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.