There are few cases in which business success comes fortuitously and coincidentally. Great millionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Steve Jobs have recognized that they became obsessed with their project and that made them achieve success. On many occasions, the path to extreme success is full of sacrifices and challenges that not everyone is willing to face.
This was explained by Justine Musk, writer and first wife of Elon Musk, in a post on Quora a few years ago, which the mother of Musk’s first five children has not deleted. Living firsthand how his partner became a millionaire serves as an exceptional testimony of the evolution of these visionaries, as he told in a TEDx Talks conference.
Extreme personality, extreme success
Justine Musk’s publication was the response to another post that asked how people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or her ex-husband, Elon Musk, could achieve such levels of success. His response was immediate: “Extreme success is the result of an extreme personality and is achieved at the expense of many other things.”
The writer clarified an important aspect that has differentiated each and every one of these millionaires: “extreme success is different from what I suppose could be considered simply ‘success’, so you should know that you don’t have to be Richard or Elon to be rich and successful and maintain a good lifestyle.
According to Justine, these people not only have unique talents, but they accompany it with an obsessive mentality that drives them to work tirelessly. “Being obsessed. Be obsessed. Being obsessed,” emphasized the writer, who lived with Elon Musk before he became a millionaire and they married after selling their stake in PayPal, becoming a millionaire.
In his writing, he states that Elon Musk is obsessed with recognition and that leads to other aspects of his personality.
“These people tend to be oddballs and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way throughout their lives. They developed strategies to survive and, as they get older, they find ways to apply these strategies to other aspects of life. life and create for themselves a distinctive and powerful advantage. They don’t think like other people think. They see things from angles that unlock new ideas and perspectives.
Bill Gates has admitted on occasion that he has a tendency to become obsessed. The technology magnate assured that, in the early years of Microsoft, he focused his entire life on a single job: taking Microsoft to the top.
Musk’s ex-wife stated that Asperger’s Syndrome, which Elon Musk admitted to suffering from in his monologue, Saturday Night Livehas marked his relationship with the world and defined his business path whose main obsession is to reach Mars. “They are square pegs in round holes,” said Justine Musk.
This obsession derives from having clearly defined their objectives, and structuring their entire professional career to achieve them. The veteran investor Warren Buffett used a simple technique based on two lists with which he refined his priority objectives, and prevented any other task from taking him away from it.
Motivation: the driving force behind brilliant minds
According to the writer in her publication, the profile of these entrepreneurs is built around a mix of unique skills and bold vision that makes them endure work sessions unthinkable for anyone else.
Walter Isaacson said in his biography of Elon Musk that the millionaire even slept in the Tesla offices and sent emails to his employees in the wee hours of the morning, working more than 100 hours a week.
Bill Gates was also obsessed with work to the point of not understanding why his employees would want to take a vacation. “At that time I was quite extreme with work. I worked on weekends. I didn’t really believe in vacations,” declared the millionaire to the BBC.
This exclusive (and exhaustive) dedication is what serves as motivation to persist in your goal. “Pursue something because it fascinates you, because the pursuit itself grabs you and compels you. Extreme people combine brilliance and talent with a ‘crazy’ work ethic, so if the work itself doesn’t motivate you, you will burn out or disengage.” you will fall by the wayside or your extreme competitors will crush you and make you cry.”
Purpose plays an essential role in this process. “Follow your obsessions until a problem appears that affects many people and that you are willing to solve, even if it means dying trying,” wrote Justine, who assured that finding this purpose can even take years, but it is what keeps these people focused despite the challenges.
Living with stress and risk
According to Justine Musk’s story, stress becomes a traveling companion for these millionaires. “Learn to manage a level of stress that would destroy most people,” recommends Justine.
“It helps to have superhuman energy and stamina. If you are not lucky enough to have divine genetics, then work on being in shape. There will be jet lag, mental fatigue, loneliness, meaningless meetings, major setbacks, family dramas, problems with your partner you rarely see, people who bore you and annoy you.
According to Justine, people who have succeeded at the levels of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates do not face failure in the same way as other people, and that has led them to travel paths that no one had trodden before. before, achieving products and milestones that no one had considered to date. Elon Musk acknowledged in an interview for the 2013 SXSW event that he had made many mistakes in his career.
“They don’t fear failure (or at least they do, but they keep going anyway). They experience heroic, spectacular, humiliating, very public failures, but they find a way to reframe them until it’s not a failure at all. When they fail in ways that other people don’t fail, they learn things that other people don’t learn and never will learn. They have incredible determination and resilience,” the writer said in her publication.
According to Justine, this ability to redefine failure allows them to acquire knowledge that others do not achieve. Furthermore, the emotional impact of the mistake is reduced when it is assumed as part of the process: “Pressure breaks eggs, but it also creates diamonds.” Therefore, accepting problems as a constant in any project is essential to not lose sight of the objective.
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Imagen | TEDx Talks, Flickr (MEAphotogallery, Web Summit, Dan Farber)
