Customer Reviews

It's Only Too Late if You Don't Start Now

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Have you got to 40 and thought your life was over? Well think again. It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now is here to show you that not only is your life *not* over at 40 - it's only just beginning!

In this life changing text Barbara Sher teaches us how to ignore social convention, turn our backs on cultural indoctrination and really start living. Did you know that the 'first half' of your life was only a period where you made your mistakes. It certainly wasn't the be all and end all. Bringing into focus once again your dreams, wishes and ambitions, here Ms Sher shows us how we have not yet even started to really live.

After reading this book to the end page, I flipped back to the first page and started reading again, it's so profound and a 'different' person finished reading the book than the one who started reading it! I turned 40 this year and this book has changed my life - will it change yours?

I've read all of the reviews here, and felt compelled to add my own two cents' worth. While the author might overly-emphasize the "beauty vs. wisdom" theory, and does dwell too much on her own view that dwindling libido = greater creative opportunities, I'd still recommend this book to anyone at a midlife crossroads. Why? Because it's a solidly helpful book in most respects.

When this book was released in 1998, I ordered a copy. I've been a big fan of Sher's for many years. At the time, my career had very unexpectedly stalled. Financial conditions were such that we (my family) had to downsize our home and lifestyle. In addition to those challenges, I had a breast cancer scare with lumpectomy. A few months later, my Dad died. This book was enormously helpful to me at a time when it seemed everything had tilted on axis in my world. Sher truly did help me find answers to the question, "Where do I go from here?"

Chapter 3, "Time Limits", was particulalry encouraging. Slapped hard in the face with the concepts of mortality, I began falling into crisis mode. What if my time is cut short? What if I've already run out of time? Those were haunting questions. Burying a parent in the midst of that crisis only served as fuel to the fear. Chapter 3 was enormously valuable in helping me to take some deep breaths, calm down and really explore what finite time had meant **and could mean** to me.

Chapter 8, "Escape to Freedom", was another wonderful section that had a profound impact in my life. It's a chapter that I feel would be useful to anyone at any age. That chapter alone is worth the price of the book, and I still review chapters 10 and 11 periodically. Those last chapters brough about significant change in my life. They could for you, too.

I only wish Ms. Sher had focussed more on the above-mentioned aspects of her message earlier in the book, because I believe age is something to celebrate, and beauty can glow from the face of a 90 year old. I also believe that most of us hope to enjoy a healthy, active libido right up 'till the day we're planted in the ground.

To summarize? If you, like me, can dismiss Sher's personal opinions about (physically) aging, then I believe you'll gain much from the other, more encouraging, insightful & proactive elements of this book.

Like a coach's halftime inspiration, I couldn't wait to get started after reading this book. I have liked all of Barbara Sher's books, but this is her crowning work of wisdom. While written for midlife, it speaks to any age and anyone seeking an authentic life. The chapters are funny and full of exercises and questions to break through conventions and assumptions that keep people from listening to their deeper urges. I particularly liked the exercises that helped me relive my childhood loves and desires and to find the core that related to my life today. I liked her discussion of the logic of past mistakes, which create the platform for fashioning the next stage of life.

This is not your typical career book. It is for anyone who has heard an inner voice calling them to take a risk and create work and a life that is entirely original. It convinced me it is never too late.

Having read many, many self-help, motivational books, this one is 'top notch'. As a 45 year old nurse contemplating (again), a career change, this book has helped me decide to 'go for it'. Barbara has an uncanny way of having you look back on your life....and making you want to step forward with great anticipation for the future. I recommend this book to anyone who is nearing midlife....it will help you through a very tough time of life.

