The danger of role models: Defining Success on Your Own Terms

Your heroes can kill you.

Living based on how you’re perceived can lead to suboptimal decisions if you’re doing what makes others happy. But acting based on how you’re seen can also skew your perception of your own strengths, and lead you to severely underestimate your potential, and the opportunities on the horizon.

I once had a mentor figure who was like a hero to me, until I realised that his perception of me was holding me back. I was a 20-year-old college dropout, still obstinately clinging to the dream of joining a top-tier global law firm.

We were at the park getting coffee. Me, the headstrong optimist. He, the wise sage.

I told him I was planning to apply to one of my dream firms. There was a chance I could become one of the first people at any City firm to be allowed to join without a degree.

He laughed kindly. “How many new associates do they take on each year?”

“Ten,” I said.

“I love you, brother. But why don’t you apply here?” He replied, pointing over my shoulder at the cafe we’d just ordered coffee from. There was a ‘hiring’ sign in the window.

This is someone I looked up to. Someone I had watched overcome the impossible.

He was an army veteran who’d been paralysed from the waist down by a car bomb. They told him he’d never walk again, but that didn’t stop him from finding a beautiful wife, having a wonderful child, and eventually learning to walk for short periods using crutches.

But he looked at my impossible dream and thought I was the crazy one.

In fairness, he wasn’t alone. My parents said the same thing. Everyone did. I’d said I wanted to be a corporate lawyer since I was 14 but I never actually met one until I got to university.

A few months after that conversation, I was having welcome drinks with the managing partner of one of the world’s biggest law firms. My dream was fully realised. He told us the odds of getting accepted that year were 1500:1.

People won’t always see the fire in you, or know when it’s burning hot enough to burn down the walls between you and your crazy, ambitious goals.

I’ll still give the general advice that you should be wise to your limits and never bet so much on a single opportunity that failure could wipe you out completely.

But sometimes you just have to tune out the world and chase your goals with reckless abandon.