Are There Really Secrets To Success?

Have you been looking for secrets to success? If so, you have come to the right place!

In a time where stories of top CEOs and top performers from all disciplines become bestsellers, questions like, “What’s the secret of the ultra-successful?” start arising. Human beings are hard-wired to look for patterns towards benefits. So, it is no wonder we look for patterns that lead us to success. This article tries to investigate this topic, by listing 5 phenomena that at least partially explain what’s going on here.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

Secrets To Success No. 1: The looting Hyenas

Before we get into the actual topic at hand, one has to stop and call out the scammers. There’s a whole industry that tries to exploit this pattern-seeking nature of human beings. The hyenas of this industry often trick people by selling them the “dream” of success for literal money in exchange for supposedly “secret” insider information. Cue in seminars, online courses, “mastermind” groups, “You can be a **** too in 3 months or less” bestseller books, up-sale-funnels, multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes, etc.

One fairly easy way to pick up on these scams is to set focus on the lead person or group of people (hyenas, really), and ask the question “Did this person (or group) achieve their success by following the information which they are actually selling?” This isn’t of course fool-proof, but it weeds out a good chunk of them. One needs to exercise liberal scepticism and logical reasoning to protect oneself against such types.

Secret 2: The Habits of the Ultra-Successful

More often than not, it is the nature of our pattern-seeking traits to look for common habits between the ultra-successful. Celebrity ‘X’ gets up at 5 in the morning; scientist ‘Y’ eats an avocado a day; entrepreneur ‘Z’ meditates 8 hours a day; “what if I combine all of these habits?” If your line of thought indeed takes you along this path, it could give you some reasonably beneficial habits, but alas they are unlikely to make you magically ultra-successful. The reason is partly to do with something called hindsight bias.

You might want to check out this article on hindsight bias to get a better understanding.

To thwart this intellectual misconception, one just has to ask, “Are there un-successful people who have the same habits?” If the answer is “yes”, chances are that it doesn’t have much to do with the habits. Although this appears to be a rather light approach, it originates from the proof-writing basics of mathematicians, so there is sound practical performance behind this line of logic.

Secret 3: What the Ultra-Successful Have In Common

In many cases, something that the ultra-successful do indeed have in common is a very advantageous starting point. A person who has tremendous success very early in his or her endeavour is much more likely to become ultra-successful than someone who is struggling in the beginning. We’ll see why this is the case in further sections. Now, one could argue that there are many stories where the ultra-successful person struggled for a decade before he or she was recognized as an “overnight success”. While this story does indeed sound contradictory to our point here, it is exactly what it is: a story. Cases like these are the minority. We (as human beings) have the tendency to mentally over-weight certain stories than others. The majority of the run-away success stories have a superior starting point.

From the same story, one could argue that success comes to those who struggle hard and never give up. While this might be partially true, let me ask a fairly innocent question: what about those who worked hard, never gave up, yet remained unsuccessful until their death? If you think I’m being naïve here, the list of such unsuccessful people is so long, that it isn’t even funny. Vincent Van Gough allegedly sold only one painting when he was alive, whereas now, his paintings are worth millions. Galileo Galilei, the scientist-mathematician-astronomer who discovered and invented game-changing technology in the field of astronomy, was criticized by religion all his life and died in the 17^th century. His theories were later celebrated in the 19^th century! The list goes on: Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, Ignaz Semmelweis (this is a rather sad story), etc. If this is not depressing enough, there’s something even darker. The people who have been mentioned here have at least become known after their passing or later in their lives. But what about the silent-dead? For every J.K. Rowling, there are probably several hundreds of thousands of writers who work part-time as waiters or in equivalent jobs to sustain their living. Most of these will never make it. Why am I so sure that they will never make it? That brings us to our next secret.

Secret 4: LUCK

Alas, as much as we would all like to believe that skills play a huge role in someone being ultra-successful, I’m afraid that the role that luck plays is far, far, far greater than any skill does. It is important to note that certain fields feature disproportionate success rates.

While for every J.K. Rowling, several hundreds of thousands of writers drown in failure, for every successful doctor, there are many poor-performing doctors who are living a reasonable life. What this means is that the success rate is favourable in the professions like medicine, engineering, bank-teller, etc., whereas it’s monstrously skewed in the profession of a writer. This is another way of saying that in fields like writing, sports, gastronomy, entrepreneurship, art, music, drama, cinema, fund-management, scientific paper-publishing, etc., the majority remains as a failure while a tiny minority enjoys the majority of the success.

You might want to check out this article on equality skew to get a better understanding.

What differentiates the ultra-successful in these fields from the ones who narrowly missed out, and are now languishing in failure? A social media post going viral could have made the difference; a movie that addresses a political topic that is currently trending could have set it on a path of spiralling upward; a work of art meant to do something might become hugely successful for doing the exact opposite. This is, again, a long-winded way of saying that luck plays a major role. So much so, that if such a lucky break comes along right at the beginning of the endeavour, the probability of ultra-success increases geometrically (secret 3). In the field of science, most discoveries are made by accident, and it isn’t even funny to discount the role of luck in the technological advancement of mankind.

Secret 5: Luck Exposure

The rule of the game is: You’ve got to be in it to win it. It is true that in fields where luck dominates (technically speaking, randomness dominates), the failure rate is tremendously high. But still, the chance of luck is open to those who stay on it regardless of the very high chances of failure. Think of it this way, your odds of winning a lottery are ridiculously low. But if you were to ever win a lottery in life, you’ve got to buy tickets regularly. I’m not encouraging gambling here. But what I’m urging is awareness of the role of luck in certain fields or professions, and the need for luck exposure. With this awareness, one could design a lifestyle where one benefits from luck exposure without having to stake one’s entire existence on something booming big.

Secrets To Success – Conclusion

When it comes to ultra-success, what is sold as a secret is seldom a secret. What is indeed a secret is something that is out there in plain sight for everyone to see, but (almost) no one ever does. It might be finally the time for us to acknowledge the role of luck in life in general, and position ourselves accordingly, to benefit from luck exposure.

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