The Iceberg of Success

Success is like an iceberg. We see this massive peak someone is experiencing, and think they are just super lucky or an all around winner. What we don't see is the ice below the surface. The hard work and sacrifice that went into reaching that peak.

I know some love and some hate her, but I'm a fan of Taylor Swift, not just her music, but her as a person. She seems pretty smart and says smart things. On her End of an Era documentary, she had a interesting statement. "Everyone's jealous of what you've got. No one's jealous of what you had to do to get it."

This is more true than people realize. I have friends who are into music, art and other things. Some are really successful others not so much. Some of the ones who have had great success have been married a couple times and can't seem to keep a relationship. I don't think this is because they are difficult. It is because their art and career is their priority. When they are with someone who wants to cut into that and take time away from what they need to do to maintain that success, they choose to cut it off.

This is not a knock on them. This is saying, many of us would not be willing to do That. I've been with my wife almost 15 years. We have a beautiful life together and as much as I want to succeed with my art and this blog, I wouldn't blow up our family in order to gain that success. It's just not worth it to me in the end. But others may make a different choice and have their reasons for doing so.

Often when we see someone being successful, we just see the tip of the iceberg. We see their wins, their success their constant highlight reel. What we don't see is their years of rejection, failures and depression and stress that went into those wins. We just see the end point.

A lot of what we deem as someone's luck is just the results of years of hard work and struggle we may not have been a part of. I know my own failures, one of my biggest was my cell phone store tanking in the mids of the economic downturn around 2010. I lost the store and literally everything. I was even living in my car for a short time in that process.

Then when I was writing horror books and out of my own lack of preparation for any success, poor mental health and bad decisions that all blew up on me. Though I will say it was already tanking as Amazon kept changing payouts and social media kept moving goalposts. I was not doing well at that point, but regardless, it was a massive failure and humiliation. But there are lessons in both of these things I have applied to my life going forward.

Ultimately, very few people reach any level of success without some failures first. Not saying it doesn't happen. But one thing I've noticed is people who have just had everything click into place their first time out, they tend to spiral at the first sign of adversity. For those of us who have gone through years of failure and self sabotage, we recognize things and know how to deal with obstacles as they come up.

The big thing we need to ask ourselves when pursuing our dreams is, where do we want to end up and what are we willing to do to get there? I know in some areas of politics and business you have to be a near sociopath and step on everyone in your path on the way up. I can't and won't do that. In the arts it is different. I don't want to be world famous. I just want this blog to reach maybe a few hundred or a thousand people and be able to support my family with it.

Some people want to be world renouned writers and artists, and that's fine too. I just know whats you reach a peak like that it gets harder and more draining to stay there. Getting there is almost the easiest part. I don't believe in faking it until you make it. That looks and feels fake and you might get some clout early on. But people will sniff that out really fast and you'll end up with no dreams and no creditbility.

A couple big takeaways here, the first is to stop comparing yourself to other people's success. When you see an artist, musician or whatever with win after win, don't compare your journey to theirs. They likely have years if not decades of work and struggle they put in to get to that point. No one just handed them anything. Even if it looks like they just exploded onto the scene. There were years of laying ground work before that explosion could take place.

I'm guilty of this too. I see artists and creators all the time I'm like "how are they always doing so well?" but then they point out they have been at this 20 years or more and just now seeing real success. I'm in my 50s so not sure I have 20 years to do all this, but I'm going to try and see what I can shake loose.

They say Comparison is the Thief of Joy and I think that is very true. When you have a loss or failure, it is sad and frustrating. It is valid to feel those feelings and process through. But then its time to get back up and either plow forward or figure out what changes need to be made to keep going. If you quit, you are guaranteed to never make it. Keep pushing foward and building your iceberg. That big win could be just around the corner.

I came back to this post after a few hours to add somet thoughts. As I write talking about success and iceberg peaks, I will tell you on an average day I average about 10-20 unique visitors to my site a day. While I apprecieate every single person who stops by to check out my blog, it's also not the numbers I want to maintain. I know they say "don't focus on numbers and ignore the metrics." but truth is, we don't. No one does and we need the metrics if we are trying to build and grow something.

I guess they call this imposter syndrome and I often have it. When I write about success and manifesting while I myself am here in the trenches fighting tooth and nail for every eyeball I can get on this thing, I feel like a fake. Not comparing myself to anyone else, but jsut sharing the reality. Social media has been enshitified, without paying for ads, it is REALLY hard to make your art or blog visible to anyone. The platform rewards ragebait, so unless I was posting crazy click bait headlines.

But those things don't create growth. They are good for fast clicks and instant monetization, but its not sustainable. For that kind of audience you need to constantly ramp up the senstationalistm to keep them entertained.

The reality is, this shit is hard. No matter what you are building or growing. It's work and more losses and more than losses is silence than you'll ever be comfortable with. Its hard to keep going when it feels like you are barfing your work into a digital void that someone may or may not see it or connect with it in anyway. And truth is, most people who do likely will do so without letting you know, adding to the big silence.

I didn't mean to end this on a down note, I just wanted to put in some reality. I mentioned earlier a lot about the successes and realized using a global superstar as a metric for inspiration is a good thought, but also too abstract for most of us. The truth is, whatever we want to achieve, even moderate success will be a lot of sweat and stress, but it can be done. I'm working on it. I relaunched this blog a few weeks ago so in relative terms its pretty new. I think I'm doing ok with it in that time, but it kind of stagnated after the initial boost. Now is the hard part of pushing through this slog and getting found again. Can I do it? I'm gonna try, I don't know what else to do. Hopefully, I inspire one or two people in the process.

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