How To Become A Successful Person

What You Didn't Learn In School About Living A Successful Life

Without a personal philosophy, you cannot be successful.

You can be rich.

You can be beautiful.

You can be healthy.

But you cannot be successful.

Why?

Because success is not something we have, it is something that we do.

Success is a special kind of achievement.

And in order to achieve it, you need a personal philosophy.

What Is Success?

There are many different ways to think about success.

Many people think about success in terms of simply possessing what's desirable.

This is a deep mistake.

If you were to give wealth, beauty, and health to the worst person in the world, no one who really knew them would consider them successful.

They would simply consider them wealthy, beautiful, and healthy.

What matters for success is not whether you have certain things, but whether you acquire them in the right way.

There are 3 basic ways that someone might acquire what's desirable: luck, exploitation, or just rewards.

Luck

Suppose that you acquire what's desirable primarily through luck.

For example, suppose that one day a bored billionaire is browsing Substack and decides to donate $1,000,000 to me after coming across my page.

He doesn't donate $1,000,000 to me because he is a genuine fan of my work, or because he wants to support new creators on Substack. He donates this money to me simply because he is bored and wants to see what will happen if he gives a random person on the internet $1,000,000.

Everyone would agree that the money itself is desirable for its instrumental value.

It doesn't lose its instrumental value just because it came about through stupid means.

This amount of money would instantly transform my life, and make it possible for me to become a full time creator who can potentially helps tens of thousands of people by producing valuable work.

The thing is, if this were to happen to me, I would not feel any personal satisfaction whatsoever (again, I did not receive this money because someone valued my work).

What we truly want, deep down, is not simply to have certain things, but to have them because we deserve them.

We want to have things because we succeeded in doing something difficult. In accomplishing what we set out to do in a way that is admirable.

There are few things more valuable in the world than earning what’s truly desirable in an admirable way.

In fact, it is very often the case that even when someone has been able to acquire what's desirable through luck, they feel a deep internal dissatisfaction because they know in the back of their head that their “success” wasn't the byproduct of anything they did to deserve it.

It is always possible, of course, that someone can convince themselves that they actually deserve what they have acquired through luck.

But just because someone thinks this about themselves doesn't make it true.

When someone acts as if they have accomplished something great that was the result of sheer luck, they look like a fool — one of the worst things anyone can be. Such a person can have many things, but they can never have the satisfaction of genuine achievement until they are honest with themselves about what they deserve.

Exploitation

It is always possible, of course, to acquire what's desirable through exploiting others (or some combination of exploitation and luck).

Exploitation comes in many forms, such as enslavement, manipulation, deception, and underpayment.

It goes without saying that many great fortunes have been built as a direct result of exploitation.

Can the person who exploits others to acquire what's desirable be considered successful?

I think not.

Again, it is necessary to distinguish between success as having or possessing certain things, and success as doing things in a certain way.

The Evil Oligarch has pretty much anything that a human being could possibly desire and would think of when thinking about “success”. But if the Oligarch's means for acquiring these things were either exploitation or luck, it is again the case that there is at least one thing the Evil Oligarch can never have — the satisfaction of genuine achievement.

It is here that we must confront a difficult challenge to morality that has haunted moral philosophers since the days of Socrates and Plato.

There are many well-known ways to present this challenge, but for the purposes of this article I will present it in the form of a question:

"Can an immoral person be successful?"

Suppose I tell the Evil Oligarch to his face that he has everything except genuine achievement. He says:

"How can you look at the life I have built for myself and say that I have not genuinely achieved anything? I have everything a human being could possible desire, and I earned it through hard work, cleverness, and shrewd decision-making".

There is some truth in the Evil Oligarch's response, and this can make it difficult to handle.

It is true that, from a certain perspective, the Evil Oligarch likely had to perform many impressive and challenging feats to acquire everything he has. They likely had to perform incredible acts of deception, negotiation, and deal-making to execute his elaborate business strategy and amass a great fortune.

So, it seems true that a bad man can succeed in overcoming difficult things.

But it is always important to make clear that the bad man who succeeds in overcoming difficult things is doing so either in the pursuit of bad ends, or in a bad way.

But are these achievements genuine achievements? Should we count the Evil Oligarch as a successful human being?

I think not.

We should consider the Evil Oligarch a complete failure of a human being who has succeeded in doing difficult things in the pursuit of evil ends.

I doubt this thesis on its own is controversial or surprising to anyone. But I think that something can be learned from understanding why it is true.

One of the many things that makes the Evil Oligarch incredibly unsuccessful, aside from his obvious immorality, is that he has provided us with every reason to believe that he could not have "achieved" the same outcomes without exploiting others. In other words, if he had tried to compete with someone who was doing things the right way, we have reason to believe that he would have been a failure.

(The other alternative is actually worse. If the Evil Oligarch could have been equally successful without exploiting anyone along the way, then that would mean they chose to be evil unnecessarily).

In what way can the Evil Oligarch be considered a failure?

I suspect that it would not be because of his lack of talent.

