Success stories are mostly bullshit!

[Lyubov]

I’ve been contemplating success a lot recently and I’ve distilled it down to really just a few things. There are a ton of illusions about success prevalent in society today.

Think of success like a slot machine, thanks to our head honcho @Leo Gura I got this analogy from. You get to pull the lever but not all pulls are equal… some pulls have much better luck at getting all 777s than others. And fundamentally it’s all random and unpredictable. 

You can increase your odds pulling the lever and getting all 777s if you master these concepts.

Intention / Vision - what you want to do, heartfelt desire, this is where creativity and authenticity come from. This is your spiritual essence that’s open and desires to create and expand. Ideas come from here. There is tremendous power here. A strong relationship with yourself and actively clearing limiting beliefs will bring about clarity here. 

Commitment - this is where the rubber meets the road and where your intentions and vision come up against other areas of your life where you need to BALANCE everything and make it so your intentions are sustainable. Keep in mind our intentions don’t exist in a vacuum. We have relationships, physical heath, money, geography, many factors of our lives we need to balance and give consideration in addition to our dreams. Sacrifice your relationships for success if it’s worth it to you but remember you are responsible and if you end up lonely and isolated chasing success, that was on you. 

Spiritual alignment (dharma, responsibility, whatever you wanna call it) - this is where you manage your emotions and beliefs, your inner child that says “I’m not good enough let’s just give up”, painful emotions you create when you realize you need to go to bed early to get up for work instead of staying up late editing that video or working on your personal project. This is  what decides if you live in flow or push against life and struggle to try and reach success and see yourself as worthy to be successful. 

Success stories are  mostly Survivorship Bias. The people you are listening to and learning about success form are largely noise and at the end of the day you simply need your own principles which come from within. Tried and true principles that I believe are innate to people spiritually, commitment, perseverance, self love, ambition and vision. 

We need to stop treating success like the human systems that rewarded it are a sentient being that rewarded "true quality" and start seeing it for what it actually is: a high-stakes lottery. Most of the advice you hear from success gurus is rooted in. survivorship bias. They look back at their trajectory and invent a "Retroactive Illusion," connecting dots that weren't actually there at the time. They’ll tell you it was their specific habits and all sorts of shit but they conveniently ignore the thousands of people who did the exact same things and even plenty of other really creative and committed things but never reach the peaks they do because they didn't get the same lucky break at the right time. To not account for luck and the unknown we live in life is to not have a world view of success that is truthful. 

Now sometimes delusional success briefs can be helpful. Such a person wins the slot machine with them and it confirms to them their delusion. Sometimes even holding some beliefs lightly, like a playful game is very powerful. I tell myself every day I can be a big YouTuber because I’m a funny and smart guy. I’ve reached success with beautiful women believe every single one secretly wants to sleep with me (removed my approach anxiety). So it isn’t necessarily about being a stark black pilled nihilist. It’s about being able to hold all these elements of truth and moving forward from your authentic life essence, hold those delusional beliefs but don’t be a mark and trick yourself and forget they aren’t what’s entirely true about life nor black pill yourself and never try or give it a poor attempt because you can’t sit with the fact wile live in the unknown and don’t know what will happen 1 min from now for better or worse. 

When someone at the top tells you they "trailblazed" their way  they are often just a lottery winner describing the method their winning pull on the leveler, never mind how they always forget they aren’t born retard or were abused or had a rich dad or are not from the Middle East with bombs falling on their head (fuck Israel btw). Still though, walk in truth and believe in yourself but don’t hypnotize yourself into ignorance. Playful delusions are ok and sometimes really powerful in our world when it comes to success and dating and money, but don’t lose sight of your inner spirit in the process.

Summary: 

Sustainability, the “Rigged Lottery" mindset. Success in creative fields isn't guaranteed by effort; it’s built on the pillars of consistency, intention, and emotional management

You do the work, it "rigs" the machine in your favor for when you finally get to pull the lever. If you can decouple your self-worth from success focus on staying in your creative flow and spiritual value, you stop being a victim intimidated by the odds but you embrace the unknown and accept whatever comes. 

This is the deciding factor between living in Wu Wei and the process being beautiful / fun vs life feeling like a constant struggle and fight 

Edited 10 hours ago by Lyubov

[UnbornTao]

How do you see success?

