Success is not easy but inevitable

One of my friends who comes from a very humble background recently did amazingly well in his career.

Someone asked me why. I said, "The result of a hunger for success and the absence of a rich father."

People don't want to face the fact that if you want to succeed, you must work insanely hard for an insanely long period of time. You just need to show up and do what must be done no matter how tough or painful it may seem to be. It doesn't matter if you like doing that or not.

Today we have brought in this totally idiotic thing about the need to 'like' what you do or who you work with and so on. The reality is that it doesn't matter if you like it or not. If you want to succeed you must do what needs to be done, whether you like it or not. And do it again the next day and the next and the next. This is why careers go south. And why businesses, especially family businesses fall apart. People decide that they can't work with someone, including their own siblings, because they don't like them. The business doesn't care who you like and who you don't. The business needs certain things to be done and if the only person who can do it is someone whose face you hate, then if you are wise, you will button up your hate in your back pocket and be nice to the guy and get them to do what must be done. People forget this and pay the price very painfully.'

Incidentally, that remark I made, 'absence of a rich father', is the literal truth in most cases. The surest way to ensure that your kids fail, is to put them on your expense account. Which is what most rich fathers do. That's how you create parasites, who eventually eat up each other and you because they never learnt how to succeed in life - all thanks to you - Mr. Rich Father with more money than brain.

What must you do?

Keep them hungry. Teach them skills. Let them earn their rewards. Make no exceptions. Take pleasure in seeing them struggle and suffer. Because that is what builds 'muscle' for success. The alternative is to turn yourself into an automatic ATM for them and in the end watch them destroy themselves. Believe me, that is far more painful and what's more, irreversible. And you will see that in your geriatric years where the only thing you can do is to weep copiously at your own stupidity. Wisdom after the event is good only for your memoir.