Becoming An Overnight Success
Photo by Artur Aldyrkhanov on Unsplash
Overnight successes are all the rage. We see or hear a success story and we marvel at how they’ve come out of nowhere. Clearly, they had an idea that resonated, got their message out at the right time and were able to capitalize on the opportunity. I wish I could be as lucky as that!
Of course, overnight successes are almost never that. They weren’t because of massive funding or a slick message or a lucky break. There was much more to it - more grit, more ambiguity, more trial and error. That hard work and toil - and persistence - behind the scenes, translated to the ultimate success on the world stage.
And it’s no different for us personally. Our own successes don’t just happen - they take time and effort. In fact, more often than not, they take years of it. Time that’s driven by directed effort (i.e. service to a vision or goal or message) certainly, but also time that’s marked as much by uncertainty, about-turns, re-do’s and more. Our graft on our own time is what ultimately translates to our success on any ‘public’ stage.
It’s important to remember this, especially when we’re in the thick of the battle. It’s easy to look at the rigors of the task in front of us, the steps we need to take, and our own relative position within that, and become disconsolate. But that’s exactly the time to double down.
The keys are vision and persistence.
Vision gives us our goal, where we want to ultimately be. Everyone needs a north star that we’re moving towards. That’s the battle we’re fighting and we mustn’t forget that. Without this, it’s easy to lose heart, but with it, we know where we’re headed. If that’s a place that means something to us, it should inspire us.
Persistence is, simply, grit. The desire and ability to keep going, to keep trying things, to keep moving towards the vision. There are no straight lines, as I’ve written about before. It’s a messy process, for sure. But it’s important to keep at it, to keep going. In the end, success is often the result for those who’ve never given up.
There’s certainly other aspects and nuances to consider, but to me, those two things - having a vision, and being persistent - are paramount. They are what ultimately create “overnight successes”, even though we understand that there is no such thing. There is just work.
To paraphrase Stephen Covey, private victories always precede public ones. It’s important, therefore, that we keep doing the private work that’s needed to get those public victories.
