Nothing is better than a comeback story and I try to feel as inspired as I can every day because the truth is people have made groundbreaking discoveries in their 50s, started businesses in their 70s and completely overcome much harder obstacles than picking sciences instead of humanities? Like really that’s an example? Career changes are literally one of the easier things in life to do if you’re determined. This article is just too pessimistic for me.
Nothing is better than a comeback story and I try to feel as inspired as I can every day because the truth is people have made groundbreaking discoveries in their 50s, started businesses in their 70s and completely overcome much harder obstacles than picking sciences instead of humanities?
There are of course such people, but they are for a good part the few notable exceptions you hear about. For each of those there are thousands of people that don't manage to pull it off.
A part of their success has to be dependent on millions of people not trying to do the exact same thing, no? What a disaster it would truly be if everyone had the same realizations
I'm not sure. Since I've never seen a situation where millions of people earnestly try for something they want, I would only be theorizing on the outcome. I think certainly there'd end up with more than 2 or 3 success stories, which is mainly my point though
Because the struggle is with yourself. The parent post is correct when they say:
> Career changes are literally one of the easier things in life to do if you’re determined
What makes it hard is changing yourself; not externally imposed forces. The article is full of hubris in my opinion. The author looks around at the failed friends in their peer group and goes “there, but for the sake of ‘my own intelligent choices’ go I”. The start and end of their wisdom is “make prudent choices, as you reap what you sow”. Granted, but this never ends - the “second chance” may not exist in the sense of a “do over”, but at any point of life the branches flow out, and better choices can be made.
I don't know. My experience is that as you get older, you're constantly evaluated against what could have been, and experiences that in youth would have been seen positively become discounted or, strangely, even held against you.
It often feels as if a second chance at a certain point in life requires more than a change in yourself; it requires an even bigger change than earlier, once over to make the real change, and twice over to convince others or overcome their biases. Either that or the luck of finding someone who understands second chances and is willing to give them.
As you get older, probably you are the one doing the evaluating and realizing you won't be a heart surgeon or discover a major math theorem (that was two from my own teenagerhood). Mostly people not you don't give it two thoughts. But whatever. Learn from your life and don't judge it. I mean sure being old is held against a lot of people but that's just some political social change you can work for a little. Other people's opinions aren't the truth and it seems hard to get a few decades in and not realize this. You can make your own chances each morning, especially to be free and to be helpful to others.
The narratives change when we’re older; but I think there are still “sorting my life out”, or “taking on a new adventure”, narratives that work. And that’s all this side of things is - a story to tell yourself and others while the real work of changing habits and working consistently toward a goal occurs.
I’m not disagreeing that it’s harder than when young, or the number of options have significantly reduced. However, I do think we too often feel trapped by circumstance (when older), when much is still possible.
When looking for guidance for life, a good example might be Jesus. Did he make the best decisions in his life? He didn't really care about his life, he gave it away. He only cared about the well-being of others.
> Career changes are literally one of the easier things in life to do if you’re determined
What nonsense. What makes it hard is everything around it. People can't choose to take a 50% pay cut to change careers. They can't let their families starve or lose their homes for it. They can't move move when they need to take care of a loved one.
This idea that changing your mind is the hard part is absolute bonkers unless you're so privileged that you don't care about the real externalities of those choices, or you don't have any.
Phrases like this one only worsen the situation, as for the majority of the world, that's simply not true. If, for you, all you have to do is change your mindset then good for you. You're very, very lucky. But please, don't assume everyone is as privileged.
An interesting comment on Trump by Ukraine's army head of intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov: “There have been nine instances in his life when he went to the top, fell to the very bottom of life, and went back again.”
When he won in 2016 i remember thinking. The campaign was so long and so intense and for all of it it seemed clear that he would lose. I remember thinking, this guy in every other respect is a despicable person, but I can't help but be impressed that he just kept going.
Anything can be relatively easy if you've either already succeeded the first time based on sheer determination and/or you've successfully done other harder things that were at least as abstract as having a successful career. This article is not about the moment you make a decision, because that's as easy as it's set up to be based on all of the previous dice rolls of your life, but about the likelihood that you'll be able to bounce back from rolling snake eyes on what seemed like a sure thing at a time when time itself was cheap.
If determination alone qualified as the criteria for succeeding in a career change, then that means whatever situation you're in already has prepared you perfectly for a marginally different path forward, or the risk involved is relatively trivial. Imo, this article isn't pessimistic enough, but it doesn't mean one can't be inspired by rare anomalies, it's just that you'd be naive to believe an arbitrary person can replicate those results merely by trying hard. It doesn't work for a primary career, and it won't work for a secondary career, there are many more factors involved.
