In this article, I am going to write about what I think a key component to success is. This is merely an observation of mine, but something I felt worth writing about.
You might find the title of this article interesting because this piece is all about what I think a key component to success is. What I mean by you haven’t failed hard enough is that you haven’t failed so much that you can’t just say “screw it” and try something new that could potentially benefit (or jeopardize) your financial, social, emotional, physical, or spiritual future.
I was recently at a higher education conference and one of the most interesting points that kept being brought up was that valedictorians rarely do really well financially. People mentioned that they typically make a fine living but rarely achieve greater than average wealth. I am not meaning to measure wealth as a measure of success and I wasn’t necessarily surprised by this point. According to these educators, the reason that valedictorians don’t achieve great wealth in their careers is because they are worried about the status quo. These educators believed that valedictorians get pegged at a young age of “high success” in an academia perspective and it formulates their social identity. Because of this, they begin caring what others think about them and they restrict themselves from potentially doing something different.
It would seem to me that this doesn’t only affect valedictorians, but rather everyone. Everyone has a financial, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual identity. Just saying “screw it” and trying something new would mean potentially jeopardizing all of those identities. However, if, in your mind, you have failed hard enough, you are already at rock bottom so there is nowhere lower you can possibly go. You might as well try something radically different to see if it works. What do you have to lose?
For me, I am an entrepreneur who started a business while attending a relatively prestigious business school and almost everyone at my school accepted some form of full-time job after they graduated. For me, I had failed hard enough that I didn’t care what anyone thought of me or what type of lifestyle I would have to live to continue running my business. When I was a freshman in college I made a lot of poor choices which resulted in my reputation being totally tarnished. In my mind, everyone thought I was a total failure. If I accepted a job after college as opposed to running my business, it would mean following a path that wasn’t the right path for me and the only possible reason I could think of that would make me want to choose that life is because it would allow me to uphold some sort of financial and social identity I thought others (my parents, peers, professors) might have for me. Since I had nothing to lose, it was really easy to make the decision to build a company that, if successful, I believe will make a positive impact on the world. The risks I took in establishing my company are what lead me to my next point.
If you are going to eat shit, don’t nibble.
If you are already at the bottom, what do you have to lose? This applies for anyone, whether you are a professional in the working world, a comedian, an actor, a parent raising a family, a musician, an entrepreneur, or anyone else. It is easy to set goals to aspire to similar successes like the Steve Jobs, Amy Schumer’s, David Bowie’s, Albert Einstein’s, Charles Darwin’s, or any other person who has achieved great success. It would seem that they all got to a point in their lives where they had failed hard enough that they stopped caring about some perceived financial, social, emotional, physical, or spiritual identity that others might have for them and decided to try something different. Doing this means that you are going to go where you have never been before. Sure, there is the definite risk that it doesn’t work (90% of entrepreneurial endeavors “fail”) but is that riskier than living a life where you never went for it? “Failing” just means that they didn’t build a financially viable company. This does not factor in the knowledge gained from taking that risk, nor does it include how much a person has grown from testing something different.
If you want to achieve great success in your life, fail hard enough that you don’t care about the identities you perceive others have for you to uphold. Once you remove that barrier you can begin to achieve success.
Garrett Mintz is the founder and CEO of Ambition In Motion. Garrett works to connect college students with mentors in their fields of interest so then students can greater insight into potential career paths and alumni can have greater engagement with their chapter or alma mater. Learn more about Garrett’s work at ambition-in-motion.com and follow him on twitter and facebook.