Self-Made Stories
Self-Made Stories The “self-made” story is the secular scripture of our time. From Andrew Carnegie’s rags-to-steel empire to Steve Jobs’ garage-to-global icon, we are captivated by tales of individuals who, through sheer force of will and ingenuity, seemingly conjured success from nothing. This narrative is intoxicating. It promises agency in a chaotic world, suggesting that the map to fortune is drawn not by lineage or luck, but by grit alone. But the unexamined “self-made” story is a dangerous fiction. It is often a post-hoc mythologizing that erases support systems, timing, and privilege to create a cleaner, more heroic archetype. The true, more compelling, and ultimately more useful story lies in the modern “self-made” journey: not as a solitary climb from absolute zero, but as the deliberate, gritty process of building your own platform, your own credibility, and your own value in a networked world, often starting from a place of disadvantage or obscurity. This…