Does Success Have a Formula?

“Is there a formula for success, and if so, what are some of the variables that this formula uses? How can anyone leverage this formula to succeed in whatever they are doing?”

This is a question I have contemplated for a long while. In this reflection, I want to share with you the thoughts I have constructed in answer to the above question. I vehemently believe that success can be reproduced. This stems from the basic life principle that says if you do the same things over and over again, you will keep getting the same results.

As someone with a science background, having been exposed to quite a number of scientific experiments, I can relate this to how scientific experiments are conducted. In science, before one conducts an experiment, they must establish a hypothesis they want to test.

You then set out to test your hypothesis by preparing the necessary environment and making available all the required ingredients or components. You proceed to conduct the actual experiment and then draw conclusions based on the results that you get.

The results will mostly go one of two ways: your hypothesis was right, or it was not. However, in the case of a positive outcome, for your hypothesis to be accepted as a universally accepted theory, it must meet a couple of criteria.

One of the most important criteria is that the whole experiment that you conducted must be reproducible. That means that if anyone else in any part of the world decides to repeat your experiment and puts together the same setup you had, and is able to simulate the same environment you used (like the same temperature, same times of day, etc.), then they should get the exact results that you got. If this is the case, then it also implies that there is a simple formula to achieve the results that you got.

With this knowledge in the background, let us now turn to the discussion about success. Does success have a formula? Inferring from my earlier illustration of the scientific experiment process, I can say that success in anything has a formula.

This means that if you are able to get the same ingredients, environment, or any relevant factors that another person used in order to succeed in a particular field of life, then you can replicate that success.

But if success is reproducible as I say, then why do people still fail, and why can’t every person just focus on the formula or processes used by successful people to help them also succeed?

That is where the caveat comes in. Even though success is reproducible, it is unfortunately not easy to reproduce the setup for anything in real life. For instance, if you come across someone who has been able to successfully build a unicorn and they share with you all their trade secrets and how they built that company, it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee success.

This is because, in real life, the environment that led to their success may not necessarily prevail in your case. This could imply the economic state, people they met, times of the year, and many other factors which are very unique.

Because of this, it is quite difficult to just bluntly say that success can be reproduced in life. So, if it is highly unlikely for us to replicate success based on the fact that we may not get the variables for the formula right, does that mean we should just focus on our own path and not even bother about what others did to succeed?

I would say a big NO to that and lay emphasis on the importance of learning from others. Even though you may not get all the variables right when trying to learn from successful people, the higher the number of such variables you get right, the higher chances you have of replicating their success.

This means that by knowing exactly what made others successful can go a long way to prepare you for success. Even if you don’t replicate their success, you may only slightly deviate away from it, either positively or negatively.

This also goes on to tell us not to just blindly copy and paste what others did but try to guide the things we do, even if we are trying to replicate what others did. Who knows, the various variables that you introduce or even the ones you miss from theirs can be the reason why yours succeed way better than theirs.

Another important thing is that if you learn enough from the variables used by a lot of successful people, you will begin to identify patterns that lead to success. These can help you identify the dependent variables which should be constant in your own formula for success.

This is, therefore, the reason why it is a good idea to learn from what others have done.

Remember that success leaves clues, and if you pay enough attention, you may be able to identify a formula that will enable you to succeed at what you are doing just by learning from those who have previously succeeded at it.