Leadership expert, Robin Sharma, said it best: “Success is never deserved. Success is always earned.”
Two terms that are used loosely throughout our day-to-day endeavors, usually at times when we accomplish goals or amount to new heights, are very misused, and they are done so while having very different meanings. The idea behind what we often view as being interchangeable concepts explains an awful lot about the world we live in today. The importance behind understanding the difference between these two words is monumental and the mentality that has become the norm for our culture is a result, largely, of the misunderstanding of their differences.
Deserved vs. Earned is a lesson we all need a refresher course on at times, and has truly become a habitual misunderstanding by so many. OR, maybe it's the arrogance of just not knowing better, to no fault of our own due to another’s influence. Nonetheless, it's crucial to the development of our young people and the generations that will follow. This mentality can cripple our growth, it can debilitate our professional environments/careers, and has stunted the level that our beloved athletics were once at. Truthfully, we’re all worse off without understanding the drastic differences between being deserving and having earned something.
Webster's dictionary has very straight forward definitions of the two terms that are clearly distinct and different in their own right:
Deserve is defined as “to be worthy of” or in other words, to be entitled to.
Earn is defined as “to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered.”
For me, this understanding was something that was displayed to me throughout my childhood and reinforced into adulthood during my upbringing as well as athletics. My parents, although they never vocalized the specific differences, they showed me through their actions. They were consistent, as you must be to see things through and be successful, and they were obvious about it. It was never a secret that they believed anything worth having is worth working for. On the athletics side, it was ingrained from high school to college ball and was something I took on to my professional playing. I had amazing coaches that led and reinforced this mentality that I'm so thankful for. I had one Strength Coach in particular that stopped someone in the middle of their sentence while being told “he deserved” whatever accomplishment he just achieved. “No, no, I don't deserve anything, I EARNED it,” he’d tell them. That was the first time I ever heard it blatantly vocalized to show the difference between the two. I always thought with that mentality, but it wasn't until I heard him say those words that I understood what a misconception this was among so many - a misconception that has grown immensely through the years regardless of the environment.
So, what are we deserving of? What things in life are we “worthy of” or entitled to, just because we simply exist? That’s a loaded question and one that would likely be answered differently depending on whom you asked. However, I believe there is an easy way to answer it and that’s by asking yourself another question: is this something I will need to work for in order to obtain, achieve, or succeed at? If the answer is “yes,” it is not something you deserve but rather something that must be earned.
This does not eliminate the fact that people will still believe they are entitled to handouts, an easy road to success, and just simply a lazy approach to wanting things vs. being hungry for them. For these instances, this is where something went wrong along the way. The mentality of earning the things you want in life is just as much a learned behavior as the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality is. Entitlement can be one of the most poisonous habits and behaviors to nearly any environment you put it in. But, just as bad habits are hard to break and spread like wildfire, good habits are contagious to those around us, too -- it's just human nature.
The first step in changing this type of lagging thought process has to be identifying that it even exists. The amount of opportunities that will be missed if we fail to identify that we don't understand the difference between deserving and earning the things we want, is unfathomable. In fact, we don't go anywhere with this type of arrogance. It is so difficult to progress in our careers, relationships, and overall lives, without the full understanding that we must work toward and EARN the success we desire. This doesn't mean that we won't still fall short or that we won't experience failure; we’re still human and life is still a crapshoot at times. However, at the end of the day, it's the way this mentality affects those around you, those watching and looking up to you, that then influences their thinking as well as those they come in contact with moving forward. The only way to result in change is by first changing ourselves. Our world is a walking, talking ripple effect. As soon as we change our own habits on a stage for others to see, it's only a matter of time before their drinking the same Kool-Aid and are acquiring a forward-thinking, advantageous mindset.
So, do you understand the difference?
Think about your goals for a second: that promotion you want, the house you’d love to have, the car you think you’d look great driving, the relationship you want to work out, the starting spot on the team, the list goes on, I'm sure…
Now, answer this question: why should you have/get those things you listed, those things you want so badly? If your answer is anything but the work, effort, and heart you’ve applied in order to get to those very goals then you, like many others, don't understand the difference between deserving and earning.
At most, we all deserve the opportunity to earn what we desire. We just can't let our being deserving of so little get in the way of the immense heights our earnings can take us to.
