Why Most Advice About Success Is a LIE

There’s something I’ve noticed that we rarely talk about, not honestly, at least. Success advice is everywhere. It’s on your Instagram feed, in podcasts, in books with overhyped titles like Crush It or Unstoppable Mindset. And almost all of it, in my opinion, is built on a lie.

Not because the people giving the advice are trying to deceive us (although some are), but because the entire concept of “success advice” operates under a broken assumption: that success can be replicated like a recipe.

You’ve heard the same formula repeated a hundred times, wake up at 5am, stay disciplined, network harder, visualize your goals. The truth? Most of that advice only works after you’ve made it. Before that, it’s just a distraction.

Let’s break this open properly.

Success Isn’t a Formula, It’s a Probability Game

People love clear steps. It makes the chaos of life feel manageable. But most successful people didn’t follow a blueprint, they stumbled through a complex mix of timing, luck, talent, background, and opportunity.

Sure, hard work plays a role (sometimes a big one). But it’s not the decisive factor people make it out to be. If it were, construction workers would be billionaires, and janitors would be giving TED Talks.

Most advice confuses correlation with causation. They say, “I did X, Y, and Z, and now I’m successful!” But maybe they also had a cousin at the VC firm. Or maybe they happened to launch their product right before a major trend hit.

This doesn’t mean their story is invalid. It just means their path isn’t replicable.

Success advice is often reverse-engineered storytelling. It tells you what worked once, not what will work again.

The Survivorship Bias Nobody Wants to Admit

Look up to any successful figure, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Oprah and you’ll find thousands of articles analyzing their “habits.”

But here’s what rarely gets said: for every Elon, there are a thousand people who tried the same things and failed.

We never hear about those people, because they don’t make good headlines. This is called survivorship bias , our tendency to focus on the visible winners and ignore the invisible majority who didn’t make it.

And so we chase shadows, trying to copy people whose success was likely a product of their environment, timing, and a dozen other factors they don’t even recognize in themselves.

Success is noisy. Failure is silent.

Most Advice Reflects the Speaker’s Personality, Not Universal Truth

When a highly extroverted person tells you “just talk to more people,” they’re not wrong, for them. For someone more introverted, that same tactic might feel draining or even counterproductive.

This is why generic advice fails: it assumes everyone is starting from the same place, with the same wiring.

Telling someone “just be confident” when they’ve struggled with self-doubt their whole life is like telling someone with a broken leg to “just walk it off.”

Advice doesn’t scale. It has to be personalized, contextualized, and sometimes, completely ignored.

The Motivation Industry Profits Off Your Insecurity

Let’s be blunt. There is a multi-billion dollar industry built on convincing you that you’re not enough yet, that if you buy this course, or follow that guru, you’ll finally unlock your potential.

But insecurity is the product. If they made you feel satisfied, they’d lose you as a customer.

The best kind of advice is often the least marketable. It sounds like this:

• “No one really knows what they’re doing.”
• “You might fail, and that’s okay.”
• “There’s no shortcut, just lots of small, boring steps.”

But that won’t sell books. That won’t go viral on TikTok. So instead, we get served a diet of dopamine-rich clichés dressed up as wisdom.

Real Success Is Often Quiet and It Looks Different for Everyone

Here’s something I believe deeply: real success is invisible to most people. It’s the single mom who raises two kids with love and stability. It’s the teacher who helps a student believe in themselves for the first time. It’s the person who turns down a high-paying job because it doesn’t align with their values.

But because those stories don’t involve yachts or public speaking gigs, we ignore them.

Success isn’t loud. It’s not always glamorous. And it doesn’t need to be shared online to be real.

If your version of success doesn’t feel like someone else’s highlight reel, that might be a sign you’re actually on the right track.