Introduction
We all want to be successful in our own way. That’s why we watch self-help gurus online preaching about how to “make it.” It’s tempting to listen to them — after all, they are successful, and successful people should know how to predict what makes others successful, right?
I used to believe that, but one day I came to a realization while watching sports. I noticed that professional boxers don’t predict winners in matches any better than the fans. Professional tennis players don’t predict match outcomes at a higher rate than fans either. And the same concept applies to success in life: successful people know what they did to become successful, but they have no reliable way of replicating or predicting that in others.
The Luck Factor
The biggest, most obvious reason why successful people can’t predict success in others is because absolute success requires a tremendous amount of luck.
As a general rule:
The more successful you become, the more luck you needed to get there.
Absolute success is largely a byproduct of numerous variables — most of them unknown — but usually a mixture of timing, genetics, networks, and cultural moments.
A few examples:
Famous Instagram Models
Most Instagram models are born with attractive physical features — the face, body, curvy hips, or larger breasts. That natural advantage gives them leverage on Instagram, a platform driven by visuals. Hannah Palmer, Abigail Ratchford, and Emily Sears are examples.
Professional Athletes
Athletes are products of genetics and timing. Every pro athlete has world-class physical ability gifted to them by birth, plus the opportunity to play professionally. LeBron James, Paul Skenes, Max Holloway, Teofimo Lopez, and Dak Prescott are examples.
Platform Algorithm Timing
Social media growth often comes down to randomness. Two people can post nearly identical content, but one blows up while the other doesn’t. Sometimes less polished content outperforms more professional posts.
Business
In business, sometimes a product just “clicks” with people — not necessarily because of the founder’s brilliance, but because the timing and audience lined up. This is why multiple bikini brands can succeed despite the market being crowded.
Without tremendous amounts of luck, achieving absolute global stardom — becoming a household name like Cristiano Ronaldo, MrBeast, or Elon Musk — is impossible.
Everchanging Context
The context surrounding you is always shifting.
- The conversation you have with your parents today is not the same as yesterday.
- A networking event you attend now won’t mirror the one your friend attended five months ago.
- Who you meet, the mood of the room, and countless other random variables are always in flux.
Back in 2019, The Bachelorette was a popular reality show. Now it’s Love Island.
Great success is driven by unique circumstances: being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, doing the right thing, having the right assets, skills, and opportunities.
Even if you follow the same steps as someone else, your personality, energy, and values will create different results. Mark Cuban himself admitted that if he were born a decade earlier, he wouldn’t have made the money he did selling Broadcast.com.
Success isn’t copy-paste. It’s situational and personal. You can’t drop yourself into the same scenario as someone else and expect the same outcome. That’s why there’s no exact blueprint for success — and the more specific and rigid the blueprint is, the less likely it works.
Instead, focus on fundamental principles rather than exact steps. Advice like:
- Work long hours
- Do the most important thing
- Always improve
- Increase your output
- Make sacrifices
It may sound cliché, but these are the universal habits that consistently move people forward.
Post Hoc Storytelling
Most success stories you hear are edited, polished, and filtered for mass appeal.
It’s the same way professional athletes filter what they say in interviews — giving safe, generic answers rather than their raw thoughts.
After success, people claim:
- “I hustled.”
- “I followed my passion.”
- “I outworked everyone else.”
You’ll see titles like:
- “The 1 Habit That Will Change Your Life”
- “Top Habits of the 1%”
- “Every Successful Person Does This”
These oversimplify and glorify success, but the reality was full of confusion, failures, coincidences, lucky breaks, and pivots.
After success: sayings like “work hard,” “stay consistent,” or “believe in yourself” contain truth — but they’re vague, not the actual catalysts of breakthroughs.
Before success: their path was messy, uncertain, and risky. They made moves without fully understanding them — and no bullet-point summary can capture that chaos.
Find Your Own Path
Everyone’s path to success is different.
Your story will be made up of experiences and events unique to you. And success stories are always filled with uncertainty, risk, not knowing what you’re doing, fear, dislike, frustration, and failure.
The best way forward is simple:
Take lots of action and figure things out along the way.
Your path will reveal itself only as you move forward — blindly, one step at a time.
Let me know what you think in the comments below — and if you have any success stories of your own, I’d love to hear them.
