Do You Really Have What It Takes to Succeed?
Why do some people succeed despite obstacles, while others—equally intelligent, motivated, or well-supported—stop along the way? This question haunted me until the day I discovered Thomas Sowell’s story, and what I learned shook me to the core, making me question everything I thought I knew about success.
Forget talent, connections, or luck. Those are secondary. The true secret to success is much simpler to grasp… and infinitely harder to apply: knowing how to persist when nothing prepares you for it, when no one applauds, when everything pushes you to give up.
Thomas Sowell’s journey, as an economist and one of the major thinkers of our time, illustrates this brutal truth better than any motivational theory.
A Kid With No Chance
1930. North Carolina. Thomas Sowell is born into a poor family in a South still gripped by racial segregation. His father dies before he is born, and his mother, a cleaning woman already raising several children, cannot care for him. He is entrusted to his great-aunt, who raises him alongside his cousins in a loving but impoverished home. For a long time, he doesn’t know he was adopted; he only finds out much later.
The Shock of Harlem and the School Struggle
At eight, the family moves to Harlem. Schools are unforgiving, and Thomas quickly finds himself at the bottom of the class, with no one to help him with homework. The reality is harsh, yet he refuses to give in. He holds on, works hard, and progresses. He enters Stuyvesant, one of New York’s most demanding public high schools… but must leave to earn a living.
At sixteen, he lives alone in a tiny room, juggling small jobs, facing unemployment, and trying to make ends meet during the Great Depression. He survives on fifteen cents a day, subsisting on stale bread and jelly.
The GI Bill as a Springboard
In 1951, during the Korean War, he is drafted and assigned to the Marines as a military photographer. This experience gives him access to the GI Bill, which funds his studies, allowing him to resume classes in the evening.
He eventually enrolls at Harvard University, studies economics, and graduates with top honors, before earning a master’s at Columbia and a PhD in economics at the University of Chicago under George Stigler, a future Nobel laureate. He goes on to teach at several universities before becoming a senior researcher at the Hoover Institution.
A Model of Courage and Perseverance
Even in the face of Jim Crow laws and segregation, Sowell refused the victim mentality. He chose to fight with determination and clarity. He built his knowledge and forged his intellectual independence by confronting reality relentlessly. Starting from nothing, he proved that courage, curiosity, and perseverance can elevate anyone to become one of the leading minds of their time.
Today, at ninety-four, Thomas Sowell has authored more than forty-five books. He has not only written on economics and society; his work has reshaped the way generations perceive reality, evaluating ideas, policies, and choices against facts rather than ideological illusions.
What This Means for Us (Thank You, Mr. Sowell)
Such a path naturally inspires admiration… and yet a thought almost mechanically crosses my mind: yes, but he was different. A genius, surely. A different era. Not comparable with my little self.
This thought is a trap. Objectively, I have had a thousand times more opportunities than he did. So have you, probably. At sixteen, he lived alone in a tiny room, surviving on stale bread and fifteen cents a day in a world ravaged by segregation. He was not exceptional at the start. What made him exceptional was that he refused to give up.
And here is the uncomfortable truth for us: if Sowell succeeded with such beginnings, what is really stopping us? What prevents us from moving forward when we already have advantages he could only dream of?
Grit: That Thing That Remains When Everything Falls Apart
Angela Duckworth calls it “grit”, and it’s not motivation—a fragile flame that goes out at the first gust of wind. It’s what stays when no one applauds, when results are slow, when you want to quit, but you keep going anyway.
Sowell left high school, struggled through extreme hardship, then returned to studies—not because he suddenly felt inspired, but because he chose to keep going, over and over, without guarantee, without applause.
And us? What are we waiting for? The perfect moment that never comes? The alignment of the stars? That flawless motivation that drops from the sky like a revelation? Spoiler: it doesn’t exist, and most people quit before they’ve really tried. Think about your last abandonment—was it a truly insurmountable obstacle, or just the discomfort of not progressing fast enough, of lingering in mediocrity while learning?
The uncomfortable truth: we rarely quit due to lack of talent; we quit because we refuse the temporary discomfort of being mediocre—the phase where you’re not yet good, but no longer entirely bad.
Believing Without Illusions
Albert Bandura, a Canadian-American psychologist, speaks of the deep conviction that your actions produce real effects, that persistent effort eventually pays off even if results are not visible yet. This is not a cheap self-help mantra; it is trusting the process rather than waiting for a miracle.
Sowell lived on stale bread in a tiny room with no sign of improvement, yet he did not wait for validation or guarantee to continue. He kept reading, writing, and studying in silence, without certainty that it would lead anywhere.
And us? We wait for external recognition, a compliment, a like, someone to pat us on the shoulder and say: “Go ahead, you have my blessing now.” But it works exactly the opposite: recognition comes after the work, often long after you’ve already proved your value in the shadows. Sowell didn’t wait for anyone to recognize his worth; he created his own proof, building credibility before claiming it.
So the question is not: does anyone believe in me? But: do I believe enough in the process to keep going without external validation, day after day, without applause or encouragement?
The Brutal (and Liberating) Clarity
Have you ever lied to yourself about your level, pretending you already know, already deserve better, already understand, when you’re actually stagnating? I have, and I bet you have too.
Sowell had no luxury of consoling lies: last in his class in Harlem, he faced reality head-on, without excuses or misplaced pride. He wasn’t good yet—and he knew it perfectly. So he worked relentlessly, climbing the ranks, ultimately graduating with top honors at Harvard.
Yet triumph never went to his head: in Chicago, he had to defend every argument against sharp minds who constantly challenged him. Hard to get an ego boost when you are regularly corrected. This brutal clarity becomes a gift: it forces honesty and kills the soft ego that comforts mediocrity.
And us? Where do we really stand when we strip away the excuses? Do we dare to look at ourselves with all our glaring gaps, persistent weaknesses, and cozy comfort zones we refuse to leave? It’s harsh, it hurts the ego—but it’s essential. You cannot improve what you refuse to see, nor what you pretend to master.
So, do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?
The real question is not whether you have innate qualities to succeed, but whether you can endure when everything becomes difficult, progress without external validation, and see yourself clearly.
You don’t need miraculous talent or perfect circumstances. You need three things:
- Determination: keep going when you want to quit, come back after failure repeatedly, even when no one cheers.
- Operative belief: trust the process rather than waiting for a miracle, act even without certainty of success because you believe effort eventually pays off.
- Clarity: see yourself as you really are, without filter or excuse, and methodically work on what’s wrong.
That’s it—and it’s already enormous.
What Really Makes the Difference
Thomas Sowell was destined for nothing by any measure of his time: no one bet on him, no one saw a future intellectual in him. He lived in poverty, dropped out of school, endured hardship, yet succeeded because he refused to stay down.
The question, then, is not whether you have what it takes—but whether you are willing to do what it takes, day after day, when no one is watching, when results are slow. That’s where it all happens: in the uncomfortable zone between effort and reward.
And between us, if you’re still reading these lines instead of making excuses, you’ve already started. The future lies ahead. Thomas Sowell has shown the path—now it’s up to us to walk it !
