the study of success

The topic of success, and really, of happiness and fulfillment has been core to me from a very young age. Brought on by an upbringing that instilled a strong sense of curiosity and willpower in me, I have journeyed through life in search of happiness, fulfillment, and success – as we all do – having been successful, made mistakes, and learned a lot along the way.

The Study Of Success is the result of the culmination of my childhood, teenage years, and early twenties leading me toward a pivotal realization and paradigm shift in college. After years of follow my interest and going with the flow, eventually shifting into autopilot from the advice of the world, and subsequently running off the road and into the mud, I had a period of revelation and reconciliation where I saw the proverbial light, realized change had to happen, and began to solidify my goals for the future, the path I was on, my beliefs, and how I was going to get there. 

Since then, I have been on a wild ride, researching success, specifically as it pertains to how we’re all taught to think about it, the expectations of the modern world, the constant flow of our own desire to expand and grow and become more, and how all of it all seems so incompatible.

Over the last ten years, I’ve been reading all I can, and exposing myself to as many experiences and revelations as possible so that I can speak from a point of intelligence and authority on the subject. I’ve held positions in a number of industries, befriended many insightful, influential individuals and benefitted from their perspectives and experience, and spent a lot of time in quiet contemplation myself. The continuing evolution and output of life is contained here, in The Study Of Success.

The Study Of Success

The Study Of Success is based on my own definition of success – not one specific to me – but one that may be different than the one you think of when you encounter the word. Success, to me, is an all-encompassing attribute that permeates every area of our lives, not just a financial one. It’s health, happiness, plenty of money, energy, sleep, time for fun, relaxation, creativity, and much more. It’s freedom to be, do, have, and become whatever you want.

So much of our happiness in life revolves around money. Money doesn’t equal happiness, but it has a lot to do with it. Unfortunately, our quest and insatiable desire to have “enough” is often what causes us so much failure, or lack of success. It’s due in large part to our adherence to the status quo, a lack of framework and support, and our unwillingness to break out and be honest with ourselves, find our passion, and do our own thing our own way. 

It’s further exacerbated by the modern education system, our economy and the massive competition for new businesses and ventures, and a job market and personal / professional culture that doesn’t give and take fairly. 

As it pertains to content, I’m all about getting back to basics and getting our minds back in the right place. Being mindful and aware of what’s going on. I’m also all about drawing awareness to the alternative paths toward success that exist beyond the typical path our society promotes.

For a long time i believe that for something to be of value it must be of length. I have come to realize from my own experience that it simply must be effective and easily digested. It’s been a struggle for me to do this, but one I’m proud of. I received marks all throughout school for being too wordy, and using one run on sentence after another. I’m working to overcome that. Everything on here is as short, brief, and compartmentalized and on-topic as possible.  You can read more about the last part of that in my article, Why Most Success Books Fail, which talks about an observation and reality that I feel very passionately about.

I think it’s great to look at people who have been wildly successful for inspiration and ideas, and to see just how similar their beginnings and lives are to our own. I have a myriad of profiles that I’m adding to on a regular basis that should be helpful to you. It’s these huge successes that can inspire all of us to our own personal goals for success by showing us just how scalable the principles that I’ve distilled from them and their examples are. You don’t have to become the next Rockefeller or Carnegie or Jobs or Gates to appreciate where they came from, what they achieved, how comparatively ordinary their beginnings were, and how you stand just as much of a chance if not more of becoming whatever you want as they did.

They all show to prove that success is no more a matter of luck than it is ideas, beliefs, decisions, and reflections. What they did, and what I’ve come to analyze and discover – the root of all success – is in what I call The TEREABA mechanism. It’s literally the principle of cause and effect put to use in a really smart way where we’re taking life, the success, and the failures we experience every day, and using them as a basis for our success to come. It’s the process of being present, and being mindful, and paying attention to the feedback that life is giving us literally every day.

The beauty of it is that you’re as ready to start now as you ever have been, and where you want to go is always possible, and is not limited in any way by where you are. It’s the justification and the proof for the adage “you can be or do or have anything you want”. It’s the “this is why, and this is how” that we’ve all been looking for. People think this must be some huge revolutionary discovery, and it’s not. It’s attention to your own power over your domain, to what’s been in front of you this whole time. It’s the process of acting instead of reacting. It’s accountability; taking what happened, reflecting and learning and making a realization, and letting that influence your next move. It’s more a collection of pointers than a method. Sound too good to be true? Well, that’s your choice. The good thing is, all the articles are short, and to the point, so if you lose any time trying it out, it won’t be that much. 

People ask me “why has this never been shared before”, and I suppose it’s because people don’t know how to profit off of common sense like they do the mystery and intrigue of their stories and groundbreaking revelations and super secret methods. That’s all that any of this is – common sense, distilled, with the goal of making you successful to the degree you wish to be. Not just financially abundant, but happy, healthy, and fulfilled. 

It’s a thought process, literally something that we are all aware of and engaged in every day, but are typically not doing as good as we could with it.

