To think the “self-made” narrative is a lie?

[ChirpyOpalHelper]

No one is really self-made. It’s family, luck, timing, health, connections. Yet we glorify people as though they pulled themselves up single-handedly. AIBU to think “self-made” is just a myth people tell to feel special?

Of course it's not a myth.

The following factors could still apply to "self made" people.

It’s family, luck, timing, health, connections

Wrong. My dad was. Started working for other people and eventually took a chance and decided to rent his own shop. Ended up building a very successful business. NO money from anyone else. We had nothing as kids but more later on.

Some people definitely pulled themselves up single handedly - I know a few of em from the estate I grew up on.

The myth is your OP. Are you trying to feel better about being an underachiever?

(genuine question)

I heard someone in radio 4 inteview in Trumps first term say Trump was self made man as was his son - they inherited wealth and privilege.

I did know someone who BIL came out of care started in building trade and managed to make himself a multi milliaire by 40s -with huge house. Yes he made contacts along way but the adage the harder he worked luckier he got - applied so though rarethey are there are some people who do start with nothing and manage to get there.

It's just social moblity in UK has massively decline - so it's got harder and harder to be self made.

It's not a complete lie. But nine times out of ten, someone describing themselves as "self-made" usually turn out, at the very least, to have benefitted from knowing they had a substantial family-funded safety net to fall back on if their ambitions didn't work out.

My paternal grandfather was born into rural poverty in the 1890s. His father was a farm labourer. He got himself apprenticed to a stonemason and became a builder. He ended up with his own firm building houses in Surrey and North London. He was a self made man.

You just sound a bit jealous OP. Easier to believe that it is a myth than to try to achieve something yourself.

I think it can be. In our family we have FIL who didn’t have the best childhood, and will tell you he’s self made. BUT it recently came to light that any property he and MIL have bought over the years (one family home, one London flat, one house abroad) has all been bankrolled by inheritance from MIL’s parents! DH and BIL had always thought their dad had done it all and he did nothing to disabuse them of this notion. There’s a big difference between his perception and reality.

WordColourWord

Imagine my shock when I opened this post to see the username!

Another example is a local man I know who started selling fruit and vegetables from a cart many years ago. Now owns one of the biggest and most popular garden centre's in my local area.

'No one is really self-made. It’s family, luck, timing, health, connections.'

No, in my experience it's:

Talent

Courage

Hard work

Dedication

Self belief.

This is mostly true. Luck plays a huge part in "success."

Being in the "right place" so to speak.

Every aspiring actor dreams of their "big break". Because this usually leads to offers that would never come prior to that "break."

Every aspiring singer dreams of a number one hit.

There are very few genuinely "self-made" people I think. Privately, I know one person who came from a severly impoverished background, they are now incredibly successful. This was the result of hard work, starting off with an idea, which lead to a series of failed attempts to monetise that idea. Eventually, a big order was placed, they took a huge risk by accepting this order. Non payment from the client would have bankrupted them. But the client did pay, the result was their "big break".

So I can see both sides.

I think it's luck that decides the self-made from the self-destructed.

Read "Would it Surprise You To Know" by Ronnie Archer Morgan.

There's a man who came from poverty and abuse and purely by determination, spirit, pure decency, passion and hard work made a successful life.

His mother pretty much tortured him and his wider family abandoned him. The court system let him down an he found himself in a children's home. Then, when you think he might get a bit of luck and happiness his mother came to collect him to continue the torture all the while doting on his sister. He had nothing. No connections.

He started off in business as a young, working class black lad with no educational or family advantages. As he was finding success he had the bad luck to be ripped off by a work partner and as a pedestrian was knocked down resulting in terrible injuries.

Yet on he pressed and there he is, successful, on our TVs and having made a happy life for himself.

I don't know for a fact, but I am sure that he doesn't need anyone telling him he is self made to make him feel special. I do know he wouldn't say he did it single handed because in his book he lists the people who helped and inspired him on his way. He's an inspiration.

Very very few people are self made and most of those who say so are liars

which is a useful skill in business

I’d say I’m pretty much self-made. I mean, sure, I’ve benefitted from luck, timing, health and connections (ones I’ve made) but all those things mean nothing if you’re not trying in the first place!

Now working with plenty of other people who say they are self-made, I do acknowledge there’s a huge gap between those (like me) who didn’t have any support after 16, and people who have a whole heap of help (parents finding uni/deposits, giving useful career advice, safety nets) ~ that being said, no matter where you are on that spectrum you’re deciding to make something of your life and forge a new path.

There’s a bit of that. There’s a rich man in the latest Strike novel (won’t say more because spoilers) who notes that when he was kicked out by his parents as a teenager, that his friend’s parents took him in, and had that not happened, his life would have been very different. There is always and element of luck. How effective are your parents? As a woman, are you abused? That sends an atom bomb into your life. So many variables.

We have only recently come to the end of the biggest transfer of wealth in history (baby boomers) - of course that has brought “self made”

there is no doubt that statistically your like outcomes and life earnings are better the more privilege you come from but that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions.

also where do you draw the line? Do you have to come from complete poverty to be self made? I have many friends who have small property portfolios now worth millions from taking risks I wouldn’t have taken in the early 2000s when money was easy to borrow and earn. They seem pretty self made to me? They have nice supportive families, but those families don’t provide cold hard cash (they didn’t need it- you could buy a house with no deposit back then!)

Well…the millionaire in my extended family worked on his now business in any spare time he could find from working long hours in a supermarket. And it’s the supermarket job that paid for his first equipment. Yes, stable family background, but all the business investment was his own, in an industry none of his family knew anything about.

Also - family member left school with few qualifications after spending several years at home ill

I knew a man who left school at 15 with no qualifications. He got a job in a back-street garage as a gofer. A few years later he was a windscreen fitter, and then started his own business with one employee. Twice he only just escaped bankruptcy. Twenty years after that it had become the biggest Windscreen replacement company in Europe. He was literally a self-made multi-millionaire, from nothing, But even he admitted that he was lucky to get into the right line of business at the perfect time. A few years earlier or later and it wouldn’t have happened.

Certainly some people get a lot more help than others, but nobody is 'self made'. Everyone has some level of support and education growing luck, and may spot a gap in the market that others have not spotted, and find success in it after working hard and planning carefully. But that only works in a particular context.

Ooh, I can post this again! Hollie McNish poem which I saw on another thread here a while ago (thanks to whoever posted it, I can't remember) which I love.

Ha it was me who posted it (different username). I was just about to post it again!

I know 2 multi millionaires. Both had poor backgrounds, left home early and neither went to uni. I have done well with zero help and no degree. Left home in my teens also.

Someone close to me grew up in abject poverty, raised by violent, emotionally abusive, drug addict parents, and is now a millionaire. You could say he is "self-made" because it took a great deal of hard work, determination and resilience to succeed when the odds were well and truly stacked against him. But he always says that it was partly down to "luck" because meeting his wife made him want to make something of himself, and that if he hadn't met her he probably would have ended up going down a very different path like the rest of his family.