Success Isn’t Good Karma: People should attribute their success to not only their hardships, but their hard work

“God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.”

You’ve probably seen this quote on Pinterest or hanging on one of those sappy wooden signs with black script lettering in the Target home aisle. The way I interpret this sappy quote is that the strongest people who have the best futures have to go through the harshest struggles to get there.

But what part of that’s true? Sometimes people can make it seem like the way of the world is that people who go through tough things have success and good fortune coming for them automatically, but this mindset is misleading.

Quotes like these often give people something to latch onto — and I’m not saying I’m not guilty of this too. Whenever I’m going through a difficult time with school, friends or family, I’ll often think to myself, this is because I have a good future coming, this is what I have to go through to get there.

Often when I’m venting to someone, they remind me that karma will come back to me because an inconvenience has happened. In the moment, this promise might make me feel better — but that glimpse of joy is short-lived. 

In reality, if something good is coming for me, it’s going to be because I worked my butt off to make it happen — not just because I was dealing with the loss of someone or going through family problems.

When I was in seventh grade, I broke my ankle the week before dance tryouts. After sitting out for almost three months, I put in so many extra hours at home stretching and conditioning to get back to the shape I was in. I ended up being placed in more advanced classes and routines the following year. So many people told me “You deserved that lead after having to sit out for so many months,” after our first competition. But really, I just wished someone would have told me that they were proud of how hard I worked.

A lot of the more well-known success stories are from people who had a painful childhood or went through years of suffering before ever catching a break. Instead of giving them credit for their success because of their hard work, people instead attribute it to the struggles they faced in the past that pushed them to their success, essentially diminishing their accomplishments and struggles.

One example is Oprah Winfrey. She was physically abused throughout her childhood, and gave birth when she was only 14 to a son who only lived a few days. When I hear people talk about her, it’s always, “It’s awesome that Oprah is so successful now, she deserves it after the trauma she went through as a teen. By the way, do you know what she went through as a teen?”

But Oprah isn’t successful and well-regarded because she had a rough childhood. She’s achieved her goals because she carved her own path to success by talking on radio shows, creating her television broadcast and moving up the ladder until she had enough power and wealth to create her own talk show. Many of Oprah’s most successful books and episodes are a reflection of her early struggles, but they’re also a reflection of what she’s learned through making such a huge name for herself — on her own. 

If I were Oprah, I’d want people to appreciate my work ethic that led to my accomplishments, rather than just feel proud of me for making it through the calamities I faced early on. We should give Oprah credit for her creations and impact, rather than focus on her past.

That leaves those who endure hardships and never find a way out. Sometimes, the reason for this is that they don’t actually ever try to get out of it. 

If you took honors English sophomore year, you might remember reading “The Glass Castle” over the summer. The author and narrator Jeanette Walls tells the stories of her family who faced poverty in the 1960s all the way through the early 2000s. The family faces homelessness as a result of the parents who can’t keep a job or save money. By the end of the book, the three kids make it out of the cycle and gain success while their parents don’t. Why don’t they? Simply because they lack the motivation to create a functional life for themselves.

The hardships they faced had no impact on their success.

Walls and her siblings gained success and freedom because they all worked incredibly hard to get out of the life they were living. The parents could’ve done the same if they worked for it, but they didn’t. Good things don’t just come to good people, they have to be earned.

Success isn’t some karma-provided gift as a reward for their hardships, and the “toughest soldiers” are not destined to face great success: good things are deserved when they are earned, not because people simply have had it rough. A tough soldier doesn’t necessarily mean a hard worker — you can be the toughest, strongest soldier but you might not have to work for it at all. Maybe you have it easy, or maybe you’re a weak soldier, but your strength doesn’t always matter in the eyes of success. Anyone can have it hard, and anyone can have it easy, but only persistent workers gain success, happiness and true satisfaction in life.