Suck Cesspool

It’s a play on words for sure. And I’m not even sure how many people out there know what a cesspool is anymore. But here we are! The combination of these two words written out is not anything that I’d want to be involved with. If you were to say the words out loud though, it conjures thoughts of Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pile of gold coins. A success pool is one that most of us would dive into. The problem is that they’re one in the same.

Our brains discount the reality of so many success stories because we get blinded by the success. JK Rowling is one of the most common that gets cited because she was a single parent on welfare prior to the success of the Harry Potter series. However, it gets glossed over pretty quickly because we know the ending. Her financial situation sucked and many of the things she had to “swim” through were a “cesspool”. It’s easy to look at her story and say it was worth it. But for that one outlier, there are far more stories of people who never turn that pool of muck into a pile of gold. Generally speaking though, that what it takes.

Success requires a willingness to do a lot of things that suck. Early mornings, late nights, long odds, thin margins, tough conditions, etc. are all possible ingredients to the “suck”. And the cesspool is filled with all kinds of things that we never want to encounter but must. Liars, backstabbers, trolls, false friends, amoral competition, self-sabotage, depression, etc. could all be lurking in the cesspool. 

So the question isn’t whether or not you want success. We all do regarding something. It’s a question of whether or not you’re willing to face all of the stuff that sucks and the muck that comes along the path to your success. The size of the success that you want is usually proportionate to the “stuff” that you’re going to have to go through to get it.

Hold your nose!

Pete