"Why Most People Will Never Be Successful" - Does this philosophy make sense?

In My Humble Opinion
21

The just world fallacy (“Good things happen to good people; therefore, if bad things happen to you, you must have deserved them.”) and its Christian variant, Prosperity Gospel, are the true dogmas of whole sections of the political spectrum, and it’s impossible to shake them. They justify so much, and comport so well with a distorted version of the Protestant Work Ethic (which doesn’t guarantee success in this life for hard work, merely damnation in the next if you do not work hard in this one) which has an even longer history, that the notion the poor are poor due almost entirely to their own choices is practically unquestionable.

Yes, they earned all they have. They must believe that. Do not ask them how they earned the right to be born without severe Down’s Syndrome, or how they earned the right to not get beaten bloody every living day of their childhood until they died of trauma, for such questions are blasphemy.

22

No question the system is unfair but I believe is still the best alternative simply because incentive is the largest driver of wealth. Nature is unfair, fairness is only a concept humans have come up with.

23

The author seems to recommend that one chase a moving goal post. That is, if you aren’t always improving yourself, you’ll never be successful.

I don’t agree. I mean, sure. Responsible, conscious people watch their diet and try to stay active. Pushing yourself and seeking challenges are also good things to do.

But surely at a certain point, it should be okay for an individual to define “success” as wherever they are right now and for them to channel all their good habits to maintaining what they’ve got rather than getting to the “next level”. If I get to old age and I’m in great shape, but I’m still worrying about how I’m going to get to the “next level”, then I haven’t learned how to be truly happy with myself, which would kind of make me a failure at life.

24

Not incentive; ruthlessness and connections. You get rich by knowing the right people, and a willingness to inflict suffering and death on others. Incentive is fairly irrelevant.

All the incentive in the world does nothing if you have scruples or lack connections; the world is full of billions of people with plenty of incentive, almost none of whom will ever be wealthy, and only a small percentage of which will even be well off.

25

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes…by me:

“Hard work, luck, and a positive attitude can only take you so far. At some point, you need to have some natural fucking talent at something other people actually give a crap about.”

26

Sounds like broadly correct advice, but one thing I always push back against, is this common implication in self help of:

You’re a loser right now. If you want to be a winner, you need to do X

…because seeing things in this way is actually counter-productive.

For most people, there are things they are doing well in their life right now. And maybe appreciating that, and looking at how they do those things, can help them improve their life in other ways.
Furthermore, most people are unlikely to think their life is perfect* at any point, so if they’re only seeing things in black and white terms of “winners” and “losers”, they may fail to spot when a change to their life has actually been very beneficial.

  • Yes, I noticed the article said it’s not about perfection, but the rest of the language seems quite absolute.
27

Have you got a cite for those allegations?

Despite famously eating chicken nuggets before one of his races at the Beijing Olympics, Bolt’s junk-food diet is a bit of a myth. He explains, “When I’m travelling overseas, if the food is not so good I might end up in Burger King or McDonald’s occasionally. But I have a chef now who gives me everything I need.” Bolt consumes lots of chicken, pork, fish and yams — a good source of carbohydrates and a Jamaican staple. “Every now and again I go for fast food, but 90 per cent of my diet is good.”

Usain Bolt has an intensive workout strategy. He makes sure that he works out six days a week which includes weight training, running, footwork training and flexibility exercises. Usain Bolt Workout Routine includes variety of exercises such as box jumps, frog leaps, high knee skips, ankle rolls, step ups and many more. He usually spends 3 hours daily for training purposes and thereafter goes for relaxation and massage in order to ensure recovery.

28

Often overlooked as a secret of success is “knowing who to trust”. In the course of your life, you will meet people you can trust who will help you, and people you can’t, who will mislead or obstruct you. Learning how to tell the difference is a valuable skill, and I’ve never even seen a self-help book dedicated to polishing that talent.

I remember hearing an interview once with Tom Monaghan, who casually mentioned a business in which he lost several million dollars. The interviewer interrupted him and said “Wait a minute – how did a man with your business sense lose several million dollars?” Monaghan replied “By trusting the wrong people – but usually I trust the right people.”

29

Hanging out with smart, motivated people who support you will get you further than hanging out with toxic jerks and lazy dipshits.

Hanging out with them in person is better than using social media.

Eating healthier will make you healthier and give you more energy to do stuff.

Exercising makes you healthier and more attractive than drinking and doing drugs.

Reading is better for you than watching TV.

Learning a new skill is better than sitting around playing video games.

If you’re in a shitty dead end job, start researching new jobs and networking with people to find out what they do.

But a lot of people won’t do these things because they take work and there still is no guarantee of success. So people will just say “fuck it” and take on an attitude that they have no control over their life.

