Success is not meant to come easy—if it were, everyone would get a piece of it.
And if everyone were successful, then success wouldn’t really feel like success. It would feel like the baseline, the equilibrium.
Therefore, success needs to be hard to obtain.
It needs to feel special.
You need to know deep down that it was earned, not given. Otherwise it feels, well… insignificant.
In order to earn it, you have to give everything.
You have to be unrelenting.
You need to be willing to leave no stone unturned…
Let’s Define Success
Firstly, I just want to be clear—success is not necessarily a number.
It’s not necessarily an action or a goal.
It’s a feeling.
It’s the knowledge deep down that you walked a path that no one else was willing to walk to get something that no one else was willing to try for.
Too often, our society rewards mediocrity, concedes to privilege or bends to the chorus of voices exclaiming that they are deserving when, in reality, they are just louder than those around them.
This is not success.
This is not you.
You know that you have been successful whether you achieve the goal or not because you can peer into your soul and breathe a sigh of relief that you stood tall in the face of adversity.
That is success.
The unwavering truth that you are him.
It’s something that can never, ever, be taken away from you.
And these five rules will help get you there:
1. Don’t Concede
This one seems pretty straightforward, but I promise you it is not.
For most of us, the idea of success is not achieved simply because we gave up.
Don’t let that be you.
The finish line is there to will you toward the end, not to encourage you to rest on what you have achieved.
Everything worth having feels the hardest right before it ends.
Think about lifting weights… the first two reps are easy, the next eight become progressively harder, the second-to-last one is tough, and if you’re doing it right, the last rep feels like death.
That last rep is arguably the most important.
You are pushing the limitations of your muscles and expanding their capacity.
The job is not done at reps one to eleven. It’s done at rep twelve.
2. Don’t Assume
“What’s the point of doing X when I’ve already tried Y?”
I don’t know, but neither do you.
When you are pushing yourself to succeed, never make assumptions about the right course of action.
That’s fear talking.
Trying to succeed requires non-linear thinking. You are not doing the ordinary. You are going to a place that you have never been before, so, logically, you are entering uncharted territory.
There’s no rulebook.
Make a decision > act > assess > iterate > try again.
Don’t let fear rule you. Be brave, march forward into the unknown and dare to be brilliant.
“Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
―Suzy Kassem
3. Don’t Cut Corners
Success doesn’t come with any actual rules (except the ones you hold for yourself).
Never compromise your values or standards to attain a goal or a number; you are only lying to yourself.
That is not success.
Think about the great names that have cut corners to gain success:
Lance Armstrong—Tour De France king who was stripped of his wins and internationally shamed for taking performance-enhancing drugs throughout the peak of his career.
Sam Bankman-Fried—FTX founder and crypto entrepreneur who was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for fraud and the loss of $8-10 billion USD worth of investments.
Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced founder of health tech startup Theranos, whose self-aggrandising built a web of lies and deceit to account for her astronomical valuations and investments, and was eventually sentenced to eleven years in prison.
Marion Jones—Olympic sprinter and athletics pin-up girl from the early 2000s who was eventually stripped of three gold and two bronze medals from the Sydney Olympic Games after confessing to doping in 2007.
It might feel good in the moment, but the truth will always come out.
All of the people listed above were already brilliant in their own right. All they had to do was stay the course, not cut corners and be comfortable with where the chips would eventually fall.
If you cut corners, you open the door for history to tell a very different story of your efforts.
4. Don’t Complain
Let me reiterate… success is not for everyone.
Some are comfortable with mediocrity, with coasting, with taking the easy route. Leave the complaining to them.
That is not you.
If you have chosen to chase success, don’t complain about outcomes.
Complaining about things outside of your control is something that the Stoics often wrote about. We control our inputs, our actions. Not the outcomes or reactions. Those are for fate (or the gods) to administer.
"Don't be overheard complaining... even to yourself."—Marcus Aurelius
If you are chasing something that you have chosen, do it with honour.
Do it with your chest out.
Every hurdle you fall over is just data for your future attempts. You knew the risks when you signed up, so tackle the work with a calm and confident demeanour until it is complete.
5. Don’t Regret
If you didn’t concede.
If you made no assumptions.
If you cut no corners and held true to yourself.
If you weren’t heard complaining while you did the work.
If you left no stone unturned—went to sleep proud of your effort—and still came up short.
Then take a deep breath and let it go. No time for regret; that is wasted energy.
Whether you like to admit it or not, you are successful.
This is what success looks like.
In the words of Marcus…
“Accept humbly: let go easily.”
That’s it from me this week, champs.
With gratitude,
SAV
PS. If this one lit a fire, subscribe below. Every week I show up and write the truth about the work—what it costs, what it gives, and who you become chasing it.