I Don’t Have Luck. I Have Perseverance, Effort, and Sacrifice

I don’t have luck or a whim of destiny. If I have made it where I am and have what I have, it is because of those values that do not need an audience: perseverance, effort, and sacrifice. Because genuine success is being happy with the people you love and feeling proud of oneself for all that you have achieved.

We live in a society where personal triumph is sometimes seen with suspicion and distrust. If someone has managed to get where they wanted to be, we believe it is because third parties have moved the strings so that things turn out this way. It’s true that this happens sometimes. Nevertheless, true talent exists and it is nothing more than discipline marked by tenacity, constancy, and patience.

When we talk about success, we are not just referring to professional triumph. We are also talking about those people who achieve ideal well being with their dream partner, with their family, their friends, and that attitude of knowing how to face any difficulty, with courage and optimism. Here, luck hasn’t moved the strings, either.

Because genuine happiness and triumph in life is the result of that wise perseverance that knows how to pick its battles. That gives its all for something that it loves, for something that it dreams of and that it wishes to achieve. In fact, and we are sure of this, each day there are thousands of people who silently carry their personal sacrifices and efforts without any need for an audience.

That is genuine talent, the one who does not hear rejections or the luck of destiny…

Perseverance moves mountains

Confucius once said that those who move mountains started by moving small stones. Success in any sphere of our lives comes, effectively, from insistence. From that perseverance that we integrate into our being as another necessity. As someone who breathes, as someone who goes out walking every day wearing their own tennis shoes, dreaming of making it a few miles further.

Anders Ericsson, a famous psychologist from Florida State University, explains that people who achieve success or triumph do not have special cells in their body that make them different from everyone else. It is obvious that “we are not all good at everything.” However, there are people who know how to harmonize a series of basic dimensions that without a doubt allow them to achieve what they set out to do.

These include proper management of their emotions, tenacity, perseverance, effort, and resistance to frustration. People who possess these characteristics also do not depend on external motivation. They know how to motivate themselves, they know what their limits are, and they take advantage of their abilities.

Something that we must also keep in mind is that there are many people with talent. In fact, we are all good in some concrete area. However, in spite of the fact that intelligence is not something that is particularly scarce in our world, what we are sometimes lacking is constancy and faith. At times, we are greatly affected by criticism, the stumbling stones that our own society and even our own limiting attitudes put in our path.

It is not enough to tell ourselves “I will be able to do this.” Verbalizations are not good for anything if there is not complete, genuine conviction, added to a firm attitude of “not throwing in the towel.”

When the success or happiness of others is seen with distrust

Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University, tells us that empathy is overvalued. We all pretend to feel it, but really, there are very few people who manage to truly connect with the personal and emotional realities of others. In fact, there is one aspect that seems strange. It is easier to empathize with the pain of others than with the happiness of our neighbor.

It is as if in some way we were putting into practice the idea of “I hope you are happy, but not happier than me.” This is something we see very often. We pointed it out at the start: if someone overcomes that opposition or achieves professional success, for instance, they are always suspected of classical string-pulling. If our rather unattractive friend gets into a relationship with an extremely beautiful woman, this is not logical. There must be a hidden self-interest on her part.

Why does the human mind sometimes drift into those malicious nooks?

That lethal and silent virus: envy virus

He who envies only sees his reduced universe. He will never intuit the perseverance of the person who spends sleepless nights studying. Of the person who sacrifices his time to rest and invests it into his work. He will also not be able to see the sincere love that this wonderful girl feels for this less-than-attractive boy.

Because the curse of envy is confusing, because the inferiority complex can be lethal and very tragic. It will always be better to demonize the success of another than to admit to our own faults. In this way, far from allowing ourselves to admire or learn from the qualities of others, for envious people, it is better to build walls and throw stones. In this way, they placate the “itch” and, with a little bit of luck, even do harm to that “successful person.”

We must not let ourselves be influenced by these kinds of people. If we are really concerned with reaching the peak of our own individual mountains, the key is to be perseverant. By letting all criticism fall on deaf ears, ignoring everyone who tells us “we will never be able to do it.”

And above all else, we have to know how to choose the right people. Look for people who are not only capable of understanding your sadness. Surround yourself with people who share your happiness when you triumph in life.