The Art of Manliness - #572： The Unexpected Upsides of Being a Late Bloomer

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast there's an unspoken

00:00:12.200 timeline that people supposedly need to follow to have a successful life be a good student high

00:00:16.540 school get into a good college and then get a good job right after you graduate but you've

00:00:21.000 probably met successful people whose lives didn't follow this kind of linear arc and neat timeline

00:00:25.340 maybe yours didn't either the young adult years weren't very auspicious and they didn't come into

00:00:29.480 their own and find their bearings until after college or even much later my guest day explores

00:00:34.000 the upsides of this kind of directory in his book late bloomers the power of patience in a world

00:00:38.540 obsessed with early achievement his name is rich carl guard and we begin our conversation discussing

00:00:43.040 how he defines a late bloomer and a few examples of some famous late bloomers in history we then dig

00:00:47.880 into how late bloomers got a bad rap and how society became increasingly obsessed with finding success at

00:00:52.720 a young age rich then walks us through the disadvantages of being an early bloomer and the

00:00:56.780 advantages of being a late bloomer including resilience self-awareness and a healthy motivating

00:01:01.700 sense of self-doubt after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash late bloomer

00:01:06.600 all right rich carl guard welcome to the show thanks for having me brett so you just got a new book

00:01:22.900 out late bloomers the power of patience in a world obsessed with early achievement what got you

00:01:28.280 thinking about and wanting to write an entire book about late bloomers well i've always thought of

00:01:32.960 myself as a late bloomer and i always wondered if sharing my late bloomer story would be of use to

00:01:39.500 people and i've been thinking about this for not only years but decades because at age 25 i was a

00:01:48.140 complete wreck incapable of holding an adult level job and i really didn't begin to form as a fully

00:01:55.440 functioning adult until my late 20s and then when that happened i began to bloom pretty fast so i always

00:02:02.300 wondered if that would be a useful story to share with a broader audience and what catalyzed my wanting

00:02:09.680 to write the book now was simply picking up all these stories about the problems that parents were

00:02:18.380 having with their teenagers and this rising rate of anxiety depression and even suicide among teens and

00:02:26.180 young adults and a new kind of sufferer not not the people who were sort of predisposed because they

00:02:34.680 were maybe bipolar or they got into trouble with drugs or things like that these were kids who were

00:02:40.880 depressed anxious and some of them even contemplating ending their lives because they were feeling this

00:02:45.960 enormous pressure to bloom early to just knock it out of the park and standardized tests straight a's and

00:02:53.540 advanced placement courses getting into the most elite college that they could and i thought wait a

00:02:59.540 minute this is this needs to be challenged this idea you have one window in your teens when you're

00:03:06.360 supposed to demonstrate the capability of your whole lifetime in front of you and i and that's when i got

00:03:12.720 off my butt and spent four years researching and writing the book late bloomers and you highlight in the 0.68

00:03:19.060 book there hasn't been a lot written about late bloomers or even like research there's been a lot of 0.94

00:03:23.640 research done about prodigies and what makes a prodigy a prodigy but nothing about late bloomers

00:03:28.560 well i was kind of surprised brett that when i looked into the field that that nobody had claimed

00:03:33.760 the term late bloomers i mean certainly it's a popular phrase in in our language i mean people use

00:03:40.020 it all the time maybe they used it more in the past than they they do now but there was no clinical

00:03:45.400 definition of what it meant to be a late bloomer and when you saw the phrase in the academic

00:03:51.380 literature it would usually be in association with somebody you know some some sort of problem

00:03:58.100 rather than an opportunity you know this poor late bloomer well you know we have no other

00:04:04.020 diagnosis for the slow kid so let's just call him a late bloomer and i thought well this is a great

00:04:09.840 chance to add a definition to a late bloomer and so i came up with a couple one was chronological and

00:04:16.620 one is more metaphysical the chronological definition of late bloomer as i see it is somebody who comes into

00:04:23.940 their own full talents and motivations simply later than expected now later than expected be can be

00:04:32.500 contextual for example the greatest nfl quarterback of all time tom brady won a super bowl in his early

00:04:40.580 20s i think when he was 24 you'd surely say therefore he was an early bloomer but in the context of

00:04:46.680 football he was kind of a late bloomer not very highly recruited out of high school had to fight

00:04:52.740 to win the starting job at michigan only started in his senior year you know i think he was the sixth

00:04:59.040 quarterback taken in his draft year he went uh there i do know that there were 199 players taken before

00:05:06.980 tom brady he was the 200th or so player taken in the nfl draft in his year and so now he becomes the

00:05:14.060 most famous quarterback of all time so is tom brady an early bloomer a late bloomer and that's why i think

00:05:20.540 is contextual it's contextual to your expectations the more metaphysical definition of late bloomer and

00:05:27.100 one that really jazzes me up is that you reach this perfect intersection of your god-given gifts