Many evil people are, as much as we hate to admit it, quite talented and effective at accomplishing their aims.

The Evil Oligarch would have been a failure because he lacked the moral character necessary to choose the right things to aim at, and continue pursuing them even if they struggled to acquire them admirably.

In short, the failure of the Evil Oligarch is that he was either too cowardly to fail as a good person trying to do things the right way, or had the wrong desires and sacrificed his moral integrity in order to acquire wealth at the expense of others.

Just Rewards

The third and final way that someone can acquire what’s desirable is through doing things the right way, and acquiring what’s desirable as a result of their character, rather than in spite of it.

The truly successful person is someone who acquires many of the same things as the Evil Oligarch without having to resort to exploitation, without convincing themselves that they deserve the benefits of sheer luck, and without having to compromise their moral character in the face of material failure and adversity.

While the lucky person acquires what’s desirable through random chance, and the evil person acquires what’s desirable through bad or evil actions, the truly successful person acquires what’s desirable through acting well.

If success is something we do or achieve, rather than have, then neither the lucky person nor the evil person can be truly successful.

The lucky person has what’s desirable, but not because of anything they did to deserve it.

The evil person has what’s desirable because of what they did, but the things they had to do to acquire what’s desirable cannot be considered successful actions.

Someone might say that evil actions are successful if they help you get what’s desirable, but again this assumes that success consists in having what’s desirable, rather than doing what’s admirable.

The truly successful person, meanwhile, succeeds in pursuing what’s desirable in the correct way, regardless of the outcome.

The truly successful person also has the correct relationship between their motivations, actions, and results.

Such a person not only knows what they do and do not deserve, but they do not even desire what they do not deserve, and are courageous enough to admit failure if they cannot achieve what they were aiming for in the right way.

Meanwhile, the lucky person believes they are successful because of what they possess, and the evil person is unwilling to admit failure.

Although we can never fully control the outcomes of our actions, the truly successful person is someone who always acts successfully because they aim at what is good, pursue it in the right way, and have the proper attitude towards their actions.

It was common ground in Ancient Greek ethics that virtuous or excellent actions did not depend on securing a specific result, but in pursuing things the right way.

The Stoics would often use the example of an archer who is aiming correctly at the target but misses because, after they released the shot, a gust of wind blew their arrow off course.

The archer, in such a case, acted well despite the result.

Even though the archer missed the target, they still take pride in their action knowing that they did the best they could.

This is something no one can take away from them.

While the lucky archer may win the prize, they can never share in the true satisfaction of acting well.

When we aim at the right things, in the right way, we act successfully.

When we do this consistently, we become a successful person.

But how do you know what to aim at?

How Do You Know What To Aim At?

If being a successful person requires acting successfully, and acting successfully requires aiming at the right things in the right way, then we need to figure out what to aim at in life.

In order for it to even be possible to aim at the right things, we need some kind of personal philosophy or life plan.

Why?

Because without a personal philosophy or life plan, it is impossible to truly aim at anything.

Consider what someone’s life would be like without a personal philosophy.

Every action, decision, and situation one finds oneself in would be completely disconnected from every other because there is no ultimate goal or set of goals that give structure and meaning to one’s actions and thoughts.

Without a personal philosophy, we would be forced to live randomly.

This would be like wandering through a foreign land without any idea where you are going or what you are even trying to accomplish. It would be possible to walk around and do various things, but they would not really add up to anything and completely lack purpose.

Such a person would be, in the strongest possible sense of the term, lost.

Now, I don’t actually think it is even possible for someone to live without some kind of personal philosophy.

Whether they are aware of it or not, everyone has some set of beliefs, values, and desires that they are trying to live out, either implicitly or explicitly.

This set of beliefs and values might be completely incoherent, immoral, and subconsciously held, but it is still a kind of personal philosophy nonetheless.

Simply having a personal philosophy, though, doesn’t count for much.

What any reasonable person wants in life is not just to have a personal philosophy, but to have and live out a successful personal philosophy or life plan.

A successful personal philosophy is one that can help them aim at the right things, make good choices, cultivate the appropriate desires, and take effective action to achieve their aims — in short, it is one that can help them live a successful human life.

(It is an interesting question whether one’s beliefs need to be true in order for this to happen).

So, in order to become a successful person and thereby live a successful life, you need, at the very least, some kind of life plan or personal philosophy.

But what is a personal philosophy? How do you figure out what your personal philosophy is? And how can you change it so that you can make sure it is a good one?

How To Create Your Own Personal Philosophy

Everyone has a personal philosophy whether they realize it or not.

What is a personal philosophy?

In general, a personal philosophy is the unique set of beliefs, values, and moral principles that guide your thoughts, actions, and life choices.

It is the operating system for your life.

If you do not know what your personal philosophy is, then you are taking a serious risk with your life.

You are risking living your entire life according to a plan that you did not choose for yourself and that could be holding you back from being a successful person.

If you did not choose your personal philosophy, then someone else chose it for you.

So it is incredibly important to try and figure out where you are currently at if you want to even give yourself a chance at being able to actively change the beliefs and values that guide your entire life.

