The Success Myth and the Four Factors You Actually Need to Know About
/
There is a pervasive belief in our society that hard work results in success. Stories of the scrappy entrepreneur, the dogged scientist, or the self-made millionaire abound. Plenty of my fellow coaches try to tell their own story in mimicry of these plot lines. (Naturally followed with the promise that they can teach you to do it too!)
But the truth is, hard work is not a good predictor of success. Even if you practice "work smarter, not harder", smart work is also not a good predictor of success. An individual is not successful in a vacuum. There are many more factors that go into the recipe of success than merely "hard work."
Done with Hard Work
And can we talk about how over it I am when it comes to hard work? Many of us spent our youths studying hard because we were told it was important for future success. We arrived in the working world with advice to go above and beyond to achieve success quickly. Many of us have taken on side hustles or gig work to help get ahead. Have any of us arrived at the magical promised land of success yet? Nope, because success is a fleeting destination at best.
To make matters worse, all this hard work is unsustainable. Many of us hit a mental or even physical wall. And then there are those of you who are chronically tired, but squeaking by on an "oh, I'm doing fine." Are you sure? When are the invisible health ramifications going to catch up with you? We can't keep working for the future at the cost of the now.
We need to have a sustainable working pace, and success needs an attainable definition. What would happen if, instead of always doing your *best* you just did your average. Average is sustainable. Best is a rare occasion that shouldn't be the foundation of your path towards success.
The Truth Behind the Success Story
I'm aware that plenty of my readers, clients, and friends would describe me as successful. I appreciate the compliment but I also want to point out that, first of all, I'm not done yet. Success is not a destination and my goals continue to grow and evolve. But also, I in no way achieved my business to this point by myself. I'd like to lay bare the actual recipe for success.
Where does success actually come from?
I'm going to discuss these four major factors that influence success:
resources & community
privilege & context
talents & luck
the work.
I named these each with two words to try and encapsulate a concept that English doesn't have a word for. (I can't comment about other languages, but I don't know of words for these concepts.) I'm going to illustrate the influence of each of these by laying bare some of my own experiences. It's a peek behind the curtain and helps explain more about these concepts.
Resources & Community
We all have resources that exist beyond ourselves. This includes financial and emotional support. This includes mental/emotional strength we've cultivated over time. This includes the people we surround ourselves with. As human beings, we rely on having support.
In a recent article, I told the story of my hardest day in business. What got left on the editing room floor was the part of that story where I fell apart. It was at a monthly meeting of a group of like-minded entrepreneurs and we were just doing a round of check-ins. That group held space for my feelings of panic, fear, and despair. They let me be a scared business owner instead of an encouraging business coach for that moment. That group is a major reason why I was able to dive back into marketing myself and right my ship.
I bring up this part of the story now because it's a great example of the power of relational resources. We are not in this alone. We will need help. We will need a mirror. We will need a safe space. Success is impossible without these things and we cannot do these without others.
Privilege & Context
Privilege describes all those unearned societal benefits. We should also look at this broader - as the entire social context. You cannot start a business today as a lamplighter. People living in places with mild summers don't install a lot of air conditioning units. Would a culture with stronger values of interdependence instead of independence even need coaches? These examples point to how important context is to the success or failure of a business.
My privilege is that I'm white, straight, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical American living in America. In the current context, it's easy to say society stacked the deck in my favor. But it might not have been at another time in history, or in another location. I can't imagine how impossible my present goals would be in the Middle Ages. Even just living in another country would cause so much more challenge than I have here.
There's also a historical context to privilege. I'm the descendant of slavers and colonizers, and wealth from my family has been passed down to me. A major resource I leaned on when starting my business was an account that my grandma had started for me as a child. While I had intended to launch my business with only the $10k I'd saved, it took multiples more than that. And grandma's money was my dumbo's feather every step of the way.
What feels safe is different for everybody. I've had clients freaking out because they were "down" to a number much higher than mine. I've had clients utterly chill while looking at a bank balance that would have had me losing it.
It may be impossible or impractical to change your privilege or context. But we can still make your context work for you. The first step is to be mindful when comparing ourselves to others. It can be difficult to know someone's privilege and context, which means we're not comparing apples to apples. The other step is knowing yourself and what you need. This is the key to being able to work around your context.
Talents & Luck
You have come into this world with a unique constellation of talents. Influenced by a myriad of things, you've cultivated some of those and suppressed others. You've also had reason to learn other skills. Influences continue to happen because that's part of life. But what things appear in your life is frequently by random happenstance.
This success factor can be the hardest to be able to see in your own life because who knows what might have been. In my own background, I know I was lucky to be born to my mom. Not only was she an attentive and wonderful mother, but she also knew and imparted a lot of business knowledge. All of that is helpful as a business coach. And yet I took on far more of that business bent than my sister did. See, it's a crazy blend of talents and luck!
I also marvel at the influences and sheer luck that went into cultivating a ton of weird skills. They served a purpose at that point in my career, yet now I still find a use for them.
Luck is a huge factor in business success. In the early days of my business, I was reconnecting with neglected connections. From the most random past connections, I got the bulk of my business in the first couple of years. There's nothing but luck that lead to an old co-worker recommending me to someone who became a new client.
And if that doesn't seem lucky enough, all the rest of my business in the early days came from random internet sources. I had no search engine presence. I was only findable on the most obscure corners of the internet. The fact that anyone found me, was a miracle. That's luck folks. We don't have any control over our luck.
The Work
Success doesn't come from a lone individual engaging in hard work. But also success also doesn't come from luck or inaction alone. And which work you do is an immense factor.
For many years of my adult life, I yearned to succeed at the things others did well and easily. It was a fool's errand. Nothing came from striving at these hard things. It wasn't until I sunk down into the things I find stupidly easy and obvious that progress and success came.
Your immutable talents come from within yourself. Not from the outside and the talents of others. Your own talents are often scary. They trigger all sorts of self-limiting beliefs. Those beliefs undermine your creativity towards solving your path towards success. Belief needs to exist for creativity to work the answer out. Believing in yourself and creative problem solving is actually the "hard work" of success. But this is also the type of work that our culture undervalues or doesn't even acknowledge as work.
A New Story of Success
We need to rethink the path toward success. Many of these factors are outside our control. No one can control luck, or what color skin they were born into. We hate to acknowledge things outside our control. It feels very disempowering.
Even more disempowering is feeling like a failure because you've not achieved what others have. I hope what you take away from this is not that you shouldn’t try, but rather that there's power in knowledge. It's not that you shouldn't work hard, but also accept that many things are beyond your control. Do what you can. Things are bound to not go to plan. And when they don't, don't blame yourself. Figure out how to keep on going.
Need some individualized support? Sign up for an Initial Consultation Session to find out if coaching would be helpful for you!
