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Why I never liked "success stories"

Filed under: People and society by Hari
Posted on Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 20:58 IST (last updated: Sat, Sep 10, 2011 @ 20:58 IST)

Ladder This might sound oddly counter-intuitive, but I find many of the "success" stories out there in the market of people who've made it big, strangely uninspiring. I'm not going to get into a long and philosophical debate on the topic but I have some practical reasons why success stories are almost always useless as "inspiration" material, whether in a material or spiritual sense. Not that I've read too many of them, but even the few I've read over the years seem to be enough.

In the first place, I put (auto-)biographical success stories into two broad categories: One is the "Oh-I-was-born-as-an-orphan-everything-against-me-sold-newspapers-as-a-kid-made-it-big-through-sheer-hard-work" kind. Put simply, a rags-to-riches kind of story emphasizing on how the person who achieved the success had everything against him or her from their childhood and how, through sheer hard work and persistence, and in the face of big odds, they made it big in life. The second is the "I-worked-smart-throughout-my-life-and-have-a-secret-to-share-with-you" kind. I will come back to the second type later on. First I will take a good look the first type.

I find these "against-all-odds" stories annoying at two levels. From a purely rationalistic viewpoint, while most of us weren't born with silver spoons, neither were we born into broken families or abandoned as kids in a hostile environment and made to battle for our daily bread. Thus, the identification with the main character is switched off right at the start, at least in those stories where the character isn't from a middle-class family background. Secondly, analysing the effort-reward ratio can be demotivating as well. What! You spent three-fourths of your life struggling and fighting to achieve that level of success finally at an age when you are probably concerned about the quantity of sugar in your coffee (if you drink coffee at all that is!) Wouldn't you rather spend a lot more time at the prime of your life leading life a little more calmly and achieving a fraction of that success? From a spiritualistic point of view, those of us who are of a fatalistic kind probably wouldn't believe that success was entirely due to that hard work alone. Call it dumb luck, opportunity knocking at the right time, right contacts, being at the right place at the right time, or if you are of the more religious kind, divine intervention, there is always some "turning point" in the life of these ultra-successful people (however well deserved their success might be) that seems to evade the rest of us no matter how hard we work. Yes, go back and read those success biographies again.

The second type of "work-smart-secret-to-success" are a bit better from a practical point of view, but again fail to deliver specifics. Most of the advice given in such books are of a very generic and unsatisfactory nature. Practical, real-world tips are rare; and if they do work at all, they might work in a particular cultural context only (notice that most of these success stories are by American or first-world authors who make large assumptions about the role and recognition of merit in society, and the underlying base of free-market capitalism that makes it possible). Then again, putting many of these "practical" tips to use so consistently and correctly in the real world is a different story altogether.

I find that reading about the success of really big people is not a solution to the real world, practical problems and issues faced by the large majority of people in the world trying to lead ordinary lives with moderate success and happiness. What is required is a scientific and practical study of an average middle-class man or woman, who goes through life leading a steady, suitable career path without too many dramatic ups or downs, achieving reasonable success, accumulating a little wealth for a rainy day; AND has the time for ordinary pleasures and happiness within a family structure. Nothing in these extraordinary success stories gives us a clue about realistic dreams and leading a balanced life in terms of our own economic, social and cultural background.

2 comment(s)

  1. Good points all. I have read some of the "success" articles and they all have the protagonist living a hellish life and then having the one genius idea that makes them wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Of course, it helps that everything just falls into place at that point.

    I'd like to see a story where the protagonist is just a normal guy and bumbles through life and does OK for himself. Like most of us do.

    Comment by ray (visitor) on Sat, Sep 17, 2011 @ 14:54 IST #
  2. Ray, quite right. Of course, what makes success stories hard to follow is that the specifics are often blurred over. The devil (as they say) is in the details.

    Life is one long chain of details that need to be taken care of. That's one reason why success formulae are often hard to follow: lack of detail.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Sat, Sep 17, 2011 @ 15:19 IST #

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