You are worthless—a good‐for‐nothing.

Have you ever heard those words—or perhaps thought them about yourself? There are few things more hurtful than thinking that you may have no value. Hurtful words were just a small part of the struggles in Larry's childhood. Larry never knew his biological father, a U.S. Air Force pilot, a serious setback for any boy. However, Larry also struggled in other ways. He became very ill with pneumonia when he was only nine months old, and his mother decided she could no longer care for him. She eventually sought out relatives, Lillian and Louis Ellison, who could raise her son. She would not see him again until he was in his late 40s.

Larry was raised on the tough south side of Chicago by his Jewish adoptive parents in a cramped two‐bedroom apartment. He was an intelligent, rebellious kid who loved lefty ace pitcher Sandy Koufax and slugger king Mickey Mantle. Although his adoptive mother was warm and kind, Larry had a difficult relationship with his adoptive father. Part of this problem may have been due to the strain on Louis, who had lost everything in the Great Depression. Whatever the reason, Larry and Louis did not have a strong relationship, and home life was not always pleasant.

A bright student, Larry enjoyed science and math, pushing himself through self‐guided study, but some of the most difficult challenges in his life were still ahead. At first, it seemed that his hard work was paying off. During his freshman year at the University of Illinois at Champaign, Larry was named Science Student of the Year, an award that highlighted his commitment to his studies. In his second year of college, his adoptive mother passed away. It was too much—Larry failed his final exams and dropped out of U of I.

Larry eventually did get on his feet again and entered the University of Chicago. It was the first time he was exposed to computers, and it was a match made in heaven. But he didn't stay in Chicago much longer, instead choosing to drop out and move to California to work with computers. “I never took a computer science class in my life,” Larry noted later in an interview for the Smithsonian Oral History Collection. “I got a job working as a programmer; I was largely self‐taught. I just picked up a book and started programming.”

His drive led him to take on a variety of jobs, but nothing that paid extremely well. He lived in a tiny one‐bedroom apartment for several years with his first wife. Despite marriage counseling, the relationship ended, thrusting Larry into the world again, alone. It was then that he obtained a new position working with computers, and eventually made the leap to start his own company.

Perhaps the culmination of Larry's studies really occurred in 1976, when he was “stunned” after reading “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks,” research by IBM's Ted Codd that dealt with the relational model for databases. It was a pivotal moment in his life. Later, Larry would note that “every once in a while, there are, you know, epiphanies.” This epiphany—combined with his insatiable drive—resulted in a life‐changing risk: “On the basis of this research, we could build a commercial system. And, in fact, if we were clever, we could take IBM's research, build the commercial system, and beat IBM to the marketplace with this technology, because we thought we could move faster than they could.”

Larry's struggles and risk‐taking paid off: His tiny company grew in leaps and bounds by creating a database that could be used on any computer. Although his company, Oracle, has not had a straight upward line of success, Larry Ellison is now the fifth richest man in the world.

Ellison's story is inspiring, not for what it has, but for what it is missing. It is missing a few important elements that are often pinpointed for success—namely a good background with unique opportunities (like Bill Gates's phenomenal opportunity to use a computer when the industry was new and he was young), 10,000 hours of devoted practice (like cello master YoYo Ma), and even good luck (take your pick). So what is really the secret to Larry Ellison's success? What is the secret to anyone's success?

You may be surprised, since it is something that you have access to right now.

Winning at Life

Does success elude you? Have you read countless articles and books about improving your life but not gotten any closer to success?

You're not alone.

The self‐help industry is chock full of different approaches to success. There are those who say success is just a matter of positive thinking; this is partly the reasoning behind books like The Secret. This approach to success says that if you just believe that you will obtain your goals or dreams, then you can have them. But no matter how hard you think positively, the universe does not seem to be holding up its end of the bargain. It's enough to make you think negatively.

Other approaches to success involve hard work and a significant time investment (10,000 hours, anyone?) to master a single skill. This approach has the most appeal, since it seems that strumming that guitar will eventually make you into Bruce Springsteen. The problem with this approach is that not all successful people have clearly spent 10,000 hours on a skill. In addition, 10,000 is an incredible amount of time to spend on the cultivation of a skill, and most of us only have time to devote to that level of concentration when we are quite young. How many of us know that we want to be engineers when we are young? Or even musicians? Maybe your “best” years are behind you and 10,000 hours—the equivalent of about 417 days of complete devotion to the study of a skill—is not possible. (You may not even have the money to hire a coach or tutor.) Plus, you may not know where to start. In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Gladwell highlights the incredible triumphs of those who have practiced for thousands of hours, honing their craft to become outstanding successes. He points to the Beatles and Bill Gates to prove his point. But not all successful people have completed 10,000 hours of training—and there are many unsuccessful people who have.