My Own Story

The Study Of Success had its start as a book idea back in college. I was very lucky at a young age to have been given a number of opportunities to explore different areas of interest, play with this, that, and experience a lot of different things. I was a natural creative at a young age, not in the sense that I had tremendous talent, but that I had unmatched desire to create. Whether this might’ve been nature or nurture, I can’t say, but I can authoritatively trace the beginning of this back to a Lego set I received at a very young age. That spurred over the next few coming years quite the collection, and many hours spent sitting on the floor building the sets, putting things together, and then disassembling and dreaming up something new and building it. I think that in a cognitive sense it did a lot to help develop my analytical abilities, and is probably one of the major reasons why I am comfortable with embarking on writing a treatise on success.

This period of major creative stimulation continued, and helped me to develop confidence, self-reliance, self-esteem, determination, and a host of other traits. I could only wish that every young child would have these opportunities to explore freely and discover at those critical early moments in life what it is that really interests them. This desire to create and achieve translated well to generally good grades in school, and eventually to the point of out-pacing classmates. I remember finishing assignments early, getting bored just sitting there waiting on everyone else to finish. I turned to making origami in class in my free time, and apparently becoming a barely tolerated distraction to other students. I just had to keep my mind occupied. In the fourth grade, after dealing with this ever-expanding disparity between my pace and the pace of my class, my parents decided it might be a good opportunity to homeschool me.

It worked out beautifully, as it gave me the opportunity to learn at my own pace, in my own way, and utilize the extra time I had in the day for other pursuits. At the age of 8, I started piano lessons. I didn’t stick with it for too long, because again, this was me wanting to explore something, not necessarily be taught and pushed through a framework as I had been at school. I continued to play even after discontinuing lessons, and progressed in a self-taught manner. After discovering organ music and learning a little bit more about the organ, I decided at the age of 13, I’d like to get one. The cost, where it would be kept, where we would find one, all matters of contention that eventually resulted in my family getting one for me. I practiced, and got my first church job playing organ, since that was really the only place one would typically find such an instrument, and started what would end up being a thirteen year career. 

The job market for what I did was great. There was a tremendous need for capable musicians, and I think my age, coupled with my basic ability, and my availability made it such that I could be there whenever they needed me. That continued on throughout high school, and for the amount of time that it took out of my schedule, I was paid very, very well. It was and is a line of professional work where you’re not so much paid for your time as you are your ability and all of the time and resources you’ve spent learning how to do what you do. This continued so well, in fact, that when high school graduation time came around and college was looming in the distance, that a career in music and music as a field of study only seemed natural.

Unfortunately, looking in retrospect, this was an off-the-cuff decision that was made in the haze and haste of what was, for me, a period of “being at the right place at the right time”. I made the decision to major in music, thinking that it would result in a lifestyle of comfort and complete freedom that would be an exponential magnification of where I was then; I was working maybe 4-5 hours a week and earning at least $50 an hour, if not more. While it was good during high school, what I failed to realize and consider is what a career as a professional musician and the earning potential it provided, coupled with the prospect of having to support one’s self with such an income would look like. That type of earning just isn’t scalable to a 40-hour a week job ($104,000 annual), at least, not in music, not the kind I would be involved in.

It wasn’t until my junior year, right as I was beginning to get my feet wet with grade school classroom observations that I began to realize the error of my decision. The first two years of college were through a junior college. They were bliss, because it was my first opportunity since fourth grade to be around other people my age and actually develop a social circle, outside of some limited interactions I was able to build in my later high school years through social media (MySpace at the time) that eventually resulted in some solid friendships, albeit a small circle. Even more than that, it was a jettison point for me into a new phase of life, one of increased independence, where not only was I now able to drive, having gotten my license at the age of 18, but now was also able and expected to be gone, out and about, going to school, and doing whatever I wanted in between classes and studying. It was fun, and so I ran with it and enjoyed it.

That realization that I’d made a mistake really came on as things began to shift when I graduated from the junior college and went to the full university. The environment was completely different. The faculty were different. There were grad students. The university was ___ the size of the one I left. There were multiple buildings, whereas the old one only had just a couple main ones. There was tons of walking, and parking was always a challenge. There was such a diversity in the student body, with people from all over the world. All of the sudden I was a very small fish in an enormous pond. There were a lot of good things and amazing memories made, but this was also a major time of reckoning and enlightenment. My studies became more concentrated in specific areas of my field. The expectations grew exponentially higher. The fun and enjoyment of discovery and study and learning went down as the requirement for assignments and achievements on exams and projects went up. Naturally, as the enjoyment and sense of accomplishment and progress decreased, so did my desire to perform and meet the expectations. As I began to hear about peers at senior level who were job searching (and what they were finding), and also from grad students who graduated, got a job, and then came back because they weren’t qualified enough for the career (read “earning potential”) they wanted, I began to develop a very clear and lucid (and sobering) view into my future.

As my motivation plummeted, it was only compounded by the apparent insincerity of the system. Faculty that were scatter-brained and overworked that didn’t come across as qualified to be teaching. Memories of the saying “those who can’t do, teach” summed many of my interactions. Professors that seemed to care more about teaching and grading tests than learning and having conversations (think speaking vs listening) made me begin to question the validity of all of this, and if this was truly the only path to a successful life, or at least a means to provide for one’s self. As things went on, and I saw the tremendous disconnect between the school of music and the school of education, the two branches of my degree plan, and the ever-rising and contradictory expectations and intrusions of one’s interests into and on top of the other, I relegated myself to a new, self-directed course of study.

