3 Myths About Success Keeping You Stuck
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Hey Reader,
I spent years chasing success the hard way. Turns out I was believing three lies that made everything harder than it needed to be.
Here are three myths about success that keep smart people stuck.
Myth #1: Success in one area completes the others
We all run invisible scripts:
IF I _____ THEN I WILL HAVE _____.
- “If I make a bunch of money, my family will respect me”
- “If I get famous on social media, I’ll never worry about money”
- “If I get ridiculously jacked, women will find me attractive”
You won’t say it out loud, but it runs in the background.
These become our goals we chase for years.
Here’s what I learned: there’s almost always a more direct way to get what you actually want.
Your family respects you if you’re there for them and prioritize them.
You can make serious money without a massive personal brand, often trying to get famous on social media distracts from revenue. You can learn to talk to women without getting shredded to 6% body fat.
Of course, there’s some spillover.
Confidence from fitness might help your dating life. Financial security can reduce family stress. But you shouldn’t count on spillover effects or use them as your primary strategy.
As Morgan Housel notes in “Same as Ever,” many top performers are lopsided. Great in one lane, disasters in others. Steve Jobs was a great marketer, terrible at the empathetic relationships thing.
Money solves money problems.
Status solves business problems.
But you can’t shortcut your way there by piling success in one area and hoping it bleeds over.
What to do instead: Solve the problem directly. The direct approach is almost always faster and more reliable than the roundabout “if I get this, then this will happen” route.
Myth #2: Success is Linear
Another assumption we carry is that once you hit success, it just keeps climbing straight up.
Name one career that never had rough patches. None do. The artists you admire, the entrepreneurs you follow… If their story looks like a pure upward trajectory, they’re leaving out the messy parts.
This meme nails it:
I’ll share my experience with this.
I’ve had months where I was pulling in multi six-figures. Everything clicking, momentum building, feeling unstoppable. Then stretches where revenue tanked and I’m wondering if my best work is behind me, if I’m already washed at 30.
Same thing creatively. Some months, filming videos felt like one pure flow state; others it felt like I couldn’t shake the brain fog and I was mailing it in.
But guess what?
Success isn’t a ladder you climb once. It’s waves you learn to ride. And the skill isn’t avoiding the lows, it’s not panicking when they hit.
Here’s what actually works:
Train yourself to zoom out more.
Investors don’t judge portfolios on daily fluctuations; they look at trends over months, years, and decades.
Judge yourself on the trendline, not yesterday’s data point.
Because when you’re judging day-to-day, everything looks either euphoric or catastrophic. But pull back the lens and real patterns emerge.
So keep showing up consistently, and your trajectory will look fundamentally different in 12-24 months.
Myth #3: Success is forever
The last fantasy we all carry that messes us up:
That you can work hard enough now, and eventually you won’t have to work hard anymore. Some mythical point where you’ve “made it” and can coast.
But there’s one psychological principle that makes this impossible: hedonic adaptation.
Basically, your brain treats “more” like “normal” pretty quickly.
Ever gotten in a hot tub that was scalding when you first stepped in? Twenty minutes later you’re wondering if it goes any hotter.
We adapt to everything. Money, status, achievements, even good relationships. Your brain is designed to recalibrate so you keep striving.
This is why people can have tens of millions, multiple houses, everyone knowing their name, and still feel empty. The hedonic treadmill doesn’t stop spinning just because your bank account got bigger.
Here’s my experience with this.
I felt this to the T after hitting 1 million YouTube subscribers. That was my dream for a decade. The day it happened, I looked at the number, felt the rush for about a day, then went back to work the next morning. Two months later, a million subs was just the norm. The gold play button is cool, but it doesn’t mean I’m in some creator promised land where videos create themselves.
Here’s what actually works:
Knowing the difference between success and fulfillment.
Success is proof.
Fulfillment is peace.
One looks good; the other feels good.
I’m not saying you can’t find fulfillment through success, you absolutely can, especially when it’s in the service of something bigger than yourself.
But chasing success for success’s sake is a black hole with no bottom.
So remember, the goal isn’t to escape effort. It’s to find effort worth doing.
Those are the three biggest success myths.
What’s your biggest takeaway? Hit reply and let me know. I make an effort to read every single one.
See you next week
CK
