I would be lying to you if I told you that I don’t like being successful. I do. And I dream about it every day!
Contrary to what you may have heard, I don’t think the desire to achieve success is necessarily unhealthy. But the obsession to become successful can be damaging.
We’re bombarded by fabricated content from seemingly rich entrepreneurs on social media.
There’s not a single day I scroll through my feed and not see another new face claiming to have a $1,000,000 business by doing these “7 things.” — whatever those things are.
How success is portrayed and the common lies we believe about success is quite alarming. We have been brainwashed by social media entrepreneurs, rags-to-riches stories, fake profiles, etc.
In this article, I’ll go over a list of these lies in the name of success. You can decide for yourself after reading it.
So here’s a list of “success” lies that have successfully fooled you:
Overnight success can be achieved
Let’s get this out of the way. It doesn’t happen! You need to overthrow this lie from its pedestal and erase it from your mind — for good.
Too many startups, businesses and entrepreneurs dream about overnight success. And they worship the people who can show them how.
As if they can launch a product and make millions the next day — hoping that their product will go viral, explode all over social media and become the next golden child of the internet.
This fairy tale is so toxic and has so much power to stop you from chasing your dreams. Why? Because it cripples the spirit of many who have not been able to achieve success “overnight.”
It’s the way the world tells each and everyone of us that you’re not good enough, not smart enough, not hardworking enough.
Don’t be fooled my friends.
Overnight success is a fool’s dream. It’s not something you want to predicate your life on.
Success make your problems go away
Problems don’t ever go away.
It just evolves as your business evolves.
Successful people don’t shy away from problems, or hope they disappear. Successful people understand problems persists and come up with better strategies and get resourceful to deal with the problems.
Whether you’re a startup or a business that has reached its zenith, you will have problems thrown your way — the more successful you get, the bigger your problems will grow. That’s a fact.
Having a lot of money can make it easier to solve your problems, but it’s all relative. Let’s think about this for a moment.
Let’s take Fullmoon Digital, my boutique ad agency as an example. I needed a marketing reporting software solution to create dashboards for my clients. In the beginning, we used Google Analytics’ because it was free. As the company grew and clients evolved, we need to find a more robust reporting integration.
There are many options from SiSense, Domo, Grow, Funnel, SocialReport, Raven Tools, Cyfe, Dasheroo, etc.
They are all great tools and I have used many of them to build real-time business reporting dashboards in my previous jobs.
With the growth of our business, we had to move from a free reporting software — Google Analytics to one of the paid options above. This was a straightforward problem for us to solve, but you get the point. At every milestone of your success journey, you will be met with new problems to solve.
Could we have stayed with Google Analytics, probably. But why wait around for the inevitable.
You will become more likable when you are successful
Success attracts envy. People around you may tell you they’re happy for you to your face, but behind your back is where it’s at.
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard people criticize someone else’s success.
“They must have done something not ethical to grow their business so fast,”
OR
“He got lucky because his family had money to fund his business,”
OR
“She’s not even creating a quality product, I’m sure she will not succeed for long.”
That’s the problem with successful people. They make everyone else around them insecure and uneasy about their lack of success — by no fault of their own.
The higher you climb, the more visibility you have in public, the chances of you getting criticized for your success increases.
You will lose friends along the way. The good news is you’ll be making new ones.
The curse or blessing of success is the absent of control of who will like or dislike you. That’s the price you pay for success.
You have it all figured out because you are successful
Society assumes just because you are successful mean you have everything figured out.
That’s far from reality.
The characteristic that enables someone who be successful is exactly the opposite.
Successful people know they don’t have everything figured out. In fact, the reason why they succeed is because they have the hunger to seek more answers to what they don’t know.
Many entrepreneurs like yourself discover success through trial and error, and by honing your skills and experience as you journey through your battles.
My friends, success is a war. Not one with anyone else, except with yourself. Your are your worse enemy; if you ever tell yourself that you’ve figured it all out.
You can be successful yourself
Nope. 100% never. It’s nearly impossible for anyone to become successful without collaboration, partnerships, and relationships.
It’s not practical and it’s narcissistic to even believe that.
While what you have done so far have gotten you far, to reach the next milestone will require a team.
You read about successful entrepreneurs all over social media. They talk about how they achieved success in a very short amount of time, and you can learn their blueprint and formula to enjoy the same.
Here’s a hint.
Most of these are paid ads. You’re smarter than that. But ask yourself this question. If they are truly successful, why are they buying your attention?
It all comes down to how you define success. If you’re happy and life is complete with where your business is at today, then you should stay there and focus on what you have.
But if you want more, then you must come to grip with the fact that the more successful you want to become, the more trustworthy people you need to surround yourself with.
Find a balance without sacrifice to be successful
You can go on 5 vacations every year, or make a million dollars every month. You can climb mount Everest. Set up your non-profit foundation and solve world hunger.
Yes, you can have it all.
Just not everything at the same time.
Our time is limited, it’s scarce, and precious. So you need to choose what you need to sacrifice today so you can enjoy the future.
Each and every day that goes by makes sacrifices more challenging. Priorities shift in each phase of your life and your business. There is no such thing as constant in an ever-evolving dynamic existence.
Here’s a hint from my personal experience.
Leave perfection at the door. In fact, throw it out the window and never to think of it again, ever.
Stop setting yourself up for disappointment. The perfect balance doesn’t exist. Perfect businesses is a pipe dream. The perfect product will be replaced. There’s no perfect.
Truth is, balance is difficult to exist in everything. To be successful demands sacrifices of unimaginable proportions — some will call you crazy or mock your commitment.
It’s like a river rafting adventure. No such thing as calm waters from beginning to end.
It’s more important to have the wisdom to navigate this imbalance rather than try to calm it.
You will be happier if you are successful
This is by far one of the BIGGEST lie anyone can tell you.
It’s worse if you this is what you seek.
So let’s say you have so much money there’s nothing you cannot afford. Great. You call that happiness.
But what happens after that? After buying everything you can imagine, what’s left?
It’s not a long-term sustainable or even logical way to approach life.
Yes, I’m saying that you can never be truly happy — unless you realize this.
The only way to being happy is you have contentment in your life. I believe this is even greater than being grateful.
You see, gratitude of the things you have, the good and bad, just means you are accepting the hand you’re being dealt. You don’t have to necessary like the outcome — but you’re telling yourself that you are thankful for whatever may be.
And you cannot choose to be happy because your gratefulness is predicated on your circumstance.
Back to this idea of contentment.
Get yourself to a state of completeness. What does this mean? Who cares if your business does not have the most expensive software, the fanciest office space, not making more money than your competitor, or other toxic opinions that the world values over how much you should value yourself.
If you tell me how little you have, I can go into how much you have by just pointing out the obvious.
As humans, we have come to a point of wanting more not because we need it. We want more because we have been brainwashed to think that having more and being successful will make us happier.
That’s 100% horseshit.
Conclusion
Your success is not measured by how big your house is. Or how many Ferrari you have. It’s not how much you can afford to spend on a 5-star hotel and definitely not how much money you can splurge on an event.
You can follow the playbook of success the world has created for you — the myth of what it means to be successful.
Or you can realize that success is never ending. Success is defined by your ability to be content at each milestone — celebrating your micro moments of wins.
Success is not a competition. Stop wasting your time trying to be better than someone else.
Because being a better person today than yesterday is already challenging enough. Success is so much closer than you’d think.
Conquer yourself. Understand yourself. That is success.
Would love to know what you think in the comments below.
