David Goggins is famous for the 40% rule: the idea is that the point where our minds tell us to give up indicates having used only 40% of our reserves.1 Mohammed Ali had a similar idea: when asked how many pushups he could do, he said eight or nine, adding that he only started counting when he could no longer do more.2. The idea is that we have reserves that far exceed our imagined capacity to withstand suffering.
Juxtaposed with this view is often the idea that our accomplishments reside on the other side of the proverbial mountain of suffering. Those few who succeed, it is said, realise their success because they pierce the hymen of pain and, as it were, endure the suffering that follows. On this account, success is roughly construed as effort + resilience.
This formula implies that success is borne of our agency; that it is up to each individual to create success for themselves, supposedly by putting in the effort and having grit. However, one cannot ignore decision-making as a significant contributor to success (or failure). It strikes me as uncontroversial to suggest that decisions can turn the fortunes of one’s life. Elsewhere, I quoted Dr Mark Lamberti who lists four kinds of decisions that inevitably pivot one’s life: who you marry, religious choices, career choices, and where you live – I will call these meta choices. On the face of it, this list is not exhaustive, but it is a fruitful start. For instance, one is most influenced by the person one marries. If not directly, definitely in terms of the constraints and possibilities that follow from having children, growing together, sharing values and grappling with extended family matters. The same can be said about the other meta choices, that they have a profound impact on one’s life.
It seems, therefore, that decision-making is crucial in how one’s life turns out. This opens up the idea that one’s agency – setting ends and pursuing them with means – is not sufficient for success. In other words, success is not entirely self-determined. If it is the case that decisions affect our lives, it follows logically that not only the decisions one makes affect one’s life. Indeed, the decisions made by one’s partner, boss or even state governor can significantly impact one’s life. At a macro level, we bear witness to the decisions made by heads of state that result in wars, say, in Gaza and Ukraine. It can be argued that the citizens who suffer the consequences of war have little to do with the politics that cause the wars. Thus, one’s circumstances, and to a large degree one’s success, result from forces far beyond one’s agency.
In keeping with the initial catalogue of meta choices, one can argue that people affected by wars or any such circumstances that make life miserable ought to exercise their agency, say, to move to another country or region. Also, to use another example, one who finds oneself in an abusive relationship ought to find another partner, and so on. I argue, to the contrary, that it is naive to think that such people willingly endure their circumstances. In wars, for instance, movement becomes restricted. In instances where they can move, the displacement brings other challenges such as inhabiting an area lacking infrastructure or public goods. Even in the case of abusive relationships, it is not obvious that one can simply dislodge oneself from a complex social environment, perhaps with children, family, emotions, hopes and so on. So, I further defend the idea that our circumstances result from forces far beyond our agency.
Now we are in the murky waters of victimhood and privilege. A victim, in this instance, grapples with an unwanted situation without having caused it. In reference to the example above, civilians in a warring state are victims because they have little to do with its cause and it can be argued that they have little sway, except if they organise, in how the war turns out. Privilege, on the other hand, refers to advantages that one enjoys without having brought them about. One need only point to the apparent inequality in South Africa – not only among blacks and whites but among the black elite and the black poor to appreciate the effect and extent of advantages that some enjoy without having brought them about.
Perhaps it is worth talking more about privilege. Some might argue that an entrepreneur, for instance, who built a business through sheer will and determination has exercised their agency to bring about their good fortunes. But consider that they exercise their agency within a fertile context, one with laws, opportunities, social capital and so on. So, this is not to bash the exercise of agency, but to recognise fundamentally that one’s agency is perhaps best regarded as a gentle contributor rather than a serious determinant.
At this point you may want to point to individuals who cross the circumstantial (or social mobility) divide, that is, they are born poor and end up rich, or they are born rich and become poor. Surely, these individuals disprove my thesis that our circumstances are better understood in terms of forces beyond our agency. These individuals, it might be argued, did something that changed their circumstances. They moved, they married well, they chose the right religion, or maybe they chose the right career. Allow me to offer two defences:
First. In a podcast, the respected businessman born to humble circumstances, Sizwe Nxasana, admits to having gained significant advantages from Black Economic Empowerment (B.E.E), the bundle of laws and regulations that (are supposed to) give black South Africans advantages over their white counterparts in the aim of redressing the past.3 His fledgling accounting firm at the time, he admits, was assisting small-time doctors and other black businesses. However, it has since grown to a large firm with an international footprint. He attributes his initial success to the economic and political shifts that created opportunities resulting in large contracts from the state. This opened even more opportunities where, for instance, he became the CEO of one of the largest banks in South Africa.
