Be So Good that People Call You Privileged

This is a follow-up to a previous article, You’re So Lucky…

I saw a great tweet the other day that really resonated with me:

I can absolutely relate to this – I’ve had many guys say, “Andy, you’re so lucky to have gotten to a point where you have tonnes of sex, 3somes with your girlfriend, you quit your job and work whenever you want, etc”. Basically – “You’re privileged”.

But is it really privilege? Was I born with it? Fuck no – I earned all of it.

I overcame years of depression and suicidal thoughts; I don’t think I need to tell you that was incredibly fucking hard.

I lost 77lbs, started going to the gym, and spent years working on my physical appearance.

I overcame my approach anxiety by talking to thousands of girls (which was fucking hard, by the way – I had many breakdowns and moments where I wanted desperately to quit).

I overcame a buttload more too – all the shit I wrote about here. None of it was easy. All of it took an incredibly amount of hard work. And the payoff? Now I get to sit here and enjoy the fruits of my labour, having people tell me I’m very lucky and privileged to be here.

And I’ll be honest; at first it bothered me. At first it used to drive me fucking insane that people would ignore (or just not be aware of) all the god damn hard work I put in to get here. Hell, I even had someone comment on my YouTube that “The only reason Imogen is with you, is because you have money” – which was utterly hilarious to read, given how god damn poor I was for the first 2 years of our relationship.

But the further I got in my journey, the more successes I had, and the more of these “You’re so lucky” comments I got, something interesting happened. I started seeing them as a compliment; an admission I’d come a damn long way. After all, if some people honestly thought I must have “cheated” (been born into success, or lied about my achievements, or been privileged, etc) then holy shit, I must have done something pretty impressive. After all, people don’t call you privileged when you have very little.

So why am I telling you all this? Multiple reasons; to show you when it comes to goals like getting laid, or making money, or losing fat, or building an elite body – there is no privilege. There aren’t any shortcuts. There’s only hard work, the long grind, getting rejected a million times, making a million mistakes, and picking yourself up and continuing forward. You can do all the shit I’ve done – and ideally even more – but you do need to work for it. I’ll make it clear; this shit takes work. It takes effort. You need to have realistic expectations of what you’re getting yourself into here. This journey hasn’t been a walk in the park for me, but Jesus H Christ, it’s been worth it. When you get to a point where people are telling you you’re lucky, your life is pretty fucking special.

I’m also telling you all this so you don’t look at people who are ahead of you, and dismiss the hard work they had to put in to get there. When you tell yourself, “That guy is so lucky”, what you’re doing is taking away your own agency, and giving yourself an excuse not to do what he has done. “He’s so lucky” is a cop-out so you don’t have to get off your ass and change your life. Well guess what, fucker? That guy who’s “so lucky” isn’t any different from you. He’s not any more special than you are, he’s not any more disciplined than you are (well, at least he wasn’t when he started), and he’s not more “deserving” than you are. He just put in the effort over a long enough period of time to get where he is now.

And guess what that means? It means you can do it too, if you stop making excuses and start taking action.

And I’m also telling you all this in the hope that you’ll push yourself hard enough, far enough, and for long enough that one day you wake up and people say to you, “You’re so lucky. I wish I could be privileged like you and have what you have.” That’s waiting for you, if you’re willing to put in the hard work.

Now go out there, bust your ass for a few years, and make some average people very jealous. I can’t wait for you to join me atop the mountain.

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