I found this to be an extremely interesting list for a few reasons. First, it’s Forbes, so you assume it has more legitimacy than what you’d find peppered all over your feed on Facebook. Obviously, there is some accuracy to these figures, not that they’re entirely accurate or rather, not that they tell you the whole story. Second, the title states this list contains “The World’s Highest-Paid Celebrities.” While I can really break that down and talk about what they might mean by both the world’s and highest-paid, the most intriguing part is the word, “celebrity.”
I’ve always been confused by that word. Webster defines it as ‘a famous person,’ but this list clearly does not contain the highest-paid famous people in the world. At a quick glance, it contains very few, if any, billionaires. Bill Gates is certainly a celebrity by that definition and he definitely qualifies by the monetary standard, but they don’t seem to be including anyone in that specific industry. In fact, I decided to break this down to figure out who is on the list.
One path to success
It contains 36 musicians, 36 athletes, 10 actors, 8 personalities, 2 actresses, 2 comedians, 2 magicians, 1 TV actress, 1 model, and 1 author. The magicians and personalities stand out in that group, but no one stands out as much as the author. The author, James Patterson, is nearly the oldest on the list and also ranks third. This list, which has an age range of 22 to 74 and a “paid” range of $170 to 30.5 million, spans just one year but it tells us something.
You may have been thinking, where are you going with this the whole time? Does the breakdown and over-analysis really matter? At the end of the day, it might not make a difference, but we want you to take something important away from this. We want you to realize that the path to success is different for everyone and while you might not necessarily want to be considered a celebrity or need tens of millions of dollars to consider yourself successful, follow your dreams and create. The author on this list gives us hope because we’ve both always wanted to move forward with our writing, especially Fit.
Whether you create moments in competitions, music and lyrics, characters and plots, or scenes that inspire, don’t stop creating. Don’t stop being creative and don’t stop being you. Take risks, be innovative, cultivate your skills, and capitalize on your talents. Success is relative and you know what your goals are, but don’t let anyone other than yourself judge whether you’ve been successful or not. Don’t let anyone other than yourself judge whether your idea can be successful or not until you’ve done everything you can to make it work. Creativity is a key to being hungry and fit!
