Is success a tip of the iceberg or the iceberg itself?
In first quarter of 2019, I won a National Essay Writing Competition organized by Better Breed Cameroon and that success led me into a series of depressions thereafter. I'd been so obsessed by the thought of winning this competition that I didn't sit to think what'll happen, or what I'll become after winning this contest. The Competition Prize was a whooping sum of 100,000FCFA (Cameroonians living in Cameroon know how hard it is to come by such a sum) For a great time, I thought it was the money that instilled in me, the desire to win this contest. I was thinking about the aftermaths of my achievements. The success stories and the "from sorry to glory" praises I was going to get( though I never got) I thought that winning this single contest was good enough to solve all my problems. So after winning, I had to slumber into depression. After all, that was my only raison d'être at that moment; to show people how gifted I could be as a writer. What did I get after?
The success iceberg has it that success is the only visible part of the process, with hard work, persistence, late nights, rejections, risks, failures... being the other part - the part we don't see. But I'm questioning that theory today. What if success was more than just the tip of the iceberg but the iceberg itself? Mic Monsta, a Cameroonian Musician in one of his singles titled "Johnny" sang: "Minimize your little steps, celebrate your gains..." And I felt that. We so much focus on the end result that we forget every little step matters. We don't believe in these little successes we attain when we fight procrastination et al. We don't see the success attained when we don't slumber after rejection. We only see the destination. And maybe that's why success has caused more people to be depressed in the past. I watched Whitney's documentary and I believe the reason for her downfall is because she didn't have a plan for when the success came - just like most of us.
While reading "The One Thing", a book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, I came to discover that success is more of a process than the expected result. They talked of The Domino Effect. Letting little things pile up to give you the greater success. Joining these little successes to achieve that final success. Which gets me thinking, asking myself... Is success just that tip or the iceberg itself? Without the other part would success have any meaning? Would it be gratifying?
