It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
invincible.substack.com
It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
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Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#2decent advice.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#3Charles Bukowski immediately came to mind while reading the list of late bloomers.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#4Okay, sure, but: many physical attributes, social perceptions, and pervasive mental habits probably do become increasingly solidified, even if fatalism about it is counterproductive. Sure, there's plenty of late bloomers, but how many of them do you get from a broken late starting point, and how many do you get from people who worked slowly and methodically and did the right slow things earlier on, taking care of their minds, bodies, social connections, growing their resources, gaining experiences, broadening and/or fine-tuning their abilities, and so on? Do fit/rich/popular/etc. 35-year-olds regularly get there from a truly broken (including internally!) state at 31, or is it more that they actually took all the advice about regular exercise/investing/graciousness/etc. back when they were 25, kept taking it, and maybe despaired in the moment about it not seeming to work while actually stacking up tons of invisible long-term bonuses?
I'm trying to come off about a decade of poor habits myself, due to a number of factors which are undoubtedly my responsibility but which it's not clear whether I could have realistically avoided. I've had some minor successes but have never really stabilized so far, including in all the little things like the above. I don't usually see this case handled clearly in the “it's okay to be a late bloomer!” inspiration crowd. (More personally, it doesn't help that the things I most want to do in life probably require being exceptional in specific ways that I'm not sure I can predict in advance and not just “successful” in a generic sort of way, and beyond a certain limited extent, I don't consider the wanting-what-I-have approach to be a viable one (except insofar as having that attitude on the face of things may make it more likely to reach my original desires anyway).)
I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway and it's hellishly difficult.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#5This makes the wrong assumption that happiness comes with success. Success doesn’t bring happiness. If anything, being happy in the first place is what gives you a better chance at achieving success.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#6Don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself yesterday, last week, last month, last year. I don't know where this saying comes from, but to me, it's the only motivational saying that matters.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#7Yeah, I totally suffer from this far too much.
Intellectually, I understand that much of the success of my peers of which I'm envious, has nothing to do with my abilities, per se, but more to do with luck and personality differences. I am who I am, and that affects the probabilities of who I meet and when, and what opportunities I'm willing to chase when they arise. I know this, and realize the, primarily, financial success of my peers does not imply that I'm a failure. But. It sure feels like I'm a failure. Mostly because of the expectation that I was supposed to succeed sooner.
But, as the article states, I do try to remember to compare my current self to my past self instead. When I do that, I can objectively see great life improvements and milestones achieved. Just not at the same times as others I know.
I have to constantly remind myself all the time of the sort of advice found in this article: to realize just how far I've come on my own journey, and that the journey is far from over.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#8Okay, sure, but: many physical attributes, social perceptions, and pervasive mental habits probably do become increasingly solidified, even if fatalism about it is counterproductive. Sure, there's plenty of late bloomers, but how many of them do you get from a broken late starting point, and how many do you get from people who worked slowly and methodically and did the right slow things earlier on, taking care of the…
> I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway
What else are you going to do?
You are where you are right now, and you can either put in the effort to make your life better or you can give up now.
The time's going to pass anyway, you might as well make the most of it.
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#9Charles Bukowski immediately came to mind while reading the list of late bloomers.
Ray Kroc, Walter White too
Re: It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
#10This makes the wrong assumption that happiness comes with success. Success doesn’t bring happiness. If anything, being happy in the first place is what gives you a better chance at achieving success.
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