Reflection #11: On Turning Survival Into Success

Last time, I had the absolute honor of chatting with Polina Pompliano — one of my major writing inspirations. She is the founder of The Profile, one of the most influential and highly-regarded newsletters on Substack, that features overviews of all sorts of fascinating people, like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Anthony Scaramucci, and NYC real estate legend Ryan Serhant. We talked about her journey immigrating from Bulgaria to the U.S. at eight, how she learned to communicate as a survival skill, and all the setbacks that got her to where she is today.

If you haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here. And if you haven’t read The Profile, you should definitely check it out — I have learned all sorts of incredible life skills from reading her newsletter. (In fact, the reason I decided to reach out to Polina is because she shared an amazing speech from the venture capitalist Bill Gurley about the importance of taking chances and reaching out to people you admire!)

Here are my 5 main takeaways from speaking with this wise and very insightful person.

#1: Successful people have regrets, too.

This might sound a basic concept to Polina — since in her work interviewing all sorts of highly influential people, she’s learned not to idolize anyone’s life from the outside — but it still always strikes me when people I admire reveal that they don’t think their life has unfolded perfectly, either.

When I asked Polina about the biggest setbacks she had experienced in her life and career, her first answer was immigrating to America at 8 years old — which would be, understandably, a near-impossible answer to skip. But her second response surprised me. She said that due to the fact she had immigrated, she felt like she didn’t take as many risks as she wanted to. She discussed the common immigrant mentality of “mitigating risk” and focusing on survival —all crucial foundations, of course — but they also subconsciously programmed her to play not to lose rather than to win. She mentioned wanting to try hobbies, skills, activities earlier in life — like starting a newsletter — but she didn’t necessarily feel permission to do so. I also wish I had tried more things when I was younger — so this was an incredibly humanizing and beautiful realization for me to hear from someone I look up to.

#2: There are many different types of risk.

Risk, as mentioned, came up several times in our conversation — but in distinctly different ways.

We first discussed the risk of not going after our dreams, which seems like the biggest one of all. Before she pursued her journalism career in New York, Polina mentioned she spent the early days of her career at home in Georgia, convincing herself it was what she wanted to do when really it was just what the people around her were doing.

She mentioned she was “talking herself into being satisfied with less than what she really wanted” — which cut directly to my soul. So many of us, and in particular, so many women, are programmed to do what is socially acceptable and “safe” rather than to allow ourselves to embrace what we really want.

However, we also talked about how to take risks, once we’ve zoned in on what is important to us. She said the beauty of starting The Profile as a personal project at first is that she never thought it would snowball into quitting her job and pursuing it full time. I can only imagine that relieved some of the pressure, instead of thinking, “I must do this newsletter perfectly so I can follow my timeline perfectly.”

#3: You might thrive in an environment that’s totally different from your current one.

Given the risk mitigation mindset Polina mentioned growing up, it made sense she initially thought she needed a highly structured environment to be successful. But one of the coolest insights she had going off on her own is that she actually liked working in a more freeform, entrepreneurial environment, which was a good match for her skillset. That was enlightening to me because I’ve always thought I required highly structured environments, too (else I might go off the rails). But Polina made the switch successfully, and I imagine at this point it’s hard for her to even imagine going back to a more regimented world.

It reminded me that we might not know what kind of things or skills we may be good at — unless we try.

#4: All the skills you develop during hard times are your superpower.

When Polina first moved to America, she learned to observe others, since she didn’t speak English or know any American social norms. Today, she is a professional communicator, and those powers of observation are her primary asset she has used to build an incredibly successful life and career.

So many times we look back with shame on the difficult or unsavory experiences of our lives, viewing them as a distraction from what we were really meant to do, just knocking us off course. But Polina’s story is a reminder to me that our difficulties can and should be used as our biggest assets — if we let ourselves.

Which brings me to my last point:

#5; Some of the most successful people think of failure differently. It’s getting the most out of failure and extracting the lessons from loss that is the success.

I got a mind-blowing answer when I asked what success meant to Polina (a question she likes to ask to all her guests she interviews). She said success was being able to fail, take those lessons, take the humility, and to do something useful with it — such as helping someone else dealing with the same problem.

I want to marinate on that for a moment. Most of us look at failure with shame, doubt, and regret. And even if we do look at it in a more positive light, it’s usually in terms of lessons learned that later helped us achieve our goals— almost never as part of the win itself. Maybe it’s no coincidence that the person espousing this very different mindset is one of the people that I consider most successful. I also find it fascinating that Polina has asked this very question to so many accomplished people, and after hearing all of their answers, she still chose hers.

I admit this framework, however motivating and inspiring, takes time to wrap my head around. Even though it sounds great, it’s still hard for me to look at failure in such a positive way, even though I write a newsletter on dealing with setbacks.

But that is the great joy and beauty of getting to speak to someone who inspires you. They make you think in ways that alter your perception of the world, which if you let them sink in, may be the hidden key to getting to where you want to go.

Thank you so much for reading — and stay tuned for our next guest! What lessons did you take from Polina’s interview? Comment below, and you can subscribe to Polina’s newsletter here and check out her book Hidden Genius here.