00:05:33.520 and your deepest motivations your sense of purpose a passion so deep you're willing to sacrifice for it

00:05:40.480 and when you hit that intersection you feel like you're being pulled toward your destiny as opposed to

00:05:46.200 being pushed by others and when you have that feeling of being pulled toward your destiny you

00:05:51.500 never burn out on that it only it's only additive and when you feel like you're being pushed by others

00:05:57.540 there is going to be a reckoning someday in the future where you're going to self-sabotage

00:06:02.780 or or realize it in your consciousness that this is the wrong path and in the book you you highlight and

00:06:08.800 you make the point that there was a time in american culture or we can say western culture where

00:06:12.920 the late bloomer was seen as in a positive light right maybe he's not you know thriving right now

00:06:18.240 but he will eventually but then there was a point in our history in our culture where that you know

00:06:24.640 the late bloomers looked down upon and this sort of this idea of the early bloomer that you have to

00:06:29.260 hit your prime in your early 20s that became the go-to ideal how did that happen what are all the

00:06:35.960 different cultural influences that led to that yeah i think the late bloomer was once more lauded

00:06:41.940 and recognized in society when you when i googled late bloomers and this is when i began the research

00:06:46.940 of the book about four years ago i mean i was kind of astonished it was the same old stories had been

00:06:52.520 around for decades colonel sanders starting you know what became kentucky fried chicken in his 60s

00:06:58.820 ray crock franchising the mcdonald brothers hamburger stand again in his 60s grandma moses coming into her own

00:07:08.820 as a painter in her 70s and 80s and i go wow these are kind of dated dated stories where are the more

00:07:15.440 recent stories they've kind of disappeared in our culture i'd also say that you know when i grew up

00:07:21.320 it was common that a kid some teenage boy usually would have problems with authority would maybe get

00:07:31.440 into some minor scrapes and some minor troubles and then would go off and join the military and

00:07:37.560 would come back you know they were straightened up they were that kind of a late bloomer they came into

00:07:43.060 their adult capacities later and i just noticed that in contemporary society the terms seemed to fall

00:07:50.940 out there were no recent examples on google in particular maybe you might come up with a morgan freeman

00:07:56.260 who didn't achieve hollywood fame and until his 50s uh kind of the same with brian cranston much later

00:08:04.080 in life but by and large i thought that this is a term that needs to be rescued and elevated and and

00:08:11.000 and used as a motivational tool for people who don't feel like they're coming out of the gates

00:08:16.020 all that fast as i did not come out of the gates fast at all and what do you think caused that shift

00:08:23.300 like i mean was did like was something did something happen where you're like yeah that's

00:08:26.820 where you start seeing this emphasis on you have to peak early instead of blooming late yeah well

00:08:33.280 i have my own theory here which i put forth in the book and that is it has to do with the economy if

00:08:41.220 you look at the last 20 or 30 years of the u.s economy the two most reliably lucrative fields where you

00:08:48.080 could make the most money the quickest way possible legally are in still today high finance let's just

00:08:55.340 call it wall street hedge funds high level venture capital and in technology but particularly digital

00:09:02.680 technology of the silicon valley sort and that's where your mark zuckerbergs have created you have

00:09:09.480 become billionaires and in their 20s and before that bill gates and paul allen and steve jobs and people

00:09:17.440 like that but unlike the era of steve jobs when he started apple in the 1970s with steve wozniak and

00:09:24.700 they started it in jobs's garage today you know the age of the tinker is kind of gone and today in high

00:09:32.520 finance and in silicon valley kinds of technology it's becoming more and more of a closed club of people

00:09:39.580 who went to certain universities not exclusively but it is trending in that direction and trending at a

00:09:46.180 rapid rate that if you didn't go to harvard or mit or stanford or caltech or a handful of schools like

00:09:52.780 that that somehow you're going to have a hard time cracking these doors on wall street or in silicon

00:10:00.060 valley at the highest levels and that created this intense competition for kids to get into these right

00:10:07.500 schools it trickled down suddenly trickled down into society suddenly aspirational educated parents who

00:10:14.540 you know became terrified that if their kids didn't get into these kinds of schools you know that they

00:10:20.200 might the window might close on them that the best opportunities in the american economy unless their

00:10:25.900 kids had some exceptional athletic skill or artistic skill or or just like were native-born entrepreneurs

00:10:32.500 who were going to succeed anyway if they didn't have those other skills and then then they had to pursue

00:10:38.140 this early achievement to be recognized by an economy that was recognizing these kinds of talents early

00:10:45.560 and so what you're seeing is people spending just enormous sums of money on tutors private camps

00:10:52.700 all the kinds of things that that parents do to give their kids an edge and it's just not in academia

00:10:58.100 it's in sports you can't just show up and hey i think i'm going to try basketball in the ninth grade if you

00:11:04.220 haven't been playing for an organized program before then unless you have exceptional talent

