the Guardian82%
Ready for your stunning second act? The 11 secrets of starting again – from successful late bloomers 22%
By https:46% www.theguardian.com54% profile54% sarahphillips0% Sarah Phillips36%
7/12/2026, 9:00:14 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 3 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias and Anecdotal, with Indoctrination as the most egregious example at 19% saturation with 326 hits. Analysis detected 386 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,714 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.1% and a BS Rank of 22% (11,511 of 14,615 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.80% of the article peer group.
Composite: Guardian Design; Mireya Acierto; Richard Drury/Getty Images
Ready for your stunning second act?
The 11 secrets of starting again – from successful late bloomers
From a seventysomething standup comedian to the founder of a highly successful spice business, seven people reveal why it’s never too late to embark on the life of your dreams
M any of us feel stuck in a job we dislike and midlife is a common time to reassess what you are going to do with the rest of your years, especially when finances require us to work into older age.
How can you make a change, follow your dreams and finally do what you always wanted?
Late bloomers share the secrets to having a stunning second act.
Be honest with yourself
The first stage of the process is accepting what you want to achieve.
“I grew up in south London and it wasn’t the sort of area where people become novelists,” says Fiona Leitch , 56, from Great Yarmouth.
She dreamed of becoming a screenwriter until she reworked a script into her first novel, Dead in Venice, at the age of 48.
It got picked up by Audible in 2017 and she has just published her 10th Cornish cosy mystery novel with HarperCollins .
To realise your ambitions, she says, you first have to “admit to yourself that is what you want to do”.
Nola Bliss , 77, who lives in York in Western Australia, found success in her 70s as a standup comedian, performing to 500-strong crowds, and in 2025 won her state Next Gen comedy competition.
“I call myself professional because I have been paid, but it wouldn’t be enough to keep a flea alive,” says Bliss.
What she does have is a “huge fan club of boys in their 20s and 30s.
They come up to me and say: ‘You’re so funny, you’re like my naughty auntie.’”
What is crucial is keeping your plan to yourself, says Bliss, who used to work in hospitality.
“Don’t tell anybody what you’re going to do, because they’ll try and tell you that you can’t.
Don’t share it with anybody.
Just get on and do it.
Don’t say: ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’
Or ‘I was thinking of taking up carpentry’… no, nothing.”
This will stop people from trying to dissuade you from pursuing it.
Flower power.
Photograph: Catherine Delahaye/Getty Images
“Feel the fear and do it anyway,” says Bliss.
“What’s the worst that can happen?
You find you don’t like it and you stop?
But at least you won’t die thinking: ‘I wish I’d done that.’”
“If you fail, other people won’t even notice,” says Lisbeth Dreyer from Aurland in Norway, who is literally a late bloomer, becoming a flower farmer and florist in her 60s.
One of the benefits of having the perspective of age, she says, is that “you know that it all goes into the river of life and life keeps going” – wherever the river may flow.
Steven Taylor , 73, had a varied career, but is most proud to have recently completed a PhD, a goal which he had meant to achieve in his 20s, but life got in the way.
“I’m a great believer in the principles of neuroplasticity – continuing to develop your cognitive capacity when you’re older – I think that’s what really worked for me.”
‘If you want to take up knitting, knit something large.’
Photograph: Zbynek Pospisil/Getty Images
If it isn’t obvious what your second act could be, look for something you’re good at or are interested in, and think about what you can do with it, says Bliss, who first tried comedy in her 50s after signing up for a writing class.
When you have worked out what to do, go big, she says: “If you want to take up knitting, knit something large – not a pair of booties.”
“You’ve got to find something you’re passionate about,” agrees Leitch.
“If you enjoy pottering around the garden in your spare time, you might want to do a course on garden design or horticulture.”
Then think about how you could turn it into a career: “What can you do to move away from that boring job and find something that is more fulfilling?”
“I have no regrets,” says Shashi Aggarwal, who lives in Walsall and established the highly successful Spice Kitchen business, selling her blends in tins, in her seventh decade, a completely new direction after years of selling other people’s products in shops she ran with her husband.
“I was itching to do something myself,” says Aggarwal.
“I don’t think if I had started earlier I would have achieved any more.
