Feeling Behind in Life? Why Success Has No Timeline | Late Bloomers, Healing & Becoming

Do you ever feel like you’re behind in life?

Behind financially, professionally, creatively, emotionally, or spiritually?

In this episode of Outside the Script, Amanda opens up about turning 41, feeling like a “late bloomer,” healing subconscious patterns, and redefining what success truly means.

This honest conversation explores:

• feeling behind in your 30s or 40s
• late bloomers and divine timing
• healing vs. failure
• aging and wisdom
• social media comparison
• success later in life
• personal growth and reinvention
• finding purpose and authenticity
• why success has no timeline

Amanda also shares inspiring examples of people who found success later in life, including Julia Child, Vera Wang, Samuel L. Jackson, Toni Morrison, Colonel Sanders, Martha Stewart, Morgan Freeman, and more.

If you’ve ever questioned your timeline or felt pressure to “have it all figured out,” this episode is your reminder that life is not a race, and maybe you’re not behind at all.

Outside the Script is a podcast about freedom, family, healing, growth, intentional living, and creating a life that feels true to you instead of performing one for the world.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody. Happy Wednesday. Happy Mercury Day. And welcome back to Outside the Script, a podcast about freedom, family, healing, growth, and creating a life that actually feels aligned instead of performing one just for the world. And today I want to talk about something that I think so many people quietly carry, especially women, is this feeling of being behind, being hind, being behind financially, professionally, creatively, emotionally, spiritually. And I've been sitting with this lately because I am 41, and there's still moments where I'm like, wait, how do I still not have like the life that I want? And I know that I cannot be the only one that feels this way. Because growing up, I thought by the age of 40, I truly was gonna have it all figured out and I was gonna feel settled and certain and successful and clear. And I thought I'd have the career, the confidence, the stability. Just I thought I was gonna have like the perfect version of my life, but real life is just so much more laid than that. And I think nobody really tells you that life just keeps evolving you. You keep change and you keep becoming. We're seeing women reinvent reinvent themselves later on in life, starting businesses, you know, starting families, healing later, creating later, finding themselves and living more authentic. And honestly, I want to give some examples of people who've become successful later in life, um, which is, I think, kind of fun, is Julia Child didn't become famous until her late 40s. Vera Wang entered fashion at 40. Samuel L. Jackson didn't get his breakout role until his 40s. Uh, Tony Morris published her first novel at 39. Colonel Sanders, who started KFC, he started that in his in his 60s after years of rejection and failure. Morgan Freeman didn't become wildly, widely recognized later until later in life. Martha Stewart has reinvented herself multiple times publicly. Jane Fauna continues to reinvent herself decades later. Um, and those are just a few examples. And I think it's like fun to just and just to remember that. Like, you know, and a lot of times when we pe see people who are really successful, we don't see, you know, the all the failure that came before that. And honestly, I feel more myself though than when I did when I was younger. And I think that is usually pretty universal for most of us. And there's something freeing about getting older, right? You give less F's, you stop performing as much, you stop needing everyone's approval, you become more honest, you become more grounded in yourself. And I think that's the one of the most beautiful parts of aging is the wisdom that it comes with. And you know, at 25, I was still immature in a lot of ways, and I didn't fully know myself yet, and I cared way too much about what other people thought, and I was still reacting from patterns, wounds, conditioning that I didn't even fully understand yet. Yesterday I was at the beach with my friend, um, her name's Grace, and we studied polarity together, and that was maybe like 15 years ago. And, you know, she really took it to the next level and she became a successful entrepreneur. And I was saying it to her, I was like, even if I like took it to that level, polarity, or try to start a business at say 25, like I was just too immature. Like I wouldn't have had the capacity and the maturity to like hold that type of even responsibility, like looking back on it. Like, so you know, I had I have to be honest with myself as well. Um, and when I look back at my life, truthfully, I think so much of it is because I did have so much healing to go through. I had a lot of healing to like do, you know, over all these years. And my life has been a healing evolution in so many ways. And I still think I'm peeling back the layers of some conscious patterning and condition and survival responses and old stories. And I think so many people confuse that, including myself in a lot of ways, with late blooming with failure. But what if like some people aren't late? And what if like some people are just healing? And some people spend their years, younger years building careers, and some people spend their younger years surviving, healing, mother, mothering, people pleasing, carrying trauma, trying to emotionally survive life. And of course, our timelines all do look so different. And also, I do think that social media makes it harder because we're constantly watching everyone else's life in highlight reels, which quietly we like start questioning our own life. But I really believe we are all on our own divine timeline, including me. And I think the years we thought we were falling behind might actually be the years that are shaping us, and like that's what I'm choosing to believe and embody the years of teaching us and softening us and deepening us, and the years helping us become who we actually are meant to become. And and I think that my definition of success leaks completely different than the way culture has taught me and like what success is supposed to look like. It isn't a shiny car, the perfect image, the beautiful house, you know, the external validations. Like success to me is living in alignment with yourself and in your purpose, feeling alive and connected and enjoying life while I am here as a human on planet Earth, feeling peace in my nervous system, feeling present enough to actually experience my life instead of constantly chasing the next thing. Because I think achievement and fulfillment are two completely different things. And honestly, I think success is less about arriving and it's more about becoming, and that is like something that I really have been embodying and really understanding on a deeper level. And I don't know if there is an arrival, to be honest. And I think life just keeps evolving us and me and stretching us and healing us and revealing us. And yes, it's hard to be patient sometimes. Gosh, I'm just like, let's just hurry the F up. Like, let's just be done already. But and also just trying to enjoy the journey and where I am at each moment. Super hard, super hard, super hard. But I'm trying and I like, you know, want to enjoy the journey. And especially in culture where I feel like everyone seems ahead or everyone feels every where everything feels fast, and where social media constantly makes it look like everybody has it figured out earlier than us. But what I really think when people, when people stop rushing their life and putting pressure on their life, is that is where the true magic does happen. That is where the magicals, the magic and the miracles do happen. So when we slow down enough to like hear ourselves again, to connect to ourselves again, to trust ourselves again because we're rushing our lives, we miss our lives. We truly do. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at and what I've been feeling into, and like what I've been like moving through. And so if you're listening right now and you feel like your life, you feel like in life you're falling behind or behind, I just want you to know that you're not behind at all. And maybe your life isn't unfolding exactly in the time in that it needs to be. Maybe the years you thought were wasted were actually shaping you, healing you, preparing you, deepening you. There is no expiration date on becoming who you were meant to be in this lifetime. And maybe life was never about arriving perfectly, and maybe it's always about becoming more fully yourself. Maybe that's simply it. So that's all for today. I just wanted to hop on this morning and just kind of a quick little share. And I just want to thank you so much for being here with me and listening. And if this episode resonates with you, I would love for you to just keep following along. Until next time, keep creating a life that feels true to you, not one that just looks good from the outside. All right, bye for now, my friends. I love you so much, and I'll see you soon.