If you learned to swim late, you know something early swimmers don’t: what courage looks like in a shallow end.

Learning something late means you did it consciously, with the fear fully switched on. People who learned as toddlers have the skill and no memory of getting it, so they never found out what it takes to stand in frightening water and keep going. You have the skill and the knowledge of what it cost.

Use that where it transfers: a first shift, a first time driving, speaking in front of a class. You know the shape of the process, which is fear, repetition, then ordinariness. When somebody else is stuck at the start of something, you are the right person to stand beside them.