The Rules of Success Are Easy to Follow if You Master These
How you can be the exception
Name 3 well-known people you admire right now.
Here are mine:
- Will Smith
- Michelle Obama
- My husband Devonte
Everyone loves Will Smith for Fresh Prince and all the amazing films he’s done, as well as just how great a thinker he is. His love shines through his work and his family. He is an all-round awesome man.
Michelle Obama is strong and the walking definition of resilience and empowerment. She is inspiring many every day, including me, to do our best and have faith in ourselves.
I am supposed to love the guy I married… But don’t mistake this for a romantic article — I’m going to talk about what my husband has in common with all the great people in the world.
The 3 Main Rules to Success
What are the basic rules that teach you to become successful? What do all the famous artists, novel prize winners, and anyone who is successful at anything have in common?
They don’t complain.
No adversity is too large for them, and they will work towards what they want. They have the drive necessary to strive. But they don’t dwell on what they don’t have or how hard it will be to achieve X, Y or Z.
Money is not their goal.
Many great people start from zero. Money came after they achieved what they wanted to because money was not their goal.
I’m not denying that money enables more happy experiences, feelings and thoughts, but money cannot be your goal when you’re working towards becoming a singer because that means your heart is not in the career itself. You don’t want to be a singer, you think being a singer will get you money faster.
Failure is not an option.
They keep on keeping on, even when the odds are against them.
No matter the result, there is always a silver lining and something to be learned. They take their circumstances and look for whatever can help them achieve their goals.
Any result they get is a win, even if on the outside it seems like a failure.
The Flawed Exception Rule
When I say I want to become a famous writer and speaker, I hear a voice in the back of my head asking sarcastically “wouldn’t we all?”
The idea of becoming a well-known artist or being the best at anything is getting the too-good-to-be-true platter — people generally just don’t think it’s possible without hard sacrifices and that’s scary.
With that attitude, they’ve failed before they’ve started. Even if they tried, they don’t go all in. They may take a trumpet class here or join a drama club there, but their heart is not fully in it because they’ve grown up being told that to get to the top, you have to be untouchably good, with a negative connotation to it.
It is not motivating and encouraging people to strive.
The standard is inhumanely high and society tries to tell you not to reach for the top because there are so many other great but achievable goals you could be focusing on.
The basketball players of today are friggin’ machines.
Records have been broken in Olympics for things that haven’t been broken in decades.
The bars are stupidly high yet people keep breaking them.
So, here’s the real catch.
The people who you admire are seen as the exception because so many people don’t do.
If you think in proportions, the number of people who you think “make it” in comparison to the number of people who don’t is so tremendously small. But, when you think about the rules of success and who follows them, 100% of people who follow the rules achieve.
They’re following a set of rules that society doesn’t abide by.
And you can too.
“We must be the epitome, the embodiment of success. We must radiate success before it will come to us. We must first become mentally, from an attitude standpoint, the people we wish to become.” — Earl Nightingale
The Biggest Attributes to Success
Success is within the reach of everyone.
There is a force that drives successful people and that force is within everybody. Everyone has a mind and everyone can utilise it to their full potential if they want to.
Believe in yourself.
Belief leads to action.
This is the thing that attracted me to my husband but it also pissed me off to no end.
The problem with intrinsic belief in oneself is that because it is so uncommon in society, it is easily confused with narcissism, selfishness, and even delusion.
That’s exactly the reason my husband and I didn’t see eye to eye with many things.
He comes across as arrogant and narcissistic because he will put his goals first and not give up, no matter how unrealistic they seem. Years ago, we would rarely see each other because he was putting in the hours at work and I resented him for it. I felt that he chose his work over me and that he was reaching too high. I would yell “you have to work to live, not the other way round!”. But he would swat my negativity away.
Today he can work from home and spend more time with me and his son than ever before while managing various businesses and giving us multiple streams of income. All because he refused to listen to me 5 years ago and asked me to trust him. Although I thought I was getting the short straw, it turns out all along he was just working on his goals which included making this family comfortable.
Will and Michelle also faced some hard times when they made bold choices — they were accused of being selfish, risky, inconsiderate, and unrealistic. But I don’t know them personally, how their families and friends know them. The people we see in Mr Smith and Mrs Obama are the results of their bold choices. We see the good that came out. We did not see the hardships they endured growing up or the rejections they faced. We don’t see the cracks in their characters or their annoying habits like we do our loved ones. We don’t know them as people, actually, but rather as rare jewels only some can touch.
We don’t believe that we too are rare jewels.
There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction. — John F. Kennedy
Don’t sit and do nothing. Work towards what you want and face all the potential outcomes head-on. Successful people thrive in all situations including rejection because they believe something will always come off every situation.
You at one point or another have said that you prefer chocolate or vanilla. You have made a decision about what phone to buy. You know how to make relatively small decisions — which clothes to wear, what pair of shoes, etc.
Successful people know what they want in life. They have clear goals and they don’t stop until they’re achieved.
Create.
“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.“ — Earl Nightingale
I loved to play the guitar when I was little, right up until I was a teenager. I wasn’t too bad at it.
I realise in hindsight that I did have an artistic side to me all along, I just didn’t know what kind of art I wanted to go into. Music is my saviour, but it wasn’t my niche.
I could listen to a song and immediately learn the bars, but I didn’t like the idea of composing. Maybe I’ll go back to playing guitar one day for fun, but I have found my place in writing (and talking!) because I am creating. Nobody has ever created the exact same article as me, word for word. It is impossible. It is exciting. All my thoughts are mine and when I express them I feel like I’m building and decorating my dream home.
But I didn’t just start writing when I wanted to. It was my husband who pushed me to for a long time. I didn’t think I could be successful at first. It had to be drummed into me. This whole attitude change came after when I realised my husband was the exception to society, but that he was following the rules to success.
It’s very hard to condition oneself to believe that you can succeed at anything bigger than choosing an outfit because society gives you “realistic” bars and pushes your desires down to something a bit less hard to reach. It entices you with so many options that are not quite what you want and teach you from young to settle. It’s hard to go against it, but that’s literally what successful people do.
Don’t take no for an answer.
Now I write every single day. Who knows what I’ll do next, but what I do know, is I am now also following the rules to success.
Most importantly, — I know I’ve got this. I have belief in myself.
Last Words
Set your goals in stone. Keep visual boards. Assume you’ll achieve them all. Don’t give attention to what you don’t want or what you’re not happy with — rather, focus on what you love, what you have right now, and work towards eliminating all bad things by replacing them with good, day-to-day.
Will Smith did it. Michelle Obama did it. My husband has done nothing but achieve his goals all his life.
You are special because you have a mind and you are capable of creating. Use it to achieve what you deserve.
Go against the rules of society and follow the rules of success.
- Believe in yourself.
- Create.
Sylvia Emokpae, philosopher and thinker, writes passionately about motherhood, self-love, and pro-race. See more like this.
