Rethinking Success: The Good News, the Bad News, and the Hidden Cost of Getting Good

I want to start with a confession: the concept I’m sharing today is not something I grew up understanding. It is something I only came to realize after observing, reading, and learning about the lives of many people who managed to build truly exceptional things. When the reality of how success actually works first hit me, it was honestly a bit of a shock. It can even feel a little heartbreaking, especially for those of us who carry strong expectations for ourselves or naturally protect our egos.

I’m sharing this here today for anyone who might still be holding onto the same old assumptions I used to have.

If I had to summarize what I’ve learned, it comes down to a mix of good news and bad news.

The Good News: Almost everything you hope to achieve, for the most part, is genuinely achievable. The path is not reserved for a chosen few.

The Bad News: It is going to cost a lot more than you could possibly imagine. Not necessarily in money, but in time, repetition, discomfort, and your willingness to look foolish along the way.

The Myth of the Natural Gift

When we see someone achieve extraordinary things, we tend to assume there must be something fundamentally different about them. We tell ourselves they are uniquely talented, naturally disciplined, or gifted with some rare quality the rest of us simply lack.

But the more I read about people who become exceptionally good at something, the more I notice a much less exciting pattern: they worked, a lot.

While Malcolm Gladwell popularized the famous "10,000 hours" idea in Outliers, the broader point goes beyond a specific number. Becoming exceptionally good at anything requires an enormous volume of practice, repetition, experimentation, and time. And that points to a truth we don't talk about often enough: you have to be willing to be bad at something for a while.

There is an old equestrian saying that captures this perfectly: “You can't learn to ride a horse if you are worried about how you look while sitting on one.”

If protecting your image is your top priority, you will never give yourself the space to absorb the bumps, make mistakes, or ride through the awkward early stages. To eventually succeed, you have to be willing to fail, look foolish, put out mediocre work, face rejection, and repeat the process anyway.

As writer Samuel Butler put it:

“Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better.”

Why Quantity Leads to Quality

It takes the mystery out of achievement when you accept that a mountain of mediocre attempts lies between where you are and where you want to be.

In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck references a photography class split into two groups. One group was graded solely on producing one perfect photograph, while the other was graded on the sheer quantity of photos they took. Surprisingly, the quantity group produced the highest quality images. While the perfection group spent all their time theorizing, the quantity group took risks, made mistakes, learned from their bad shots, and refined their craft through real practice.

We often think quality comes first and quantity comes later, but quantity is usually how you arrive at quality. We see the final outcome: the peak athlete, the bestseller, or the thriving business. However, we rarely see the thousands of ugly attempts, missed shots, failed ideas, and frustrating sessions that preceded it. Exceptional people often aren't operating on magic. They simply kept producing, failing, and learning longer than most people were willing to.

If you take 100 shots at something, you have 100 chances to get it right. If you only take five because you’re waiting until you feel ready or good enough, you’ve dramatically reduced your odds.

Accounting for the True Cost of Entry

This is where the idea gets uncomfortable: the cost of success is often much higher than we imagine. It may take three times longer than you hoped, require far more repetition, and involve way more judgment or self-doubt than you prepared for. Looking foolish for an extended period might simply be part of the cost of entry.

Hard work doesn't guarantee success. Luck, timing, health, and resources always play a role. But there is comfort in knowing there is a path: doing the work, doing a lot of it, and continuing even when you don't have immediate proof that it's paying off. Sometimes, the main reason people don't reach their goals is simply that the price turned out to be higher than they were willing to pay.

A Few Questions to Reflect On

If you’re currently working toward a goal, here are three exercises to sit with. Feel free to reply with your thoughts below, or just jot them down privately:

Look at someone you admire. Choose someone who has succeeded in an area you care about like fitness, writing, or business. Look past their finished result. What do you think their failure-to-success ratio actually was? How many hidden, terrible attempts came before the thing that finally worked?

Count the true cost. What did their path cost them in terms of time, discomfort, rejection, and starting over? Have you realistically accounted for what your own goal might cost you if it takes 100 attempts instead of 10?

Remove the fear of judgment. Imagine failure carried zero risk of embarrassment. Other people couldn't judge you, rejection didn't hurt, and setbacks didn't count against you. What would you actually pursue? What are you willing to risk looking like while trying to get it?

As Jim Rohn famously said:

“If you think trying is risky, wait till they hand you the bill for not trying.”

Everything carries a cost. Trying is uncomfortable, but staying still has its own price tag.

Recommended Reading

If you want to explore these ideas further, here are two great books on the subject:

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck: A foundational look at ability, effort, and how we respond to initial failure.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell: A great dive into how practice, timing, and opportunity intersect.