What if you simply don't have great opportunities? In Outliers, Gladwell highlights the advantages enjoyed by some of these successful people—like Bill Gates, who had early and consistent access to a computer. But if we are honest—and take a look at history—we see a very different pattern of success emerging. Success is not merely a matter of being born in the right place at the right time to the right family. It involves more than money or practice. History is littered with famous failures—people who had talent, money, power, and fame—who squandered it or ended badly. Take, for example, Nikola Tesla, the inventor whose name now graces one of the most advanced autos in the world (Elon Musk's Tesla). Nikola Tesla was always considered a man out of time: His development of the alternating current changed the world forever. Tesla had a relatively happy childhood with what today would be considered a large family (he had four siblings). Tesla's father encouraged his children's educational interests and his mother was quite an inventor, even though she never learned to read. As an adult, he slept around three hours a night, had more than 700 patents, and, like Larry Ellison, had an epiphany about a revolutionary invention. Yet for all his brilliance, Tesla died a lonely, impoverished man.

There is, however, a way to reach your goals—and I am living proof. I have found a way to move my life in a positive direction, realizing success I never dreamed possible.

And you can, too—without spending 10,000 hours of your life on it, being born into the right family, or being as brilliant as Albert Einstein or Marilyn vos Savant.

It's a little secret that I call Strive.

Strive is the principal that helped me take control of my life. It is about embracing change and doing things outside of your comfort zone. It's about persevering in the face of rejection and adversity. Taking control of your success is something you can do right now—and this short guide will show you how.

What is the real key to success that ties together the most famous winners in history? To become successful, you must pursue challenges that are tremendously uncomfortable and outside your comfort zone. Only this type of stretching beyond what you are comfortable with will allow you to achieve success.

Writers often embody the key aspects of Strive: Despite the odds, they frequently step outside of their comfort zone to become more than they dreamed possible. There are powerful risks involved with writing, and financial ruin is only one.

Take one of the most famous writers, J. K. Rowling, the mastermind behind the Harry Potter series. While growing up, Rowling exhibited a talent for storytelling, but did not pursue writing in college. She actually majored in French, since it was seen as a “safer” way to obtain gainful employment. Rowling's idea for the Harry Potter stories went unwritten for some time. As a matter of fact, when she first conceived of the idea, she had nothing to write with and was too timid to even ask for a pen. So one of the best‐selling children's series in modern memory almost went unnoticed, a passing thought on a train, left behind on the platform like so many other great ideas.

But then Rowling's life was flipped upside down. She found herself alone with a child to raise and no job. Most people would have sought out any job to pay the bills. Rowling was, after all, an educated individual with a strong drive to succeed. However, she chose the uncomfortable path instead. She accepted the stigma of obtaining government aid for herself and her child, and threw herself into finally drawing out the story that had been bubbling over in her mind for so long.

Rowling was striving for success. She embraced the uncomfortable to obtain her goal. But she still didn't have it. Simply writing the book The Philosopher's Stone was not enough to lift her from the poorhouse. Getting it published was another struggle that she tackled with a dogged determination: The publishing world is a Wild West shootout with many actors but extremely few stars. As the Internet has risen, traditional publishing venues have fallen, making the print publication of any one writer's work difficult. Rowling did not have fantastic luck—she had terrible luck. The rejections for her book piled up, one after another. Twelve publishing houses ended up rejecting her work. When she finally did find a small publishing house that accepted the manuscript, she was advised to get a day job—after all, writers don't make much. That was in 1997, when Rowling's net worth was somewhere around zero. In 2015, the Motley Fool estimated that Rowling's brand was worth an estimated $15 billion. (Her personal net worth, however, was a mere $1 billion. She is still the wealthiest writer of all time. She beats out horror monarch Stephen King, who, with all his books combined, is worth an estimated $400 million.)

Rowling is not the only writer to embody the concept of Strive. The Grand Dame of Mystery herself, Agatha Christie, knew a thing about it. Her first manuscript was rejected by many publishers, and Christie had to wait five years before her book would see print. Perhaps the king of perseverance is Louis L'Amour, who suffered 200 rejections before going on to be one of the most recognized authors in the world. Perseverance is an important part of Strive, because embracing the unknown can be challenging.