00:11:09.040 you probably are going to be cut and never get a chance to play football the same baseball the same

00:11:15.720 and everything is backing up into earlier early age groups where kids must show their promise

00:11:23.460 and talent early or they the whole system kind of bypasses them right and i imagine also the research

00:11:31.160 the psychological research that's been coming out sort of popular has reinforced that um you know

00:11:35.780 this idea of deliberate practice and if this the earlier you start deliberately practicing whatever

00:11:40.320 the the better you can do and so parents hear that it's like well we got to get johnny and signed up

00:11:45.620 for elite sports camp or start him preparing for the lsat or the the sat when he's you know 15 or 14

00:11:51.940 so they specialize early uh but the interesting thing is you highlight this research is that

00:11:57.340 by doing that you're actually you're you're there's a downside to that right by specializing so early

00:12:03.320 yeah david epstein in his new book called range does a pretty good job of debunking the 10 000

00:12:10.060 hour theory that that was popularized by malcolm gladwell and developed by an

00:12:15.200 academician whose name escapes me right now the idea that that which you alluded to that you better get

00:12:21.900 those 10 000 hours in early that practicing with intent or uh or you're not going to be ready for

00:12:28.940 prime time and now prime time being coming in an earlier and earlier age bracket but david epstein

00:12:36.140 shows that actually it's the well-rounded sports kid the kid who played all sports who tends to do

00:12:42.720 better as their career progresses both in college in the pros and so yeah i think there i think when you

00:12:50.180 look at the what's gone on in the economy and how it's raised the profile of of these two industries

00:12:56.300 that select most of their young talent from a very restricted number of schools and you look what's

00:13:02.740 happened in sports that um you know it's led to this mania but more and more it's been debunked if you

00:13:10.640 take the idea you look at google as sort of this example now google started by sergey brennan larry page

00:13:16.420 were two stanford grad students and and the rest is history and they were both exceptionally bright

00:13:22.820 academic people and they both scored 800 on their math sats and i can verify because i just talked to

00:13:29.440 somebody last week again in addition to the research i did in my book in the early days of google when

00:13:35.120 brennan page were still involved with recruiting people they would the first question out of their

00:13:40.860 mouths would be what did you score on your math sat jeff bezos would do the same thing at amazon now

00:13:49.020 they don't do that anymore because they know it's kind of a political hot potato to do that but more

00:13:54.080 importantly at google google tests everything and google had a visionary hr guy named laszlo bach no

00:14:01.400 longer there he's doing his own startup but he tested this idea that whether the high math sat people and

00:14:07.300 the people who went to the elite schools were they actually performing better at google and he found

00:14:11.520 out that yeah in the first three years they had they were doing slightly better than their peers

00:14:16.420 but after three years or so that one's sat and one's diploma mattered almost to the point of

00:14:24.380 insignificance it was lost in the statistical noise so there you have it you know whether it's david

00:14:30.500 epstein with his book range or google's own testing that the early advantages kind of they they revert to

00:14:38.300 the mean even lewis turman the stanford researcher who imported the iq test from france and began this

00:14:45.140 longitudinal study called the stanford study of the gifted found out that the early iq high achievers

00:14:52.360 reverted to the mean over the course of their lives that is to say they didn't do any better than

00:14:58.240 the merely above average well so besides this pressure to excel in in today's economy there's

00:15:07.320 also this concern that's driving this you know early bloomer mania that you have to do it while

00:15:12.780 you're young because you're you have your faculty like all your mental faculties are there right if you

00:15:17.520 if you wait too long then you're just gonna your brain gets slow because you get old does the research

00:15:23.080 back that up uh the research doesn't back that up so where does that idea come from well it comes from

00:15:29.780 ill-considered statements from people like mark zuckerberg who said when he was in his 20s face it

00:15:36.460 people under 30 are just smarter now mark is in his 30s now you'll notice he doesn't say that anymore

00:15:44.720 or how about vinod kosala brilliant man one of the founders of sun microsystems back in the 1980s

00:15:51.340 became a very successful venture capitalist who said publicly basically people over 45 are brain

00:15:58.100 dead and what he meant was brain dead in their ability to go out and start silicon valley kinds

00:16:03.540 of companies well it's kind of refuted by a lot of examples out there you take a woman named diane green

00:16:11.100 who co-founded vmware with her husband in her 40s diane didn't even go back and get a computer science 0.51

00:16:18.140 degree as a master's degree until her tell her 30s and then tell the beginning of this year diane 0.92

00:16:24.500 at age 64 was the ceo of google cloud or you take tom siebel who founded siebel systems in the 1990s in

00:16:34.000 his 40s he's now ceo of one of the leading enterprise level ai companies c3.ai and tom just turned 67

00:16:43.960 the founder of service now which is 30 billion dollar market cap company

00:16:48.140 was started by a guy a week before his 50th birthday so you have plenty examples even even in

00:16:55.860 high technology fields i mean jim goodnight who the founder of sass institute big analytics company