I wanted to learn, I wanted to be successful, and I wanted to be happy. I enjoyed music, but realized that I had never really considered any of my other interests as potential valid career paths. It wasn’t time to switch degrees, this far in, so I decided that it was time to buckle down and study success, as a whole. After less than a year at the university, I had seen and experienced enough that I was led to the conclusion by the synthesis of it all that a degree, although a great idea at one point of time in the history of education, was now just a gatekeeping mechanism, a framework for the educational system and the job market to keep us all in line with. I came to that conclusion based upon the fact that I had seen tons and tons of people who had dropped out of school and become major successes and lived crazy, wild, awesome lives. Some of them were millionaires and billionaires. Other people owned small businesses that they crafted from their passions and desire to make a better world. I began to talk to people about this, and I was always met with opposition. “You need a degree to get a job” – “People who drop out of school aren’t ever going to be successful” – “Do you want to flip burgers at McDonald’s for the rest of your life?”. I understood their intentions – to protect me and wish the best for me – but I felt like their perspectives were, well, a little bit cavalier perhaps. What I realized was that there was no clear-cut path toward success without a degree.

Why would there be though? Success comes in so many shapes and forms. But I also asked myself “why can’t there be?” So I decided at that point in time that, with what I knew about success, and what I had yet to learn, that I would compile all of my information, and write a book. It would be called “The Dropout Millionaire”. Excited, and for the first time in ages feeling renewed about the idea of my future, I felt like I was finally feeling the level of excitement for what I was working on that my peers were for their careers. We were just in different places.

So, over time, I selectively began skipping classes, and spending time studying at the library instead; studying success. Reading about Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Gates, Jobs, Buffett, anyone I could find. I began distilling down the commonalities and also the differences. I did this day in and day out. I went all across campus and found quiet places to study and read and write. I discovered the beauty of the campus and in a way rediscovered the beauty of life in the peace of nature, and in being 100% engaged in work that I felt inspired to do, work that I felt like had a purpose. There was no more busy work, instead, I was always busy with work studying this person or that person and having “aha” moments on a literal hourly basis that led toward new insights around a success that was self-driven.

Eventually the point in time came where I formally made the decision to leave school. I knew it wasn’t going to go over well, but I had a great part-time job in the music industry that was an additional aside to my weekend church music work, and I had already checked about the potential of that becoming more full-time. I made the decision, and it was rough for a while. But eventually I got through it. I used the increased earning potential that I had to move out and become a fully-independent being. Life was great. I traveled, I spent time on my own, time with friends, time with family, and I explored and learned so much. Life was so good that I took the opportunity to take on some additional professional opportunities that presented themselves. It got so good that The Dropout Millionaire inadvertently kind of took a backseat for a while, with all the time that I was spending on other things. I continued to write over the next few years from time to time, but the need to research was displaced by a desire to start putting some of what I had discovered to use, and to try creating some businesses.

Back in high school, I had a candle company that I had started, selling homemade soy candles at the local farmers’ market and neighborhood cooperative store. About when I decided to start writing The Dropout Millionaire in _____ I had discovered blogging as a potential source of income, and had initially started doing that with the theme of The Dropout Millionaire, before pretty quickly switching to a men’s lifestyle blog. I did that for several years, and in _____ saw the opportunity with a friend of mine in Southeastern Indiana to begin doing concierge work and event planning. In those years from _____ to _____ I also earned my real estate license, and sold real estate for a couple years. They were all good experiences, but they weren’t quite what I was wanting. The businesses worked, but I just didn’t have the desire to keep them going. Even more than that, though, I had too comfortable and busy of a life otherwise with my obligations in music to truly sink myself into them. On top of that, the interests I had and the ideas that I wanted to pursue didn’t seem to have a market in Southern Illinois, where I had grown up and lived. Looking in retrospect, I reached a point where I had outgrown the area. My lifestyle blogging was suffering because there was no “city” to “go out” in. There was nothing exciting to share. There were no shops to talk about. There were no centers of fashion. There was nowhere for me to get the content that I wanted to share. Furthermore, there was no way to live the lifestyle that I wanted to. But, I was comfortable. I made a good income. So I stayed.

Unfortunately, as time went on, it began to wear on me, mentally, emotionally, and physically, to constantly be having new desires and ideas springing forth, but to be held back by my surroundings. I wanted to leave, but I was afraid to leave all that I had ever known. The time finally came in 2016, when my family actually decided to relocate to Middle Tennessee, and the opportunity for me to do so along with them presented itself. I jumped at the opportunity, and have never looked back. There are often times that I miss aspects of what I left, but as I continue to figure out and recenter myself and rediscover what went into dormancy back in Illinois, I am inching out, reconnecting, and rediscovering my desire to explore, experience, and fully seize every opportunity that I have here.

I don’t regret it, because without it I wouldn’t have the perspective and firsthand experience that I do today.