How I found the Audacity to be Successful
From my earliest days, I learnt to see success as somewhat of a bad thing. Many people grew up this way and without knowing it, you might even share these feelings. You know that mindset that people are successful because they are doing something illegal. That mindset that successful people are not decent people. By extension, the state of mediocrity might be a lot better and is quite popular among regular people. They would say to themselves, ‘besides, I am not doing anything bad!’ That was my sentiment for the longest time, contentment in being average. To be clear, it is not a bad place to be if you are in your eighties and just want to travel the world and enjoy what’s left of life. But when you are a young person, like me, that’s some bollocks. You must learn to find the audacity to be successful. In this piece, I will share three important lessons that I learnt about being successful.
Success is a feeling and it is also a lifestyle. That is why a person from an obscure background can fake it, till they make it. Look at the successful people you know or have read about. They don’t all have rich parents or backgrounds. They have not all attended the best schools in their countries of origin. They all don’t work in the tech space or are athletes or musicians. So the first point is that there isn’t a singular sure path to success. It can be anything from teaching to being a Barman. Yes, a Barman like the guy who pours drinks at a bar like the Cubana Chiefpriest.
The other lesson that I have learnt is that there is no metric to being successful. There is no success metre anywhere in the world that determines if one is succeeding or failing. It is what you declare to the world that they perceive. Be your own judge and tell the world how you want to feel and how to address you and it will. In essence, you don’t have to compare your successes with Elon Musk and then declare yourself a failure for not doing enough. If you write a hundred words more than your usual average in a single day, that is a success. If you made a hundred US Dollars more than your regular earnings in a month, that also is a success. Stop downplaying your successes. Allow yourself to feel successful.
The final lesson is this. You will fail more than you succeed. However, never let your failures overshadow the import of your successes. A key to success is to replicate what works for you and to ignore what isn’t working. So let your emphasis not be on the failures but on the successes. A common mindset is to consider your failures as stepping stones to your big break. You will try many things and most of them will fail. But people will remember you most for the big breaks that you make. Keep working on your dreams and goals and everything will fall into place at the right time.
These three lessons taught me to prize the life that I have and to value the results of my work. Your achievements are like the children you bear. They may not look good, but you love them anyway. Prize your failures and mistakes, they will lead you to the success that you seek. I challenge you to be audacious and if you need encouragement, seek them inside.