00:17:02.760 in north carolina was still leading it in his mid 70s still giving keynote speeches at industry

00:17:09.040 conferences so it's kind of a refuted now the science refutes it even more deeply there was a

00:17:15.180 2015 study led by mit and harvard two postdoc researchers who had their degrees at those

00:17:21.800 institutions and were working with massachusetts general hospital and they asked the simple question

00:17:26.760 at which age do we cognitively peak to get to your point that there's this window that we have all of

00:17:33.200 our you know that we're at our cognitive best well it turns out to be much more complex than that

00:17:39.200 it's certain things yes we're best in our late teens and early 20s rapid cognitive processing speed

00:17:46.020 working memory those peak pretty early and other a whole other set of skills that support executive

00:17:53.760 functioning leadership communication skills etc only begin to peak in our 30s and 40s and 50s and then

00:18:01.060 what we call wisdom those skills begin to peak in our 70s 60s and 70s the question is then once we're

00:18:08.480 past peak how rapidly do we fall off our peak because the implication you know that if by this fear about

00:18:15.520 if you don't hit a window early you're not never going to hit it is that post peak we fall off rapidly

00:18:20.960 let's say like a professional sports player who suddenly when they fall they fall rapidly well we don't

00:18:27.020 the research that mit harvard study suggested we fall off peak whether it's rapid cognitive

00:18:34.080 processing speed or working memory at about a rate of 0.2 percent per year so it's this slow slow i mean

00:18:42.520 for all intents and purposes over any given five-year period it looks like a plateau and then five years

00:18:48.540 the plateau may be a little lower but in fact if you're a software programmer in your 20s and 30s and

00:18:55.000 you're going to advance in your career you're probably going to become a manager anyway in

00:19:00.040 your 30s 40s and 50s where you're going to need these new skills that most people don't get until

00:19:05.180 their 30s 40s and 50s leadership skills empathetic skills communication skills and the rest so yeah

00:19:11.540 there's different parts of our life where we're going to be good at certain different things and

00:19:14.720 like that's the other thing to point out is that you could peak at say that you know that that sort of

00:19:18.320 information processing working memory later than some other people right some people might peak when

00:19:23.740 they're 20 it might you might not do it until you're 24 because that's a misconception a lot

00:19:28.700 of people think that you become an adult once you are 18 but biologically the brain is still forming

00:19:34.740 into an adult that might happen until you're 25 oh and 25 is seem to be a median age for when the

00:19:42.640 prefrontal cortex is fully developed and some young adults will fully mature into recognizable adult

00:19:50.200 capacities earlier than that and some later than that there's a neuroscientist at nyu named el conan

00:19:57.280 goldberg who believes that with each generation for some reason he can't quite figure out whether it's

00:20:04.280 driven by biology or driven by our environment but with each generation the prefrontal cortex seems to be

00:20:10.680 appearing about 12 to 18 months later so the median age might be moving toward the mid

00:20:16.640 20s goldberg even has an intriguing theory that somehow the body knows that the full adulthood

00:20:24.600 should come about one third of the way through a person's life and as life expectations keep

00:20:29.740 growing in the west you know that this is happening anyway he he's conducting a number of tests to see if

00:20:35.820 that is that is possible or whether things like social media and other things are delaying the onset of

00:20:42.700 full adult maturity could be any number of reasons but 25 moving upward is the median which means that

00:20:50.140 some will mature faster some will mature slower i can tell you in my own life that i was very conscious

00:20:55.820 of the fact that i only began to think and comport myself like an adult until i was 26 or 7 and only then

00:21:04.140 did i began a pretty rapid process of blooming but i was incapable of blooming much at all from

00:21:11.780 adolescence through my middle and late 20s with a few little exceptions you know along the way some

00:21:18.760 low level you know accomplishments in sports pulling an upset and getting into stanford at a time when

00:21:24.900 frankly it was a lot easier to get into stanford than it is now a few things like that but but nothing

00:21:31.480 that took root nothing that took root until my late 20s and beyond we're gonna take a quick break for

00:21:37.420 a word from our sponsors and now back to the show i'm curious in your research in the book and talking

00:21:43.300 to different late bloomers like do we what did you find like why did late bloomers become late bloomers

00:21:48.600 or is it sort of like tolstoy right in his families like every unhappy family is unhappy in its own ways

00:21:53.700 like every late bloomer different in its like a late bloomer in its own way oh i think you asked a great

00:21:59.360 question because i i don't think there's a single answer to that some i'm pretty convinced in my case

00:22:05.040 that two things slowed my development one was simply i had a you know a whole history going

00:22:10.740 back to childhood of being a really slow to physically mature kid when i was in eighth grade

00:22:17.280 i was five foot two and 80 pounds five foot two and 80 pounds i mean i got the snot kicked out of me

00:22:24.980 playing junior high school football i i never got playing games you know i was the poor kid who was got

