I Learned How to be Succesful
And I’m the most broke I’ve ever been and have nothing to show for it.
I’ve learned how to be successful. I say that with full admittance that I’m the most broke I’ve ever been and that I have no “real” tangible success to share with the world. But nonetheless, I’ve learned how to be successful. It’s been a process that’s consciously taken about 7 or 8 years. And only now, at 23, do I understand that it’s easier than I thought it would be because I realized that all being successful comes down to is decision making.
If you have a dream, and if you know what you want from life, don’t make decisions that slow you down or stop you from that goal/dream. That’s an easy thing to say, but as I said, it’s something that took me about 7 or 8 years to learn, and only within the last 1.5 years have I been acting upon it. Because hearing and agreeing with that sentence is one thing, but to continually make decisions that’ll enable your success is a whole other.
I’ve been blessed to know the type of life that I’ve wanted from a young age. I’ve known what I wanted to do, what my dream was, what I wanted my life to look like, the types of people I’ve wanted in my life, etc. I knew all of that. What I didn’t have was discipline, and what I didn’t know was how to consistently make decisions that would bring me closer to it, and how to reject ideas/decisions in the form of peer/family/societal/personal pressures that would bring me farther away from it. So, what I had to learn, and then what I had to apply, was how to make the decisions that would best benefit my view of a successful life.
What’s nice about wanting to be a dermatologist, for example, is that there’s a clear pathway to get there. It goes something like — Get good grades in high school, get good grades at a respectable college, apply to med school, graduate from med school, apply for dermatologist jobs — Now, obviously, there are challenges in that process, and no one says that it’s an easy process, but it is a defined one. You know the grades you need, the test you’ll have to take, what you need to know, etc. And perhaps more importantly, you know what comes at the end of that process. You know that if you accomplish x, you’ll receive y in terms of salary, and z in terms of respect, admiration, and other intangible things that come along with being a doctor. Moreso, if you want to be a dermatologist, you probably will not (and should not) take advice from, or try to live your life like, other people who have no interest in dermatology or the medical field. The way you want/need to live your life to be a dermatologist, is different than the way you want/need to live your life if you want to be a professional writer, for example.
Because, if your dream is to be a professional writer, you have none of the defined goals/markers from above. More so if you want to be a screenwriter. Or both. The career path is abstract. Everyone who doesn’t have an aunt in the film/publishing industry will start from a different place, and they’ll go to different places, all with possible different end-goals, but all sharing the same byline of wanting to be a professional writer.
The writer career process is something like — Write a lot and read a lot until you can write at a professional level, query publishers/production companies, market yourself/build an audience, get representation via a manager/agent, sell your script/book, hope that it becomes enough to…pay a couple of bills (?), quit your day job (?), become a bestseller/blockbuster (?), turn you into a commercial success (?), turn you into a critic success (?), turn you into an all-time great (?), enable you to live as free a life as possible by both paying your bills and enabling you to spend time abroad with other great writers/interesting/successful/creative people preferably on/around the Mediterranean?
The last two on that list are my dream, and my goal, respectfully.
Right now, I’m in the application process of what I had to learn. What that means is that I’m doing things that I believe will bring me success, but have no honest timeline of when my vision of what success means to me will arrive. Realistically, I feel two years away from really getting the ball rolling, and maybe another five until I feel like I’ve hit at least one major marker in my chosen profession. But who’s to really say?
One time, after submitting a script to a writers group, I was put into contact with someone who I thought was going help me get a manager. After a few back and forth calls, and some polite emailing, this person told me “Solomon, this profession is a marathon, not a sprint. And if a marathon is 26 miles, right now you’re around mile 2.” I’m glad he told me that. Not only because it was true and that I still had a long way to go, but because if you’re running a marathon, being on mile 2 is a lot better than being on mile 1. Or even worse, mile 0. Anyway, we had a few more calls and some polite back-to-back emails, but I think we both realized that the other person couldn’t provide what we needed them to provide. And that was that.
So, what does that have to do with success if — I’m the most broke I’ve ever been and I have no “real” tangible success to share with the world — I’m at this step?
What it has to do with success is that based on what I know about myself and what I know about my life, my goals, my dreams, I not only know the decisions to make that will best take me in the direction I want to go, but I am finally consistently acting upon them. In short, this includes reading every day, writing every day, and saying no to decisions that will take me farther away from my goal/slow me down, and yes to decisions that will take me closer to my goal or speed me up. The Solomøn of 2–3 years ago wouldn’t have the discipline to post every Sunday for 10 Sundays in a row. Are 10 Sundays a lot of Sundays? No. Are 10 Sundays a lot of Sundays, if you wouldn’t/couldn’t have posted 10 Sundays in a row 2 years ago? Are 10 Sundays an important amount of Sundays if you’re building consistency and discipline by hitting a set goal every week? My answer is yes.
That’s what success is. A series of decisions that you make every day that will take you closer to what you want to do, and what you want your life to be. I accepted a long time ago the type of life that comes with pursuing what I am pursuing. And I’m fully aware that I might not make it. That things might not work out the way I want them to. But truthfully that doesn’t frighten me. What frightens me would be living the other life. The life where I stop writing every day and lay down to accept the life that other people think would be best for me, even if our vision of a successful life, and our goals/outlooks on life, are radically different.
If you know what you want, if you have a goal or a dream, go after it by making the decisions that consistently best put you in a position to achieve it. The rest is just noise.
Until Sunday,
Solomøn
