Success isn't what you think.

It isn't what you see on the internet. It isn't what you hear in the news. It isn't what you read about in the manicured business biographies. It isn't the neat, linear path from plan to execution to celebration.

You're sold a glossy, filtered version of success.

The reality looks different.

In today's piece, I want to share 13 harsh truths about success—the reality that no one sells you (because it wouldn't sell very well).

Brace yourself and let's dive right in...

You will have to endure long seasons of loneliness.

Periods of loneliness are a natural byproduct of transformation.

When you start growing, changing, and developing faster than your environment, you will stop fitting into that environment.

The people you felt aligned with start to feel distant.

It's almost as if you start speaking an entirely different language. You no longer have much to talk about. They don't seem to understand your values or motivations. They say you've changed. They laugh at your ambitions. They tell you to be realistic.

But as you leave behind the old, you have yet to attract and build the new.

Remember: The season of loneliness is natural, a sign you're on the right path.

Embrace it. Use the solitude and the focus it creates to accelerate your pace of transformation.

Your anxiety will scale proportionally to your ambition.

Your ambition is your greatest asset and your greatest liability.

Ambition can be channeled to create incredible outcomes—but it also creates incredible anxiety when those outcomes are falling short of rising expectations.

The most ambitious people are also those who are the most prone to the feelings of anxiety that accompany the non-linearity of their progress.

If you think your anxiety will dissipate as your achievements compound, you will be disappointed.

The best you can hope for is to manage that tension: Center on your present actions, maintain gratitude in the moment, and zoom out regularly to appreciate your progress.

To shine in the light you have to embrace boredom in the dark.

Most of what you think success looks like is the social media version: The glamorous trips, the fancy events, the impressive meetings, the flashy stuff.

Here's a reality check: The success you want is found in the discipline you've been avoiding. The structure. The routine. The order. The boredom.

What success actually looks like:

• Doing what's necessary, even when you don't feel like it
• Executing the boring basics, day in, day out
• Finding ways to be useful to everyone around you
• Falling in love with the slow, stalking grind of the hunt

Don't be fooled: Success is built on the back of long, painful periods of extremely disciplined, boring routines. This is the cost of entry.

The climb is always better than the view from the summit.

The arrival fallacy is the false assumption that reaching some goal or achievement will create durable feelings of satisfaction in our lives.

The reality (which you've probably experienced):

You reach whatever you propped up as your summit, feel a fleeting burst of dopamine-induced euphoria, and then the nearly immediate lull that accompanies the lack of a new summit to climb towards.

My entire life changed when I accepted one truth:

Real happiness is found in the anticipation of the achievement, not the achievement itself. It’s the quest. It’s the hunt. It’s the process. It's the journey.

The best moment is right before you have it. You're still on the chase, but you can taste it. It's just a matter of time. It's in your control.

The happiness is not in the having, but in the becoming.

It's in the climb, not the summit.

You have to pay your rent daily.

A lot of people seem to think that after you make it you can coast in the idyllic land of success.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Every single day, you have to fight to earn your seat at the table.

And that fight gets more intense as you have more success:

You have more to lose. More mouths to feed. More people counting on you. More expectations.

There's an old saying that I love:

Every morning in the savannah, the gazelle wakes up and knows it must outrun the lion or be killed. The lion wakes up and knows it must outrun the gazelle or starve. Whether you're the gazelle or the lion, when you wake up in the morning, you'd better start running.

Rent is due daily. Pay it with pride.

Adaptability will always beat planning.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change." - Charles Darwin

Adaptability is the single most important trait for success in life.

The explorer doesn't set out on his voyage trusting that the seas will remain calm and that he will stay perfectly on course; but rather, in his ability to adapt when the inevitable storms and chaos arrive.

You are the explorer and life is your voyage. You don't need to trust in your plan or your intelligence.

You need to trust in your ability to adapt.

Your imposter syndrome and self-doubt never go away.

I've asked several billionaires about their experience with imposter syndrome and self-doubt in the early years of their careers.

All of them said the same thing:

It never went away.

You just get a little bit better at moving forward in spite of it.

