Re this article “Why Most People Will Never Be Successful”.
The thesis seems to be we’ve got to cut out everything in life that’s petty and mundane and focus on that which truly engages us then we will be “high quality”. Interesting in theory but life is full of mundane “must dos”. I’m not seeing how you’re going to live a fully developed “high quality life” and not be seen as some rude, borderline sociopath.
I think the article is dogmatic, but has some good ideas.
How do you define ‘successful’?
Some want to be millionaires; some to play for their national sports team; some define success as having a modest income and a happy family.
No matter how talented and hard-working you are, we can’t all play in the NFL and win Superbowl rings; nor all win Oscars (acting is a particularly crowded field.)
It is sensible to cut down on crappy food. Eat a balanced diet, with fruit and vegetables and just have an occasional treat of crisps* or chocolate.
(* I’m English - I think the Americans call these chips 
)
It’s good to have some exercise (both physical and mental) and to enjoy improving yourself. But we all like to chill out a bit (who mentioned ogling Kim Kardashian?!)
‘Money doesn’t necessarily bring happiness - but lack of money does make you sad.’ © glee 1998
Yes, you should learn to save something. It will help a lot in the long run. Also always pay off your credit card in full.
So, not proofreading then. 
In all seriousness though, the article seems a bit obvious in content really: *If you want oucome X, figure out the steps necessary, then do them. *
Which, as so often happens, leaves out the part about figuring out if the goal itself makes sense.
It’s the same crap as “you can do anything you want”, but in a tone that draws equally from crystal magic and R Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket.
I think despite being an 19yr old guy, I’ve learned thes two peices of wise philosphy about life
1.) Don’t expect anything in life. If you want something, you’ve gottta make the steps to take it. This isn’t a ‘tough love’ advice where some people say ‘you aren’t entitled to anything’ ‘the world owes you nothing’. It’s instead saying that hardworking people can get nothing whatsoever. They could get killed the next day (think workers in WTC during 9/11). On the flip side, assholes (Kim Kardashian family) could get all the money, academic opportunities, fame, good looks and waste it all. Life is neither fair nor unfair,
2.) A followup to the first one is that anything is possible. Even criminal acts. With some exceptions, people can do anything. They just have to sacrifice or disregard some aspects of their life such as belief system, culture, values etc to whatever degree.
Based on my knowledge of successful people, I’m going to go with a flat, “No.”
Not doing things which are unhealthy and lazy, well sure, that’s good. But that’s pretty far from the road to success. It’s good. But it’s also not really a philosophy.
The path to success is to establish specific goals, establish a path to get to those goals, and put in the effort to hit them. If you fail, either come up with a different set of goals or revise the path you’ve chosen. And definitely, anything longer than that is mostly woo.
(And on a related topic, if you want to lose weight, then take in less energy than you spend in a day while making sure that you’re still getting all your vitamins. And, unless you’re working construction in the Antarctic, most likely you’re not going to hit the target on the energy expenditure side of the scale with today’s diet.)
The mention of high quality food was funny. Plenty of rich businessmen and professional athletes have horrible diets filled with fast food and junk food.
Sure, and in all of this, it’s still hard not to be lazy. A better thing to do would be to try to figure out why it’s hard not to be lazy, and see if there are any productive paths through that. They’re going to be different for different people.
There’s a certain amount of truth here, but I think the author takes it too far. It absolutely is important to do “high-quality” activities and surround yourself with “high quality” people, but doesn’t do a whole lot to really say what that means. Sure, we all know, for the most part, what eating crappy food means, and most people would benefit from working on their diets. But what makes a high quality person or a high quality activity? I think that’s the hard part, and I think it really depends on one’s direction and purpose.
For instance, I’d heard it said, and I agree with the idea, that one is the average of the 5 people one spends the most time with. To that end, I think if realizes one is spending time with people that one doesn’t want to be like, then it’s time to consider cutting back time with that person. Are you, for instance, trying to get get healthy (say, improve your diet and exercise) but spend time around people engaging in unhealthy activities? It’s easy to say weed them out, but what if other than their unhealthy activities they’re brilliant, generous, hardworking people that you love dearly? It becomes a much more difficult proposition.
Similarly, what makes a high quality activity? I’m sure a lot of people can identify activities in their lives they could do less or more of in that regard, but how many activities are purely low quality? For instance, playing games for 10 hours a day is clearly bad, but there’s benefits to playing some, like mental sharpness and hand-eye coordination, or even as minor as a little bit of time to unwind (which is highly underrated with the type of approach in the article).
Ultimately, this type of approach I think takes things too far. Certainly for people, you know if you have shitty friends, and you know if you’re wasting your time on activities that just waste your time or even hurt you. But I think the answer is really more about considering one’s goals, having people and activities in ones’ life that will serve to further those goals, doing some streamlining, but still keeping moderation in there. Going too far on trimming the fat, just like the literal interpretation, is just as unhealthy as having too much. Most people can, and probably should, trim some here and there, but it seems like the article is really pushing for everyone to pretty much pick 3-4 things of critical importance and drop everything else. For some people, that may be right, but that’s really only right if one’s measure of success is along the same lines as those in the article.
