The Secret to Your Success, Part 1
I’m Andy Temte and welcome to the Saturday Morning Muse! Start to your weekend with musings that are designed to support your journey of personal and professional continuous improvement. Today is January 4, 2025.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about a tale as old as time. Achieving success. We’re going to explore the secrets to success, or the lack thereof.
Don’t worry, I’m not selling you on a get rich quick scheme or the “7 steps to achieving your wildest dreams.” The truth is that there are no secrets to success. The ingredients to achieving success are very much out in the open for everyone to see. Unfortunately, we’re inundated with popular narratives that claim there are secrets to success—that there are indeed shortcuts.
The hard reality that draws folks into get rich quick schemes and the “7 steps to ___” is that achieving success takes real effort and is the result of hard work. Period. I totally get the allure of overnight success stories and the promise of shortcuts, but there are no shortcuts. Ever walked into a convenience store, looked at the size of the lotto jackpot and said: “What the heck, I’ll play. If I win, all my problems will evaporate and I’ll be on the fast track to success?” I have definitely had those moments of weakness.
The good news is that I’m not alone and we’re literally wired to seek the path of least resistance. Our brains are continually optimizing our path. The bad news is that our brains are littered with biases, so if we go on autopilot and allow our subconscious to take over our decision-making, our decisions will be laden with bias and our subconscious will lead us to suboptimal outcomes.
We all want the secret, we all want the shortcut, but the only way there is through.
But were is “there?” What is the destination? What does success mean? Many people can’t answer these questions. Instead, when someone utters the words “I want to be successful,” they’re often referring to the success that someone else has achieved. We live in a social-media driven world that is overflowing with influencers and celebrities from the worlds of music, sports, entertainment, and business who shout their success stories from the rooftops. We’re surrounded by other people’s success stories.
As a result, it’s easy to get caught in the trap of adopting a definition of success that has been written by someone else. “Oh, I’d like to be just like ___” or “If I just do what they did, I’ll be successful.” This is a natural outcome of our brains seeking the path of least resistance. Our subconscious whispers to us: “That individual’s life looks cool from the outside, let’s just follow in their footsteps. Doing so will save me loads of time and energy.”
I say that adopting someone else’s definition of success is a trap because you end up chasing someone else’s dream. You end up walking a path that’s not genuine to you and the likely outcome is disappointment, disillusionment, and regret.
So what’s step one on the road to writing your own, authentic success story? Step one is to work on you. To understand your own needs and desires. To build a one-size-fits-you roadmap for your future. To create a customized vision statement that’s based on the definition of your desired future state. It is only when you’ve defined what success means to you that you can start pursuing your dreams. Without engaging in this work, how will you know when success has been achieved, or at a minimum that you’re walking the right path toward your version of success?
At the top of today’s Muse, I promised that I wasn’t here to sell you anything and that’s still the case. I do, however, have a FREE tool you can use to define your personal purpose, the vision for your future, and build a roadmap for getting there—it’s my Personal Planning Guidebook. I recommend that you download it today and begin the difficult, but rewarding work of defining what success means to you.
Next week, we’ll continue the conversation with a description of the ingredients to success that are applicable to most, if not all, genuine success stories. Until then…
Grace. Dignity. Compassion.
