Bad news about breakthroughs: They don’t exist.
Great news about breakthroughs: They don’t exist.
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You see that person in the gym with the perfect muscles.
You see that medium writer with 12k followers.
You see that Youtuber who lives a nomad life.
A calm voice inside you tells you that you will never get there.
Of course, it does.
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Untangling the breakthrough fairytale
Success stories are the most compressed stories humans tell.
Hard work and thousands of struggles are cut to a few minutes.
The narrative is built only to arrive at the highlight:
The magic moment of success!
Ironically, the standard narrative about greatness is the biggest obstacle to achieving greatness.
Let’s look at the toxic picture of success in society.
Here’s what we are taught to believe — and how to think instead.
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The beliefs that hinder us
- #1 Success has a standard definition: Success is loud and glamorous. It always culminates in a blockbuster-worthy story. If you do not comply with the promoted image of success, sorry, you are unsuccessful. Please don’t even try and accept your way to success might be different.
- #2 Better be fast: Success violently shows up in a matter of months. If your progress can’t be shown off or measured within a short time span, it is not what society considers to be desirable.
- #3 Go big or go home: Success has a common threshold and needs to be measurable. Your Instagram account does not have 10k follower? Oh, bummer. You earn only cents on medium. Why keeping up all that effort?
- #4 Just for the magic moment: Society does not appreciate a process, struggles, or rethinking targets. Man, we do not want to hear your hardships! Unless… You have finally made it and tell that great story. We value output here. Not progress, not process.
Of course, our image of success is obscured.
If you believe all these intimidating messages, you will arrive at the ultimate conclusion:
I will never achieve success.
So here is your gentle reminder to not let classic success stories be your teacher about success!
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What to believe instead
#1 You do you:
The only definition of success you should value? Your own!
It is tempting to think success is unachievable or just happens to some very lucky people. This is a lie — or your bad excuse to sit on the couch and just let life happen.
I grant you will be much happier if you form your view about success and go for that. Start with grabbing a white paper and answer:
What does success mean to me, personally?
#2 Process over result:
If you want to become a sportsperson, it is a success to grab your running shoes for the first time this year and run 1k.
The marathon runner who overtakes you might think:
She’s slow. Oh, only 1k? What a ridiculous distance!
All this does not matter, as you made an important step towards your own goal.
Also the marathon runner ran his first k at some point.
The basis of success is a very unglamorous process of thousands of mini steps. Success happens gradually. Acknowledge this!
Start creating and enjoying your process.
To do so, I wrote a proxy plan to achieve my definition of success. For some extra motivation, I answer a daily question:
What will I do today to serve my goals?
#3 Comparison kills success:
If you hang around with people who have a different definition of success, this might confuse you.
David travels 5 times a year. Jennifer makes big money in her job. Steve runs 10k in under 50 minutes. Mary bought a house in the countryside. Alex sold everything to live in a van.
Be happy for them and don’t leave your path!
Don’t let bad outside energy make you question your targets. You will always meet people who do not see your goals as desirable. This doesn’t matter.
You choose the road you go.
Don’t let comparison get in the way!
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The punchline: Good news about success
Success stories are never built to serve your success — instead, they are built to capture attention, gain acknowledgment, and showcase someone as a hero. Someone totally out of reach.
Success is not standing in the middle of the crowd, journalists present, everyone screaming your name because you are the greatest. It is not picking someone else’s parameter for success and being better at it.
Success is something defined by you.
A very unglamorous process.
And this is the good news:
Everyone can be successful!*
*As long as we do not believe the overpolished and unrealistic stories we are always told.
Thanks for reading my article! I strive to build a community here on medium and dedicate my words to self-development and sustainability. If you like my content, please support my mission with a follow, some claps, or a comment! 🚀
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Clay Banks / Unsplash.