00:22:31.540 to play safety and just got the you know got blocked you know and the wind knocked out of me

00:22:38.740 on every practice play and you know i'm six feet and one half inch today and i mean so you know from

00:22:46.220 five two to my full spurt happened happened rather late people could grow up in dysfunctional families

00:22:52.820 people could grow up with some undiagnosed problem like dyslexia where people were slow to catch it

00:23:00.020 ronald reagan i was reading ronald reagan's biography and ronald reagan had really poor vision

00:23:05.120 and but he came from a kind of a poor family and he didn't have glasses until high school and only in

00:23:12.160 high school did he begin to show any love of reading and things like that so there could be any number of

00:23:18.540 reasons why people are slow out of the gate and but the important thing is is that being slow out of 0.99

00:23:25.120 the gate doesn't dictate where you're where you're going to go unless we let this stupid societal 0.88

00:23:31.360 narrative right now win the argument and i'm determined to not to let that not happen and part 0.66

00:23:37.680 of that in your book the second half you talk about the problem of this early bloomer narrative

00:23:42.440 but then you make the case for late bloomers that there are lots of benefits and strengths that late

00:23:47.240 bloomers have i mean what are some of the what are a few of the those strengths that stood out to you

00:23:51.040 in your research curiosity i think is one of the great attributes of of late bloomers now why would

00:23:56.540 why would late bloomers have more curiosity which is something i assert but i will admit that i can't

00:24:03.020 prove this one this one goes into the area of anecdotal you know the best that i can do speculation but

00:24:10.400 i'm sticking with it why do late bloomers as i assert have more curiosity than early bloomers well think

00:24:16.580 about this whole early blooming conveyor belt track that we're putting kids on today where they're

00:24:24.640 supposed to demonstrate their excellence in sports or school or playing an instrument in an orchestra

00:24:31.560 whatever it is earlier and earlier what is the process that makes that possible the process that

00:24:36.880 makes that possible for them to do well early is that they focus they approach everything that they do

00:24:43.840 whether academics or sports or music with a determined focus well what what what is the price of a

00:24:50.940 determined focus the price is your lateral vision you know determined focus is you're looking straight

00:24:56.280 ahead with with a focused vision you lose your lateral vision you lose your curiosity you lose even the

00:25:03.340 sense that going out wandering and playing and trying things you know has a justification anymore

00:25:10.900 society would appear to tell you it has no justification whatsoever well you lose your curiosity

00:25:17.600 kids have it in abundance but you lose your curiosity throughout your childhood and adolescence

00:25:23.320 young adulthood when you need it it's kind of hard to get it back if you've always been the rote learner

00:25:29.660 the one always marching to adults tunes it gets hard to get it back now is that a lot real loss yeah i say it is

00:25:39.400 and i go to this uh it's a 2017 cover story in fortune magazine and their annual best places to work

00:25:47.100 issue and they asked a bunch of ceos of high performing companies the very kinds of companies

00:25:51.520 that recruit for high iq people companies like genentech intuit and they asked the ceos of these

00:25:58.600 companies what's the number one attribute that you'd like to see an employee and the ceos of both of

00:26:03.920 those companies said curiosity and so did other ceos because without curiosity there's no learning

00:26:10.960 without learning there's no there's no human development inside of the organization and if

00:26:17.120 people are people are stuck then teams get stuck then the organization gets stuck you know you fail

00:26:23.960 to recognize when to disrupt yourself you fail to recognize a new competitor coming out of left field

00:26:29.560 all of those kinds of things vanish when you are so focused and you don't have curiosity that goes with it

00:26:35.640 so curiosity late bloomers tend to have more curiosity simply because either inherently or through blind

00:26:44.280 luck they resisted the siren call to put their butts down on the chairs and concentrate and and with a

00:26:51.380 determined focus that their early blooming brethren were doing another benefit that stood out to me that

00:26:56.560 you wrote about in the book was that early blooming you know you look at these kids and you look at

00:27:01.820 they're doing awesome they're amazing but they're also really fragile because they experienced success

00:27:07.140 early they might not have experienced too much failure so it makes them less resilient but a late

00:27:13.000 bloomer they probably experienced failure after failure in their early life and so at a certain point

00:27:17.880 they built up a tough skin yeah leading leading to some resilience again i speculate perhaps more

00:27:26.520 than some of these early bloomers now i don't mean the early bloomer who followed the path of

00:27:31.780 of pluck and grit and and found that they could do things on their own i'm talking about the mass of of early

00:27:39.380 bloomers in an affluent society or simply been pushed to early blooming by their parents by the school

00:27:45.380 system let me tell you one of the most important interviews that i did for the book it really opened my eyes

00:27:51.160 on a lot of subjects it was carol dweck now carol dweck if you're not familiar with the name

00:27:56.720 wrote a best-selling book called mindset in 2006 where she differentiates a growth mindset from a fixed