Of course, I cannot take away from his capabilities once at the helm, that is, his ability to learn quickly, think at a high level, build relationships, and add value thereby realising the potential in the opportunities. However, the opportunity itself depended entirely on a context which, I argue, was outside his sphere of agency. In other words, he could not have single-handedly created B.E.E. and the political environment, chosen the right career, met the right people, and bought about all the conditions that influenced his colleagues to consider him for the opportunities in the first place. He, and many others, were born at the right time, with the right skin colour, and fortuitously chose the right career.
In other words, he and many others were lucky. On the face of it, luck might appear to undermine what I have already mentioned as inherent skills to materialise the opportunity. But my idea of luck was best articulated by Warrant Buffet in an address at the University of Florida:
You don’t know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the ovarian lottery. And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. What type of world are you going to design?
Even those who work much harder to achieve their goals (not to suggest that the B.E.E elite did not work hard), I argue that if they were in a warring state, for instance, they could not have even dreamed of such opportunities. In other words, the context in which one exists significantly impacts the potential that one realises in oneself. This context, I argue, is largely outside one’s sphere of influence.
Second. I am further seconded by The Hamilton Project, a study in social mobility by Greenstone et al. The study shows that children of families in the top 5 income percentile see significant growth in family income throughout their lives. On the other hand, children in middle-income families hardly see any real changes, and those born in the lowest 35 income percentiles experience a worsening of family fortunes over time.4 In other words, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and not much happens in the middle. The study further shows that children in high-income families and those in low-income families do not have real differences in intellectual capacities. What shapes their lives are the opportunities to which they are born and of which they have access. This evidence further strengths my claim that access is largely due to circumstances outside our control, or that our context determines our circumstances more than we think.
I am not refuting effort and resilience as important ingredients in one’s success. However, my project in this newsletter was to show that one’s agency is only a contribution to one’s success. Furthermore, it can be argued that one’s agency is a small contribution to one’s success considering the forces that can impact one’s life. So, we are better off understanding our lives as shaped by the forces far beyond our sphere of influence and agency.
The ancient greeks seem to have understood this idea. Their belief in a constellation of gods, like the god of war, the god of love, the god of fortune (and so on) seems to portray a reality whereby the locus of control is mostly external to oneself. This view, of course, no longer appeals to us. We rather conceive of a world where we are in control of our fate and we direct our lives to a desired end. But maybe something can be said about espousing a life where one is partially in control, or perhaps largely not in control.
Here I imagine two leaves falling from a tree. One falls on the ground next to the tree and the other is whisked away by the wind and falls into a stream. Without effort attributable to it, the leaf that fortuitously fell into the river flows and covers unimaginable distances. If it were human, it would revel in its success and maybe fashion itself as a teacher, preaching about its success on social media. But may, just maybe, we are leaves on a great stream of destiny, aiming towards ends of which we have little to do in bringing about and maybe even conceiving.
Reference
[1] Haden, Jeff (2022). Can’t Overcome the Navy SEAL 40 Percent Rule? Embrace the Mindset of High Achievers. Inc Magazine. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/success-persistence-seal-40-percent-rule-high-achiever-mindset.html
[2]: Loper, Chris (2018). Mental Toughness. Becoming Better, https://becomingbetter.org/mental-toughness/
[3] Penuel Mlotshwa (2024) ‘The Konvo Show: Penuel In Conversation with Sizwe Nxasana, Sizwe & Co, Telkom CEO, First Rand CEO’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlJjX3y8zY (Accessed: 29 October 2024).
[4] Greenstone, M. et al. (2013) ‘Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education’, Brookings, 26 June. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/ (Accessed: 27 June 2020).
