LATE BLOOMERS WEAR DIFFERENT COLLARS…

Based on the way I have presented things in the past articles, I could understand if someone would think that when I refer to a Late Bloomer, I am only talking about someone who goes from little or no ambition, straight into the Information Technology field. For this I apologize. Allow me to clarify.

I have known early bloomers who were motivated to learn some pretty brainy stuff; mathematics, sciences, computers…etc. These are the areas which would surely land them a higher-paying white-collar job later in life. The same holds true of those who are ambitious enough to learn the mechanics of an automobile, or the skills required to be a great carpenter or electrician. One of my best friends as a teen was heavily interested in cars. He was mechanically inclined and had the motivation to learn as much as he could. Right out of High School he attended Porter and Chester in Connecticut. The last I heard, he was making a great deal more money than I am. I have another friend who many people would not think of as a bloomer at all; early or Late. (I won’t mention in too much detail the facts, but only the basic idea.) He may be socially unskilled. He may be rough around the edges. But that man bloomed in his occupational field early in life and is now considered by many of my white-collared friends as a go-to guy for getting projects done…and done extremely well. So an early bloomer does not simply fit into the nice, clean and tidy world of white collars. There are many early bloomers who have some pretty grungy blue collars.

The same will hold true for the Late Bloomer. He does not need to go into the technology field in order to bloom. I worked in kitchens for most of my working life. But, being a Late Bloomer, I did not focus on my craft or hone my skills in the culinary arts. I did just enough to hold a job and get by. I understood the basics of sauces and cooking methods. I knew how to coordinate foods to go well together. I knew how to balance a meal. But anyone could do those things with minimal training. What I lacked was the motivation to take what I knew and make things better, even excellent. I lacked the motivation to learn to make things more appealing to the eye (which is 70% of all of the foodservice industry. Funny how I still remember that lesson in school). I was a chef for 20 years before I got out of the industry. But if I chose to bloom there, I could have.

For the Late bloomer, it is not a matter of a major career change but a major mind change about how he views his future. It is a matter of how he thinks about learning a new skill or accomplishing a new task. It is a matter of how aggressively he will go after achieving the next goal or task. So don’t think that you have to take all you know and chuck it to the dogs as irrelevant dumpster fodder. If you like what you are doing, then bloom where you’re planted. Grow your roots deeper and take in the nutrients needed to make the flowers more abundant. (I know…corny line.) You’ll have at least a working knowledge of what you do know, and the benefit of knowing what you don’t know. (Did you follow that?) But if a new career is what you want, think through it carefully. Remember. You will hit the “wall” and have to push through. So you had better be sure that you want to do what it is you decide to do.

LATE BLOOMERS FINISHING THE TASK…

What you are reading right now is proof that tasks can be completed by Late Bloomers. When I listed out the tasks about a week ago, I actually doubted I would write them all out:

1. - Start small


2. - Get Motivated


3. - Talk about your task


4. - Ask for help


5. -Finish the task


6. -Start all over again

Seriously, I really doubted. I didn’t have all of the thoughts fully developed. Nor did I have the desire on some days to put forth the effort. Yet here it is; the last step to the “How does the Late Bloomer begin this trek” section. (I know, it looks like there is another one to come…but it’ll be tied in with this article.)

You may or may not have noticed that I took some precautionary measures to make sure I stuck to this thing.

• First, I started it. That is, in and of itself, a huge step. If I don’t start…I don’t finish.
• Second, I wrote out the steps in advance. I laid out what I was going to talk about to the whole WorldWideWeb so that I would have to finish or be ridiculed for being a hypocrite.
• 
  Third, I printed these out and showed them to others who don’t go online. This gave me incentive because I knew that they were going to ask me about the rest of this section.

I understand that finishing the task is the hardest thing to do. I know that motivation comes and goes in fluctuating amounts, even if you have help from other people, and the required skills and knowledge to get it done. The Late Bloomer rarely sees this side of the “wall” and therefore considers it a foreign place, viewed only by those who have drive, ambition, and a hunger for completing things. But here I am; a Late Bloomer sitting on the edge of a completed task. It feels pretty good, actually.

HEY YOU!!! WAKE UP!!! (I know…I know. Typing in all caps is considered yelling at someone online. Forgive the offense. I just needed to get your attention for a second.) Keep in mind that there will be times when, the closer you get to completion, the easier it is to slow down. This is similar to a marathon runner who knows he’s not going to win a race and complacently jogs across the finish line. Finish lines are meant to be crossed with fervor spawned by the thrill of completing the run. So don’t give it just enough energy to get the task completed. Give it all you have and put a deep notch on the “win” side of your “tasks completed” record book.