Really, I think the bigger question is, what makes one a success? Our society tells us wealth or fame or respect or whatever. Some people really value family and are happy to do menial jobs if it means more quality time with family. They might be failures in society’s eyes, but who cares? Hell, some people passionately love all that stuff that is fat to most people. If one passionately loves games or TV or music or any number of other activities and sets up their life to make that a priority, chances are most people would call them losers. Hell, I’ve personally met people who have kind of crappy jobs because it affords them the freedom to take time off and see bands perform live pretty much whenever they want. Similarly, there’s people who do the same to play video games at a high level. Not only do these people seem to not regret their decisions, many have told me how happy those things make them. Sure, someone who has a bad job and scrapes money together just to rent a crappy room but is able to pursue their passion that many just don’t get might be losers, but who are we to judge them as unsuccessful?
I forget where I heard it, but I think the expression goes “You can’t judge a fish by how well it climbs a tree.” By that, I mean, it’s not only unfair, but it’s missing the point to judge one person by another person’s standards. I love music, but I have no illusions that my technical skill or knowledge will ever be at the level of my musical heroes, does that make me a failure? I work in technology, but that I’ll never be the next Bill Gates, does that make me a failure? I think one is really only a failure if one takes no steps to accomplish their goals or, worse, never even gets so far as to set goals in the first place.
It depends on whether you insist on defining other people’s success or not.
To me, being a success means not caring about all that stuff that defines success.
I doubt it, much less common nowadays for professional athletes, and distinctly less common for successful business types either compared to average or especially below average income people. Bad diet and weight problems have a definite inverse correlation nowadays to socio-economic status. But what’s the cause and what’s the effect?
In professional sports it’s clear. Eating healthier makes you a better athlete (‘healthy’ food directed to that purpose). As the rewards have increased that incentive has increased. A few people hang on in say the NBA eating lots of junk. But there’s no way you’re going to have enough more talent than LeBron James or Steph Curry to compete with them as a really top player without taking care of yourself the way they do, the way virtually all top players do now.
In the business world or financial success more generally the causation isn’t as clear. Maybe to some degree it increases your mental ability and physical stamina (as in long hours) to eat better, but I think it’s mainly perception. Looking like you don’t eat right is taken as a sign by others of lack of discipline and you’re taken less seriously. But anyway your idea is anachronistic at best. Maybe at one time ‘fat cat’ was literal, but nowadays top earners are obviously less likely to be obese than poor people.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but who are “low frequency people?” The author also says once you start realizing success, “You’ll live at a higher frequency.” What’s he talking about and why is high frequency better than low frequency? Maybe I like a little more bass.
And therein lies the rub. The dictionary definition of “success” is simply the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. There is a pretty vast gray area in there. My “aim” when I got up this morning was to make it to work on time. I did. That is, by definition, a success. Does it make me a successful person? That is up to individual interpretation. Fact: we all achieve some goals and miss others, either partially or completely. Reggie Jackson is generally considered to have had a very successful 21 year career in Major League Baseball. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible, with the 20th highest % of the vote in history. Yet he struck out 2,597 times. That is the most strikeouts of any player in the 147 year history of Major League Baseball. That is also more strikeouts than hits (2,584) over his career. For every homerun he hit, he struck out nearly 5 times. Success? Failure? Yep. It all depends on how you look at it.
TLDR: Since there is not standard, objective way to define success, there cannot be a standard, objective way to achieve it.
The headline is unnecessarily patronizing and triumphalist. OK, so you’ve found a system that works for you, no need to crap on everyone else with the “Most People Will Never…” line. But I guess that’s just standard click-bait phrasing nowadays.
Otherwise it’s fairly standard stuff - if a little close to Scientology or maybe a bit Ayn Rand-y with the “don’t hang out with low quality people”. Mostly it’s about having the discipline to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positvie, e-lim-i-nate the negative, latch on to the affirmative.
However, if you’re idea of success is helping the homeless and underprivileged, then maybe you and the author would exactly see eye-to-eye.
Essentially, there are three keys to success:
#3 is the most essential. No one succeeds without it (though most successful people will not recognize that it’s a factor).
wouldn’t…wouldn’t exactly see eye-to-eye.
If hard work led to success, the rich wold keep it all for themselves, instead of hiring people born poor to do it for them.
Hard work yields success is the most destructive lie in the world. Bolivian tin miners and Indonesian rice planters will never be successful, mainly because they literally work themselves to death by 50, doing body-and-soul-crushing labor that westerners can’t even imagine.
Intelligence,without educational opportunity, is more likely to produce a terrorist than a “success”.
Luck is the only one that counts. Accident of birth in a country where a WalMart greeter will earn a million dollars in a lifetime, and of she doesn’t, then social benefits will take up the slack.
Aliens made of sapient radio waves? Like Fredric Brown’s Waveries.
Yes I know that wasn’t he meant, but it’s such an obviously empty buzz-phrase…
Usain Bolt admits he lives on junk food and doesn’t train very hard- he’s just a rare guy who can roll out of bed and run 100 meters in lightning fast time.
No matter how hard I work or how well I eat, I will never be able to run as fast as a lazy, uninspired Usain Bolt.
For a lot of people admitting that a big part of success is genetics, luck and connections is hard to deal with.