fallacy is when we tell ourselves that we can\u2019t quit because of all the time or money we\u2019ve already spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second economic concept is opportunity cost. Unlike sunk cost, this concept deals with the future. It means that for every hour or dollar we spend on one task or direction, we\u2019re giving up the opportunity to spend that hour or dollar on a different, better task or direction. In other words, instead of focusing our efforts on something that isn\u2019t working or fails to make us happy, we could be directing our energies toward something that might make us happier, better suit our lifestyle, or help us make more money – if only we weren\u2019t so worried about the sunk cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the context of the sunk-cost fallacy, abandoning a failed pathway seems to waste the resources we\u2019ve already expended. For late bloomers, this would be the feeling that all those years pursuing a Ph.D., a law firm partnership, or that career in fashion would be a waste of time, money, sweat, and tears if we gave up now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet refusing to abandon our investment in a college major, a job, or a path that\u2019s not right for us can be costly. For every moment we double down on something that\u2019s not working, we\u2019re forgoing other potentially valuable opportunities. As behavioral economics and psychology show us, the real waste is not in sacrificing our past by quitting a failing endeavor. It is in sacrificing our future by not pursuing something better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the single most important lesson in quitting – and I hope an idea that will stick with you – is that it is a strength, not a failing. We need to overcome our natural tendency toward the sunk-cost fallacy. We need to see quitting for what it really is, a virtue – the ability to \u201cfail quickly\u201d and to pivot nimbly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How do most people deal with self-doubt? Not always so well. Many of us self-handicap, or sabotage our chances of success. We imaginatively create an obstacle right before any true test of our ability. That way if we fail, we have a perfectly acceptable justification and can protect our internal beliefs about our talent and ability: I drank too much the night before the big test, so of course I didn\u2019t do as well as I could have.<\/em> Procrastination is one of the most prevalent forms of self-handicapping for late bloomers: I didn\u2019t get around to writing my resume until the last minute – that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t get the job. <\/em>Or, All my time was taken up with busywork – thanks to my boss – so I couldn\u2019t get to that big presentation. That\u2019s why it bombed. If only I\u2019d had another day or two.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, many self-handicappers rely on what psychologists call the \u201ctomorrow fantasy.\u201d This fantasy is that we\u2019ll give our full effort tomorrow, down the road, when it suits us. When the time is right, we\u2019ll give our genuine best – which, of course, will produce success. I don\u2019t care that much about this project, so whatever. But when it\u2019s something I\u2019m passionate about, I\u2019ll work hard at it. Then people will see what I can really do.<\/em> This illusion allows us to avoid putting our ability to a true test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day I asked him about the role of confidence in a successful career. He snorted. \u201cConfidence,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my whole career I\u2019ve been passing men with greater bravado and confidence. Confidence gets you off to a fast start. Confidence gets you that first job and maybe the next two promotions. But confidence stops you from learning. Confidence becomes a caricature after a while. I can\u2019t tell you how many confident blowhards I\u2019ve seen in my coaching career who never get better after the age of forty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, we can improve our self-efficacy through something that we all already do: talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, the study showed that motivational self-talk dramatically increases both self-efficacy and performance. It also confirmed Bandura\u2019s premise that increases in self-efficacy are related to improvements in performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even how we refer to ourselves can make a difference. Ethan Kross, director of the Self-Control and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Michigan, has found that people who speak to themselves as another person – using their own name or the pronoun you<\/em> – perform better in stressful situations than people who use the first-person I. <\/em>In a study, Kross triggered stress in participants by telling them that with just five minutes to prepare they had to give a speech to a panel of judges. Half the participants were told to try to temper their anxiety using the first-person pronoun: Why am I so scared?<\/em> The other half were told to address themselves by name or the pronoun you: Why is Kathy so scared? <\/em>or Why are you so scared? <\/em>After they each spoke, the participants were asked to estimate how much shame they experienced. People who used their names or you<\/em> not only reported significantly less shame than those who used I,<\/em> their performances were also consistently judged to be more confident and persuasive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Kross, when people think of themselves as another person, \u201cit allows them to give themselves objective, helpful feedback.\u201d This is because they self-distance – they focus on themselves from the distanced perspective of a third person. \u201cOne of the key reasons why we\u2019re able to advise others on a problem is because we\u2019re not sucked into those problems,\u201d explained Kross. \u201cWe can think more clearly because we have distance from the experience.\u201d By using external pronouns for ourselves, we view ourselves as a separate person, enabling us to give ourselves more objective advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To break what he called \u201cexacerbation cycles\u201d of people with low self-efficacy, Bandura suggests we avoid the negative reinforcement of a skill deficiency or promotion of the idea that a particular task is easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This just reaffirms a point we all already know: words matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead of telling a late bloomer, \u201cThis isn\u2019t brain surgery,\u201d try saying, \u201cThis is a challenge, but you can figure it out.\u201d Or instead of telling yourself, \u201cI feel terribly overwhelmed right now,\u201d try, \u201cAAlex, you have the capability to do this, and here\u2019s how.