An idea exists that if you work hard enough at one particular thing, you’ll become rich, successful, famous, infamous, notorious, etc — all these terms are variations of each other, ironically. This idea is BS. Hard work amounts to wasted time and long hours of drudgery. You’re telling me that if you work 80 hours in a coal mine that you’ll become rich and famous? No? Aha, so we have dispelled one myth within a paragraph—which shows how faulty that myth was in the first place.
So what is the path to riches? This is a better question, yet, still faulty and uninspiring. Take an example of the mountain.
Say you are interested in climbing a mountain. It is your life’s goal. It is something that is on your mind 24/7, something that will change your life, and give you meaning. So…what next? There are a series of steps in order to conquer the mountain. In order to climb a mountain, you must pick the bloody mountain to begin with. This is step one: pick your path. I have come across so many instances of people simply uttering the menial phrase(s): “I cannot wait until I am successful/I wish I was successful/if only I was successful”—insert “rich/notorious/wealthy/any other variation.
These phrases amount to nothing because they don’t establish any real objective, any real goal. Saying “I wish I was successful” is akin to saying “I wish I was healthy.” What does that even mean? Healthy is a term to describe attributes that promote life and wellbeing. Becoming “healthy” is a potentially lifelong journey, and is different for everyone. An addicts’ version of “healthy” is different from an obese persons’. Thus healthy is a blanket term, and so is “success.”
Success looks different to everyone. An immigrant coming to North America may view success as saving enough money for their children to go to college, paying off their house, running a business, etc. A person born in the West will view success completely differently: Lamborghinis, yachts, mansions. These two viewpoints are still of success, but are distinct.
Pick a pathway that you understand, that you are passionate about (possibly talented in?), that will exist in the long run, that will help you grow and mature, and that will make you happy—if you can monetize it, even better! Continue on this pathway and have a clear goal in mind: “what do I want to do on this path/journey, exactly?” Remember, we’re still at step one. But the first step is the most important. It dictates the path you’re on. The mountain will always be there, ready to be climbed and conquered. But in order to get to the mountain, you must prepare.
This brings us to step two. Once you’ve determined your path, you must start preparing. This may take days, weeks, months, or even years—and possibly even longer! Preparation for the mountain must be done in order to scale it. Why on God’s green and blue Earth would you try to climb a mountain without practice runs, simulations, and, most importantly, hiking shoes? Analogy aside, success—whatever your definition—isn’t an overnight phenomenon. It can’t be. While I succumb to the fallacy of promoting free-flowing definitions of success while producing a parameter on the definition, success cannot be something small and easily accessible. For then, it is not a mountain, but a hill. If you can achieve your “success” within 24 meager hours, you must broaden your horizon considerably. Moving on, the preparation must invigorate you, stimulate you, and drain you. It must keep you going day and night, chomping at the bit to get started and crawling away when finished. Eventually, you will feel ready to climb your mountain. Whenever this point happens, that is when the journey truly begins.
Step three is the longest, most draining, most important step. The climb. This is where your tools (passion [talent], understanding, happiness, future security, monetization) come into play. They act as your equipment to scale the mountain. When navigating up the treacherous path of the mountain, you will come across many instances of failure, of no return, of death, and of madness.
The tools you have optimized for yourself, for your climb, help alleviate the burdens of whatever you come across on your journey. Don’t feel like getting up to continue your climb? This is where passion comes into play—in my book, if you don’t want to pull many all-nighters to continue working/studying towards you’re goal, you aren’t passionate about it. Don’t feel like it’ll amount to anything in the future? This is where the preemptive thought (in step two, preparation!) of future security comes in handy. Feeling sad, down, depressed, anxious? Remember that this path is a happy path. An important note is happiness is not the goal, you will not find it at the top of the mountain. Rather, happiness is what gets you up the goddamn mountain. You cannot climb while you’re crying. Never, ever, do anything in the hopes FOR happiness. You must find happiness from within, and use that intrinsic power to propel you forward, towards the mountain. Lastly, worried about the money? This is a big one to consider. Many people view aiming for success solely for money as shallow, yet, they fail to consider the role money plays in our society. Money is freedom; money is time; money is health; money is happiness; money is power; money is comfort. All of these aspects of money are similar to the previous analogies of success and health: they are different to everyone, and every different permutation of the definition of money is equally weighted.
There is no set duration for step three. This is what separates the weak from the strong, the cats from the lions. The mountain can take years to climb or decades. The crucial aspect is that you keep trying to climb. There will always be setbacks, turnaround points, bad weather, etc. But if you have packed the correct tools for your journey, they won’t matter. You’ll keep climbing with compounded ferocity.
A side note: there is a toxic social norm that fast success is the best success. That being rich and young is the highest validation to receive. This is a horrendously poisonous notion. Why are we teaching children and teenagers through social media (which drains their mental health and energy to begin with) that if they are not a certain level of successful by a certain age, they’re failures? Again, this is why I talked about the differences in terms of success: they’re all different and they’re all valid! What social media does is feed a narrative of success, one which only a small minority can achieve, and then blow it out of proportion and label it as the only path you should follow. No wonder mental health is shot so young these days. We’re teaching kids and young adults that they’re failures when they don’t understand what they’re exactly failing at.
Step four is the peak. The summit. You have reached the top. You have reached your version of success. Life is good. Or you haven’t. What happened, I thought there was a happy ending? Not all journeys end in flooded dopamine circuits. Sometimes, the outcome is less than what you expect. Sometimes, you are forced to abandon the mountain in lieu of external factors. And that is okay. Falling short of success is okay. Success cannot be equated with meaning in life.
Again, this is a false social narrative perpetrated by social media and entertainment. Meaning can stem from a number of things: family, friendships, love, art. Meaning must come from within. Some may choose to climb the mountain for success, and others, for meaning. Whatever the journey, the steps provided in this post are the necessary tools to pack.
The mountain will always change. I know I said that the mountain was static, and it is. But there can be many mountains. The point I am making is that the mountain you focus on can change many times. This is another problem of living for success and equating it with meaning. You will never find peace; you will continue climbing, forever. Once you conquer one mountain, you will look for another one to put your flag on. While this is a dangerous game, it is inevitable, as humans are explorers. We will never sit still and stagnate no matter how advanced and capable we are. This is both a beauty and a madness intertwined. Whatever your success or meaning is, whichever mountain you choose to conquer, no matter how high, pack accordingly. And remember to give me a call when you reach the summit.