Everything Looks Easier from the Outside

As is probably clear from the Book & Podcast review section of the site, I’m a big fan of biographies and long-form interviews. I’m especially drawn to the stories of people who have achieved success, whether in business, physical pursuits or life more broadly.

Reading or listening to the detail of their experiences allows you to look past the visible signs of success and get behind the curtain on what it actually took to reach that point.

One thing that becomes clear is that when people look from the outside in and see the headline or major success, they rarely see the full picture. It’s often said that behind every ‘overnight success’ is years of hard work, commitment and struggle.

Whether it’s someone with extraordinary wealth or simply someone a few steps ahead of us, we often notice the house, the lifestyle, the freedom or the comfort before considering what it took to build and sustain it.

Reducing Success to Simple Stories

We see someone who’s built a successful career and it becomes tempting to say, “I wish I could stay interested in the same type of work like you do.” Or we know someone whose business is now thriving and reduce it to “I wish I enjoyed work as much as they do.”  You see someone in good shape, consistently pushing boundaries and explain it away as “I wish I enjoyed working out as much as they do.”

This of course overlooks the fact that if you sat down and spoke to any of these people, they’d probably tell you that whilst there’s an element of enjoyment, a large part of what it takes to succeed in their career, business or physical capability is hard work, consistency, overcoming challenges and far from what most people would consider enjoyable or comfortable.

The successful career tends to be the result of years of long hours, commitment and continual striving to move up the corporate ladder. The now booming business is a result of making it through the start-up years of uncertainty, bootstrapping finances and sustained self-belief even in dark times. The ability to run a marathon, ultra, or take on a hybrid fitness event, all of which are finished in a few hours or less, is the result of years of consistency in training, overcoming injuries and early morning starts when staying in bed was the easier option.

Again, we see the outcome but we don’t see the full story. So much of what it takes is unglamorous and happens when no one’s watching.

You Can Have Anything, But Not Everything

Our time, energy and resources are limited. It’s how we use them that determines the outcomes we achieve in life.

Every decision on where we allocate our time and attention is a decision to say yes to one thing and no to another.

Saying yes to building your own business and enduring through the ups and downs over the years may mean saying no to the certainty, predictability and relative comfort of a regular income and permanent job. Saying yes to dedicating yourself to a successful career working your way up the corporate ladder usually means saying no to your evenings and weekends for long stretches as you seek to work harder than your peers. Saying yes to training your body consistently often means saying no to constant late nights, chilled out evenings and the comfort of avoiding strain and pain on your body and muscles.

It’s not necessarily that any path is better than the other, it all comes down to what your ambitions are and what you’re willing to do to achieve them.

If a good life for you looks like the comfort of steady hours, income and stress levels then saying no to pushing for any of the above may be the right answer for you. If the idea of a more comfortable life makes you feel uncomfortable, then one of the above may be the right path for you. It’s all subjective and dependent on matching ambition with choice and sacrifice.

The decisions we make and the sacrifices along the way aren’t an assurance of success, but they are often the price of admission to even having a chance. A blend of timing, good fortune and circumstance will play their part along the way but without putting the work in often over a multi-year period a dream is just a dream without a plan or action.

It’s All Down to What You Want

We can often look at the nice houses, cars, wealth and accolades of successful people with envy but the envy is usually for the outcome, not for everything that came before it. The story of getting there is often much less appealing yet it’s necessary that both go hand in hand. Of course there are instances of wealth handed down, surprise wins or major unexpected windfalls that people come into but these are often the outliers rather than the rule.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting wealth, comfort and nice things as long as we’re willing to acknowledge that they generally come on the other side of hard work, sacrifice and endurance.

You can have anything but you can’t have everything.

Ultimately it comes down to asking what success and importantly fulfilment in life looks like from a personal point of view.

For some, fulfilment may come through the constant pursuit of growth, challenge and achievement, even with the pressure and sacrifice that comes with it. For others, it may come through building a life with more stability, more space, more time with family and friends.

Neither is better or worse; they’re simply different choices with different costs.

It’s worth keeping that in mind the next time you find yourself seeing someone’s success and saying, “I wish I…” You may want the thing you see as the symbol of success without wanting the battle scars it took to get there.