One of the reasons we struggle to get what we want is surprisingly simple: we haven’t decided what we actually want.

We are taught from a young age to fear the unknown, including strangers. In evolutionary terms, this made sense. To our early ancestors, a stranger represented a potential threat, and in a tribal psychology mindset, overestimating a threat was always safer than underestimating one.

I’ve recently finished Matthew Syed’s book Bounce, in which he uncovers the science of human performance. The big takeaway for me is that success isn’t an exclusive club reserved for the genetically gifted; it is something every single one of us can achieve through the right kind of effort.