The Start of a Journey
I’ve read enough stories about people who “made it happen”, folks on the back end of their brave and noble efforts who’ve clawed their way to success.
It’s time to hear from the people still on the way up.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say how awesome it would be to have footage of Jeff Bezos in the early days of Amazon.
Packing boxes, pitching for angel investments, organizing papers.
“The story alone would be worth millions!”, they shout.
We love to glamorize the road from rags to riches, but when it’s time to put their money where their mouth is, no one seems to care about supporting people in their early days.
A Work in Progress
We claim to love an underdog, but in reality we love the team or person that’s already in second place fighting for first. Third, fourth, who cares? They aren’t winning it all, so they’re not worth noticing. That high school kid who’s been playing ball since he was 5? He’ll just have to make it to the league before he earns any respect.
Lebron James has a routine much like any other professional athlete. Sure, he’s statistically more skilled than most any other player in the league, but why do people obsess about only his story and effort, when every other athlete in the NBA is also leagues ahead of any other basketball player?
We play favorites once people have proven their value or skill, but when someone is first starting out, they get the cold shoulder.
Why is that? My theory is simple. Instant gratification.
Overnight Success is Not Real, but It Makes for a Good Story
Most people suffer from thinking they want something, but once the effort required to obtain it rears its ugly head, they shudder and run.
It’s easier to read about the end of someone else’s journey, and daydream about how,”someday you’ll get lucky, just like they did, and your story will end just as epic and cool.”
When you daydream about becoming some ideal person without any of the day to day monotony, you’re suffering from a disease of entitlement, and you project that entitlement onto others’ successes.
This belief that “making it” is something that happens quickly, or all at once even, warps the actual time, effort, and discipline required to achieve success beyond the average person.
But we all know this. Overnight success has been debunked for years, in thousands of articles.
What hasn’t been addressed is how you can go about curing yourself of this quick-fix disease.
What you need to do is learn to support folks who haven’t achieved outward success, but who maintain inner peace and willingness to work.
Invest in the Beginner
Our default behavior is to glorify and praise someone who has lived through the grind, and spit themselves out a champion, but what if instead you followed someone from complete novice and onward?
When’s the last time you saw someone trying and decided they were worthy of praise?
The reason this article exists is because I saw an old video of my then 4-year old niece nervously singing her way through “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.
It was adorable!
But there was this automatic tendency in myself that I noticed, and did not like.
I said something akin to,”It’s obviously terrible, but look at her trying!” I simply had to judge the quality of her work, despite this being one of her first ever attempts at public singing!
How awful! She’s having nothing but fun, and I’m over here critiquing it like she was on Broadway!
As someone who has sung and competed with high level choral talent, I’ve heard my fair share of jaw-dropping vocals. But what right or reason did I have to compare a toddler to vocal masters?
Comparison is the Thief of Joy
When I stopped to reflect on what I just thought, my heart sank. I nearly swallowed my thoughts, feeling a tad nauseous.
Right in that moment, a concept struck me. This was a symptom of a much greater problem within me, and within most of folks as well.
We want so badly to see the good guy win, to watch the movie of a sports team climbing their way to the top and winning, to say artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda “came out of nowhere”.
But that’s all we care about. The end result.
Support Other People, Dammit!
I saw a post on one of those generic motivational Instagram pages that perfectly summarized this toxic perspective. It read:
“No one will care about you until you succeed.
No one will cheer for you, or praise you, or care
Until you’ve already done it.
So you gotta cheer for yourself, care about yourself, and praise yourself,
Until you finally get it done. Then they’ll see you.”
How horribly isolated and lonely does that sound? Why does everyone equate success to some miserable existence of living above everyone else, alone and depressed?
Virtually every person whose climbed to the top of any mountain has done so with a team. A mentor. A family. A friend. People do not succeed in isolation, and most people depend on their community to thrive and grow.
Stop waiting until people have “won it all” to support them. They need you well before then.
Kids, adults, elderly and everything in between are novices, noobs, and nobodies at something, and we as people can decide to share our love and support before they ever had to prove anything.
The same way you wouldn’t shame a child for being bad at singing, choose to praise yourself and others simply for the effort.
Lift others up, elevate their passions, and create a world where people are alive and full of love.
Find someone at the beginning of their journey, and help them through to the end.
Just maybe, someone will do the same for you.