People say I am mad to be working at 75, but I enjoy every bit of what I do.”
“Even the things that maybe I shouldn’t have done, I don’t regret, because they’ve made me who I am now,” says Bliss.
“It is all part of the tapestry: some parts of it are a bit ragged or have got porridge dropped on it, but it’s all me.”
Draw on what you have learned
Mature students often find their life experience goes a long way.
Photograph: Juice Images/Alamy
The more experience, the better, if you want to become a writer, says Leitch, “because it’s like you’ve done research without even doing research.
You know a bit more about the world and how people work and how people react, so that can only help.”
When Taylor went back to university in his mid-60s, he was by far the oldest person there, but “the only real difference I felt was that I had a lot of experience that marked me out in a way, and that I could draw upon and refer to,” he says.
He also felt he was “intellectually very curious, because I’d been starved of that stuff for 40 years”.
You also have the authority to have opinions on certain subjects, given your age, which Bliss uses for material: “I try to stay away from menopause because that is what they expect, but I joke about going on dating apps like ‘Tinder Dry’, ‘Grumble’, and ‘Unhinged’.
Because I’m older, I can also say some quite rude things.”
At certain points, you may have responsibilities that mean you have to neglect your aspirations, but this doesn’t mean it will last for ever, says Leitch.
“When I had my son in 2003, I stopped writing completely.
You just don’t get time to sit down and think when you’ve got small children.
Then I went back to work, and I was doing part-time jobs – I was a cleaner, I worked in a contact lens factory – that I could do around school times.
It wasn’t until he was about 10 that I really got back into writing regularly,” and this led to her dreams becoming reality.
“I had started to think writing was just going to be something I always did as a hobby,” says Leitch, but having a positive mindset helped her to persevere.
“If you are good at something, admit to yourself you are good at it, and you need to carry on going,” says Leitch.
“But on top of that, there was an element of luck in getting it in front of the right people at the right time,” she continues.
“You have just got to keep working at it and to look out for opportunities and take them, even if they seem really unlikely.”
“Sometimes a simple idea can be a very successful business,” says Aggarwal.
Her son suggested that she sold the spice mixes she made at home, inspired by her Indian heritage.
“I said: ‘Who would want to buy my spices?
There is so much in the supermarket, why would somebody want that?’”
Aggarwal got her first order on eBay on Boxing Day; her products are now stocked at 600 shops around the UK.
“You could try your idea, start small, then gradually it might grow bigger.
If you don’t try, you’ll never know,” she says.
On running your own business, Dreyer adds: “I think some people are scared of it.
I’ve freelanced a lot in my life and it is the most fun thing in the world to find your market, find your customers.”
“I don’t really do age,” says Taylor.
“I don’t live massively differently than I did when I was 35,” which is a good job, as the PhD involved researching underground clubs and “dancing until 4.30am fuelled by nothing more than a couple of espresso martinis”.
He has also written a book called Ageing Radically: “It suggests how we could approach, handle and experience the later years in a way that is more constructive.”
‘Kicking back and making jams is becoming less realistic to people.’
Photograph: Francisco Franco/Getty Images
Gone are the days of idealised retirement, continues Taylor: “Kicking back, making jam and going on cruises is becoming less realistic to people.
If you can get to a point where you’ve got some [financial] stability, then the second half of life is not necessarily about making more money or having a bigger house.”
Instead, you might want to use that stability to find a more pleasurable or easier way of paying the bills.
“I work when I want to work,” says Aggarwal.
“That is the advantage of having your own business: you can take time out when you want to.”
She says that she has no interest in sitting and watching TV all day.
“Because I worked for 40 years, Monday to Saturday, doing nothing doesn’t seem right to me.
I have a lot more to give.”
Remember, you only live once
“People should remind themselves that they only have one life,” says Dreyer, “and if there is something you want to do, you should try it.
I think people feel bad inside if they don’t try what they want to do.
If it doesn’t work, at least you tried.
It is easier to live with it if you try.”
“Age is a state of mind,” as Bliss puts it.
A second career will “keep you alive, keep you young, keep you interesting”.
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37%flagged-word coverageNola Bliss
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Writer 4.9%Nola Bliss 37%
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