There Has Never Been a Self-Made Anyone

No one is self-made. No one. Anyone who claims anything to the contrary is lying to themselves. We live in a globally-connected network, and we rise and fall together.

Every movie star, every businessperson, every leader of any sort has had help. They have emerged with through the strength of their network and everyone who has come before them, and everyone who will sustain their current level of success.

The movie star who says they’re self-made would be anonymous without the millions of fans who buy tickets to their movies, not to mention the parents who enrolled them in acting classes, the teachers who taught those classes, the directors and producers who gave them their role.

The businessperson who says they’re self-made would be piss broke without the customers that paid for their lifestyle, the distributors and partners that fulfilled those customers’ orders, the professors at the business school they studied at, the authors whose business books they’ve read…the list goes on.

The only person who could possibly say that they are self-made is the person who goes off into the wilderness to live off the land; but even they can’t say that they’re self-made or self-sufficient, because how do they eat? Everyone alive is supported and brought up by the people and planet that makes up existence itself…