The Legend of the Self Made Man is Bullshit.

Joan Westenberg 🌈 Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 30, 2016

I’ve heard this myth so many times. People will tell you that they’re self made, that everything they have is the result of hard work and nothing else, that they started from the bottom and became successes solely through their own determination and sheer bloody mindedness.

Unfortunately most of that is pure bullshit with no additives or preservatives.

If you looked at my life, and everything I’ve achieved, you’d certainly see a lot of hard work. I’m not scared to break a sweat and lose sleep in order to get what I want and where I want to be. But that hard work is enabled by a whole lot of good luck and privilege.

I was lucky enough to be born in Australia, with free health care that means as an entrepreneur I don’t have to worry about health coverage and government funded education that let me get 2 degrees without taking out a high interest loan.

I’m a white male – which is a huge advantage, no matter what Twitter eggs might say. People will trust in my abilities in a way that they won’t trust other people, for something completely out of anyone’s control.

I was homeschooled by an amazing Mum who was a professional teacher and writer. That alone meant that I was automatically an outlier with no dependence on arbitrary cut off dates, extended programs, advanced classes or school systems – and I was also raised with the encouragement and freedom to pursue any interests.

There are more. There are so many advantages that I used to be totally blind to, but that I couldn’t now un-see if I tried.

But the point of this article isn’t to feel guilty about the advantages I’ve had and that I continue to benefit from. And it’s not to shame anyone who has advantages. It’s to point out a few salient truths…

When you measure your accomplishments by you alone, you’re too proud to recognize where you’ve had help.

When you stack yourself up against your hopes and your dreams, if you can’t take a moment to consider the advantages you’ve had, you’re giving yourself over to total selfish abandon and not giving credence or respect to the struggles of others.

The struggles of the entrepreneurs who can’t achieve what you’ve achieved because they don’t have the same advantages, who see your idea that you were self made as being an insult to the challenges that they have struggled with their whole lives.

The role of someone building a company or a product or creating great art or fighting for change – doing anything that can change the quality of the human experience – is not to generate ideas in a vacuum and call them genius.

It’s to relate and communicate with the rest of the world and gain an understanding of what they want and need. And you can’t do that if you’ve placed these barriers of unrecognized advantage between You and Them.

You’re saying to people that what they fought for isn’t important, or valid, or a priority — because you had it from the get go. That kind of attitude is immensely polarizing, hurtful and unhelpful.

It’s also going to lead you to build things people don’t want, hire the wrong people, pass over the right people and generally be kind of a dick.

When you measure your accomplishments by yourself alone, you’re too proud to recognize where you need help.

That failure to understand when you’ve benefited from help and from advantages means you’ll keep failing to recognize when you’ve needed it in the past and when you’ll need it again in the future. People always need a helping hand, but they need to be able to identify when that is.

I can’t tell you how many young founders I’ve met who think that they’ve built everything on their own, interpret that as meaning they know everything there is to know and don’t take the advice they’re given out of a heightened belief in their own magical powers.

…And I can’t tell you how many of ’em are running companies funded by their parents, while living at home, in a comfortable environment, in countries where internet access is taken for granted and infrastructure is only noticed on the rare occasions when it isn’t there.

When you just operate as someone who is a self-proclaimed self made winner, what you’re doing is rejecting the outside knowledge base and insight of the people who could really take you to the next level, and in doing so, you’re likely shooting yourself right in the fucking foot.

Life isn’t about what you’ve accomplished, it’s about what you’ve overcome

That’s something I know for sure about success. You can measure it however you want, but if you haven’t considered the obstacles as much as the accomplishments, you haven’t measured shit.

It’s the equivalent of comparing a bowler who’s playing with the gutter guards up and getting strike after strike with a bowler who’s playing without ’em and struggling through to the end with guts, courage and a refusal to quit.

You have to be aware of the advantages that you’ve had, and the advantages others have and haven’t been given. That’s just the way it goes.

Here’s a comic by Toby Morris that really sums this up beautifully:

Like I said, I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’m proud of how I’ve done it. But I’m also aware that I haven’t done it alone. I’ve had a lot to be thankful for, from my family to my education. I think being aware of that is important, and I hope I don’t lose sight of it.

Some of the people I’ve talked to since I started Creatomic have shared incredible stories with me about the obstacles they’ve faced, and I respect what they’ve done all the more because of them.

That’s the thing about the myth and the legend of the self made man — it often discounts the people who have lived truly inspiring lives of adversity, in favor of the people who had a running start. And that means we only take in half of the picture of what success really is.

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I’m the founder of Creatomic.

I am incredibly excited about changing lives. If you’re interested in working with me, you can check out my program above or reach out for a conversation: jon@creatomic.co