I've read this book at least 3 times, and I came back to buy a new copy because the one I have is SO worn, underlined, written in, the cover is missing, in short- at times in life- it's been truly a life-line, a friend, and what has taken my hand and pulled me through.
The first time I read it I was in my late 20's, feeling direction-less, kicked around, and not at all sure of how to take the reigns in my life. This helped. I read it, I "Talked back" by writing in the margins, I answered the questions at the end of the chapters, and I learned a lot about myself. I learned that I had been focusing much/most of my life, my goals, my plans- on trying to please others, trying to get approval, because of things that happened when I was too young to even see that it was impossible to please those I was trying to please- anyway! I learned that I was working hard for things that I was "supposed" to want- but actually- I didn't really want them. I re-grouped, and spent some time adjusting, and was able to find a new level of comfort and happiness.
I did not give up trying to feel pretty, I did not stop wearing makeup (By the way... just making note of earlier reviews)
I read the book again, several years later, in my 30's... as I started FREAKING about aging, and this time, I saw that all her quotes by others about aging- where the SAME things I was thinking! PHEW, I was not alone! This is SCARY STUFF!! All these "Oh My GAWD... It's too late to do this, it's too late to do that...Maybe I'll never be a superstar!!!(Oh no, Maybe I don't WANT to be a superstar!)" and this book helped to debunk that... Thank god!
And Now, I just finished reading it, because I'm looking for new dreams, now with my children leaving home for college... And I'm sending copies to my siblings and friends.
~~~~~ Buy this book if you are 20, if you are 30, if you are 40,50 or 60. Buy ANY of Barbara Sher's books, She is an Excellent, Educated, Brilliant, Motivational Person, with a LOT to offer- and She does not have that "Anything you dream, you can have" attitude. She's realistic and concrete and sane and rational.
A real 5 Star Read!

This book deals so directly and honestly with the issues of changing your life. I can't get over how the author has thought through the desire for change and the challenges of actually making the changes. This book is more meaningful and pertinent than all the coaching books I ever bought before. It was more targeted at mid-life changes than I expected but it has relevant material for people of any age who want to change any aspect of their life in a significant way. Be prepared to be get shaken up as you read and to be real honest with yourself. At age 50 and considering a major change in my work, it was the perfect book for me.

I bought this book last year shortly before my own 40th birthday, and have since given it to a number of friends as they reached that milestone - in addition to returning to its pages myself from time to time. It's like having a wise companion standing beside you, urging you on, and helping you to realize how much there still is to do, despite your advanced age. I don't think Sher quotes Mary Oliver in this book, but her book asks the same question Oliver asks in 'The Summer Day': "Tell me, what else should I have done?/Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?" Highly recommended.

I'm a little surprised at some of the lower reviews. Sher is smart and compassionate. I'm twenty-four (yup, not 40+), and I felt nothing but wonder, appreciation, and inspiration while reading this book. The clarity of thinking, comprehensiveness and attention to detail are wonderful. Of course, you need to have some experience and introspection for certain things to "ring true" (or not). This is a book to grow with and critically analyze, in an ongoing way, at any age.

I've read this book more than once, and I recommend it very highly but with some warnings. I recommend certain chapters very, very highly, as they've changed my perspective on midlife and aging tremendously. Barbara Sher does a masterful job of explaining how and why, if we're willing to be open to new possibilities, we can create lives that are *more* exciting, meaningful and rich after age 40 than before. She does an amazing job of showing how standard ideas of post-40 life are based on cultural propaganda rather than facts, and on skewed perspectives promoted by our youth-obsessed culture. (Quick example: Stereotypes say that after 40 people lose their individuality and creativity and become stodgy, boring old farts whose lives eventually dwindle to nothing more than bingo. She shows that in fact, *teenagers* are far more conformist and self-limiting than middle-aged people, and that age 40 is, for many of us, the age at which we finally get enough sense of ourselves to develop true individuality instead of going with the herd.) She explains how the youthful drive to impress people and "get to the top" may be biologically motivated by the need to impress potential mates, but then shows how, as that kind of narcissism starts to fade away at around 40, we can begin to perceive possibilities for deeper, more meaningful success, based on who we truly are rather than on needing to score points with people. I'm 41 now and I've been finding that a great deal of what she says is dead on.

My only caveat is that, as she's offering sympathy and understanding for some of the difficult aspects of midlife, she sometimes sounds dogmatic about how universal and inevitable some aspects are or the timetable on which they can be expected. For example, in the first chapter she works very hard to convince the reader to come to terms with loss of physical beauty and romantic possibilities. I first read the book when I was pushing 38, and that chapter left me with the impression that I could pretty much mark the date on my calendar when I would be totally unattractive and unable to get a date again in my life. I'm 41 now and still -- in all honesty -- very attractive, with men expressing interest in me frequently, and I know plenty of other people my age who are very good-looking and have lots of sex appeal. But that chapter almost sounds like she thinks that anyone who's pushing 40 and still thinks they can turn heads is just living in fantasyland and they should just "deal with reality." So I think she laid it on a bit thick there, and in a few other places as well, where she's trying to convince the reader "It's no big deal, this aspect of aging happens to everyone and it's not the end of the world" but it may be bewildering or frightening to readers who aren't yet 40 and are wondering whether all these things will happen exactly on schedule, or for people whose experience of being 40-something doesn't precisely match what she describes. So I recommend this book to my late-thirty-ish friends, but I warn them not to take every last bit of it to heart, like the implication that they're guaranteed to look like hell by age 40.

Once again, Barbara Sher has created a masterpiece of encouragement. Throughout, this book inspires the reader to hope and believe that anything is possible, then supports those ideas both with logic and with an understanding of human nature. I am reading it a second time, using it almost as a personal cheering section that's available to me daily. If you're hesitating to embark on a new path at mid-life, this book will get you going and help you choose the best path. I'd recommend it for anyone, not just mid-lifers.