Mark: What if I told you that getting everything you ever wanted—the dream job, the public recognition, the perfect life on paper—could be the very thing that leads to a complete and total breakdown? That achieving success might be the most dangerous thing you ever do. Michelle: Come on, that sounds a bit dramatic. Isn't that the goal? To achieve success? We spend our whole lives chasing it. Mark: You'd think so, but that's the central, explosive question in Emma Gannon's book, The Success Myth: Letting Go of Having It All. And what makes her perspective so powerful is that she's lived it. This is an author who was named in Forbes 30 Under 30, a huge benchmark of success, yet this book is essentially about dismantling that very idea. Michelle: Okay, so she's critiquing the game from the winner's circle. That’s a perspective I want to hear. I'm listening.

Mark: It all starts with this incredibly vivid story she tells. It's 2018, and she's flying to the Isle of Man to give a keynote speech. On paper, she is the definition of success. She's wearing new clothes, being chauffeured to the airport, feeling on top of the world. But then the plane hits severe turbulence. People are screaming. Michelle: Oh man, my worst nightmare. Mark: Right? But the woman sitting next to her, in pink lipstick, remains completely calm. When Gannon asks her how, the woman just says she's content. She's done everything she wanted to do in life. And in that moment of terror, Gannon has this horrifying realization. She thinks, if this plane goes down, my identity is just a list of my achievements. She says, "I was my achievements; I was a walking billboard of the ‘things I was working on’." Michelle: Wow. That gives me chills. The idea that in a moment of crisis, your list of accomplishments means nothing. It's your inner state that matters. And to have that reflected back at you by a stranger... that's intense. Mark: Exactly. And the story doesn't end there. She lands, delivers the keynote speech flawlessly, and then goes back to her sterile hotel room and has a complete breakdown. Just sobs, feeling totally flat and alone. She gets a voice note from a friend who just had a baby, and it hits her: her job will never truly love her back. This is what she calls the 'Success Junkie' trap. Michelle: It's like a sugar high, right? The achievement gives you this incredible rush, but the crash is brutal and leaves you feeling emptier than before. We see it all the time with celebrities—people who seem to have everything but are deeply, publicly unhappy. Mark: Gannon backs this up completely. For her podcast, she interviewed over four hundred 'successful' people—authors, entrepreneurs, activists. And she found this was a shockingly common theme. People would tell her, off the record, "None of this impressive stuff has made my inner problems go away." She concludes that we are chasing the scam of outward, traditional success. It gives our ego a boost, but it doesn't positively impact our inner landscape in any lasting way. Michelle: So the whole premise is a lie. The idea that if you just get the right job, or the right award, or the right number of followers, you'll finally feel 'enough'. Mark: It's a total illusion. And it’s an illusion that serves a system that needs us to keep chasing, keep consuming, and never, ever feel content.

Michelle: That’s a pretty big claim, Mark. It feels like it could be a bit of a cop-out. It's easy to blame 'the system' for our problems. Where does personal responsibility fit into all this? Mark: That's the perfect question, and Gannon addresses it head-on. She isn't saying personal responsibility is irrelevant. Her core argument is that the playing field itself is fundamentally broken. She has this incredible quote: "I believe that before we tell ourselves that we’re broken and need to change, we should consider whether it is actually the society we live in that is broken and needs to change." Michelle: Okay, I can get on board with that. It’s shifting the lens from "what's wrong with me?" to "what's wrong with the picture?" Mark: Precisely. And she argues that the path to traditional success is deeply gendered. Take the whole 'girlboss' era from the mid-2010s. It was marketed as this great feminist leap forward. Michelle: Oh, I remember. The pink suits, the hustle-harder mantras. It was everywhere. Mark: But Gannon tells the story of an acquaintance, 'Sally,' who launched an app and looked like the ultimate girlboss on Instagram. In reality? She was exhausted, her health was failing, and she was spending all her time pitching for funding. And the data Gannon brings in is stark: in 2020, female founders received just over 2% of all venture capital funding. For Black women, it was less than 0.35%. Michelle: That’s staggering. And you know, this is where some of the criticism of the book comes in, that it can feel focused on a certain kind of privileged, creative professional. But that 'girlboss' example is perfect because it was sold as empowerment for all women, when in reality, it only ever worked for a very, very small, and often very specific, demographic. It was a myth within a myth. Mark: A myth within a myth, I love that. And Gannon extends this critique to all the other 'tickbox' life goals we're fed. The idea that you have to get married, buy a house, have kids, in that order. She brings up that viral comment from the Australian millionaire who told millennials to stop buying avocado toast if they wanted to afford a house. Michelle: I remember that! The internet had a field day. Mark: As it should have! Because it’s a perfect example of how we're told to solve huge, systemic problems—like wage stagnation and an impossible housing market—with tiny, individual sacrifices. It’s a way of deflecting blame from the system onto the individual. It keeps us feeling like we're the ones failing, not the game itself.

Michelle: So we've torn down the old definition of success and we've blamed the system. It feels a little bleak, honestly. Where do we go from here? How do we actually build something new? Mark: This is the hopeful, constructive part of the book. Gannon calls it entering 'Phase Two' of life. Phase one is the striving, the climbing, the chasing of external goals. Phase two is about unlearning all of that and starting to redefine success from the inside out. And a key part of that, counterintuitively, is embracing the power of quitting. Michelle: Quitting? We're told our whole lives that 'winners never quit.' That sounds like the opposite of success. Mark: But Gannon reframes it so powerfully. She uses the example of Simone Biles at the Tokyo Olympics. When Biles withdrew to protect her mental and physical health, she was criticized by some. But what she actually did was demonstrate a higher form of success. It wasn't failure; it was an act of profound self-preservation. It's about having the courage to say 'no' to a goal that is harming you, and 'yes' to yourself. Michelle: That’s a huge mental shift. To see quitting not as giving up, but as choosing yourself. Mark: Exactly. And that choice opens up space for a new kind of ambition. Gannon talks about 'collective ambition.' It's a move away from individualistic, ego-driven climbing and towards success as contribution. She quotes New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who said, "Economic growth accompanied by worsening social outcomes is not success. It is failure." Michelle: I love that. It's shifting the entire frame from 'what can I get?' to 'what can I give?' And it brings the focus back to smaller, more human things. Gannon talks about celebrating a friend getting a dog with the same energy as a wedding. It's about valuing the texture of a life, not just the big, shiny milestones. Mark: It's about finding joy in the process, not just the outcome. She quotes the author Farrah Storr, who writes about gardening. There's no end goal, no metric of success, other than the quiet, modest happiness it brings. It's about finding things that release you from your own head. Michelle: That feels so much more sustainable. And more real. A life built on a thousand small, nourishing moments instead of a few big, stressful ones.

Mark: Ultimately, the book's message is that we've been sold a faulty product. This shiny, one-size-fits-all 'Success' is a marketing tool designed to keep us insecure and always consuming, always striving. The real work isn't about achieving it; it's about having the courage to define your own success, even if it looks quiet, or messy, or 'unambitious' to the outside world. Michelle: It really makes you stop and ask yourself: what game am I actually playing? And is it one I even want to win? It’s about realizing the finish line is a mirage. You keep running towards it, but it just keeps moving. Mark: And as Gannon so beautifully puts it in the end, you don't need to race to some future destination. The view is glorious from exactly where you stand. You have already arrived. Michelle: A powerful thought to end on. If this conversation resonated with you, we'd love to hear what your personal definition of success is. Find us on our socials and join the conversation. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.