What makes success unbearable is your mistaken belief that there’s only one way to get it

Calling for more deep thinkers and courage to forge your own path

You know the “I give you everything you need to do so you can avoid the pain” sales pitch?

The one that makes you feel like you’re in a lack. Like, if you don’t get or do (insert anything), you won’t make it?

Or, if you don’t join (insert place), you won’t be able to figure it out?

Or, if you don’t follow “these tried and tested proven steps” you might as well give up?

The same rhetoric applies across genres from business to health and relationships.

It’s fascinating really, how in a perceived pursuit of “uniqueness” everyone becomes more or less the same. Paralysis by analysis in the eyes of the endless theories and external pressures of how to reach your goals of success.

When maybe… just maybe… all you need to do is to look inwards for answers instead?

I’ve been reflecting a lot on this lately.

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The title for this piece “What makes success unbearable is your mistaken belief that there’s only one way to get it”, is an adapted version of an excellent quote that

Eliza Butler

shared recently in her brilliant essay “The rise of the over-therapized”. The quote is originally from Charlotte Joko Beck and goes:

“What makes it unbearable is your mistaken belief that there’s a cure”

Eliza then goes on to say:

There’s no cure for our human experiences. There is only curiosity. Only acceptance. Only presence. There is only moment to moment recognition of where we are on the scale from openness to closeness.

Maybe we all try too hard to find the one thing, the perfect recipe, the ideal strategy, the best therapy. Everything and anything external in the hopes that it will solve an internal struggle or in this particular example, the inherent struggle to succeed at something (whether to succeed at getting better, reach more balance, work-related success you name it).

Maybe what makes it unbearable is the belief that it has to be done in a certain way, by following certain experts, rather than just roam wild and free and explore the arena? (Or maybe the thought to be wild and free is just as unbearable to some!?)

My husband said something to me early on in our relationship that really struck me:

“You’re lucky you never went to art-school, because you’re free to do however you feel like doing”.

This came from a guy who went to the most prestigious Fine Art school in Paris. His degree is in figurative drawing by the way, a degree that doesn’t even exist anymore… I find that amazing. He’s like an ancient artist already! How mysteriously sexy that sounds…

What struck me with what he said is how school, culture and other social pressures make us believe that there’s only one way to succeed.

In this small example it was the way I draw, which before he said this, I felt incredibly conscious about as I didn’t have any formal art training. I just always drew in the loneliness of my room growing up.

But that was the thing. I had no constraints on where to start or finish a line. How the process should be done, proportions… all of it. I was always guided by intuition. Yet he had sometimes a hard time to just “go loose” and forget the rules that were instilled in his hand.

Two versions of the same street sketch I did in Lisbon, Portugal 2018. The right version is the original sketched with black pencil. The left version is hand embroidered (I call this technique thread-sketching, here’s a course I did about it for my embroidery Academy) with single stranded black cotton floss on off-white heavy canvas.

The typical belief to reach success (if we assume the general definition relating to work and money excluding our own mental well-being), the one that society and many parents wants you to follow is;

Go study. Study hard. Get good grades. Then get a good job. Work hard. And hopefully you get a good pension to enjoy later on (if the day comes).

Thanks to the internet, this schema is outdated (yet still very dominant).

You are able to write your own rules now. Find your own mentors (or become one yourself). There’s infinite opportunity for everyone who stops following instructions and start trying things.

Maybe it’s a sort of creative therapy where you’re guided by expressing your intuition rather than oppressing it in a desire to fit into a mould that wasn’t made for you in the first place.

Let’s make success bearable as we forge our own paths instead!

Thanks for reading this reflective essay! I truly appreciate you.

Elin, x

Let’s open the chat in the comments and let me know what struck you, and your own experience with limiting beliefs on how things “should” be done.

If you know someone who is consumed with the idea of finding the one next thing that will be the answer to their desire for success, then send this their way!

Hi there, new here?

I’m Elin, Swedish (expat) artist and mother of two who have plunged into the unknown of Substack as a new writing home. Despite having 500k+ across mainstream social media platforms for my embroidery art, I decided to start afresh here. It’s hard, thrilling, heavy and joyful all in ones. Come and join me for the ride if you haven’t done so already!

You can also check out the how, why, who and what in the post below:

Follow Your Gut & Start here