When is Life’s Little Secret to Success Going to be told?

By H. Mikel Feilen

I was thinking of the reasons why some people have great success. Why do some people’s lives seem more valuable and special? Why are they revered and treated as if they are better? Are there shared traits or commonalities between all successful people?

On the one hand, you have the rich, celebrated, and powerful, who live a life of comfort, fame, and fortune.

On the other hand, you have the poor, struggling masses who live a life that is hard, thankless, stressful, and virtually faceless.

But why does one person fail and another succeed? Is it hard work? Is that what elevates these special people to the top, making them the cream of the crop?

Are they smarter than everyone else? Do these people attend the best universities in the country, assuring their success? When they graduate, do they stand with a diploma in one hand and the keys to the summer home in the other?

Some very successful people never graduated from high school, let alone attended college. So, were their amazing accomplishments achieved through sheer ambition? A strong sense of ambition is a quality found in most successful businessmen, politicians, and celebrities from around the world. Could this be the cornerstone when building an empire or a global reputation?

Or, could it be that it is in their blood? Were they destined to be rich and famous from birth, like being born into a royal or super-wealthy family? For these success stories, their abilities, hard work, education, or ambition had nothing to do with their social accent into the one percent. Instead, massive wealth and success were passed along to the children, who merely had to be born to be special.

So herein lies the question with the wealthy-from-birth crowd — should the people born into an opulent lifestyle be considered when analyzing the key qualities that make a person a success? My answer was yes!

We know about the rich and the famous, but not everyone rich is famous — and not everyone famous is rich. This is because success is not always based on the same criteria. Being rich and living a lavish life is one form of success, but so is being at the top of your field, as in science, the arts, religion, and politics. Sometimes, fame and fortune find us!

Much like the person who inherits their success, as is the same for people who are naturally talented or have an innate ability that they were born with. The luck of the draw skyrockets them into a position of possible wealth, prestige, and notability.

But I know, and I am sure you know, people who are smart, talented, creative, educated, and ambitious yet are as poor as a church mouse and known only by an abstract few. What is the reason for such inconsistencies?

I love a good puzzle as much as the next guy, but this one had me stumped. It wasn’t like I pondered endlessly for hours on the answer either. It did feel as if success was or had a random element to it that was without form, purpose, intellect, or intent. In other words, it was not a tangible physical object, nor was it knowledge, talent, personality trait, or heritage. So what was this enigmatic but omnipresent little secret to success?

I had an idea come to me one evening while watching a baseball game. My idea made me think of the inconsistencies of success but from a physics point of view.

My father was a mathematician and preached the joys of math as I grew up. He would say that everything in life could be explained with the right mathematical equation. Thus, I approached the Random Element question as a physics problem. If my variable of the equation is correct, the random element will be the same in each form of success.

As I was saying, I was watching a baseball game when the proverbial light came on in my head. I watched as each player would step up to the plate, going through their ritual before taking their signature stance and giving the pitcher the look. The pitcher; on the mound, spitting, twisting, and scratching the dirt with his shoe like an old bull, preparing himself for the moment. Then, when the pitcher is ready, he looks back at the catcher for his finger-coded pitching instructions. It is now that the secret is revealed; within a second, success or failure is decided.

We take it all for granted, seeing it just as baseball. Our only concern is who wins or loses. If I watched the game with my father, he would argue about the team’s success or failure in a scientific way. He would contradict any reasoning pointing towards skill, ability, or awareness accounting for a team winning or losing. For him, it was simple — it was mathematics!

It was then I discovered that “When” you do something is far more important than “What” you do. The game I was watching proved my new-found theory beyond a shadow of a doubt with each pitch and swing. I watched as the pitcher squeezed his shoulder all the time, conjuring up his next pitch. The batter’s feet, firmly planted, body is slightly moving, staying loose, ready to swing at the ball in a split-second or let it zoom by. At once, I could see that no matter how good the batter was, how good his technique was, how strong he was, or how smart of a player he was, the only thing that mattered was how good his when was; this is his secret to success, as is ours.

If his timing is off, he misses the ball, plain and simple. On the other hand, if he is in his Wonderful World of Sports head zone and his timing is spot on, oh baby, this is great — oh baby, this is physics.

I feel this is a true statement: “It is not what you do, but when you do it, that is important in everything you do.” That means timing is the secret element in every success story. Hard work, intelligence, inheritance, talent, and spiritual enlightenment may all play an important role boosting someone into the stars — but they will only be successful if their timing is perfect at the point of blast-off.

Because of timing, being born into a royal family in Paris during the French Revolution would have been a death sentence. Easily, one could be looking at the business end of a guillotine instead of living their entitled bourgeois life.

Throughout the ages, we have seen people who were geniuses but were ahead of their time. Their life’s work was left behind in books, art, and music, only to be found and understood at a later date and time. During their life, many were ridiculed as their brilliance went unappreciated and unnoticed.

In every aspect of success, the “When” dictates the outcome. Look at your own life; you will see that you make when oriented choices every day, every day… many of which are quite crucial.

All success, financial, personal, and any other form of success, begins with when we do, not the what we do. What we do is very important too, but in this cascading sequence of events, the what, how, and why take a backseat to the when.

If you work hard and focus on success, you can achieve it; not everything is chance. However, because you are prepared, you will be able to know when to make the big decisions and at the right time to ensure your success. I call this “Taking advantage of my when!”

So, that little secret to success is simply, When! We search for the magical trick in being successful; high and low, we search, and yet, here it is, hidden in plain sight the whole time.

Swing, batter-batter-batter… Swing!