ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

Commencing operation . . .

Overview

Yeah, I threw a Yu-Gi-Oh! reference into the title of this entry, because I can. In this article, I will run through ten benefits in being a late bloomer and then talk through my own experience growing up as a dark horse in the stables.

10 Benefits of being an Underdog

1. Happier in the Long Run
2. Form a very close Relationship with Grit
3. Early Success can be Disorienting
4. Appreciate every Milestone Reached
5. Work at your own Pace
6. Greater Life Experience for Making the Big Decisions
7. A Greater Eye for Spotting Untapped Potential
8. Stay Humble
9. Develop Supreme Patience
10. The Victories taste all the more Sweeter

 1. Happier in the Long Run

Everyone thinks they will be satisfied once they are rich and successful.

The reality?

Seldom the case. 

Premature success can very much lead to ruination. Just look at the majority of child actors and people who attain early fortunes. What follows is a plummet that occurs just as swiftly as the accumulation of riches!

True happiness needs to be built on solid foundations so that it can weather the storms that life unleashes.

The love of the journey and not the destination. 

This is a concept which late bloomers understand on an intuitive level.

2. Form a Close Relationship with Grit

Lasting success in any calling is going to require a big dose of determination to see things through to fruition. Remember, you are running a marathon and not a sprint. You will need to pace yourself and ensure you have the staying power to outlast the long game. You have to keep taking those shots, even when no one is watching, or nothing is coming back.

We all fail.

The difference is that the underdogs who have mastered the art of resilience, know that these failures are a necessary part of the formula equating to success.

3. Early Success can be Disorienting 

Especially the case for naturally high achieving individuals. Early success can throw people right off track when such people eventually hit a roadblock. Because things have been relatively easy-going for such individuals, when the going does get tough, they haven’t had as many opportunities to develop the discipline and determination required to push through such setbacks.

The dark horses of the world, on the other hand, have likely had too many opportunities to prove their ability to navigate obstacles and continue trudging onward. When the underdogs finally succeed, they tend to be more grounded and, therefore, less liable to collapse.

4. Appreciate every Milestone Reached

Things that come easy are hard to appreciate. A sense of arrogance can befall early achievers who then hold unreasonable expectations to attain more things, with the same level of ease as previous achievements.

This very rarely is the case.

When it takes great effort to reach a goal, you are more likely to appreciate the moment you get there, and not take it for granted.  

5. Work at your own Pace

The western world especially promotes a high pressured environment. Particularly for the young, there is a great deal of unreasonably high expectations from parents and teachers for children to perform to the highest of standards.

• Get good grades to get into a top university
• Graduate to get a highly paid job
• Get married, buy a house and have kids by 30
• Retire only to die unfulfilled

 Sound familiar?

The underdogs who are in tune with themselves know that they do not need to fall into the trap of ticking boxes from a check sheet handed to them by society. They march to the beat of their own drum and are content with the process rather than the result.

6. Greater Life Experience for Making the Big Decisions

Putting information overload to one side, the more data or experience you have, the better your decision-making process is. Deferring life-changing choices (if feasible) is an excellent way of minimising risk.

Maybe you didn’t get the chance to date the hottest people at school, but that time spent on the sidelines was not wasted! Through your own observations you will likely have asserted an idea of what you may be looking for in a potential mate, so that your later years, you will have the knowledge required to filter and find what you are after.   

7. A Greater Eye for Spotting Untapped Potential

One of the main reasons I created Absolute Ascendancy is because I know all too well the untapped potential of the people in this world. I have seen it countless times on my life journey. People who could be so much more but just need a push in the right direction. Recall the Absolute Ascendancy motto.

• Build Strength
• Eliminate Weakness
• Unleash Potential

That third bullet point, Unleash Potential, relates to unlocking the untapped potential in the global populous and directing it in a positive direction to fulfil the ascension of humankind.

It takes one to know one.

Dark horses can sniff others out far more quickly than others. Late bloomers more readily can spot the hidden gems in the rough. With this ability, the highly utilised underdog can build alliances with such people, and grow together.

8. Stay Humble

There is a humbling aspect that is beaten into the underdogs of the world, as they suffer defeat upon defeat. Even when success does arrive, the late bloomers will be planning their next move, because they know that the rug could be swept from under their feet at any moment. They know how much blood, sweat, and tears went into their undertaking to finally make it, and they are humble enough not to take such achievements lightly.

9. Develop Supreme Patience

The best things in life are worth waiting for. The dark horse understands this, both on an intuitive and practical level. They will grind the grind, day in and day out, without even an inkling of success being shown. The late bloomer knows that it will take as long as it will take to reach the height of success and will stop at nothing to achieve it.

10. The Victories taste all the more Sweeter

The underdogs of the world do not tend to have many opportunities to experience victory, in comparison to the early achievers of this world. But that just makes those successful moments all the more sweeter to the dark horses.

The early achiever is the person who has water readily available to them for consumption. The late bloomer travels miles to reach the nearest well to obtain their water. Which person do you think will savour every drop of water, like it could be their very last?

It is the exact same liquid, but because of the means required to gather it varies so differently, it results in a change of perception and appreciation for the late bloomer, in comparison to the early achiever.

My Experience as a Dark Horse

At an early age, I struggled with asthma, and my brain was slow to develop. As a young child, I was taken to a specialist doctor who examined me and told my father that I would amount to nothing because I had little intelligence.

