I Want to Succeed So I Don't Have to Act Successful

I Want to Succeed So I Don’t Have to Act Successful

People say success means you must become more careful.

Watch what you say,

watch what you do,

manage your image,

and avoid saying anything that might stir controversy.

Even more so when your company grows.

Once you have employees, customers, and a recognized name, you are no longer merely an individual. You represent the company.

Successful people therefore have to behave like successful people.

Then one day, a strange thought occurred to me.

Is that why we succeed?

I write often.

Whenever something occurs to me, I put it on Brunch.

Even now, I polish things quite a bit before posting.

I refine the logic,

check the evidence,

revise the sentences,

and remove excessively rough language.

And I vaguely assumed:

If I become more successful, I’ll have to be more careful.

As my company and possessions grow, the cost of a single remark will grow too.

But looking at Elon Musk’s X account, something seemed strange.

This man is incomparably more successful than I am.

His companies are bigger, his assets greater, his influence larger.

A single remark becomes news.

Yet he posts all sorts of things on X.

Throws out thoughts,

jokes,

posts memes,

sometimes writes a word or two and disappears.

While I am polishing one Brunch essay,

one of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs is shitposting online.

It was funny.

But the more I thought about it, the less it seemed merely funny.

Perhaps we understand success strangely.

Usually, we see it this way.

Success gives you more.

Having more gives you more to lose.

Having more to lose means being careful.

Therefore, the more successful you become, the less free you are.

The logic sounds plausible.

Many people probably do live that way.

But the opposite direction is possible too.

Success reduces your need for other people’s permission.

Your need to bow to someone you dislike for money.

Your need to prove yourself to someone.

Your need to fit other people’s formula for success.

Then greater success means greater freedom.

Success can move in two opposing directions.

Toward having more to protect.

Or toward no longer needing permission.

I would prefer the second, if I can.

When I think about it, my reasons for wanting money are similar.

It is not just to buy a nice car.

Or wear expensive clothes.

Certainly not to have people recognize me as successful.

What I want is choice.

The choice not to do things I dislike.

The choice to call something strange when I think it is strange.

The choice to go where others do not.

The choice to fail.

The choice to start again.

And above all,

the choice to live according to my own thinking.

If I succeed to gain that,

then after succeeding,

“You’re successful now, so you must behave this way”

would be a strange new set of rules to enter.

It would mean escaping the prison of poverty

to enter the prison of appearances.

Of course, living freely does not mean bearing no responsibility.

Greater influence brings greater consequences for words and actions.

If you spread false information, correct it.

If your actions cause harm, take responsibility.

But responsibility and constraint are different.

Responsibility means bearing the consequences of actions I choose.

Constraint eliminates possibilities before I even choose,

because “someone like you simply shouldn’t do that.”

That is what it does.

I can accept the former.

I do not care for the latter.

Perhaps success’s most dangerous trap is not failure.

It may be beginning to perform the role of a successful person after succeeding.

At first, you make money to gain freedom.

Once you have money, you must keep up appearances.

Keeping up appearances means performing the version of yourself people want.

Perform it long enough, and eventually you live to maintain the role.

Then something strange happens.

You have more money than before,

but fewer actions available to you.

You have succeeded socially,

but your freedom of action has diminished.

I do not want to call that success.

Instead, we could use this standard.

How much have my available options increased?

Money is a means of increasing those options.

So is technology.

Knowledge too.

And relationships with good people.

Building a company is ultimately another way to expand the choices through which I can act in the world.

Success, then, is not simply a process of numbers getting bigger.

It is a process of the space of possible actions expanding.

From this perspective, becoming more constrained after success looks rather strange.

If your assets grew but your freedom shrank,

did you really succeed?

So I do not yet know how I will behave if I become more famous.

I might write more carefully.

Or far more freely than I do now.

A long essay today,

just one sentence tomorrow.

Something serious one day,

a pointless joke the next.

If I change my mind, I might simply write:

“Yesterday’s take was wrong.”

Done.

I want to become someone who can do that.

Not someone who is never wrong,

but someone free to be wrong and free to correct it.

Not someone maintaining a perfect image,

but someone who need not hide the process of thinking and changing.

Perhaps real success

is not moving into a better prison.

It is getting out.

If escaping the prison of money reveals a prison of reputation,

escaping reputation reveals a prison of appearances,

and escaping appearances

reveals the waiting prison of “this is how successful people should act,”

then keep going until you are all the way out.

That is why I want to succeed.

Not to look like a successful person.

Quite the opposite.

To become someone who does not have to act like one.

And if that really happens someday,

I want to write a very serious essay,

then post a meaningless piece of nonsense the next day.

Nobody gave permission,

but permission was never needed in the first place.