It's comforting to know that the CEOs and founders of some of the biggest companies in the world still experience that same sensation before the big presentation or meeting. It's human. It's natural.

They feel it. They just act anyway.

It will always take longer than you expect.

There's an idea called Hofstadter's Law that I love:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Success in any endeavor seems to follow this law perfectly.

If you ever need to create a timeline on which you think something will happen, just double your initial estimate and you'll probably have a more useful one.

Remember: The most meaningful things in life take a long time to earn. Longer than you ever imagined. But that's precisely what makes them so meaningful.

The good and the bad get amplified.

Success isn't all sunshine and rainbows.

The highs get higher—bigger wins, more impressive achievements, fancy awards—but the lows get lower.

The size of your problems will scale alongside the success.

Every day, new kinds of issues arise, new monsters to fight. And the monsters become more complex as they involve tapestries of people, because, as any businessperson will tell you, people problems are much more challenging than pure business ones.

The failures become more public. The critics get louder, scrutinizing your every move.

But as Jeff Bezos once quipped, "If you can't tolerate critics, don't do anything new or interesting."

The money only solves money problems.

Money is a great problem solving tool, but it only solves one specific type of problem: Money problems.

As it turns out, most of the problems of your early years are money problems:

• Meeting your basic needs (food, shelter)
• Achieving basic pleasures (vacations, eating out)
• Reducing stressors (hiring help, outsourcing basic tasks)

As you navigate these early years, making more money and solving these money problems, you create a psychological pattern that money solves your problems.

Unfortunately, this pattern is flawed:

Money only solves money problems—which represent a small percentage of the problems you face once you've exceeded a moderate level of financial means.

The real problems you begin to face are more meaningful and challenging:

• How to build great relationships with a partner and kids
• How to maintain vitality as you get older
• How to find purpose and meaning in your life

Money cannot solve these problems.

The richest person in the world cannot build a real relationship faster than you. They cannot get someone to do the workout for them. They cannot find their purpose and meaning more efficiently than you.

If you blindly chase the money, thinking it will solve all of your problems, you will be destined for a rich-yet-miserable existence.

There's no such thing as later.

The journey to success is filled with laters:

• I'll spend more time with my kids later
• I'll find time for my health later
• I'll have more freedom later
• I'll enjoy myself more later

The brutal reality: Later never comes. It's just another word for never.

Most of the things you say you'll do later won't be possible by the time you're able to do them. Your kids won't be young later. Your health won't be there later. Your life won't suddenly be built for freedom and enjoyment later.

Either start designing it into your life now, or live life with regret later.

You never really figure it out.

There are two rules in life:

1. You don't have it all figured out.
2. If you think you have it all figured out, see Rule 1.

A lesson I wish I learned earlier in life:

No one knows what they're doing. Even the people you admire. Everyone is just stumbling along.

Some are just willing to stumble enough that they find their way into something special.

Some are just a bit better at remaining humble, following their curiosity, and marching courageously into the unknown.

You'll never feel successful unless you create your own definition of success.

The problem with discussions on success is that they assume a single, universal definition of what "success" means.

Most subconsciously define it around financial metrics: Some arbitrary annual income level, the achievement of a net worth target, or the ownership of some new thing.

What do all of these have in common? They fundamentally rely on a comparison to others, a relative positioning. You want to hit the income level or net worth that places you above others, or own the things that make you stand out from the crowd.

Author C.S. Lewis referred to this as the desire to enter the Inner Ring:

"As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion; if you succeed there will be nothing left."

If you define success on the basis of comparison to others, you will never feel successful.

The only way to feel successful is to create your own definition of success, rather than consenting to one that was handed to you.

Reject the default, live by design.

P.S. This is a core idea of my upcoming book—The 5 Types of Wealth. The book offers a clear roadmap for designing your life and a guide to the high-leverage systems to build that life today. You can claim exclusive bonuses by ​preordering it today​.

Whether you are in your 20s and just starting your journey or in your later years planning for a fulfilling retirement, those 13 harsh truths will provide valuable clarity.

Developing an awareness of these realities unlocks new peace and progress on your journey.

I hope you think deeply about them and find value in their application to your life in the days, weeks, and months ahead.