Why Do Some People Find Success Later in Life ?

Have you ever wondered how someone who has been labeled as a degenerate throughout their life suddenly finds success in their later years? 

Or imagine being someone who has spent their 20s and 30s failing time and time again, only to find success in their 40s. We often are left to ask why success comes late for some people. 

In this blog post we explore three reasons why success might come later for certain individuals starting with…

Upbringing and Stunted Growth

Trauma – let’s face it, most of us have been through it in some form.

Some of us less than others, but for the percentage of those who have gone through enough to develop diagnoses like CPTSD, and other trauma-inducing symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar symptoms, they often spend a great deal of their adulthood trying to figure out who they are and why they are the way they are.

It doesn’t help that trauma and its wide effects haven’t been considered until this decade, where you can actually find psychologists and other experts now ringing the bell, alarming others that trauma plays a vastly important part in one’s development.

Take someone who had gone through a severe form of trauma and was often misdiagnosed due to their symptoms, not the root cause, such is the case with most trauma victims. 

This person would have spent their whole life living through their symptoms, thinking they were the problem. That their brain was wired to be a certain way from the start, and this misconception alone often puts them behind others.

Furthermore, take someone who knows their trauma is the cause but has had to do their own healing throughout their lifetime because doctors refused another point of interest. 

They spend their early adult years researching, healing, reading, and finding out their own diagnosis, and then spend another decade unraveling not only their misdiagnoses but healing their symptoms. 

By the time they do this, they might be well into their 30s, 40s, or even 50s.

For those who needed to cope with their conditions, we often can see their success stories in the form of addiction. 

The bios that read, “I was an alcoholic for twenty years on the streets. I got sober and clean and opened up a restaurant in my 50s.” or “I am a recovering drug addict, and I finally got my life together in my 60s.” or “I was obese for my entire adult life; food was my comfort. It wasn’t until I faced my past that I dropped the weight and found my own definition of success.”

If you look at the patterns of trauma in these different but similar stories, you can find that at one point in their life, their growth was stunted due to the events that shook them. Oftentimes, I tell people that you can often find the actual age of a human by understanding their reactions and behavior. 

Someone who is in a 30-year-old body could still be frozen at the age of 15 when their traumatic event occurred. 

This has nothing to do with someone’s intelligence or capability. This is a result where someone was traumatized and then forced to move on, whether by another person or just by life in general, without acknowledging the event. 

As the years went by, their outward appearance changed, and their worldly age went up, internally they have remained stuck since that moment in time.

The Time to Make Mistakes

Sometimes it takes longer for others to learn from their mistakes; oftentimes, the very people in the same group mentioned earlier end up here. 

Due to the nature of their upbringing, sometimes what is deemed normal behavior isn’t caught until someone points out that the behavior they display is anything but.

It takes time to undo the layers of our environment and the learned behavior from those around us. What we now understand as mistakes are things we once thought were right. 

Mistakes are not always obvious, in our faces; sometimes they’re hidden under layers of our complicated selves.

So now combine someone who has had to spend their adult life coping with trauma, perhaps even spent their youth getting into trouble, starting fights, and then later on in their 30s began to understand their reactionary behavior. 

They now have to spend another decade unlearning everything they once knew to be right and true to who they were.

It isn’t until their 40s where they finally feel comfortable with who they are and where they plan to go in life, which direction they want to take, whether it’s going back to school, starting a business, keeping a stable job or a 9-5 career, making amends with loved ones. 

Once stability has been found, that is when humans often rise to meet their systems in place, which are the small elements we put into place, like our support system, our routines, our mental health, etc. 

Only then do some people find success later on in life. 

Another reason is that people from environments of their background often have responsibilities at a young age. 

Having kids young, taking care of sick parents, taking on responsibilities of their household, such as helping with bills, raising siblings, all these can also contribute to stunted growth as much as they are known to contribute to wisdom.

People often view the people in this group as people with higher levels of maturity and responsibility but forget that having these responsibilities also comes with shunted personal development outside of those responsibilities.

When you are busy taking care of others, you don’t have time to unpack your own world and understand your own behavior. 

You can find this in single mothers who have spent their earlier adult years raising children. 

You can also see this with people who have gone through divorce and spent a good portion of their life raising children while maintaining a relationship, so much that the back burner became their home while putting everyone first.

Years later, you often see them doing interviews, writing books, or in your local community college, taking classes. They might be that 35-year-old who is starting medical school or that 50-year-old in your English 101 class.

Confidence Sometimes Comes Later on With Age

Combine reasons one and two, and you will find that confidence within these groups is diminished in the early years while dealing with their trauma or upbringing. Often shame and self-criticism occupy the space where confidence flourishes. 

These individuals don’t usually gain their confidence until the later years, such as their 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s, where suddenly internal validation becomes more important, and their realization that the world isn’t as focused on them as much as they think.

It’s that realization that becomes a breakthrough for many of their public successes. 

Some of those who come from traumatic backgrounds have a heightened sense of awareness and insecurity because the focus was that much on them when they were younger, especially in an environment where abuse was directed at them. 

For others, emotional neglect could have hindered their confidence during formative years, causing them to think critically of themselves because no one ever took the time to nurture them.

Overcoming various obstacles, including the normalcy of the world where everyone is judging based on certain milestones, behaviors, objectives, someone from a complicated background could find themselves having confidence for the first time in their later years. 

This isn’t a bad thing because in our later years, we are more mature if we have learned and gained insight.

Take someone who started medical school at the age of 35, even though older than their peers. Their life experience and worldview allow them to have confidence due to the slight edge of knowledge over their peers. Not only that, but they have healed their younger versions of themselves. They know that their choice is their choice, and this is what they actually want to do. 

They have gained the necessary life skills and understanding of systems needed to achieve their goals. Their confidence showing up during this time is the added bonus.

Finally, we must accept our unique path in life and get off the comparison train. 

Remember the quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” 

More people than they would like to admit have had advantages in their lives. 

Unless we have stood by someone’s side every single minute, we don’t know their life story and what it took to get them there, what tools were already in their toolbox, and what help was given to them.

It can be as simple as having loving parents that supported them through their endeavors at a young age, giving them a foot up. 

It can be as simple as being in the right school and educational system where needs are met, and students are pushed to excel. 

Realizing that comparison does nothing but take away time that could be put towards the application of our labor is one of the biggest insights we can have while minding our journey.

This blog post is part of the understanding human behavior series.