\u201d These simply linguistic tweaks can help late bloomers – as well as everyone else – make significant strides toward greater self-efficacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School recently studied the influence of framing on our emotions, looking at anxiety in karaoke singing, public speaking, and math performance. When confronted with performance anxiety, most people try to suppress their emotions. Brooks investigated an alternative strategy: framing anxiety as excitement. Compared to those who attempted to calm down, individuals who instead framed their anxious energy as excitement actually felt more genuine enthusiasm and performed significantly better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brooks found that we can frame anxiety as excitement by using simple strategies like self-talk (saying \u201cYou are excited!\u201d our loud) or simple messages (\u201cGet excited!\u201d). These framing messages allow us to channel our anxious energy into an opportunity mindset rather than a threat mindset. Brooks\u2019s findings demonstrate that we all have remarkable control over our perceptions and our resulting feelings. The way we frame – and verbalize – our feelings helps us construct the way we actually feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second reframing step is to link a challenge to a larger goal: This big presentation is not only exciting, it will give me visibility and lead to more opportunities.<\/em> The larger goal should be clear and compelling in your mind. It should capture the excitement of doing something new that can substantially improve your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leaders who are able to reframe challenges as learning opportunities, who can reframe change initiatives as chances to help others, are consistently more successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why would people, even friends, try to keep you \u201cin your place\u201d? Animals and humans are wired to be status conscious. Groups of crabs will quite literally pull down any member who tries to escape a trap or a bucket, relegating the whole group to certain death. Psychologists and sociologists call the phenomenon the \u201ccrab pot syndrome.\u201d Among humans, members of a group will attempt to negate the importance of any member who achieves success beyond the success of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kimberly\u2019s positive experience with moving from her \u201cprofessional bubble\u201d and to a more diverse (and less \u201ccool\u201d) environment is supported by extensive research. Journeys like hers – journeys to new lives – involve embracing roles and jobs that are more congruent with one\u2019s true self. Studies have shown that \u201chigher levels of satisfaction and mental and physical well-being will occur when there is a good fit between the person and the environment.\u201d This includes the work environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a moment to reflect on your own story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That time you were rejected by an employer or laid off – is it further proof that your career is going nowhere? That you\u2019re a failure or a washout, one of those late bloomers who never launched? Or is the layoff one of the best things that ever happened, freeing you to find work that better suits your individual talents?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Quiet<\/em>, Susan Cain wrote, \u201cThe secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some it\u2019s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers – of persistence, concentration, insight, and sensitivity – to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply. Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure that you contribute it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, this happened during a leadership conference I was attending in 2016. It was a simple assignment, really. The organizers had us write down fifty accomplishments in our life that we were most proud of. Some might be resume accomplishments, some might be goofy things that we wouldn\u2019t dare put on a resume\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, forty-one years later, that insane and noble run was the achievement I chose to put atop my personal list of fifty accomplishments. The drill in the seminar was to try to recognize what drove me on that run. What I learned about this drill was profound, and I regretted that I hadn\u2019t absorbed the lesson decades earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I learned was this: I accomplish the most not when I set out to prove something, but when I set out to discover something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On that run, I learned that whenever aI went around one corner and up the next hill, I was doing it to satisfy my curiosity. The thought process was: I wonder what would happen if I just kept going for a little longer? If I just ran another mile – patiently, persistently – to take a look? If I begged for money?<\/em> What I did not do was plan this run as a competition, a test of my grit, or with any plan at all. The very thought of doing that would have wrecked it. I never would have started. Rather, I just did one little hill at a time, patiently and persistently, and ended up climbing a mountain – twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That worked for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned that the situations where I excel are those where my curiosity takes over. When it does, a sense of exploration also takes over. I get in the zone, and I go for it. I feel pulled, not pushed – pulled by a beautiful power I can\u2019t explain. Persistence and patience come to me; I don\u2019t need to summon them. That\u2019s when I really succeed. It was a great insight into who I am and what drives me. My own blooming occurs when I explore, when I take a step forward, with no particular goal other than to see what\u2019s next on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Start a \u201cmgr design lab\u201d like Stanford guy on back cover – at Penn or S-ford<\/p>\n\n\n\n 157 – 2020 goal setting<\/p>\n\n\n\n P 179<\/p>\n\n\n\n P181 convo(?) w\/Zoey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement Rich Karlgaard Introduction There were about thirty employees. I\u2019d never managed anyone. Now I had to. And I did okay – much, much better than expected. Do you know what I learned? I learned the most important part of leadership is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,252],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booknotes","category-family-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4121,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4119\/revisions\/4121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Chapter 1: Our Early Bloomer Obsession<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 2: The Cruel Fallacy of Human Measurement<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 3: A Kinder Clock for Human Development<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 4: Worth the Wait: The Six Strengths of Late Bloomers<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 6: Quit! Subversive Advice for Late Bloomers<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 7: The Powerpower That Is Self-Doubt<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 8: Slow to Grow? Repot Yourself in a Better Garden<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Chapter 9: Late Bloomers: The Long Run<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Notes<\/h1>\n\n\n\n