Without knowing where you’re currently at, you are merely hoping that things will change in your favor.

Is that a risk you are willing to take with your life?

My advice is to figure out what personal philosophy you currently living by and then create a new one that better serves you.

If you have never taken the time to write down what your fundamental beliefs, values, desires, and goals in life are, then it is very likely that you are not in control of your thoughts and feel anxious about your life.

Imagine if you were to run a business this way.

Imagine that you were a CEO and never took the time to externalize and document your business philosophy, strategy, goals, and core values.

Even just thinking about this makes me incredibly anxious.

The thing is, you are the CEO of your life.

No one else can run it for you.

You need a life plan in order to be successful.

It’s possible to simply choose a pre-made philosophy to live by.

Millions of people do this, and it is a good way to guarantee that you end up like everybody else.

I recommend that you create your own.

Why?

The main reason is that if you simply choose to follow some pre-existing plan, then there is a real danger that you will never really do the work on yourself that you need to do in order to take control of your own thoughts.

If you are not in control of your thoughts, then you are not in control of your life.

This often ends up being another way of leaving your life up to chance, and hoping that the philosophy you chose will serve you well.

If you are not wiling to take that risk, then I recommend that you learn how to create your own philosophy and use pre-existing ideas as the raw material upon which you work.

Going through the process of creating your own personal philosophy will force you to take an active role in shaping your life and creating your ideal self, which makes it more likely that you will actually succeed in achieving it.

The problem is that we don’t learn any of the skills, ideas, or frameworks necessary to create or redesign our personal philosophy in school or university.

That would be too dangerous.

The education system is meant to socially condition you so that you fit into what’s already been accepted as normal in your society and become a productive worker.

The unfortunate truth about the current global economic system is that it would not be able to function without the vast majority of people passively accepting the status quo.

The only way to break free from this is to think differently from everybody else.

It is simply not possible to live differently from everybody else if you are thinking the same thoughts.

My Solution: Build Your Own Micro-Philosophy

There are many ways to go about creating your own philosophy and transforming your life.

What matters isn’t finding the perfect solution, but the one that works for you.

After studying philosophy for 15 years and getting a PhD, I reached a point in my life where I felt like I didn’t really know what my own philosophy was.

I had spent thousands of hours studying everyone else’s, but I had never really sat down to create or design my own.

So I asked myself the following question:

“Given everything I know about philosophy, what would be the best way to build my own philosophy from scratch?”

What I came up with was the micro-philosophy system.

While I don’t think this is the only way to build your own philosophy, it is the way that makes the most sense to me and I think to anyone who is interested in building their life upon a solid philosophical foundation.

The micro-philosophy system is a step-by-step process for building your own micro-philosophy.

A micro-philosophy is a logically cohesive system of fundamental beliefs, values, and moral principles that you can live by and fit onto a sheet of paper.

Unlike the macro-philosophies of history’s great thinkers, a micro-philosophy is meant to be something that is manageable, useful, and personalized to your life circumstances.

It is not supposed to provide a universal answer to life’s biggest questions, but some of the answers to the biggest questions of your life.

A micro-philosophy is a way to organize your thoughts and beliefs into a flexible system that helps you feel less anxious, make decisions, and take actions that move your towards living in alignment with your ideal self.

If you want to learn more about the concept of a micro-philosophy, I have written various articles here on my Substack that develop the idea in more detail.

If you want to learn how to actually build one for yourself, the most up-to-date and comprehensive way to do that would be to enroll in my upcoming course, titled Micro-Philosophy: Foundations.

Micro-Philosophy: Foundations is the first complete course that brings together everything I have written over the last 9 months and combines it into a step-by-step system that guides you through building your own micro-philosophy in just 28 days.

The goal of the course is to help ordinary people go from having no idea what their personal philosophy even is, to having a clearly articulated system for living in just one month.

The course gives you the step-by-step system and frameworks that you need to be able to do this.

Like I said, this is not the only way to create your own philosophy for life, but I don’t know of anyone else who is teaching people how to think for themselves about their life in such a systematic way.

There is so much great advice online today, but almost no one is teaching people how to think.

Instead, most content tells people what to think or do.

This can lead to information overload, anxiety, and inaction.

If you want to learn how to actually think for yourself about your life on your so that you can have more mental clarity, self-confidence, and direction, I think this course is right for you.

If you already feel like you already know who you are and what your purpose in life is, then this is probably not going to benefit you unless you are looking for a system that helps you think more deeply about your current beliefs.

By joining Micro-Philosophy: Foundations, you will also become part of a community of philosophically minded people who are also seeking more freedom and agency in their lives.

Micro-Philosophy: Foundations is a cohort-based course which means that you will start and finish the course with a unique group of other people who join at the same time as you. After the course concludes, though, you will have lifetime access to the community and be able to interact with a growing network of micro-philosophers.

Micro-Philosophy: Foundations will be released for pre-sale on July 12, 2025.

The course officially launches on July 19, 2025 and runs for 4 weeks until August 16, 2025.

I hope to see you there.

-Paul