In the age of everyone having 15 minutes of fame it's easy to assume all that success comes overnight. But I don't think that's how it works at all. Rather, it feels like ages of work to the person the success is happening to.
Consider this. People toil in obscurity for years before experience any sort of success. In their minds they are working and working and working. They're trying to become something. And they aren't anything until they are.
People find success when they find it and regardless of when it happens it took their entire life that's a reassuring thing even if someone is successful at 13 that was their entire life i am reassured by this thought and that doesn't mean be patient it just means that things happen at a time.
But to people watching it, it looks like overnight success.
Everyone, no matter what age they are have been waiting their whole lives for this success. It wasn't overnight.
It took a lifetime.
And it's much harder to resent success when you look at it that way. How could you possibly resent someone who has worked their entire life to become something? Even if they have something you don't.
For me, this is a refreshing, less distressing way to look at success. Because success, however you define it, is less mysterious than assuming it just happens.