Success does not come overnight
Dear Friend,
Welcome to another issue of my weekly learnings newsletter! This week it will be a little shorter because not that much “new” happened. Nevertheless, I had a very nice realization I want to share with you.
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out
In my childhood, I always believed that success requires talent, much luck and that it comes overnight. In the last few years, this belief has changed completely. I am still so young and inexperienced and, therefore, may not really say that I am really successful in something (at least according to my definition of success), though, I achieved a few small goals and milestones which enables me to evaluate what helped me to obtain these outcomes and differentiate what is required to become successful.
Today, I truly believe that success in most areas of our life does not require great talent and much luck, but rather it requires consistency, effort and willpower. The times when I was most likely to succeed were the times when I was patient, consistent and worked hard for my goals. I mean this sounds very obvious and this is clear to most of us, too. However, this seemingly intuitive concept applies to all areas of our lives.
You cannot become Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Obama, Bill Gates, Oprah, … overnight. All those successful people seemed many years to be not successful. When Ed Sheeran started singing he was not the great singer he is today. It took hundreds or even thousands of hours of consistent work and effort before he recognized at all. To get into the position of being offered a record contract, he had to work very much. In case of many successful people, it looks like they became successful from one day to another, but most people do not see how long these people were “not successful” at all until they made it.
I had this realization a few months ago. Moreover, I have learned that this is with everything in life (not only “areas of success”). Consistency is key. And that is why all those small daily decisions matter so much in the long-term. In the short-term, it does not really matter whether you skip a workout or prefer watching Netflix over reading 15 pages of a book. I am strongly convinced that future success (let’s say your level of satisfaction, happiness, health and professional advancement) is the result of all the decisions and, therefore, efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. Whether you will be in a healthy and fit condition depends on how often you said yes to fast food and Netflix over healthy self-cooked meals and sports. And whether you will (still) have very good relationships to friends, family and your love depends on how much you invest daily to think about opportunities to strengthen the relationships instead of swiping all day long through your social media feeds.
I hope you get the idea of my thoughts. This realization has proven to be very valuable to me. Would be great if you can make use of this learning and take away something from it.
All the best to you and yours,
David