00:28:06.340 mindset you want a growth mindset to jump to the to her conclusion and this book has been embraced by

00:28:14.300 by leading corporations satya nadella the ceo at microsoft as everybody at microsoft read

00:28:20.080 mindset it's that good a book well carol teaches psychology at stanford university and she has a

00:28:26.440 freshman introductory class when i interviewed her for my book late bloomers it was 10 years after

00:28:32.920 mindset came out it was in the late summer of 2016 and she said something that was just kind of

00:28:41.620 shocking to me and answered the question of has anything changed and she came out with mindset

00:28:46.100 in 2006 and she leaned forward and slapped the table and she said it's gotten worse i said what

00:28:53.680 do you how does it got worse you know more than a million people have bought and read your book and

00:28:57.960 satya nadella you know you've changed the way companies are thinking about this you said it's not

00:29:02.880 companies it's it's the the school system system and the incentives there for students has got worse

00:29:09.620 so i said well give me an example and she said well the kids i see coming into stanford today

00:29:15.600 the ones i see in my introductory freshman course in psychology are and then i quoted her are exhausted

00:29:23.260 brittle and don't want to wreck their perfect records now stop and think about that if that's the if

00:29:32.560 that's the spoils of victory of you know because stanford you know school that i could never get into

00:29:39.520 today but you could and heart and a lot of people don't it only has a three percent admissions rate

00:29:44.680 so it's a very prestigious school to get into today and you're spending your whole high school career

00:29:50.420 trying to get into an elite school like that and then the price of winning that prize is that you arrive

00:29:56.220 brittle and exhausted not wanting to mar your perfect record you know what kind of a win is that

00:30:02.820 that's not a win that's a fixed mindset that's somebody who's traded in their curiosity for focus

00:30:09.280 and now is exhausted another attribute that i thought was surprising you talked about it can be

00:30:13.620 a benefit to late bloomers is this idea of self-doubt now we live in a world where like people are you

00:30:19.440 know googling for articles on how to be more confident more assertive but you're saying late bloomers they

00:30:24.680 understand how self-doubt can actually propel them to success how so well late bloomers have to openly

00:30:31.000 face their self-doubt because society isn't praising them the way they're praising the early bloomers so

00:30:36.060 it's out there in the open now the question is what do you do with your self-doubt and there's a lot of

00:30:42.520 pop literature around the idea that you simply ignore it or bull your way past it you know you you puff

00:30:49.040 yourself up you tell yourself some slogans you go to some some conferences by some very popular

00:30:54.740 speakers uh whom i won't name because i think they act in good faith but but uh and that can have a

00:31:01.460 short-term effect sometimes we need to bull our way through a period of period of doubt but as a

00:31:07.420 long-term strategy self-doubt is going to creep back in i look at self-doubt like the weather you can't

00:31:14.460 control the weather you can't control your mood all the time it's going to creep in the clouds are going

00:31:19.940 to creep in now what do you do with it then when it's impossible to keep self-doubt away do you try

00:31:25.940 to bull yourself through it well maybe you can but maybe maybe that's like the equivalent of anaerobic

00:31:32.620 sports and you need an aerobic strategy to go along with that and the aerobic strategy to go along with

00:31:38.780 that the marathon strategy for dealing with self-doubt and simply coming to terms with it in a way

00:31:43.540 and the number one thing you need to do is not let self-doubt infect your self-worth you need to draw

00:31:50.740 a wall between your self-doubt and your self-worth you have inherent self-worth you know i mean i

00:31:56.680 personally believe that we're all creatures of god and that alone gives us all the self-worth that we'll

00:32:02.300 ever need but even if you don't have that have that religious belief about your values as a human

00:32:09.360 being just accept that you have self-worth self-doubt is information we should we're here

00:32:15.780 human beings have evolved because our our forebearers had self-doubt the ones that rushed into you know

00:32:24.020 rushed across a raging river to chase the animals to get protein perished they drowned and so being

00:32:32.020 skeptical of things or being skeptical having doubt about a scam artist all of those kinds of things

00:32:37.200 having doubt if somebody's telling you to jump off a cliff and into the water and it's a 50-foot drop

00:32:43.040 that's good so self-doubt is information it's evolved into us as part of our survival mechanism

00:32:49.180 and so we need to do with self-doubt about anything is step back and say as uncomfortable as it is to feel

00:32:56.280 the self-doubt what information value can i get from it you know carol dweck going back to her again

00:33:02.920 says that she teaches a technique of uh imagining self-doubt is the annoying friend who shows up at

00:33:10.080 the wrong time at the worst possible time right before you're going to give a speech right before

00:33:15.080 you're going to do a job interview right before you're going to take a major test right before

00:33:19.220 you're going to make the biggest sales presentation of your career you know this annoying friend self-doubt

00:33:24.300 shows up and you just simply you know you oh you again okay what what do you have to tell me

