‘All rising to great place is by a winding stair’
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. p.1
and
An online commonplace book
‘All rising to great place is by a winding stair’
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. p.1
and
People are always speculating – why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.
– Malcolm X
X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. United States, Random House Publishing Group, 2015.
and
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg V
“Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”
– Michelangelo
Or write. Or code. Or pitch. Or read. Or blog.
Do not waste time.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg 278 of the Kindle Edition
True genius does what it takes to succeed, which is why Michelangelo, old, tired, irritated at not being able to go home to Florence, went to a building site in Rome every day and talked to people who hated him about hauling stone and carving pillars. As well as everything else, Michelangelo turned out to be a late bloomer in the art of running a construction site. Everyone who loves architecture can still feel glad about that today.
– Henry Oliver
Even Michelangelo took on projects that he wanted to pass on. But when the Pope asks you to become the architect for the St Peter’s basilica “yes” is your only response.
Also, maybe architecture isn’t as glamorous a profession as depicted?
Read the article in it’s entirety here. It will reveal to you new sides of Michelangelo.
Oliver, Henry. “It Is Never Too Late for Greatness.” CapX, July 4, 2024. https://capx.co/it-is-never-too-late-for-greatness/.
What would you add to this list? What would you strike out?
Any here you feel are un-reasonable?
Patagonia. “Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now: The Life of Audrey Sutherland.” Patagonia. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.patagonia.com/stories/go-simple-go-solo-go-now-the-life-of-audrey-sutherland/story-17793.html.
‘Close your eyes. Sit very quietly for a minute. Imagine that you were just given five million dollars. Now think what you would do if you had that five million dollars.’ After a pause, she would say, ‘I want you to open your eyes and think what is stopping you from doing those same things without the five million.’
Go ahead. Close your eyes.
What would you do? What fear is holding you back?
The Audrey Sutherland: live immediately chapter inspires.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg 223 of the Kindle Edition
She wasn’t what Callard calls aspirational – she never set out to become this sort of explorer. Instead, she constantly self-cultivated, expanding her interests to a point where they had become something new and extraordinary. As her consciousness expanded, journey by journey, accident by accident, and her instincts were honed, she came to see the world in new way
– Henry Oliver
If you’re not sure what your goal is, or what your next project should be, pursuing a life of self-cultivation can help reveal what’s next.
As Henry explains:
By cultivating your existing interests, you can gradually develop yourself into something new.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.
She shows us that simply deciding to act when faced with a challenge can reveal new depths of capability. The more she did, the more capable she became. ‘Do your work,’ said Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘and you shall reinforce yourself.’
Henry Oliver on Katharine Graham
That from the introduction to Henry’s new book: Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life
The most important thing to understand about Smiles is that he worked for his whole life. When he wasn’t in the office, he was pursuing his education or writing articles. This doesn’t mean he was succeeding. Often he was simply reading and learning for the sake of it. The successful books he published were the eventual result of decades of accreted labour. He studied because he wanted to. For a long time, the returns were zero.
Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part I, Henry Oliver. The Common Reader
That last sentence though, a pile driver – “For a long time, the returns were zero.” Writer Samuel Smiles was a model of persistence. He is what Henry Oliver calls an opsimath, or a late bloomer. (You know a word is good when the spellchecker redlines it). Smiles persisted with his dream project – a biography of the father of railroads George Stephenson. Smiles persevered with the book despite discouragement from Stephenson’s son, and day jobs sapping his writing time. The George Stephenson project began for Smiles in 1849. It was finally published in 1857.
Failure and rejection be damned. A side hustle is for life — and the sheer hell of it. He was a walking writer. And he began to benefit from his accumulated experiences. One trait of late bloomers is their ability to turn their experiences, however incoherent, however seemingly irrelevant, to their advantage as they persist in their interests.
Samuel Smiles: late bloomer with a side hustle. Part II, Henry Oliver. The Common Reader
Samuel Smiles’ determined path reminds me of Brooklyn Nets guard Seth Curry, who went undrafted and didn’t sign his first guaranteed contract until age twenty five. And the “exceptional case” Athletic Bilbao striker Aritz Aduriz. An athletic polymath who found success at the top level of Spanish football during the latter stages of his career. Scoring 66% percent of his career first division goals after age thirty and then retiring at thirty nine.
Read Henry Oliver’s full profiles on Samuel Smiles here: pt.1, pt.2.
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