Does Watching Success Stories Actually Make You More Successful?

We run a website full of success stories, so you'd expect us to say yes. The honest answer is: sometimes, and it depends a lot on which story and what you do after it.

Watching a video has never got anyone a job. It would be strange if it did. But stories can change what you think is possible for someone like you, and that matters more than it sounds.

Why seeing someone else do it helps

The psychologist Albert Bandura spent years studying what he called self-efficacy, meaning your belief that you can pull off a specific thing. One of the sources he identified was simple: watching someone like you manage it.

Think about what that means if nobody in your family has ever run a business, or sat for the civil services, or moved to a big city alone. You don't just lack the money or the contacts. You lack proof. Hearing that Divya Tanwar studied in a government school while her mother worked on farms and stitched clothes at night does something a motivational quote can't. It's evidence.

When stories make you feel worse

Here's the catch, and it's a big one. In a 1997 paper with the great title "Superstars and Me", Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda found that an outstanding role model can inspire you, or can leave you feeling worse about yourself. The difference came down largely to whether that person's success seemed reachable and relevant to you.

So a first-year student may feel fired up reading about a star graduate from their own course. A final-year student who has already run out of time may just feel deflated by the same story.

You've probably felt this yourself. Some "how I made it at 22" videos make you want to throw your phone. That isn't you being negative. The story just isn't giving you anything you can use.

The problem nobody likes to mention

Then there's survivorship bias. We only hear from people for whom it worked. For every chai stall that became a national chain, plenty of chai stalls stayed chai stalls or shut down, and nobody makes a Short about them. Luck, timing and family support play a bigger part than most success stories admit.

If you watch these videos thinking "do what they did and you'll get what they got", you'll be disappointed, and possibly make some bad decisions. Please don't quit your job because of a 40 second video. Including one of ours.

How to watch them so they help

A few habits make the difference.

Pick people whose starting point looks like yours. A Silicon Valley founder's morning routine is probably useless to you. Someone from your kind of town, your kind of family budget, is far more useful, because you can picture the next step.

Pay attention to the boring middle. The ending is the least useful part. Mirabai Chanu winning silver in Tokyo is lovely, but it's the years after her "Did Not Finish" at Rio that have something to teach. Vineeta Singh failed at two startups before Sugar. What did those years actually look like?

Look for one small move. Deepinder Goyal didn't begin with a plan to build Zomato. The first step was scanning menus because people at the office were queueing up to read them. You can't copy a company, but you can copy "notice what's annoying people around you".

Then close the app and do something. This is the bit that decides whether any of it was worth your time. Feeling inspired is pleasant, and it's a trap if the feeling itself becomes the reward. If you watched three stories, do one small thing tonight. Send the message or fill in the form.

So, does it work?

A story won't do the work for you. It can make the work feel possible, and on a bad week that might be what keeps you going. We think that's worth 40 seconds of anyone's time, as long as you don't spend the whole evening on it.

If you'd like to try, browse the stories and look for someone who started close to where you are now.