Dan Fogelberg And Debunking Myths About the Measure of Success

Dan Fogelberg outshined his father by every conceivable measure. Fogelberg redefined the genre of folk-rock for the 70s and 80s using a variety of music that was too country for rock radio, too rock for country radio, and too complex for the adult soft rock stations. Nevertheless, Dan would become a fixture in the adult contemporary music genre with four of his songs hitting the Top 10 on Billboard.

Throughout his career, Dan would fight to prove his music belonged to both rock and country. His first solo album called Home Free only reached 210th on the music charts, but it would eventually go platinum with over a million sales because of Dan’s early dedicated following. For three decades, Dan Fogelberg produced an incredible string of solo albums, 16 of which were in studio and three live. The Innocent Age, his most celebrated album, would be described by Time Magazine as catchy, romantic folk-rock tunes that intertwined folksy, simplicity, and sweetness vibes.  When Dan died tragically in 2007 at 56, he had 11 platinum records and two gold albums to his name. He was honored by every rock/country radio station and magazine in the country. His final album was released posthumously in 2009 as an international tribute.

Dan’s father, Lawrence, was a battalion band leader in the Army who became a high school music teacher when he was relieved of service. He was also a band director at Pekin Community High and founded both the stage band and the football marching band. When Dan's father passed in 1982, he was honored by the Perkins Municipal Band at a very modest concert. By every conceivable measure, Dan outshined his father's success. However, that wasn’t against Dan's own standard. Throughout his career, Dan would claim that he wasn't a legitimate musician like his father, a prominent bandleader who conducted his students from the front of the stage. In fact, Dan wouldn't claim the title of “legitimate musician” until much later in his career, when he played his music at Carnegie Hall. While playing at this legitimate venue for legitimate musicians with his dad watching from the crowd, only then would Dan consider himself to be a success.

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 We’ve all heard stories about visionaries who set outrageous goals and did amazing things to achieve them. We love talking about how Steve Jobs made his unexpected return to Apple and turned it into a multi-billion-dollar company. However, we don't talk nearly as much about the people who mature, grow, prosper and redefine their own success. When we talk about icons of success, we don’t talk about Bob Ross, who quietly and calmly paints happy trees for the public and died with a comfortable ten million dollars to his name. We don't talk about Dan Fogelberg, who redefined the world of mellow, nostalgic folk-rock. With that being said, our topic today is when do we stop and redefine our measure of success? When do we change our vision board? When is it time to move the goalposts? To answer these questions, we have a few myths to bust.

Myth 1: Everyone should aim to make more money than their parents, just like Dan Fogelberg. That's the American dream, right?

Lawrence Fogelberg, in Dan's opinion, was a legitimate musician, and he never felt like he was. He always felt insecure and thought his music was slow and meandering. Now, the reason we did this episode is because we were floored by the fact that Dan Fogelberg, the man who sold 11 million records, thought his father (the high school band teacher) was a better musician than him. That's a theme that has come up in multiple episodes. We've run into instances where people think that they are less than their parents or that their parents were somebody that they were supposed to overtake or make more money than.

With that as a starting point, how likely is it that you will overcome your parents and their success? This comes with the giant asterisk of if you're creative, proactive, what your luck/still involves, and your motivation/hustle. Those are all core factors, but let's turn to a Forbes article called, You'll Probably Make Less Than Your Parents. The writer talks about how hard work used to level the playing field. I don't know if you feel the same way, but when you think you don't make enough, do you think you need to hustle more? It's one of those things where I think television and media indicate that if you don't make enough money, then you haven't worked hard enough. Now, this article dives into what is called Economic Mobility. This is basically just how much taxable income you make compared to when you started life, i.e., your parents. They found that city-by-city, upward mobility in America changes drastically. For example, if you live in certain cities in America, you will have upward mobility of the American dream, and your chances of going from the lowest economic bracket to the highest are above 9% vs. some towns that have a virtually zero likelihood.

For the study in this article, they wanted to measure by the decade what the upward Mobility rates were. What they were looking at was not lowest tax to highest tax bracket, but simply children that made more than their parents. Back in the 1940s, 90% of children born in 1940 had upward mobility over their parents, meaning that almost everybody born in the 40s was going to make more than their folks. Which, if you were Dan Fogelberg back then, he might not have been so hard-pressed to beat his dad. It may not have been as much of an obsession because naturally, everyone would make more than their father. That figure steadily declined up until 1984 when it reached back up to 50%. So, 50% of people born in 1984 only had a 50% chance to make more than their parents. Now, the graph within the article does not go past 1980, but our percentage is below that now.

All in all, you are not likely to make more than your parents, and it is not something that you should assume will happen. All of the well-respected paying jobs have been paired down, redefined, and now have streamlined budgets. Industries across the board streamlined their systems to where they can pay you less than your parents. A good example is internships, taking well-established, young kids out of college and having them work for free. As a final note here, it is actually more economically feasible to earn more money by starting up a side hustle than working harder. If you find a practical side hustle and pair it with a job, you can end up making more money than if you had a second part-time job. It just depends on what you choose to do. And of course, also invest early as that is still one of the best ways to secure money, even if it is still less than your parents.

