An essay on the price of success.
In the picture above the price of Onions is 4.00 per bag.
What is the price of success?
Everyone wants Success
Each of us is unique and each of us has had a unique journey in life. Hence, what is success for me, may not be success for you and vice versa.
As a result, success is not zero-sum. You can be successful in your own way. I can also be successful in my own way.
Everything has a Price
One thing is universal: everything has a price.
To obtain something you want, you have to pay its price.
Some prices are well defined and visible, for they are expressed in money.
- These prices are explicitly labelled on the goods and services you buy.
- Determining what is the price and deciding whether to pay it is easy.
But some prices are not expressed in money.
- These non-money prices are not explicitly labelled on your desires.
- Determine what is the ‘real’ price and deciding whether to pay it becomes tricky.
Success has a Price
The price of success is expressed in time, failure, stress, discipline, perseverance, being uncomfortable, uncertainty and sacrifice.
Because the definition of success is unique to each individual, the price of success varies for each individual. To achieve ‘x’ success, I may have to pay ‘y’ price while you may have to pay ‘z’ price.
But the bottom-line is:
There is no success without sacrifice.
To move ahead you have to leave something behind.
A few examples:
- Usain Bolt – He spent 20+ years practicing but spent less than 2 minutes on the track to win 9 Olympic medals. The price he paid to be a world class sprinter is the 20+ years of time spent training and the persistence to fine-tune every single stride in his sprints.
- Elon Musk – Tesla and SpaceX are his two key successes but both of them had a string of failures and were near bankruptcy at some time in their journey. Musk worked multiple shifts and slept in the factory to address these issues. Musk himself thought that the odds of both companies being worth zero was more than 90%!
- Warren Buffett – Known to be the most successful investor of all times, but 99.7% of his wealth was made after the age of 52. His string of failures is quite long, but not as well-known – Waumbec Textile Company, Tesco, Dexter Shoe Co., ConocoPhillips, Lubrizol Corp., not investing in Amazon, and recently investing in airline stocks that he sold in the aftermath of COVID19.That’s the power of time, discipline and perseverance through the boring parts of the journey and learning from failures.
What we see as overnight success involved hundreds of unsuccessful attempts and decades of effort. These unsuccessful attempts are not visible to us and we get amazed by the ‘overnight’ successes.
Success demands a price every day.
Its price is:
- Time
- Failure
- Stress
- Sacrifice
- Discipline
- Uncertainty
- Perseverance
- Being uncomfortable
- …
If you want to be successful, find the price, and pay it.
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