Why Some People Are So Successful While Others Are Not?

 

Source: Kellogg Northwestern University

The one question that doesn't stop crossing my mind is why some people are just so successful while others are not. I remember when I was a kid, I used to think about what that one thing is that you need, which can change your life. I wondered how to make the most out of life. And I personally noticed that people who were once the smartest or the people who had everything to make their lives better were struggling, while others who had dreams, grit, and drive succeeded. I know countless people who are not successful simply because they are not hungry enough or are just too practical to live in the delusion that they can also achieve something that they thought was impossible to achieve. In the end, it all comes down to how you lived your life, how you served a greater good than yourself, and how you maximised it.

So when I tell you that someone left her job at a management consulting firm just to find the answer to this question, will you believe it? Angela Duckworth, known for her bestselling book Grit, left her job to study why some people are so successful while others are not. Her research team went to the West Point Military Academy, and they tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. They also went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in the competition, and one character stood out as a significant predictor of success. It wasn't social intelligence; it wasn't IQ. It was Grit. And as Angela Duckworth defines it, grit is sticking to the future, day in and day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. She further adds in an interview with Abhijit Bhaduri, "The second thing is about my understanding of 'deliberate practice,' i.e., doing effortful practice; work on your weaknesses, getting feedback, doing it again, and eventually getting better. That’s what gritty people do. So I decided to work on my weaknesses. I asked people for feedback, especially negative feedback. You don’t improve with praise, even though you may like such people more. When you are at the edge of your skill, it feels like you are floundering, and that does not feel good. It helps to know that people at the top of the field feel that way too."

Life is all about failing and then getting back up. Henry Ford was bankrupt before starting the Ford Motor Company. Imagine if he had never faced failure in life; imagine if he had gotten everything at once. Would he be the character that he was? Successful people know how to deal with failure, as far as I know. As per the paper published in Nature by Wang and James A. Evans, success comes down to learning from one's prior mistakes. If you read stories of successful people, you will find that failure is not something that happened once in their lives; they fail daily to succeed once. " And while that litany of failures may make the Edisons of the world better off, it seems to thwart many other people." Wang from Kellogg Northwestern University says, "Imagine I go from -5 to -4 degrees Celsius; nothing happens. The ice stays as ice. But the moment the temperature hits a particular point, it begins to melt." James Clear also shares the same thing in his book Atomic Habits. "Imagine that you have an ice cube sitting on the table in front of you. The room is cold, and you can see your breath. It is currently twenty-five degrees. Ever so slowly, the room begins to heat up. Twenty-six degrees. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. The ice cube is still sitting on the table in front of you. Twenty-nine degrees. Thirty. Thirty-one. Still, nothing has happened. Then, thirty-two degrees. The ice begins to melt. A one-degree shift, seemingly no different from the temperature increases before it, has unlocked a huge change."

Take the story of Walt Disney. He was a commercial artist at Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio and was fired after a short period. He founded Laugh-O-Gram Studio, which went bankrupt after distributors failed to pay him. The creation of Mickey Mouse itself came from a disappointment. After losing rights to his successful character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, he was very disappointed, and out of sadness, he drew a cheerful mouse. Even after that, Mickey Mouse cartoons were rejected by various distributors. While making Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he faced several financial struggles, and to fund it, Disney mortgaged everything he owned. And the movie became the highest-grossing film of that time. You can't say this was purely luck. It was hard work; it was grit. Walt Disney said, "The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting."

So the next time you feel like you’re stuck at 31 degrees, will you stop or wait for the one degree that changes everything?

References-

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/some-people-succeed-after-failing-others-flounder#:~:text=In%20a%20new%20paper%20published,out%20failure%20after%20failure%20forever

https://youtu.be/H14bBuluwB8?si=UHFfv4EBZdS9ADdr