Myth 2: How should we set our goals? If we're continuously changing our vision of what success looks like, is goal setting even worthwhile statistically? 

If you close your eyes, what does "successful you" look like? Fam? Money? A family? Finding a sound like Dan Fogelberg? So, we're talking a lot about goals because you can't measure your success without an image of what you look like successful. Thus, we're going to highlight the flaws and successful goal setting techniques because one of the things that people are encouraged to do to set goals is entirely wrong.

This is going back to a Harvard study and a Harvard Business Review article called Increasing the Odds of Achieving Your Goals by Setting Them with Your Spouse. A lot of going to start these are about the stats behind goal setting. If you are into self-help, you probably already know 83% of the U.S. population do not set goals, and only 3% of the U.S. population bothers to write down their goals. And here's the crazy thing - if you bother to set goals and put them on paper, you are ten times more successful than those that never write them down. This is because you are able to perform goal setting in a granular way going this route. If you get granular and know what you want emotionally, you can make a strategic path to get there and succeed.

Zooming back out, there's a vast difference between people who don't have goals and those that do and another massive difference between those that write them down and those who just think about their plans. Those without goals are navigating through life in the dark; those who only think about their goals may get lost because there is no concrete guidance or deadlines to strive for. Worst of all, you just don't know where to start, so you don't start. This is why writing down your goals, breaking them into small milestones, and adding deadlines (maybe add inspiration/pictures to the mix) is the best way to make those blueprint aspirations a reality.

Now, we're going to get into the dangerous part of goal setting. This is the part where people can actually distract themselves and drag themselves off task. Your brain does a neat trick that may shoot your goals right in the foot. Psychologists have found that while positive thinking is broadly beneficial if you fantasize about your successful life as if it has already happened, you will actually apply yourself less. During a study, researchers tried to have people fill out job applications. They also looked at salaries and people who set goals, and they found that people who fantasized about already having achieved a job or making more money applied for fewer jobs. They were offered fewer jobs, and if they're able to find work, they had lower salaries. There is a psychologist at UCL in London named Jeremy Dean. He says the problem with positive fancies is they allow us to anticipate success in the here and now. However, they don't alert us to the issues we're likely to face along the way and can leave us with less motivation after all of it. Positive "daydreaming" can actually undermine our attempt to achieve those goals.

Myth 3: Happiness flows from success. If I get mega-successful, I'll be a happier person. Simple, right? So, what are we missing?

We all tend to measure happiness in different ways. For Dan, looking out in the crowd at his father and realizing he won in surpassing him had to have been the happiest moment for him. But that's the thing between success and happiness. How is happiness defined, and where do we draw that line? What will make us happy and satisfied?

We're pulling from a 1978 study that compared 22 lottery winners, 29 people who were paralyzed in accidents, and 22 everyday people. They ask them to rate their satisfaction in general, and the lottery winners reported being happier than the people with paraplegic or quadriplegia (about four out of five). The everyday people reported 3.82 out of five for their satisfaction. However, the lottery winners reported getting the least enjoyment from what researchers called ‘mundane pleasures.’ Lottery winners got less joy and less fun out of mundane pleasures overall, indicating that winning the cash didn't increase happiness nearly as much as the researchers thought. In addition, the paralyzed group was not nearly as unhappy as they expected.

In summary, the thrill of winning the lottery will wear out. They depart from a baseline of past experience gradually, making even the most positive events have less impact as they become absorbed into the new baseline. Whereas if you have paraplegia, you may find more enjoyment out of mundane activities that you otherwise thought you wouldn't get to enjoy again. Finally, do we have to move the goal post? We've talked in other episodes about how happiness plateaus at about $80,000-$120,000 a year. So, if your goals are all about making tons of money, maybe shift them to tangible things you can do physically, not what money can do. PS: Keep in mind that 60 is when your self-esteem peaks, so you still have time.

Final Thoughts

Despite Dan making more money than his father, we can't all expect the same according to economic trends. However, what we can expect is to position our lives for success on our own terms. We should all dream big to reach the success that we're cut out for. Feel free to set goals to achieve in your life by keeping a vision board, a bucket list, or using sticky notes on the fridge. But remember, it's more important to engage in the practice of achieving those goals than merely fantasizing about them.

Imagine yourself crossing the finish line or being 10 pounds thinner. You could just trick your brain into thinking you've already achieved it. But make sure to act and not just plan. Finally, we can't all anticipate being rich and famous, but we can all work hard, save smarter, and engage in side hustles to make a few extra bucks. Lastly, money in itself doesn't make us happier day to day; It just removes problems. But you know what you can plan for? Happiness and enjoying what you do. That's a type of success we all can plan for and achieve. Or, as Maya Angelou put it, success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.