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I’ve met plenty of successful people. Yes, many of them are smart. Yes, some of them are creative. Yes, they’re often talented. But none of those traits is crucial to their success. The gene cards we are dealt are just a starting point; nearly every successful person I know started on the downside of advantage. Humble beginnings can create the perfect foundation for success, because starting at the bottom creates almost endless opportunities to enjoy small successes.
Confused? That’s okay. The key is to understand how motivation works.
There is only one recipe for gaining motivation: success.
Specifically, the dopamine hits we get when we observe ourselves making progress.
Not huge, life-changing successes. Those come all too infrequently, if ever. If you want to stay motivated, if you want to stay on track, if you want to keep making progress toward the things you hope to achieve, the key is to enjoy small, seemingly minor successes—but on a regular basis. If you’re trying to learn a language, it’s fun when you realize you can count to twenty. If you’re trying to learn an instrument, it’s fun when you realize you can read simple sheet music. If you’re trying to learn to code, it’s fun to realize that silly little program you wrote actually works. Small successes are fun—and motivating.
That’s why you already have everything you need.
That’s why motivation isn’t something you have . Motivation is something you get, from yourself, automatically, from feeling good about achieving small successes.
Success is a process. Success is repeatable and predictable. Success has less to do with hoping and praying and strategizing than with diligently doing (after a little strategizing, sure): doing the right things, the right way, over and over and over.
It’s easy to look back on a path to greatness and assume that every vision was clear, every plan was perfect, every step was executed flawlessly, and tremendous success was a foregone conclusion.
It wasn’t. Every extremely successful person I know never expected to achieve as much as they have. (Many still can’t believe it.) Almost to a person, one day they woke up and were stunned to see how far they had come.
Why were they so surprised by their success? They were busy doing. They didn’t focus on what they did not have. They focused on doing the work, day after day after day, to get them to where they hoped to go.
When you consistently do the right things, success is predictable. Success is inevitable. You just can’t think about it too much. No obsessing allowed.