As university students, one of the most useful habits is listening to each life story that others share with you.
Instinctively, you want to listen only to the ‘successful’ people: the artists with multi-million followers, the scholars who shift paradigms, or the millionaire entrepreneurs who started from nothing.
After all, we can only learn success from the successful, right?
Well, no.
At least, not only.
Why?
Because they survived.
The planes that did not return
The most famous story about survivorship bias is the work of the Hungarian statistician Wald Ábrahám.1The survivorship bias occurs when your evaluation is based on who (or what) survived the earlier selection (the few winners). You reach the wrong conclusion because you discount those who did not survive (the many losers).
In WWII, the US Air Force wanted to fortify their planes with armour platings. But there was a problem. They could not put the armour on all sections. It would make the planes too heavy for combat operations.
So they talked to the pilots who returned from battles. They asked the pilots to record the areas of their planes that were shot by Luftwaffe fighters.
Most shots hit only particular sections of the planes (like the tail wings, or the midsection of the fuselage).
‘Excellent,’ the commanders said, ‘let’s put armour only on those sections.’
Wald Ábrahám stepped in and asked an incredible question: What about the planes that did not return?
With some mathemathical wizardry,2For the mathematical explanation of Wald’s argument, see Mangel, M., & Samaniego, F. J. (1984). Abraham Wald’s work on aircraft survivability. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(386), 259-267. (full-text) he helped them realised that:
1. During dogfights, some planes were shot at those particular sections (the tail wings, the midsection of the fuselage).
2. These planes survived and returned.
3. Because of this, when the pilots recorded where the planes were shot, they showed most damages at those sections.
4. If you only look at the returned planes (because you consider them ‘successful’), your logic would bias only towards the survivors.
5. In fact, those most shot sections are not the most critical. Why? Because even when the planes were shot there, the planes still survived.
6. So, you must consider the ‘unsuccessful’ planes (the planes that did not return). When planes were mostly shot at other critical sections, they are statistically less likely to return.
7. They did not survive, even if they successfully killed more enemies.
Eventually, the Air Force made the counterintuitive decision: for future planes, instead of fortifying the most shot sections that were recorded, the engineers would plate the armours on the least shot sections.
Wald’s insight saved thousands of lives.
View every ‘successful’ life story contextually
I share that story to illustrate the risk of listening only to people with a ‘successful’ life story.
It distorts your perception of reality. Consider this line of thinking:
- ‘Did you know this guy who quit university? Now he’s a billionaire, inventing the operating system that runs most computers.
- ‘This other guy also dropped out. Now he owns the largest social media empire in history.’
- ‘That girl quit university to pursue music, to be herself as she was ‘born this way’. Now she has won over 300 entertainment awards.’
- ‘Those two sisters, they don’t have to do lab assignments to be successful. They just post short videos of themselves dancing. They make millions of dollars more than university graduates.
- ‘Conclusion: I’m just wasting my time studying at university’.
If your mind tells you something like that, ask yourself :
‘What about those who did not survive? Those who quit university, but didn’t end up with gold and glory. What about each of their life story?’
Sure, you can still decide to quit university, and then pursue success somewhere else.
But consider the larger context first, such as the statistical data that shows higher education often leads to higher earnings.3Those with higher education are more likely to earn more in many countries, like the US, Malaysia (Chart 1), Japan, and South Africa (Figure 1)
And then, you narrow it down to your personal context. How is your life similar to and different from those successful people?
Then, equipped with that understanding, pursue whichever path that is more true to you.
Hidden gems in every ‘unsuccessful’ life story
Pay attention to the life stories of people around you, including those who are not popular on social media, not at the top of their career, or who decide not to make climbing the career ladder their main purpose in life.
They may not be ‘successful’ in the ordinary definition made by society. Yet they might be successful in extraordinary ways that the ‘successful’ people will never experience.
When they share a story, the details of what happened may not be relevant to you. In fact, some might not even be accurate; we misremember things when we tell stories.
But beneath the story, they reveal what truly matters to them in life, the mistakes they made, or the actions they failed to take because they were too afraid.
Those are the gems you are looking for.
And there are patterns to it too. I can tell you what some of those are (I learned them from life stories others shared with me):
- Many wish they had spent more meaningful time with their family.4See the discussion of that research in Happiness: What We Learn from a 75-year Harvard Study.
- Kindness makes your life brighter, but too much of it can blind you.
- ‘Winning at any cost’ can make your life worse than if you lose.
Nothing new.
Truths tend to manifest repeatedly. They affect us not because they are new. They affect us because they are true.
They enter our heart, very often, because they are absorbed through life experiences that are sincerely shared — those moments when as you are listening to them, you catch yourself staring into the void.
Your Life Story
The point of reading or listening to each life story is not for you to copy them identically.
The stories are simply a gentle slap on your cheek, to remind you that you are writing your life story, right here, right now.
People around you (lecturers, parents, seniors, online influencers) will share ideas of how a ‘successful’ life looks like. They do that because they care about you.
But their take on ‘success’ is inevitably coloured by their own perspectives of the world. In other words, they are suggesting their plots to your story.
To pursue your own Personal Legend, as Paulo Coelho calls it, you must accept or reject those suggestions on your own terms. To design a life story that is authentically yours, you must select your own plots.
Here is what you can do:
- Record your experience in your own words. Make a digital diary that is for your eyes only. Journal as frequently as you can. Don’t worry if it’s short, incoherent or grammatically messy. It’s not a writing practice. It’s a practice of self-reflection.
- Read outside your discipline. If you are in the natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), read materials from the the human sciences (Religion, Art, History). If you love factual history, read fantasy literature. If you love imaginative fantasies, read empirical theories. They remind you that there are other parallel lives out there. Lives that you can explore, and perhaps live.
- Listen without judgement. Notice your egoic tendency to only listen to ‘succesful’ people in the society. Yes, learn from them, but learn also from the day-to-day, ‘unsuccessful’ people. Overcome the feelings that you are better than them. And remember, the truth beneath the story matters more than what they literally say.
Choose Your Price for the Magic
As you get older, you will find highly successful people who insist that you need to do this or that, and only then you will be successful. And they show you that one path of progression, with all the glory at the end.
Yet deep inside, you constantly feel, ‘Yes, that works for them. But is this what I really want to do with my own life?’
If that happens, take it seriously. Never ignore that intuition. Never lie to yourself.
You will have doubts: ‘But those people are so successful. They’re respected in society, they have money, a happy family (at least that’s how it looks like on their channels and feeds). So who am I to reject their views?’
Honestly, I don’t know. But whoever you are, you are not them.
Even if you get exactly what they have now, you may still not be fulfilled.
Remember, you rarely see what’s behind the magic; you don’t know exactly what they have given up to get there. It might very well be the type of sacrifices that you will never, ever want to make.
Every magic has its price. So choose yours, thoughtfully.
- 1The survivorship bias occurs when your evaluation is based on who (or what) survived the earlier selection (the few winners). You reach the wrong conclusion because you discount those who did not survive (the many losers).
- 2For the mathematical explanation of Wald’s argument, see Mangel, M., & Samaniego, F. J. (1984). Abraham Wald’s work on aircraft survivability. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(386), 259-267. (full-text)
- 3Those with higher education are more likely to earn more in many countries, like the US, Malaysia (Chart 1), Japan, and South Africa (Figure 1)
- 4See the discussion of that research in Happiness: What We Learn from a 75-year Harvard Study.