Susan eventually decided to write a book based on the course she had taught. She faced many roadblocks. And after four agents and fifteen rejections from various publishers, she reluctantly put the proposal in a drawer. One of the worst rejection letters she received said, “Lady Di could be bicycling nude down the street giving this book away, and no one would read it!”
During this period, she decided to leave the Floating Hospital and focus on becoming a serious writer. “I remember riding in a cab one evening. The driver asked me what I did. I heard myself say, ‘I’m a writer.’ I suppose until that moment I had thought of myself as a psychologist or an administrator, but there it was. I was a writer.”
After three years of writing articles for magazines, she was going through the drawer that held her much‐rejected book proposal. “I picked it up and had a profound sense that I held something in my hands that many people needed to read. So I set out with much determination to find a publisher who believed in my book the same way I did. This time, I succeeded. What’s more, I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.”
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway® has sold millions of copies. It is available in a hundred countries, and it has been translated into more than thirty‐five languages. Susan has written seventeen more books that are also making their way around the world. Susan was indeed a writer; the Times of London even dubbed her the “Queen of Self‐Help.” She is a sought‐after public speaker and has been a guest on many radio and television shows internationally. About Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway®, she says, “My Web site receives e‐mails from all over the world from people telling me how my book has helped their lives. Some have actually credited it with saving their lives. I’m so happy I never gave up. My father would really have been proud.”
Is It Too Late?
We all know people who feel locked into their lives. They sincerely wish they could do something more meaningful and fulfilling, but at age thirty‐nine or fifty‐two or sixty‐four, they feel that the opportunity has passed. Perhaps you feel that it’s too late—that it’s unrealistic to pivot your life suddenly in a new direction. Perhaps you feel that you’ve missed the one opportunity you had to pursue your heart’s desire (maybe due to one of the constraints we discussed earlier). Perhaps you didn’t have the confidence to follow the passion earlier, and now believe that the moment is gone.
There is abundant evidence that opportunities to discover our Element exist more frequently in our lives than many might believe. In the course of writing this book, we have come upon literally hundreds of examples of people following their passions later in their lives. For example, Harriet Doerr, the best‐selling author, only dabbled in writing while she raised her family. When she was sixty‐five, she returned to college to get a degree in history. But the writing courses she took along the way raised her prose skills to a new level, and she wound up enrolled in Stanford’s creative writing program. She eventually published her first novel, the National Book Award–winning Stones for Ibarra, in 1983, at the age of seventy‐three.
While less than half that age at thirty‐six, Paul Potts still seemed stuck in an obscure and unfulfilling life. He’d always known he had a good voice and he’d pursued operatic training. However, a motorcycle accident cut short his dreams of the stage. Instead, he became a mobile telephone salesman in South Wales and continued to struggle with a lifelong self‐confidence problem. Then he heard about auditions for the talent competition television show Britain’s Got Talent, created by Simon Cowell of American Idol fame. Potts got the opportunity to sing Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” on national television, and his beautiful voice brought down the house, leaving one of the judges in tears. Over the next few weeks, Potts became an international sensation— the YouTube video of his first performance has been downloaded more than eighteen million times. He ultimately won the competition and got the opportunity to sing in front of the Queen. Carphone Warehouse’s loss has been a gain for opera fans around the world, as Potts released his first album, One Chance, in late 2007. Singing had always been his Element.
“My voice,” he said, “has always been my best friend. If I was having problems with bullies at school, I always had my voice to fall back on. I don’t really know why people bullied me. I was always a little bit different. So I think that’s the reason sometimes that I struggled with self‐confidence. When I’m singing I don’t have that problem. I’m in the place where I should be. All my life I felt insignificant. After that first audition, I realized that I am somebody. I’m Paul Potts.”
Julia Child, the chef credited with revolutionizing American home cooking and originating the television cooking show, worked first as an advertising copywriter and then in various roles for the U.S. government. In her mid‐thirties, she discovered French cuisine and began professional training. It was not until she was nearly fifty that she published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her storied career took off.
At sixty‐five, Maggie Kuhn was a church organizer who had no intention of leaving her job. Unfortunately, her employers made retirement mandatory at her age. Angry at the way her employer showed her the door, she decided to start a support group with friends in similar situations. Their attempts to address the common problems of retirees pushed them toward higher and higher levels of activism, culminating in the creation of the Gray Panthers, a national advocacy group.
We’ve all heard that fifty is the new thirty and that seventy is the new forty (if this algorithm extends in both directions, it would explain the adolescent behavior of some thirty‐somethings I know). But there are some important changes that we should take seriously. Life expectancy has increased in our lifetimes. It has more than doubled in the past hundred years, and is growing at an accelerated rate. Quality of health for older people has improved. According to a MacArthur Foundation study, nearly nine in ten Americans ages sixty‐five to seventy‐four say they are living disability‐free. Many older people in the developed world have much greater financial stability. In the 1950s, 35 percent of older Americans lived in poverty; today that figure is 10 percent.
There’s a great deal of talk these days about the “second middle age.” What we once considered middle age (roughly thirty‐five to fifty) presaged a rapid descent toward retirement and imminent death. Now, the end of this first middle age marks a series of benchmarks (a certain level of accomplishment in your work, kids going off to college, reduction in necessary capital purchases). What comes after this is a second stretch where healthy, accomplished people can set off to reach their next set of goals. It’s certainly either chastening or inspirational—I’m not sure which—to hear boomer rock stars prove their predictions wrong about what they’d be doing “when I’m sixty‐four” or still trying to get some “satisfaction.”
If we have an entire extra “middle age” these days, certainly we get additional opportunities to do more with our lives as part of the package. Thinking that we need to fulfill our grandest dreams (or at least be in the process of fulfilling them) by the time we’re thirty is outmoded.