All You Need Is Not Enough

Whenever I explain my "two essentials" theory of success it generates vociferous denial.

The two essentials are Status and Confidence. There are people with status who lack confidence, and confident people who lack status; neither type will become achievers. Both characteristics are essential to gaining success. And the two characteristics are sufficient, needing nothing else. (I'll be coming back to this last point later, so save your outrage.)

Bear in mind that I'm describing qualities as perceived. Status and Confidence can each be faked, and both together. If they are perceived by others as true, the faker will have success with the gullible.

But true Status and true Confidence certainly exist, and sometimes in the same person.

True Status means a social standing certified by some impressive institution that represents a summary approval of a person's quality. They have been evaluated and found qualified, and the rest of us can trust that judgment without conducting our own evaluation. Professionals have status, the rich have status, PhDs have status until they blow it. Teachers today in the US have little status, and lawyers are always under suspicion.

True Confidence means a self assurance that obstacles will be overcome even if they cannot be fully foreseen. A confident person says to herself or himself, I know I can do this even though I've never done it before, I have faith in my abilities to perceive, assess and respond because I'm ever striving to do my best, and although I have always a wall of doubt to scale, I have always been able to climb over that doubt and deliver good results.

A faker in each of these two qualities simply believes the lie he tells himself, which enables all lies to others.

There are fakers who have true Status and Confidence—as fakers. They are widely acknowledged as being really good at telling the lie that others want to hear. Some of them are politicians and some are motivational speakers.

Whether faked or true, perceived Status and Confidence are essential to success. But they are no guarantee of quality. This fact explains most of the mediocrity in life.

For what happens is this: People with perceived Status and Confidence are often given opportunities on the strength of perception alone, with no due diligence whether they can actually deliver desired results. Con men build penny stock empires that invite their own collapse, blue ribbon panels of prestigious people issue clueless reports, managers who have successfully job hopped to a high level position demonstrate they have no talent for running an operation, having never run anything but their own career advancement.

Thus, much of what we reflexively attribute to the Peter Principle is the fault of the people who promoted candidates of perceived Status and Confidence to their level of incompetence.

Now, back to what is not on the list of necessary characteristics for success: Talent, authentic, enviable talent. Its products are worth stealing, its mysterious wellspring quite frightening to those who have little talent of their own. Talent is like being born a magical person, someone who can make things happen. And magical people are considered threatening, they need control. Talent is not necessary for success because talented people can be appropriated.

To many creative people, talent is a curse. People of perceived Status and Confidence confiscate the golden eggs and give the creative person the goose. Snarky critics demean the talented person, attempting to deny them Status and to shake their Confidence. Talent brings out the quiet mean streak in mainstream hypocrisy.

This truth is pretty widely acknowledged, and it does not offend. My hypothesis receives vociferous denial not so much because it does not make talent essential, but because it does not acknowledge the commonly believed fount of success: Dedicated Ambition. 

If you believe that wishing hard and working hard trump all else, you are in the mainstream. If you realize that wishful thinking and unproductive effort is delusional, you are a heretic. I am a heretic, and this makes people angry, as if I were refuting the only path they see for themselves to success.

There is a relationship between talent and hard work. People with basic talent can greatly improve their skills. But Dedicated Ambition is something apart from the effort, drill, study, training, and self discipline that hones talent to its sharpest edge. Dedicated Ambition is an occult potion for those without talent. It gives one powers that are not natural gifts. It is not exclusive like talent, it is available to all.

The quotidian essence of Dedicated Ambition fits it well into the American Zeitgeist. We as a people have always believed to our marrow that with enough hard work and pure determination, anyone can achieve anything they want, you just have to want it hard enough. 

This belief is demonstrably untrue and at the same time, impossible to falsify. For every gold metal winner there are silver and bronze "losers" who just didn't want it hard enough, and countless also-rans, a vast majority, for the sole victor to leave in the dust. The true statistics of competition are easily dismissed by the culture of winning. Such denial is overwhelmingly powerful, built into the American psyche. We don't fault ourselves for not being good enough, we fault ourselves for not trying hard enough.

Notice that in the bootstrap mentality of Dedicated Ambition there is no special place for talent. You don't need it starting out, you just have to want it hard enough, and you will acquire it through belief in yourself. In this way, talent becomes a product of Dedicated Ambition. With enough desire, even a pig can fly.

Notice, too, that a lot of the "impressive institutions" that certify Status also highly value Dedicated Ambition. And why should this matter more than rigorous tests of excellence? I'll answer with another question: Why do some engineers build bridges that fail? Institutions can sometimes be too impressed with themselves and not enough with standards of performance.

Performance is the domain of talent. In some fields, talent prevails. Status and Confidence may gain an audition, but only performance will win the part. When is the last time you applied for a gig that included a performance test? If you are an actor or a musician, even a successful one, you understand and appreciate that auditions are a necessary part of your career. If you are a manager or a professional, you are used to coasting on credentials and recommendations, and would resent having to demonstrate your ability through repeated audition performance.

And that is why All You Need Is Not Enough. Status and Confidence are of little help in the performance arena, where talent emerges and shines.

But talent should never expect success as the reward. Knowing you did good work is often talent's only gain, incentive enough to do more good work with little expectation of reward and no escape from having to audition for your next gig. Talent is a compulsion, not a goal. Talent is who you are and who you must always be, regardless of outcome.