5 Paths To The Golden Road Of Success

Are you successful?  Face it — are you successful?  Or are you just muddling along, unappreciated, forgotten and, frankly, unknown.  A real nobody?  One of the “little people” who are born and die and are never remembered.  Very sad.   A blip on the cosmic scene.

And even if you think that maybe, just maybe, you are successful, is it really true?  Look in the mirror and tell me — no, tell yourself — aren’t you really just an imposter?  A fraud?

Well, there really are successful people, who are not imposters.  They exist!  You may even know one or two of them.  They are a success because, well, they are successful.  Famous … wealthy … notorious … at the top of their game.  In short — they’ve made it.  Maybe you’ve seen a few on the cover of your fave mag!

Is there some attribute that they share?  Some trait — either innate or learned — that permitted them to sail to success?  Some path that they all took — or different paths which ended up in the same place?  Something that can give us a glimpse into their charmed lives and allow us to determine whether we, too, can be successful if we emulate them?  Or try to?  Or want to?

Yes!  There is!

After a thorough review, and a careful regression analysis of perhaps thousands of studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Cosmopolitan, Sports Illustrated, Glamour, People, and others, I think I have the answer — or at least an answer.

As an example, Cosmo re-packages and recycles the same 10 or 15 (or 56!) tired, old habits of the rich and famous — but my intensive study casts doubt on their methodology.  They pick two or three people who are celebrities and generalize.  Have they ever studied the one or two successful people who you know?  Not likely.

All of the “Top 5” or “Top 10” (or 56!) habits of the successful that these academics (ahem!) cite are, for the most part, silly on their face.  The guy across the street who you envy — do you think that he practiced for 10,000 hours to become — whatever it is he does?  Did he get to wherever he got by working like a dog? Doubtful.

And the woman in your yoga class who seems to have everything — do you think that she had a Tiger Mom who whipped her?  Hardly.

Practice, practice, practice? Nah — not for them.  Practice is for the outliers, the peculiar superstars who practice and also work and strive. The majority of successful folks, however, don’t follow this bunk.

Maxims such as “all work and no play” are not for them.

And traits such as “laser-like focus.”  The business guy on the 6:45 from Greenwich who you see thumbing through The Economist and smiling smugly as he glances at the stock pages, and who you wish like all get-out that you could be like — do you really think that he shuts out all distractions and does not multi-task?  Laser focus — him?  Yeah, sure.

And do you think that any of these people attended all of their college classes, studied until dawn, read the classics, and diligently did all of the extra reading encouraged by the prof?  Hell no.

The way to success is NOT working like a dog.  It’s not being a compulsive workaholic.  It’s not any of these things which are on trumpeted on virtually every cover of Vogue.  Do you think Kim K. did even 1/100th of these things?

Okay, enough of debunking the received wisdom of our culture.

I have distilled what I think is the definitive list of the five really real habits, traits, and pathways   of successful people.  Yes, I sacrificed all of those otherwise billable hours so that you, dear reader, can be successful!

The successful share a number of things, each one interconnected with the all of the others.

1. Their pedigree, and their gender and race. This is key.  My exhaustive review of the data has revealed this heretofore unknown secret:  if you were born white and male — you’re golden, and already on your way!
2. Their family’s socioeconomic standing and their zip code. Yes, it’s true.  It’s who their parents or grandparents are, or were, and what they did.  Were they born with the proverbial silver spoon, or were they simply in the right place at the right time?  Were they allowed to ride the painted pony — until they grabbed hold of the brass ring?  It’s all about the money, money, money that surrounded them growing up.  Yeah, sure, this is inextricably bound up with thing number 1, supra, but it also deserves a category of its own to stress its importance.
3. The fancy prep school and Ivy League educations. No, wait — my bad.  It’s not the education, it’s the fancy, expensive schools.  Again, this is part and parcel of the first two things, supra, and hard to achieve without them.  But it is the requisite connector — the bridge — to the next thing, infra, and therefore deserves to be listed separately.
4. Who they knew and associated with in school, camp, or club. It’s also who they now know — which are likely the same people.  Think the past, present (and future!) ambassadors to the U.K., Barbados, and Monaco.  Were/are they top diplomats?  Hell no! They hobnobbed with the heavies. And finally, it’s something that cannot be inherited, learned, practiced, or copied — it’s nothing but …
5. Sheer dumb luck. And a lot of it.

Takeaway

So, forget all the things you think you know about success or have learned from the tabs — they are a ruse, an illusion, a chimera.  There is no other way to success except what I’ve outlined above — and I intend to make millions selling to all of the imposters out there.  Why do I do it?

In. Order. To. Be. Successful!

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Richard B. Cohen has litigated and arbitrated complex business and employment disputes for almost 40 years, and is a partner in the NYC office of the national “cloud” law firm FisherBroyles. He is the creator and author of his firm’s Employment Discrimination blog, and received an award from the American Bar Association for his blog posts. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @richard09535496.