00:33:31.640 spit it out okay thanks go sit down and move forward right and you may i like how you make

00:33:36.760 this distinction uh between self-doubt and self-efficacy just because you don't think maybe

00:33:41.460 you have doubts about your you know how it's going to turn out the people late bloomers who doubt

00:33:46.820 themselves they still have confidence that they're able to figure out a way to make it work even though

00:33:52.080 it looks like it's going to be hard they still exercise their agency to get it done yeah self-efficacy

00:33:57.860 it was a great concept put forward by a stanford psychologist of an older generation he's still

00:34:03.220 alive he's in his 90s named albert bandura one of the great psychologists who ever ever lived and

00:34:09.640 self-efficacy exactly as you describe it is this idea that the people who accomplish things are not

00:34:16.480 people who are free of self-doubt they're the people who move forward despite their self-doubt

00:34:21.100 and they start at their point of efficacy and they expand their circles of efficacy they learn

00:34:26.580 the habit you know even even in self-doubt go to that thing that you know you can do well

00:34:31.740 even when you have self-doubt and then use the information value that self-doubt is bringing you

00:34:37.400 to say well how now do i expand that circle you know maybe the self-doubt you're feeling about your

00:34:43.160 startup company let's say is your worry that you're really not good in some areas that the company needs

00:34:49.560 to be good at and you're the founder and you think you're supposed to be good in all the areas

00:34:53.680 finance raising money making the product selling the product marketing all of that and the fact of

00:35:00.620 the matter is very few people can do it all so you're feeling a vague sense of self-doubt

00:35:05.040 listen to what the self-doubt is saying it may tell you okay you know you're strong here you're weak

00:35:10.540 there okay self-efficacy is going to your strengths and building from there and then figuring out how do i

00:35:17.380 build the bridge to solve the things that i'm not good at maybe i need to bring in a partner maybe i

00:35:21.900 need you know a really good employee in this area so self-efficacy go to the thing you know you can

00:35:28.000 always count on you know and get some get some momentum going and then begin to expand the circles

00:35:34.940 and develop the habit of knowing a technique of proceeding when you feel this self-doubt and then

00:35:41.980 also you know understand that self-doubt is information right it can be useful information

00:35:46.620 to help you make a wise decision so imagine when you're young you don't have a lot of self-doubt

00:35:51.660 you're confident and so you tend to be sometimes there's a tendency to make decisions that aren't 0.77

00:35:56.740 good in the long run and can actually come back and bite you in the butt later on yeah one of my 0.52

00:36:01.120 heroes that i wrote about in the book a man who if you met him was a man who wore self-doubt on his 0.95

00:36:07.120 sleeve and seemed almost neurotic and you'd think well you know that generally doesn't describe

00:36:13.780 successful people and certainly would never describe an nfl football coach and one of the

00:36:19.880 greatest nfl football coaches and innovators of all time bill walsh but bill walsh you know um had

00:36:28.140 this very professorial demeanor he was a great innovator everybody talks about the west coast offense

00:36:35.860 today and you know as many different iterations including the kansas city chiefs and and patrick

00:36:42.800 mahomes today doing it on a level that no one dreamed it could happen but it was really bill walsh uh

00:36:48.900 back in the early 1980s of the san francisco 49ers and before that as an assistant coach of the

00:36:54.460 cincinnati bangles in the late 1960s who pioneered all of this so anyway i got to know walsh quite well

00:37:01.620 and i would see that you know a great example of how walsh would would deal with a self-doubt

00:37:08.660 walsh knew that he would feel a sense of panic at the beginning of a game all the tension all the

00:37:15.300 adrenaline all of that and finally the kickoff and and he felt overwhelmed but he admitted that he was

00:37:21.400 overwhelmed how did he respond to it he scripted the first 20 plays of every game he did it for himself

00:37:28.020 he did it for his quarterback he did it to give the team a sense of calm you know not to be overwhelmed

00:37:34.500 by the moment another thing he would do he knew that he and his team were prone to panic if let's say it

00:37:41.020 was first and 10 on their own two yard line particularly in an away game with a really loud

00:37:47.940 fan base you know of the other team you can't hear anything so he practiced it he said okay let's

00:37:55.160 take this problem head on and he would simulate that out on the practice field bringing in you know

00:38:00.680 rock concert size speakers with crowd noise and simulating what you'd like to be first and you

00:38:07.360 know first and 10 on your own two yard line in a very very noisy stadium and you know he would deal

00:38:13.500 in other words what walsh would do is he would anticipate those moments where he might feel doubt and

00:38:18.540 panic and simulate it before rather than run away from the doubt rather than puff up his chest and

00:38:24.240 tell his players we're all men here we're gonna you know bull our way through it which

00:38:27.960 i think is the equivalent that a lot of these uh rah rah speakers are telling some of the people who

00:38:33.100 are coming to their seminars all right so late bloomers can use self-doubt to their advantage