Now hold the thrill just a bit longer because it’s time to look the last step in the face which, ironically, is to start all over again. Yep. Grab your list of tasks and scratch off the easiest one. Now grab the next one and follow the same steps all over again. You will find that the more “wins” you have, the easier it will be to take on a task. You will even begin to look forward to them. Really.

LATE BLOOMERS ASK FOR HELP…

As has been laid out in the past couple of articles, the Late Bloomer usually needs help from outside sources to stay motivated. He has a friend who acts as a motivator, and he has been talking about his task trying to find others who, themselves, are interested in that task. But I cannot deny that sometimes motivation is not all that is needed to complete a task. Sometimes more knowledge is needed. Sometimes skills are required that have not yet been acquired. The bigger the task, the more potential there is for further knowledge and skills. Therefore the Late Bloomer should not limit himself to his motivator and the insights gained from others alone. They may not possess the proper knowledge and skills needed. (Remember, your motivator is simply being a friend who will help you stay focused.) He must ask for help from outside of these sources. Let me describe a few of them.

This is the age of electronic data. There are millions (or more likely, billions and quite possibly trillions) of pages of data on the internet just waiting for someone to read them.

Is your task something a little more difficult than finishing a book as was the example used in previous posts? Perhaps it’s something that requires a bit of skill and extra knowledge (like replacing a deck or painting a room…ok…those are a bit large for the Late Bloomer to start with. Let’s try something simple like replacing an air filter on a car.) This is a topic close to my heart because just this morning I paid someone else to change the air filter on my own car. And judging by how quickly it was done, I am left to conclude that this is an extremely easy thing to do. So I will take a few minutes to find out if someone has posted this useful data on the internet. I’ll be right back…
Ok…I was online for about 20 seconds and I found this: http://www.ehow.com/how_112770_replace-air-filter.html
It came with instructions and a graphic. You gotta love the internet.

Are you not internet savvy? or perhaps you are not online at home? (Obvious question is “How are you accessing this?” But that’s trivial at this point.) If either one is the case, then try Barnes and Noble or Borders. You can go in there and read any book on the shelf for free. Take the time, take some notes, just don’t take it out of the store without paying for it.


But what if you don’t have all day to spend at a book store? What if you need to grab something off the shelf and get home? There is always the old standby otherwise known as “the library”. They have free videos and books for the taking. The variety and amount of information may not be up to Barnes and Noble standards, but if you live in a large city there is bound to be something useful there. You may perhaps find a book or video on the “how-to”s of auto mechanics. (The Late Bloomer will almost always choose a video over a book.) Who knows, you might get lucky and learn something more than just how to change an air filter.

Below are a few more you can try.

Free magazine subscriptions.

Try this spot first. http://freebies.about.com/od/magazinesubs
If you don’t find what you want there, then use Google or Yahoo, or whatever search engine you want. I have been receiving several free magazines for years relating to the IT industry. There is usually some great stuff in some of them.

Free email subscriptions.

If you don’t like clutter then try free email newsletters. If you look hard enough and keep your ears open you’ll find someone who has a free email newsletter chock full of information you can use. I get several every day. Some political, some technically oriented, and some just for fun.

Take a class.

If you are really ambitious you could take a course on the subject.

I am quite sure that there are other methods of getting whatever knowledge and skills are needed for you to complete a task. But these are a few that will help the Late Bloomer ask for help and actually get it.

LATE BLOOMERS, TALK IT UP…

In the last article I discussed how a motivator can help you keep on track to finish tasks. Your motivator is a significant part of your life. He will assist you to your tasks completion and help you in your journey to a more mature character. However, and this may be hard to believe, but there is the possibility that your motivator will have a life outside of helping you. He may not be able to be there exactly when you need him to help you past the wall. He may even go on vacation for a week or two at a time and leave you stranded. Well, if there is no one around to hold you accountable or help you through the wall then that must simply mean you postpone the rest of your task, right? No way! That is a trap that looks as tempting as a glass of milk after a chocolate bar. Fear not, my fellow LBer. There are other ways of finding motivation and getting past the wall.

