I’m tired of the literature out there right now that explains how a person can be “successful.”

The marker of success for all this literature is being a superstar (i.e. rich and famous)… or something close to it.

It kind of ignores other markers of success like… I don’t know… Gandhi successfully liberating India from the British… Martin Luther King Jr. successfully becoming the voice of justice… Angela Merkel successfully becoming the first female chancellor of Germany and holding that office for three terms… me successfully making it a night without eating a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that have been teasing me on my kitchen counter.

These “success” books actually do more damage than harm because they only focus on the superstars and try to deconstruct their methods. Really, it’s just three steps:

1. Working hard
2. Building connections
3. Luck

The focus is always on the first two steps and how they went about it, but luck is always ignored.

Luck plays a part and will show up if steps one and two are taken care of first. No one explains this… and they certainly don’t explain that luck could take many years to appear on your doorstep.

Instead, you’re made to feel inferior because your marker of success (money) could be so much more if you just followed what others are doing

If we really want to build people up, then let’s focus on personal successes.

What is an accomplishment you can work towards today?
This week?
This year?

If you start celebrating those milestones when you hit them, you’ll always feel like a success in life.