00:38:37.320 as long as they don't let up on the self-efficacy that's yeah that that that's absolutely critical i

00:38:42.960 mean just because you're a self-bloomer it may not be your fault that you're a self-bloomer you may have

00:38:47.440 been for any number of reasons the family you grew up in the fact that you were a late mature the fact

00:38:53.120 that you know you had to overcome some trauma in your own life whether a illness or accident or

00:38:57.820 your own addiction problems i mean you know that you still own your life you know it may not be your

00:39:04.780 fault but it's your life and and you are responsible for it so i don't want to leave anybody uh feeling

00:39:10.420 that i'm uh giving permission for people to run away and be passive waiting for that magic late blooming

00:39:15.760 moment to happen well in one way late bloomers if say someone is like they're they feel like they're a

00:39:20.520 late bloomer one thing they can do to exercise that self-efficacy is to change their environment

00:39:25.260 right their their environment might be the thing that's causing them to you know late bloom so maybe

00:39:30.560 maybe you have to move somewhere else or maybe you got to get away from friends who are holding you back

00:39:34.800 because they don't think what you want to do is good for whatever reason yeah i'll share my own story

00:39:40.660 so i grew up in bismark north dakota and my dad was a high school athletic director in the capital

00:39:47.260 city of north dakota so he was paid about at the level of a high school principal and my mom didn't

00:39:53.240 work so we were middle middle class but he was an esteemed guy around town and and he was a great

00:39:59.760 high school athlete himself one of those all-arounders football basketball baseball and the traditional

00:40:06.540 sports and and i was terrible in all of those traditional sports and i became you know pretty good

00:40:12.660 but not great in track and field and cross country i was good enough to run in the state track meet

00:40:16.660 in the fast heat the finals and the mile but you know then i was the kid that finished second to last

00:40:22.120 in the fast heat the state mile so that kind of tells you my my level but i always felt that this

00:40:28.020 mark north dakota was not a place where i was going to bloom number one you know there always be the

00:40:32.760 comparison with my own father a wonderful man but but but kind of a barrier for me because it informed how

00:40:39.840 i would see myself and it would inform how others might see me and then i began to realize that my

00:40:46.500 i love to read i love to debate people i love to all those kind of things that weren't weren't skills

00:40:53.420 that at the time i found of much that were valued much by society now i was maybe looking in the wrong

00:40:59.140 place but uh but people who really do well in north dakota are are people who are action figures i mean

00:41:07.240 they are they get into physical industries they become civil engineers they build dams roads

00:41:12.680 do construction projects they're good in those things they love to do those things and you know i just

00:41:20.200 wasn't more of those i was more of a cerebral creative introverted type and in fact the cerebral

00:41:27.520 introverted type particularly if you layer on the late bloomer aspect to that they're going to do better

00:41:32.720 university towns they're going to do better in in urban settings and i found i find that i was able

00:41:38.860 to take all my love of sports and the competitive angle that goes with sports and transfer that to the

00:41:45.560 the competitive landscape of silicon valley where i could put my cerebral and communication skills to work

00:41:52.960 and and a friend of mine and i founded a magazine at the dawn of the desktop publishing revolution and it was

00:41:58.840 was called upside magazine and it and it was my entrepreneurial breakthrough in my early 30s and it got the

00:42:04.840 attention of steve forbes who then hired me and has given me a 27 year career at forbes and all that's going along

00:42:11.740 with it but that couldn't have happened i mean upside is about silicon valley i wouldn't have been motivated

00:42:17.260 to start a magazine about building dams or doing construction projects or the ag industry in north dakota i mean it just

00:42:24.880 wouldn't have happened all right so yeah you you knew yourself well enough you're able to change your

00:42:29.600 environment to make something happen for yourself well rich where can people go to learn more about

00:42:34.640 the book and the rest of your work well thank you so much for that you can go to my website

00:42:41.180 richcarlgard.com be sure you get the spelling right r-a-c-h and then the last name is a little one of those

00:42:48.260 tricky scandinavian deals k-a-r-l-g-a-a-r-d you can ping me at richcarlgard at gmail.com if you want

00:42:58.500 you can go to my book website but i i haven't kept that up as well as i should with all the other things i'm

00:43:04.360 going on here but late bloomer singular late bloomer.com or just go to amazon and look up richcarlgard

00:43:10.580 late bloomers or go to your local bookstore and look it up fantastic well rich carlgard thanks so much time it's been a

00:43:17.040 pleasure yeah thank you so much brett uh it was a real honor to be on your show my guest today was rich

00:43:22.220 carlgard he is the author of the book late bloomer it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:43:26.280 everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website richcarlgard.com

00:43:30.860 also check out our show notes at aom.is slash late bloomer where you can find links to resources

00:43:35.100 where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:43:36.740 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliest.com

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00:44:39.600 you

The Art of Manliness - December 30, 2019

#572： The Unexpected Upsides of Being a Late Bloomer

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