Have you ever seen someone launch a boat from their lake house, and thought, “must be nice”? I know I have. And it probably is nice, at that moment. But what did it take to get there? How many years of saving? What opportunities were traded for that piece of waterfront property? How many weekends are spent maintaining it? We don’t really know, do we?
If we’re not careful, this creeps into many other aspects of our lives. Notice a colleague in great shape at 45? Must be nice. Sure, it's amazing. But it didn't happen by accident. What time does that person wake up to work out? How many years have they been showing up when they didn't feel like it?
See a musician on stage or read about an entrepreneur who built something from nothing? Must be nice. And here's the thing, it really IS nice. But that's never the whole story.
I think about this often with our own business. Applied Leadership Partners started from zero, and launched our website on March 17th, 2020, and then the whole world shut down for COVID. Not ideal. And even though we managed to have some early success, it took more than three years before we could pay ourselves a decent salary. That meant foregoing steady paychecks, benefits packages, and the reasonable comfort of traditional employment. Now, when someone mentions the flexibility or the freedom, or the how much fun we’re having, it does look nice from the outside. And it is. But what you don't see are the nights lying awake, the red-eye flights, or the ongoing pressure of never being able to fully clock out.
That's not a complaint. It's just reality. The nice things come with a cost. That cost is often substantial, and it generally isn't visible from the outside.
We're remarkably quick to dismiss other people's success as luck, genetics, or being in the right place at the right time. The amazing band you just discovered? They've probably been grinding it out in dive bars for a decade. The executive who seems to have it all figured out? She’s probably been chewing glass for 20 years. Even the coworker with what appears to be the perfect family didn't stumble into that situation. Healthy relationships require daily work, intentionality, and sacrifice.
“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
When we reduce someone's success to "must be nice," we're doing two harmful things. First, we're robbing them of the recognition they've earned through years of difficult work. Second, and perhaps more important, we're lying to ourselves about what it actually takes to build something meaningful.
This matters because that lie keeps us stuck. If success is mostly about luck or genetics, then there's not much we can do about it. But if success is actually the result of consistent effort, smart choices, and perseverance through difficulty, well now, those are things we can control.
The truth is that nice things require hard work. The beautiful family took years of choosing to show up even when it was hard. The thriving business demanded risk and sacrifice. The strong body required thousands of small decisions made when nobody was watching. No one has just drifted into those things.
And here's the real gift in recognizing this: once we stop dismissing other people's success as good fortune, we can start building our own. We can look at what we want and ask ourselves honestly what it will cost. Then, we can decide whether we're willing to pay that price. And we can start chipping away at our own dreams with clear eyes about the road ahead.
The alternative is to continue saying "must be nice" while standing still, and that doesn't serve anyone.
So the next time you catch yourself thinking it about someone else's life, pause. Look a little closer. See if you can spot the suffering behind the success, the discipline behind the dream. Then ask yourself: what am I willing to work for?
Because yeah, it is nice. And it's available to you too.
But only if you're willing to do what it takes to get there.
