How did I become the successful person I am today?

Real success, without the bullshit!

An elderly Slavic woman holding a cat with one hand and rising the other with her middle finger towards the camera. Her face expression is defiant.

If you ever felt that you are not doing enough, that you can do better, that you are lazy — you probably read the shitty articles with click-baity names like “7 habits of ultra successful people” or “How *a famous person* became the success they are today!”.

I read those, and they had several things in common. The most disturbing was the fact they never made one question clear. “What defines a “successful person”?

Now, my autistic brain was very confused. The articles talked about something that was never defined. They never said anything about what made these people successful. They wrote how great and admirable those people are, failing even to write what was so great about them. Most of the writers of these articles never even met the people they talked about.

My autistic brain found this to be very annoying, so we decided to find the pattern. We tried to find what those people have in common. Here are our conclusions:

1. They are rich. They have lots of money, and they don’t have to worry about petty stuff like keeping enough money to eat. They are not balancing their expenses to pay rant. They are not thinking about saving money in case they get too sick to work.
2. They are White Cis-Straight Dudes.
3. Unless Steven Hawking is on the list, non of the people mentioned are disabled. Steven Hawking rarely makes the list.
4. They almost always live in the USA (and are citizens). Few live in the UK or Canada.
5. They make lots of money — from owning a company.

This list might seem depressing. You might think to yourself that you can’t be successful. You are not a privileged Straight White Abled American dude with Lots of Money who owns a company, after all.

You are wrong!

Take me for example. I am an immigrant from USSR to Israel (race works differently here). I am disabled, Genderqueer and bisexual. Even though I have enough money to get by, I definitely have to work to pay rent and buy food. I am and I definitely don’t own a company. I am definitely not a dude. And I am successful.

As my few regular readers may know, I work part time for a minimal wage and I have many mental health issues. I don’t go to restaurants, I am not famous. My adviser for my master’s degree said that she can’t give me a recommendation for my resume.

“How can someone like *you* be successful?”

The answer is both simple and complicated. Success isn’t about being what society says is good. It is not about being rich and famous. It is not about being good within the academia. It is up to you to decide what success means to you. It took me some time to find, and I needed some time to understand it.

Here is the thing:

I am successful because I feel that I am successful.

Now, this may sound simple, but it is actually very hard. It took me a lot of therapy, medication, writing, talking, thinking and reading. It was a long process till I felt (sometimes) like I am actually a decent being that deserves to be alive. It was (and is) a painful journey. I learned a lot, and I have so much more to learn. But right now I am in a point in my life where I feel content. I feel that I succeed in what I do. I still struggle a lot. I have meltdowns, anxiety, sensory sensitivities and lots of pain. But my baseline is quite good.

OK, how do you do it?

In hope you will find some of my methods useful, I am sharing them here:

1. Self love is crap. If you hate yourself, forcing yourself to love yourself will make miserable. Especially if you do it because others told you so. Instead work on self acceptance. Learn what you can and can’t do. Find out what you can and cannot change. Don’t punish yourself for being you. Accept the fact that some things are harder to you, and there are things that you can’t do. Understand that the fact that you technically can do something, might not be worth it. Especially if you have to constantly push yourself to do it, without the thing becoming easier to do.
2. Work on healing. Ignoring the past or pretending bad things didn’t happen will backfire. If you can afford it, go to therapy. Take medications — and find the ones that work for you. Read blogs by people who have been through similar traumas. Talk to people about your life. Read books that will help you. Work on your past traumas. I carry C-PTSD from childhood abuse by my family. I still have flashbacks, nightmares and I am anxious all the time. I am not always aware that my abuse already stopped. But I made a lot of progress. I may never fully heal because my personality was built under abuse, but things got better. Slowly, painfully, but they did.
3. Self care is important. Try to be as healthy as you can, without sacrificing your well being. Try to eat healthy and yummy foods. Try to do exercise. Try to keep the place you live in nice and uplifting for you to be in. Do things you love. Get outside if you can. Try to find ways to improve your sleep. If doing something causes you distress, or is too hard or even impossible — it is fine. I stopped doing sports because I would self harm during them. By self harm I mean my autistic headbanging and other unpleasant things. So I did Yoga. When I couldn’t, I did my physiotherapy. It was better then doing nothing.
4. Find a place to be safe in. I can’t stress enough how important it is. You can’t start your healing if you are getting hurt. It will be harder to do the things you like if you can’t trust anyone not to hurt you. Or even trust yourself.
5. Be patient with yourself. I don’t know who put that idea in my head, but once I thought that getting out of my abusive home will solve all my problems. It didn’t. I wanted to be healed NOW. I felt like that is what I am expected to do (I wasn’t wrong). I thought that the fact my mental health didn’t improve proved that I was a horrible person. But with time, things got better. I needed an extra year to finish my thesis (and I was very ashamed by that). I couldn’t unpack all my staff more then a year into moving out. But I managed to do it.

And one day, when I went out of work, dreading the way home in the public transportation, it hit me. I am a successful person. I may not be smart, pretty or rich. But I felt content. And it was enough.

As a bonus, here is Hank Green saying some great stuff to about success:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjiMvcCzDBQ