“Success isn’t measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.” –Mike Ditka
External accolades and trappings are reflective of internal excellence.
Somewhat.
There are people with tremendous net worths, with the expensive car and beautiful house that inherited money or married into wealth or got lucky in some other capacity. This will always happen, and wasting energy either hating on them or being anything other than motivated by them is a waste of time and emotion.
But the person with the big office that started as a lowly intern and showed up every morning at 7:00 and outworked their peers? That is the person that should be emulated. The drive to succeed and the willingness to sacrifice the Thursday night out to be more productive, who listens to the audiobooks on the drive home so that they can continue to improve even when they have the position and payments of success. This is the type of person that we should look to, not just because they have the title but because of the habits they continue to exhibit that got them there, that we can learn from even if we are in a different track professionally.
There is an adage that you can’t cram for a marathon, nor can you buy it. Yes, celebrities hire trainers and can easily take the time to run every morning while their social media captures and disseminates the images, but they have to do the 26.2 like everyone else (plus the hundreds of miles leading up to the day). Celebrate not their five million followers on social media but the daily efforts of the miles and building those followers for something more important than just being famous or pretty or friends with someone important. Look at what gets them to the point where people pay attention to them, not the metrics of attention itself.
Do what you need to each day, whether it is taking care of the special needs kid or aging parent or studying. The daily grind of making the sales calls or practicing the routines is the route and the reward. The every day efforts of building your business or creating that art or resisting the addiction is the process and the prize. Learn to love the autotelic feedback loop of pursuing your own version of excellence in what you do, instead of chasing the brass ring that will lose its luster even if you grab it.
Focus on you and what you can do, and let the world respond and reward as it may.