Popular Beliefs About Success Are Profoundly Wrong

Of course, there is no denying that talented, hard‐working people can become successful—but there are millions of them, and most of them do not achieve real, lasting success in their lives. Real, lasting success often occurs as a result of intentionality that often requires doing “the uncomfortable” to stretch that individual to obtain new capabilities and new opportunities.

There is nothing mystifying about this striving to get outside of your comfort zone. One look at a da Vinci painting can convince anyone that the man was an astounding student of the human form. What no one sees, however, is the profoundly uncomfortable steps da Vinci took to finally achieve those incredible results. The Renaissance brought about an increased hunger for truth, and achieving accurate depictions of the human form was highly prized. This led some artists to go well beyond sketching nude models. Artists such as Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni and Antonio Pollaiuolo were known to have used their studies of dissected cadavers to improve their own work. Da Vinci himself is thought to have dissected 30 bodies. Uncomfortable indeed.

It's clear that the greatest successes came to people who pushed themselves outside their comfort zones. This striving to be more influences our ultimate success—and leads to even greater accomplishments. As you succeed in large and small ways, you will begin to find that there simply are more opportunities and people who will help you move upward toward the next level of your goal.

Successful people do not begin as “outliers” or masters. They are people who are subject to society, health, and class, just as you and I. They also had problems and struggles that seemed impossible to surmount. Da Vinci was born out of wedlock to a mother who did not acknowledge him; it was even thought that his mother was an Arab servant that da Vinci's father eventually “gave” to another man in the village. Elizabeth I was born to one of her father's many doomed wives and feared for her life since she did not follow the teachings of the Catholic Church. Thomas Edison was told that he was “too stupid to learn anything.” Isaac Newton, whose Principia Mathematica became the foundation for all modern math and science, failed miserably as a farmer. In modern times, star actress Michele Yeoh trained hard until she was 16 to become a ballerina, when she suffered irreparable damage to her back. Young George Soros was one of the survivors of the Siege of Budapest. All these people suffered hardships just like you and I; they also show that success comes from striving to do better through uncomfortable challenges and risks. Some people may start out well, and others may have more money or talent; but what really differentiates the winners is the way they embrace change and risk to improve their lives and achieve their dreams.

Think about it: The ability to succeed is within your grasp. It doesn't depend on money, background, or even talent. (Think of how many people are famous for being…well, famous.)

You can be successful, but why stop there? Once you help yourself achieve wonderful things, just think of how you can impact the world. Imagine we can create a repeatable process for success to help all people from all walks of life. This would completely revolutionize our world. The World Bank estimated that 10% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. (About 50% of the world is considered poor.) About half of the poor in the world are children. How many lives could be changed by lifting these people from poverty into the middle class?

Society would suddenly become less polarized. Much of the current rise in populism around the world is related to globalization and the sharply rising income inequality. Take France, for example. French farmers need government assistance to survive, because the cheap agricultural products from EU heavyweight Germany are flooding their markets. The average French farmer works extremely hard—but despite talent and drive, he cannot survive in the new global economy. It is not only in France that those who are working hard cannot make ends meet. Americans are struggling, too. The loss of well‐paying factory jobs has really been only one more nail in the middle class's coffin, destroying not only the underpinnings of the middle class, but also marriages and family structures. Tech companies large and small, once seen as the saviors of middle class jobs, are replacing existing American engineers with cheaper labor from other countries (in some cases, American engineers are actually training their offshore replacements to take their jobs), cloud services, and automation. It can feel like the situation is hopeless.

But it's not. And I am confident that by showing you that Strive works, you can not only improve your life, but help others improve theirs.

Strive for Real, Lasting Success

The secret to success is embracing uncomfortable change and risk to reach your goals. Throughout history, this principle has often been proven to be true. It accounts for the wild successes of some and the sad failures of others. The amazing thing about Strive is that anyone can do it, regardless of background, upbringing, talent, time, or education.

Those who reach outside their comfort zone are those who succeed. However, reaching outside your comfort zone does not mean just doing anything. To Strive is to pursue the right kind of risk while taking care of yourself and your loved ones. It involves a balanced approach to life that helps you focus clearly on what you want and how to achieve it. I have used the letters from STRIVE to help create a simple approach to embracing change and risk in your life.