WARNING: very basic social skills coming up next.
I find that if I am interested in whatever task I am trying to accomplish, I will talk about it quite a lot. Sometimes others are interested, too. Sometimes they are not. If the person I am talking to is not interested, I stop talking about it and move on to something else. (end very basic social skills) However, if I find that the person I am talking to is actually interested in my task, two things tend to happen. First, I get a little more excited about it. Let’s face it. Knowing someone else is interested in your interests makes the interest even more interesting. (didja follow that?) And second, the conversations may lead to thoughts and insights that I may not have had regarding my task. And again, that makes it more interesting. Motivation increases as interest increases. There is no way it can not.

This next point is kind of a side issue, but it seems to fit in here, so here is where I’ll put it. I grew up thinking that a conversation with someone was…well…a conversation with someone. And to be sure, sometimes that is all it is. But I have observed something different in motivated people and their conversations. They have lots of conversations with people and listen for, and actually remember, key phrases that will help them with their task later. This was a new way of looking at how to converse. This way of conversing means that a great deal of attention must be paid to whatever is being said. I know people who seemed to have mastered this. (FYI: people love to talk to people who actually listen to them for content and not just because of friendship or because it would be rude not to listen. That is one of the necessary social skills upon which the Late Bloomer needs to improve. (I alluded to this in the article posted on 7/20/05.)

Your motivator may not always be available when you need him, but at least motivation can come from other sources. Find someone else who thinks it’s interesting and share one another’s thoughts and insights. Are you having trouble staying motivated? Talk it up.

LATE BLOOMERS, GET MOTIVATED...

(To better understand what I mean about motivation, please refer to the article posted on 7/14/05.)

As was stated in the last article about how the Late Bloomer should begin his journey to “bloome-dom”, he must start small. But even this could be a challenge for the Late Bloomer. Motivation is the key to overcoming this challenge.

Regarding motivation, sometimes a Late Bloomer has had an epiphany. He woke up one morning and shouts, “I have ventured deep into my soul and find that, yea, verily motivation now dwells within my depths and forms the very central core of my being!”
I believe it safe to say that, for most of us, this is not the case. Most of us need some kind of external motivator. If you are the rare person about whom I spoke a second ago, feel free to skip the rest of this article and wait with bated breath for the next one. However, the other 99% come with me.

I trust that, because you are a Late Bloomer, you have always possessed adequate social skills (as was explained in the article posted on 7/20/05). That being said, it is safe to assume that you have friends; not just coworkers; not just casual acquaintances; not just neighbors to whom you wave and say “Good morning” as you both get in your cars to live your separate days. I am talking about friends who would be willing to help you out if you ask them. (I just heard about 100 guys scream from within, “I can’t do that! That would be like asking for help or something.” Yeah. That’s the point. You are a Late Bloomer because you didn’t get any motivation earlier in life, remember? It was before you found out that our society says it is shameful for a guy to ask for help with character issues. I have a question for you:

If society frowns upon a man who shows a bit of vulnerability, why is it then that you would help the friend who asks you for help? Are you not part of society? Do you not make up a small portion of this thinking world? The fact is, guys are willing to help one another because we care about and are loyal to one another. Those who say differently are either blinded by what is perceived as a societal norm, or just flat lying, both to themselves and to others.

Ok. So now you’re ready to ask for help. You are ready to receive external motivation. But what can this friend do for you that will help you be motivated? Glad you asked.

Did you know that there is such a thing as a personal coach? A very dear friend is a personal coach. I don’t know what she gets paid (nor is my business) but it is her business to help others accomplish tasks and achieve goals. I am asking you to ask a friend if they will help you by being your personal coach, henceforth referred to as your motivator. It could be your spouse, one of your friends, a family member; anyone who you feel is going to help you stick to your plan. Oh! Did I say plan? That just happens to bring me to my next point. Make a plan.

When a Late Bloomer looks at a task he can be intimidated by the thought of actually finishing it. There is occasionally the occurrence when he could go head-strong into a task because it looks like fun or it’s something he really wants to do. This may actually happen quite often. But if a Late Bloomer hits the wall before he has even decided to take on a task, then the task has to become less intimidating; hence, the plan.

Let me use the book analogy from the previous article.

If I think about finishing “Shut Up And Sing”, it seems a bit intimidating. Not so intimidating that I don’t believe I can do it; but intimidating enough that I won’t go full throttle into it. (FYI: this is not because it is not a good book. It is a great book, filled with just the kind of humor, sarcasm, and politics I enjoy.) So, I need a plan. First, I should find out how many pages left to finish it. Then I set a goal for when the book should be completed. Divide the number of pages by the number of days until the goal and commit to reading that many pages per day.

