Success

I have been thinking a lot about how this brand and how this blog might grow. I often come back to the Hormozi frame which advises that the work must be done even without recognition. He says that you will have to get used to working so hard with no results for a long time. Obviously, he has enlightened me that this is the case and so I have the expectation of working while nobody watches. But sometimes it does help to think of those who have had to do this before us. One interesting character which first came to mind was Albert Einstein.

Everybody know who Albert Einstein was. He was, is the world’s most famous Physicist and Mathematician. He came up with the theory of relativity which superseded one of the worlds other most famous physicists, Isaac Newton. Using that simple equation E=MC2. Well, he wasn’t always that man, what is interesting is what it took for him to become that man.

He was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. His family soon moved to Munich, where in 1894, after his Fathers company failed, they moved again, but leaving Einstein in Munich for his schooling. While he was very good in Math’s and Physics, he lacked in many other subjects, leading him to fail the entrance exam to the school he wanted to go, and the best school in Switzerland and instead was forced to go somewhere less desirable. It is also the case that for him to continue his education after high school, he had to renounce his German citizenship to avoid conscription, quite a price to pay for education.

Following his eventual graduation from university, he spent 2 years applying for teaching roles with no success. He finally gave up and took a job at the Swiss Patent office. While most people would feel very down on their luck, Einstein took the opportunity to look and learn about all these new Inventions which people were trying to get patents for. It was through his time looking at lights, electric gadgets, watches, and the like, where he first started to think about relativity. Over the next few years Einstein continued to write papers on and research his theories. It took from 1902 when he took the Patent office job until 1908 when he finally secured a position at a university.

This is the time which is most interesting to me. It was 6 years where his work went completely unnoticed. 6 years working a job he didn’t want to work and thinking in his spare time. When he was finally put into the teaching position, his career took off, very quickly becoming a world-renowned physicist.

If this had happened today, many people would look at this guy and see an overnight success. You would see him come out of nowhere and blow the world away. We now see this amazing mathematician and call him genius. That is very easy to do when see his achievement. But it is so important to consider what is not seen. That near decade of non-achievement, the rejection from school and the bad grades in other subjects. This is what someone like you and I must always remember.

I want to be successful in this venture, in this idea. Success takes work when nobody is looking. And that work will go unnoticed until it is noticed. It took Einstein around 10 years before he was recognized. It might take me that long.

And most importantly, that’s ok.