What makes a late bloomer

Basically, he points out what a bomb each tale is and why he feels terrible reading it again. Late bloomers learn resilience. Early disappointments force concessions, as Duhigg notes, and they reshape expectations. It is no doubt sad that the best way to gain strength is by falling and continually bouncing back, practicing, working around obstacles.

But this flexibility is critical to long-term success. The only way to get this quality is to fail and try again. Great late bloomers abound. The painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses, or Grandma Moses, took up a brush at age 75 and became a renowned artist before she died at The writer Harry Bernstein published his first short story at 24 and his debut novel when he was Alibaba founder Jack Ma was a bad student as a child, was famously rejected from Harvard University ten times, could not for the life of him land a job, and then went on to become a business titan.

All of them took a winding path. None could have anticipated their success, arriving at their calling by trial and error. We tell our life stories retrospectively, which means that what happens next will inform what you think of the present.

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Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz. Many of these strengths and skills are a direct result of spending more time on self-discovery, learning and even failure. Beyond increased flexibility, a longer road to success also brings opportunities to discover and cultivate meaningful values and passions that are personally resonant, rather than what society pushes us towards.

Shafrir made one such swerve when she left her dream job in traditional journalism to launch a podcast in her 40s.

Despite feeling like a failure at various moments along the way — like when she dropped out of a PhD programme, moved away from New York and undertook fertility treatments — in hindsight, she saw the value in her winding path. While Shafrir learned this lesson in her own time, she hopes future generations will be spared from the age-related achievement pressures she faced — particularly as a woman.

The pandemic may offer one such opening for culture to begin to course-correct. Once people realise that fulfilment produces excellence, not the other way around, we can help people to make their best contributions, whenever they occur. How We Live. At some point, however, the late bloomer begins to do well. If in college, he will go from C average grades to straight As. If at work, the late bloomer will go from a barely noticed employee to a star employee. The transformation is not due to overnight magic, however.

Instead, it can be triggered by some event that happens one day or in a specific period of time. A mediocre student might attend college, and as he takes courses in different subject areas, he takes one that sparks his interest. It could be one that he never had the opportunity to study in high school or one that covers a topic in more depth than it was covered in high school. It is the interest that leads the student to excel. At work, it might be a new project that triggers a person's interest.

It may even be an opportunity to compete that had been missing before. Late bloomers do not suddenly become smart or talented. They are most likely intrinsically motivated, which means that they are internally motivated.

They are not motivated by grades or praise, which are external rewards. Their reward comes from the pleasure of learning or achieving. A late bloomer "blooms" when he finds something that interests him enough for him to pursue that interest. A student who had never been exposed to the field of psychology may take a psychology course in college and find that she wants to pursue a career in the field. A young adult who had never been to the ocean or an aquarium might have made use of the opportunity to go on an oceanic fishing trip and realize she's interested in sea life.

Because discovering a passionate interest can motivate a child to work hard and excel, it's a good idea to introduce your child to many different topics and activities.

This doesn't mean that you want to enroll your child in so many activities that he has no time for himself. It just means that you want to provide opportunities for your child to be aware of different subjects. You may be able to turn your undermotivated, underachieving child into one who is eager to learn and highly motivated. Of course, the motivation might not be related to schoolwork. For example, a child may develop an interest in electronics, but since that isn't taught as a subject field, you may not see a change in schoolwork, but if he maintains that interest, your child could become a successful electrician or decide to study electrical engineering in college.

Ideally, all children would be challenged in school, but that doesn't always happen.