There you have it; a plan to start a not-too-simple but not-too-challenging task. It’s all really easy, except for that “commit” part. That infers something beyond just getting started. Enter: the motivator. Make it known to your motivator what your goal is and your plan to accomplish it. Your motivator will be able to help push you through the wall that you will inevitably hit once you get under way. He will help you through that paper wall and give you a bit of a push. And when you cross the finish line of your task, don’t forget to thank him for helping build your character.

LATE BLOOMERS START SMALL…

Q.) How does the Late Bloomer begin to bloom?
A.) Start small.

The Late Bloomer must start small. The task to be tackled should not be monumental. This would more than likely result in another failure. Nor should the task be so miniscule that no real effort is needed. Instead it should be one that could be finished in a short amount of time, and take only slightly more motivation than is currently available. (This must be the case in order to be faced with the “wall”.)

As a Late Bloomer, I have ideas, thoughts, and projects that are just waiting for me to pounce on them and take action, (these articles being some of them.) I know for a fact that there are thoughts stored up in the heads of other Late Bloomers concerning things that they will surely do “when the time is right” or “when motivation is stronger”. I understand that it is difficult, but don’t fall into that trap. You’ve hit the wall even before you got started.

“So what is a reasonable task to start with”? Well, what are your interests? What do you think about doing “someday”? List them out and place them in order from the simplest to most difficult. Take the simplest one; is it at least a little challenging? Is it something you think you’ll finish…but have some doubt?

Example: I am prone to begin reading books and not finish them. Right now, I am in the literal middle of at least 5 books. Those would be “All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Shut Up and Sing”, “The Greatest Generation”, “Prophets”, and “Harry Potter”. I would automatically remove any Potter book from my list of books to finish because my wife and I read them out loud to one another, and it is assumed that we will finish it very quickly. Therefore, it takes zero effort to believe I will finish it. But as far as the rest of them are concerned, I question whether or not I’ll finish any of them. So I would take the one that I have the fewest pages left to before it is finished and get started where I left off. (I will discuss how to get motivated for this in the next article.) When that one is done, go to the next, and then do it again, and again. Before long, I have finished all the books.

After having done the above, not only will I finish some really great books, or perhaps not-so-great books, I will have begun training my character to finish tasks. I will have faced the wall in each instance and will have proven to myself that I really can finish the things I start, even when motivation is lacking. I then may look to a new task and have some historical basis on which to believe that I will finish it.

This is a very simple example to type out. And it is probably even easier to read. Even though the concept is simple, for the Late Bloomer…much more is demanded. The Late Bloomer must first find the motivation to take on the task at hand, and then find even more motivation to finish it. That will be covered in the next article.

THE LATE BLOOMER AND HIS “WINS”…

Q.) How does a Late Bloomer overcome the lack of motivation, the wall, and the disadvantages associated with being a Late Bloomer? In other words: How does he bloom?

A.) He absolutely must get a few “wins” under his belt.

The main reason a guy will become a Late Bloomer is that he has lacked the character to finish difficult tasks. That characteristic was not built earlier in life. Such is not the case with the early bloomer. Therefore, when a Late Bloomer looks back on his years and sees more than a few unfinished tasks, he can easily be convinced that he will almost never finish anything. He has racked up too many failures to believe otherwise. He must begin to get “wins” under his belt.

Getting “wins” is not about gaining confidence. Confidence can be false. Anyone can talk themselves into being confident even when they ought not to be. However, confidence will be the by-product of getting “wins”. This is about building the character to get beyond the wall that has stopped him so many times in the past. This is about being able to look back and see more than failures. This is about being able to see accomplishments. A Late Bloomer absolutely must be able to take on a difficult task without having to be haunted by past failures. The more “wins” a Late Bloomer has, the more apt he is to finish a task. He sees that he has in the past. He knows his character has been built. He sees the wall for what it is: a paper wall that is no longer insurmountable, but thin, and brittle. He has a bit more motivation to push on simply because he now knows he has before and can again.

But how does the Late Bloomer begin this trek?
- Start small
- Get Motivated
- Talk about your task
- Ask for help
-Finish the task
-Start all over again

The next several articles will explain these in more detail.
(I would do that now…But Late Bloomers typically don’t like to read lengthy articles.)