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Fake Successes

Writer's picture: William DownsWilliam Downs

Let’s be honest—most of us will rack up only a handful of true successes in our lifetime. We find the right partner (if we’re lucky), land a dream job (or at least one that pays the bills), maybe get into a prestigious school. And that’s about it. The rest? It’s filler.

 

But because we crave the rush of victory, we invent fake successes to keep ourselves going. That’s why we cheer for sports teams as if we’re on the field, devour celebrity gossip like it’s our own wedding announcement, and get emotionally invested in TV shows, movies, novels, and video games. These little surrogate triumphs give us a temporary high, a quick fix for our ambition-starved souls. But deep down, we know the truth—our personal scoreboard isn’t affected when our favorite team wins the World Series or when we rack up 7 million gold stars playing Counter-Strike: World Domination Overlord Edition.

 

A great story is a series of small wins (and losses) leading to a final, climactic success. The protagonist is actively doing things—overcoming challenges, making choices, and experiencing real triumphs. If you want your life to be interesting, you need to be your own protagonist. So, forget about living vicariously through others. Stop tallying up someone else’s victories as if they were your own. Create your real mini-successes. Because in the final moments of your story, you don’t want to look back and realize that all your greatest victories belonged to someone else.

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