Is success in anything possible with pure ambition or is there more?

[Sgoldie]

Add having a quick mind or being a quick study to see what you need to do, an ability to stay tuned on the big picture as well as the intellect to handle details even as you delegate them. Some amount of success comes down to marketing and PR, ie, perception.

[redguard57]

I accomplished more or less what my career goal was in college.

Yes I had help. A professor that liked me helped get me my first position which was crucial to build experience. I never would have gotten my subsequent jobs without that initial experience. There were a couple other leg-ups that I got too, some of them due to my own good planning, others just to luck.

In a lot of ways the luck factor was that nothing went wrong, ie: I did not have a car accident, break my leg, cancer, an unplanned kid or some other setback. My former college roommate got into a car accident in his jeep - it rolled over onto his shoulder, that was an instant $47,000 surgery bill to fix it - he had crappy insurance that didn't cover much of that. He had just started an adventure travel business, mostly geared toward scuba which was what he wanted to do. Well, with a bum arm you're not going to do a lot of diving so his business didn't go far. It took him years to recover from that both physically and financially & he will never get those years back, now is in a completely different field.

Another luck factor was that people generally like me and have not tried to screw me over which I've seen happen to others and sometimes for stupid reasons - ie: I once saw a guy held back, I'm pretty sure because he was Jewish and I know for a fact the manager did not like Jews. There was no other explanation for why he was passed over for promotion.

[redguard57]

Originally Posted by SOON2BNSURPRISE

Tyrone Bogues 5' 3", Earl Boykins 5' 5", Anthony Webb 5' 7" all played in the NBA

He did say star. You can be short and be in the nba but you have to be super good ie: Chris Paul.

[tickyul]

Originally Posted by lkm370

But on the flipside, there are more successful talentless people than the latter. Think of all the successful bands with mediocre singers and musicians or terrible actors or even terrible presidents. It seems most company CEOs are useless as well. It seems in all industries, there are far more hacks at the top than people who are truly innovative or revolutionary. How can someone be so useless and incompetent(in some situations) yet still rise that far?

Part of the reason I ask is Ive recently been reading alot of biographies and memoirs and it seems that alot of these people decided this is what I'm going to do and just steamrolled their way into it with networking, hard work, and taking action and what they sough to do finally happened. In my lifetime, Ive rarely met a super ambitious person. Most people seem to be on autopilot and certain lucky people who come from a good background can get pretty far up while being totally useless. People like George Bush(dad was ex prez), Taylor Swift(wealthy dad bought record label to get her signed), etc etc

Well, in fields where you HAVE to be good, or you are either not getting hired/will soon be fired.....there is really no faking it. Most of these fields are pretty black and white.

If you are an engineer responsible for keeping an assembly-line well-maintained and running.......and you fail at that task on a regular basis, you WILL be gone!

Non black/white areas of proficiency.....you have a LOT more leeway in being a dooooofussss!