30

I’ve written and self-published a self-help book (with a writing partner who was the “star” of the book, a guy who’s been in the biz since the 1970s), and IMHO the article is really low-grade material. Certainly nothing new here, and it comes across more as preaching than as advice truly intended to help people.

The title alone is dickish clickbait.

31

Seriously … the first step to being successful is knowing what success means to you.

Is it some being in some specific top percentiles on an economic or fame metric?

Is it having achieved some of those metrics against some odds and adversity?

Is it having the respect of those who you respect?

Is it having what you want and wanting what you have?

Is somehow performing up to your own optimal potential in some variety of ways?

Is it simply being happy and content with who you are and what you are doing?

Is it not failing?
Define the term and then we can talk about how many are “successful”, why those who are not are not, and how to get there best.
FWIW to me someone who is doing something with their life that they think is important and can say they are honestly satisfied with the choices and effort they have made is successful. Now my bias would include that such includes making the world a bit of a better place for their having been in it, but individuals’ mileage may vary.

32

I agree this is the core relevance of the ‘philosophy’ in the article, as much at that’s obscured or undermined by ‘motivational speakeeze’ in the article’s delivery.

Every sentient person knows there are things in life beyond your control. And it’s not really relevant if some people on the successful side don’t realize that and credit their success solely to their efforts. Although, big fat straw men have been set up in this thread like imaginary successful people who claim it didn’t matter they were born in the US rather than Bolivia. I have never heard that, and it would only be some knucklehead if it were ever heard.

What’s relevant is people on the unsuccessful side of things, in a society like the US, who try to deny anything is under their control, and don’t do the basic things you outline. There are a lot of people like that IME and it has a much bigger negative effect on society than the distinct minority IME of successful people who have no realization that luck, genes, good upbringing, etc. contributed to their success.

Also I don’t fully accept all the parsing about ‘success’. The natural definition in the context is fulfilling personal potential. Obviously if you define success as top 20% (5%, 1% or whatever) of income or assets it’s limited to that % by definition, and likewise more or less if defining ‘success’ in athletics to major pro leagues, etc.

33

OK, here’s his definition of ‘success,’ which might be relevant: Success is continuously improving who you are, how you live, how you serve, and how you relate.

Excuse me, but continuous improvement? That sounds like something out of some corporate mission statement, not something that we should be applying to our own selves and lives.

Most people will never be successful by his definition because it’s totally nuts that anyone should even try.

To quote Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax, “Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself.”

Becoming a success, by his definition, basically involves treating yourself and your life as a thing. And treating friends as things, too, as you go through life trading your ‘low-frequency’ friends for ‘higher-frequency’ friends.

Fuck that shit.

Maybe his name is ‘Kenneth.’ (Oh wait, it isn’t. Well, it should be.) You’re looking for Meghan Trainor. :stuck_out_tongue:

34

Oh please. I am not going to hold myself up as an example of success in this thread, but compared to the billions of poor, miserable people in the world, yes, absolutely. And I definitely started out poor and miserable myself.

I didn’t get on the track I’m on by “inflict[ing] suffering and death on others.” Pfft! Not even close. I worked, I worked some more, I made sacrifices, I did a whole lot of homework and generally tried to optimize my abilities. In the service of… obtaining real estate.

I now have a real opportunity to become modestly rich, certainly far more than I am now. If that happens, it will be because I scrimped and strained to acquire some assets, traded them up for better ones, and sold for a profit. That’s it.

Nobody was harmed by all my hard work, unless they were lonely because I was too busy to hang out with them. Buying and selling stocks and real estate is a capitalist exercise, yes, but I am not “inflict[ing] suffering and death on others.” Puh-leeze.

35

It reads like a dozen truisms strung together in an attempt to sound profound, repeating over and over in slightly different words “If you want to win, you ought to cultivate winning habits”. No shit, Sherlock.

36

Success isn’t an objective quantity and for it to have any meaning, it needs to be grounded on some kind of context.

Most people are successful at something. Whether that something be maintaining strong and enduring relationships, keeping the bills paid most of the time, raising a family, having some kind of skill that others might have, or even enjoying life despite the crap it can throw at you.

Probably the saddest fiction of our time is that success is limited to how prestigious your job is or how much you get paid.

“Low frequency people” sound less obnoxious than “high frequency” ones, and they probably live longer, get laid more, and are all around happier in life. So the author needs to show why its the height of horridness to hang with them or even be them.

37

Great stuff. I bet the author has some really strong views on “Sussudio” and Huey Lewis and the News, too.

If Beluga caviar and truffle foam every day is the key to success, I’m fine eating pizza in Failuretown.