[Lyubov]

48 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

How do you see success?

Good question. 

It’s actually entirely subjective and arbitrary. People all have their own different opinions on it.

I think to an extent we will often subtly frame success in grandiose ways or almost in this deceptive manner where we are “here” and “over there” is success. And where we are here is not enough whereas over there, there is success, where we are enough. This is not true. Success doesn’t define our value. 

So for me I sort of have a very detached idea of it where I’m always a success and don’t need to prove my worth, that being authentic and being able to express your soul in balanced ways with all the responsibilities of life cause there are a lot of them (bills, family, health).

I think this is where success becomes more of a game and something that we can be passionate about. But yeah I think success is not a carrot and stick. Defining it heavily with external stuff causes problems.

[aurum]

Survivorship bias does not eliminate that there are real factors that determine success. Like skill.

Skill trumps everything. If you are skilled and committed enough at something, you will eventually be successful.

[Davino]

Imo, it can all be boiled down to intelligence.

[Lyubov]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

Survivorship bias does not eliminate that there are real factors that determine success. Like skill.

Skill trumps everything. If you are skilled and committed enough at something, you will eventually be successful.

Skill is the result of intention meeting commitment. 

You have the intention to create a YouTube. You commit to doing it. The skills you build during the process are video editing, speaking, storytelling, etc. 

[aurum]

11 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

Skill is the result of intention meeting commitment. 

You have the intention to create a YouTube. You commit to doing it. The skills you build during the process are video editing, speaking, storytelling, etc. 

Yes, but it’s more than that as well. You have to have the natural potential / talent.

The natural potential is the lottery part. Practically, you don’t have control over of this. But that does not mean success is random.

[Lyubov]

Your uniqueness is what sets you off on a path for what you may be suited for, but of course trial and error plays a huge role and accepting it with grace. A person born a cripple probably doesn’t have a future playing professional basketball.  

You are playing the lottery always. You pull the lever and deem it a success after the fact when your labors could have resulted in any number of other ways. This is not the same as living on a level/flat plane of randomness. This is living in the unknown. 

“In life’s battle, once you have done everything within your power to realize your life’s vision, all that remains to be done is graciously to accept the outcome and proceed.” 

- Chin Ning Chu

Edited 2 hours ago by Lyubov

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, Lyubov said:

And fundamentally it’s all random and unpredictable. 

Far from it. Success is highly rigged and manipulated, the polar opposite of random.

Yes, luck is involved, but if you rig the slot machine you win the game regardless.

Highly successful people are good at rigging slot machines while everyone else plays like a mindless sucker. There are illegal and legal ways of rigging the slot machine.

Also, simply hard work can be used to create success.

Edited 2 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, aurum said:

Survivorship bias does not eliminate that there are real factors that determine success. Like skill.

Skill trumps everything. If you are skilled and committed enough at something, you will eventually be successful.

Yes. I might add - and action and application. Action action action. 

[Lyubov]

Where you’re born, your uniqueness (talents, strengths, weaknesses) is sorta like a lottery and each moment has any number of ways life can turn out, any number of commitments can lead one down a path in the unknown. You never know which way woulda been better. Your choices obviously rig it so you see it as reasonable to assume you will get 777s and often times that’s a safe call to make. That one video did 5 million (success!) but who knows, maybe it woulda done 25 million and launched you onto the JR podcast mid you made that 20 minute cut? You’ll never know now. There are hierarchies and degrees of randomness. We are always looking back and drawing a straight line through the chaos. You must become conscious how many lucky breaks you get daily and turn them into plan. I am speaking about looking at it contemplatively not just practically. Obviously you can plot your day out but the sun rising and setting and that’s what’s wise to do. I have laid out the principles. I’m not saying you should sit around and you’re likely to have a million bucks fall onto your lap for no reason whatsoever (surprisingly some still do get this though!)

[Raze]

You should probably add resource acquisition and networking 

[Lyubov]

1 minute ago, Raze said:

You should probably add resource acquisition and networking 

This is again where intention meets commitment. As you take action you can clearly reason what your next natural steps are. This can be 10,000 things including socializing/networking with people you believe will help you or finding other resources to keep yourself off the street (we all have to eat)

[Joseph Maynor]

Whose success is BS?  Why is this useful?