I’m writing this week’s column while on a break from a very surreal experience: a four-day Tony Robbins seminar called “Unleash the Power Within.” Most days are 16 hours of jumping up and down, hootin’ and hollerin’, and pledging to rock breakthrough after breakthrough. Six thousand people from 47 countries fill the LA Convention Center, and as the camera pans around the VIP area, I see name actors, big-time producers, multi-millionaires. Because, of course, what do you want when you have it all? More.

When I’m on breaks from this crazy, awesome, mind-blowing seminar — like now — I’m on the roof of the hotel in which I’m staying (yes, post-op Bon decided adding hours of driving each day, in this already crazy schedule of immersion would be unwise, so there’s a hotel room within walking distance of the venue involved, here), watching a bunch of very beautiful people take a dip in the infinity pool between sips of champagne in the waterbed cabanas while techno music blasts and very trendy members of the hotel staff take very good care of everyone.

It’s bizarre. And awesome. And while a part of me wants to yell at myself about where I’ve spent my money this weekend (to which the smart part of me explains the value in TIME that I’m not thinking about when I’m counting money), another part of me is being ever the ethnographic journalist, taking it all in and studying success.

And that’s what I want y’all to do. Find success and study it. Study it well. Never look at issues of fairness and really try not to think about what anyone “deserves” or “earns” in this business or in life. Most of the time that people grouse about nepotism or favoritism, they neglect to notice that there is a requirement that TALENT — at a sustainable level — exist on the part of those who are granted chances “unfairly,” or else they will never sustain the success to which they were given access.

Here’s the thing: When most people observe, comment on, or study success, they’re thinking about all they would do, if they could get there. They’re thinking of how they’d do things differently or about what they’d never take for granted. I’m gonna ask that you take a different look, the next time you’re moved to check out these folks. Think about where they started and how they GOT to success. Toss out all the folks who were born into it and those whose journeys were truly “once in a lifetime.”

Not because you can’t have those elements as a part of your reality, but because that’s stuff like winning the lottery, and even lottery winners for the most part are working real jobs and moving toward the moment at which the big win comes in. For those lottery winners to sustain any kind of happiness long-term (which most don’t), there’s conditioning for success, for love of the day-to-day, for happiness that is in place. THAT is what I want you to study.

It’s the stuff we do in those earliest days that MAP OUT our success, and when we study those who have achieved success, often times we’ll see that what they did in those early days, they did without certainty that it would lead to success. This is why — even as we study the successful — we can’t just “do what they did” because we are not who they are, born into the era into which they were born, with the same charisma or smarts or WHATEVER it is that existed for them, when we *do* those things. Of course, this is one of my favorite principles in Outliers, which I’ve talked about before. And it’s not the one thing you do… it’s all the things you do.

And sometimes it’s that random thing that just happened to happen, irrespective of the work you put into your career or how much you tried to make happen. So much that you do can put you up against that thinnest line, but what pushes you past that line has much less science to it.

The unpredictability of what makes for a HUGE success is actually one of my favorite things in this business. It’s the “there’s a chip on the floor as you walk through the casino. You have to play it. To which table do you take it and what skill do you bring to THAT game you chose, to make it so you *at least* get two chips from that amazing opportunity? And then how do you use those chips?” thing.

I really effin’ love that. Because it’s why everyone has a shot at being a success story for others to study.

What are you doing to get as close to that tipping point as possible? What are you preparing to bring to the table, so that when you stumble upon that chip in the casino, you make the most of your time? And what will you give back to the world, as it asks if it may study your success, once you’ve gotten to the top tier? Map it out now. It’s good for you, and for the world.

Wanna be sure your tools *and* your mindset are in peak form? Let us get you in gear with some FREE training right now!

Woo HOO!

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001639.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.