38

I think a lot of this stuff in general is much more along the lines of life coaching for people who never got much of that kind of thing growing up. Stuff like telling a high school kid that if he’s serious about going to college, he should probably surround himself with other college-bound kids, so that they all mutually support each other, instead of hanging out with other kids with no future plans beyond “graduate”, lazy stoners or petty criminals. Similarly, telling that kid that if he doesn’t love running track or playing basketball, or being on the debate team, he should probably quit those things, because they’re drawing resources, motivation and focus from things you DO value, like going to college. Those are more or less the kinds of things the article is advocating, and they’re reasonable. But only in the context where success is defined as going to the good college of your choice. If you haven’t defined success, or success is something else, then that advice may not be particularly useful, and that’s part of why the article is so weird; he’s trying to generalize that kind of thing to anyone, and it comes across bizarre.

And I’ll second the notion that success is defintely not strictly defined by money, status and prestige. For example, my parents were never particularly wealthy growing up- we always had to watch the budget, and a lot of the time, my friends got all sorts of stuff I never dreamed of getting- cars, trips, etc… So you might have defined my parents as unsuccessful because they just kind of had their heads down, saved and worked, while the rest of the neighborhood was caught up in some kind of “keeping up with the Jones’” situation. But flash forward 25 years, and my parents are comfortably retired with health insurance, savings, two pensions, and a paid off house. My friends’ parents are either still working in their early 70s or are in somewhat less comfortable circumstances than my parents. And some of my friends and their siblings are less successful than me and my brother in whatever way you choose to measure. How successful is everyone now? Are my parents still unsuccessful?

39

Okay, let’s go with that. And let’s say that someone wants to judge whether or not some - hypothetical individual - is a success.

The person is accomplished enough - well educated, makes a decent income, does a job that the person thinks is worthwhile and that makes a positive difference for others, married to the same partner multiple decades working through problems, by most standards would be called a good parent, well respected by peers, physically fit, says true to his/her ethical standards, so on … but how do we know what that person’s personal potential is or has been?

Maybe if that person could have really devoted him/herself to the violin and become a world class violinist but never tried that, even quit music training early in childhood. In any case whatever music potential this person has is completely undeveloped and unfulfilled!

Maybe if the person had worked harder or chosen a different career path (s)he could have made more money. Maybe if a chance meeting had occurred they’d have taken a path making them more renown in their field.

Maybe given what chances they had by accidents of birth, the era and culture they were born in, the opportunities available, the family support they had, the peers they were exposed to, so on, they had potential to accomplish more academically, more financially, more fame … how does the person know? How does an outside observer know?

How can one ever judge whether or not someone “is fulfilling personal potential” when we are always guessing as to what that potential is/was? Anyway fulfilling one element of potential to some degree might mean not fulfilling another.

Nah. That “natural definition” is a reasonable mindset to use to set goals for ourselves - “I want to be the best me I can be.” - but knowing what the “best me” means, is and would potentially be? Those are the interesting things for each of us to decide before we embark on discussing how to achieve it.

I would posit that many (I don’t know about “most”) people are not successful because their perceived “best me” is off-target and they are chasing things that will never get them to where it actually is, and/or because they have no, or at least insufficient, actual interest in the goal.

Can you honestly look back and say that you have done the best you reasonably could with what you’ve been given in life, your innate strengths, your innate weaknesses, your opportunities chance or otherwise, to do the best you could at achieving that which you feel is important? That can be a being a good spouse, a good parent, a good friend, a good colleague, a good citizen of the country or the world, career or other interest accomplishments, and/or whatever is what you personally value. Then you have good ground to call yourself a success. IMHO.

If being a good friend is important to you and you fail to be one in pursuit of “high quality” acquaintances … then you are a failure. IMHO.

40

In some philosophical sense that’s all OK. But, and maybe I’m an oversimple person, I don’t think a lot of that navel gazing is necessary in most cases for people to look at their lives and generally judge how they stand v msmith537’s list or something basically like that. Also I take it as given, in the context of the article and ones like it, that this sort of examination should be forward looking. There’s some room for new things later in life but mainly you’ve got to get yourself focused and going earlier on, and again in my oversimple to you perhaps terms a lot of younger people don’t.

Same token there’s a theme in some posts of some kind of trade off between being a good and a motivated person. I don’t buy it in general. Whether you’re a ‘good friend’ vs being a slacker or a go getter are mainly separate IME and view of the world. And I also don’t buy a completely relative judgement where somebody says ‘but my destiny in life is to watch TV and do drugs’. It’s up to individuals to decide based on some traditional idea of pulling your own weight in society if you can.

All subject to some kind of 80/20 rule. Presenting stark exceptions to any of the above is fine, and not so relevant by and large to the bulk of people, IMO.