Educationally I was far behind the curve. Special needs classes and out of hours, tuition were required for me to try and compensate for my shortcomings. I was pretty much a twig as well. Skinny arms and legs with the only bit of fat showing on my stomach. I had a few instances of heartburn as well, which I attribute to being incredibly unfit and out of shape.

At times, it has been frustrating watching my peers develop faster than me. Always behind everyone else, these so-called prodigies who just inherently understood everything while I was left dumbfounded and clueless. It felt like these people were cruising on the highway, while I was stuck in first gear on some country dirt road.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, over many years, my abilities began to flourish. Enforced by my unwavering determination and hardworking ethic, I transformed. I started at the bottom and had to crawl my way up, though I am fortunate that such persistence pays dividends as it gives people like me a fighting chance in this world.

At any rate, I completed my education, graduating with a degree in Mathematics. I also learned how to play the piano, read through several publications on various health/lifestyle topics, and started competing in Koshiki Karate-do tournaments.

I am thirty years of age, and conventionally speaking, I am a failure. 

• I am not married
• I do not have kids
• I do not have a stable career

However, I have gained a rich understanding of the world in which we live in and how things work, courtesy of the broad, diverse range of interests and activities and travelling the world throughout the years. I have over twenty years of experience as a Karate-do practitioner and have spent much of that time building a strong and flexible body as well as developing the mind to be as tough as an iron wall and as sharp as a steel blade.

I want to highlight three anecdotal examples where you can read about me being an underdog in action.

1. Karate
2. Romance
3. Piano

1. Karate

It took me over six years of training in Koshiki full contact karate before I achieved my first international fight victory. Believe me, I suffered many losses before finally attaining that win.

I remember one of my coaches in 2016 telling me to focus solely on kata performance and to forgo fighting. This was after I suffered two crushing defeats in a European championship tournament in Poland.

Let’s face it.

I had been fighting for the past four years at that point and had no tangible results to show for my efforts. I could have thrown in the towel and focussed solely on kata, but I was already excellent at kata competitions and truly wanted to improve my fighting.

My instructor, Shihan Ciaran Mitchell, encouraged me to continue my fight training as he had absolute conviction that I would make it someday. It took a few extra years, but yes, I did experience victory in Australia 2019. While I am not a big shot fighter, at the very least, I can say that I have improved leaps and bounds in comparison to six years ago.

2. Romance

Hoho, have I got one for you! You know, in my younger years, I was not particularly skilled at picking up on social cues and the like. Accepted conventions that other people just seemed to know were alien concepts to me.

One time in primary school, a girl hit me on the arm, because I was annoying her.

I hit her back.

One of my friends turned on me.

“what are you doing? You don’t hit a girl!”

To which I responded.

“Why not?”

Anyway, he explained the etiquette of not hitting a girl to me, after which I apologised to the person I hit. The point is, I feel that is something guys intuitively know not to do, but it never occurred to me until someone explained it.

In secondary school, there was a girl I liked.

She had a boyfriend.

Despite this, I tried on numerous occasions to win her over, each time upping the ante. I crossed the line when I wrote a poem.

Not for her.

It was an eloquently written piece of wordplay slander directed at her boyfriend. Upon reading it, all bets were off! The inevitable showdown commenced, which ended up becoming a legendary fight at the school.

As you can likely guess, I did not end up with the girl, and I learned a lesson not to move in on taken territory. Unless you have a War Sun and need to score a secret objective, but that’s a different matter entirely.

My time at university saw me hit the nightclubs on the very rare instance, where I was more or less inclined to go, for whatever reason. It happened to be my roommate’s birthday, and we all dressed up as gaming characters and hit the local club.

I cosplayed as the Mysterious Figure from Kingdom Hearts. So I enter the club with my two blue lightsabers and a long coat, and I become a success! Or perhaps I would have if I had acted on any of the opportunities that had presented themselves to me.

One, in particular, was quite stunning, but the disorientating noise of the club prevented effective communication to the point where I gave up and left. Besides, I was almost always more focussed on studying and gaming anyways, to pursue that type of thing.

Beyond graduating, in my adult years, I have had my fair share of crushes, mostly in the workplace. None of these ever worked out, however. I also began exploring online dating opportunities, and while I did enter one long-distance relationship, it fell through after I became disinterested in the online world.

At the age of twenty-seven, I entered my first face to face relationship, but that ended abruptly, after a couple of months, to the point where I don’t even think it could even be called a proper relationship!  

Anyway, my point is that I am a prime example of a late bloomer when it comes to romance, and there is nothing wrong with that! Perhaps you can relate to some of what I have written above (although I sincerely hope you cannot!), and if so, then take heart that what is meant for you will come your way when the time is right.

3. Piano

You can read all about this one here. To briefly summarise, I took lessons as a kid, but then I stopped playing after moving country. A decade later, I picked it back up again, and I have continued playing ever since. 

Conclusion

I dedicate this article to all of the underdogs, dark horses, and late bloomers in the world! To those who started at rock bottom and continue to climb to the top. Back the underdogs in this world, because they truly need it more than most.

If you can relate to any of the above, then don’t give up! Keep pushing onward, one step at a time, and slowly but surely, your life will change.

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out.