On Success, Control, Luck, and Self-Help Books

Self-help books lead us astray by ignoring age-old and time-tested advice about how much control we have over our lives. And that's a huge problem.

Self-Help Books

Self-help books offer recipes for success, and despite the considerable merit in some of these books, that’s a huge problem.

Just for example, James Clear (Atomic Habits) claims that small, incremental changes pave the way to massive success; Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass) writes that we only have to tap into our inner power; and Dr. Carol Dweck (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success) “illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on … which paths we take in life,” according to a pretty successful guy named Bill Gates.

But Ancient Wisdom

What these and other books often leave out is what humans have known for thousands of years:

Τῶν ὄντων τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τὰ δὲ οὐκ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν.

Some things are in our control and others are not.¹

as the Stoic Epictetus writes.

Lou Guanzhong, probably citing an earlier Chinese source, penned basically the same thing halfway around the world:

謀事在人成事在天。

Plans are made by humans. Outcomes are made by heaven.²

And Horace’s oft-quoted “seize the day” points in the same direction:

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.³

When people ignore this age-old and time-tested advice, they wrongly think all their failures are their own fault. And, as I say, that’s a huge problem.

Malcolm Gladwell knows this. His bestselling Outliers offers overwhelming evidence that luck plays a bigger role than most people appreciate. According to one particularly poignant example of his, Canadian hockey players are more likely to make it big if they are born in January, February, or March! (This isn’t astrology. It’s related to something called the “Matthew effect.”)

It’s not that the self-help books are always wrong. Not at all. It does seem true that incremental changes can lead to big successes (Atomic Habits). You probably do create more of what you focus on (You Are a Badass). And it’s likely that effort can turn ability into success (Mindset: The New Psychology of Success).

Just not always.

Balance and the Second Arrow

The “I can do anything” approach has to be balanced with “anything can nonetheless happen to me,” because, after all, “some things are in our control and others are not,” and while we may make plans, we cannot determine the outcome.

If we ignore the balance, we run the risk of magnifying our wounds instead of healing them.

Buddhism addresses this. When things go awry, we suffer what Buddhism calls a “first arrow.” If we then lament that our misfortune was our own fault (because we didn’t make enough incremental changes, or we didn’t focus enough, or we didn’t make the effort, or whatever) we shoot ourselves with a “second arrow.” The first arrow is beyond our control, Buddhism stresses. The second arrow is self-inflicted and avoidable.

Unfortunately, self-help books are in this sense a double-edged sword, minimizing the first arrows, but augmenting the sting of the second arrows. Yet again, our lives prosper best with the full breadth of human wisdom.

Emily Dickinson seems like an appropriate way to wrap up:

In this short Life

that only lasts an hour

How much – how little –

is within our power.⁴

Questions

Do you find these ancient quotations optimistic or pessimistic?

How much do you think luck has to do with determining your life?

What role do you think Karma plays? How about God/Heaven/etc.?

Which one is easier for you to deal with: when things go wrong because of what you did, or when things go wrong in spite of what you did?

What steps can you take to help yourself deal with the category that is currently harder for you (because of what you did / in spite of what you did)?

1. Epictetus, Enchiridion 1.1, 2nd c. CE.

2. Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 14th c. CE, attributed in that book to Zhuge Liang (3rd c. CE), perhaps originally from Zuo Qiuming (5th c. BCE).

3. Horace, Odes 1:11, 1st c. BCE.

4. Emily Dickinson, 19th c. CE.