It seems everywhere we look, someone is trying to sell us a quick pathway to success. Want to be like Warren Buffet? Read what he reads in the morning or want to be creative like Steve Jobs? You have to do X,Y, and Z. While there is no magic bullet for success, the path to success is your own and yours alone.
There is nothing wrong with aspiring to be the next Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet or whoever you idolize. The problem exists in thinking if we do what they did we will be successful. Everyone has their own path and too often we never see the struggle; we only see their success. We never know what they truly had to go through or what they had to sacrifice to make it. All we know is that we want success and we think its some linear line from point A to point B and it rarely is.
We get sold these get rich schemes by people who prey on those who so desperately want to be successful, wealthy or powerful. And in reality there you’re selling you a false narrative. Waking up at 3am and eating eggs with prune juice like this person is not going to make you successful.
To be truly successful you have to define what success means to you. Success means different things to different people and chasing after someone else’s success to make it you own is not a successful way of finding success. Your goals, dreams and aspirations are your own so why are you chasing after someone else’s?
In today’s world of instant gratification, instant this or that we all want what we want now. Why should we wait to be rich or successful. If so and so did this we should do the same and in theory we should be rich or successful just like them right? Wrong. We so often assume success happens overnight and it rarely does. How many times did someone make an app that failed miserably before they came up with Instagram or Snapchat?
And honestly, sometimes we never achieve the success we set out for. There could be tons of reasons why, but not everyone is going to be successful. Not everyone is going to be rich or powerful. There is no rhyme or reason for who is successful and who is not. We just have to understand our path to success is our own and trying to follow someone else’s path isn’t going to lead us to the fame and glory we all inherently seek because we think that validates us as a person.
Blaze your own path to what you perceive as the definition of success. Sure there may be times where it seems that paths are parallel but remember no 2 paths are ever the same. The only time our paths meet is when we’re all six feet in the ground. Chase your dreams, your hopes, your desires, but make sure that they’re you own. Avoid the outside noise of get rich schemes and know that the path of success is your own and no one else’s.
Photo by Guille Álvarez on Unsplash