Could "success" become a real discipline people study?

A genuine “discipline” of personal success: could that ever be possible, like say the disciplines of economics or psychology? What would need to happen? There is surprisingly little theoretical framework around it.

You can study medicine, or economics, or management, but there is no discipline of success itself. It seems too big, too generic, to be pinned down. Yet if it were possible to isolate certain principles (not methods) of success - is this not knowledge everyone would want to have?

The motivational/personal development industry has tried to identify ‘success secrets’, yet there is no real theory or scientific credibility. Many of its messages are powerful, but intelligent people steer clear of its gurus, who ask us to take their clichés as fact.

Personal development today is what Thomas Kuhn referred to as pre-discipline or pre-science – that is, a domain of competing ideas for which there is no body of accepted theory (no “paradigm”), and no genuine desire to have them tested.

The problem with personal development or “success” as it stands is that, while there are insights, strategies, tips, and methods galore, and even modest attempts at theories, there are no first principles.

The psychology discipline studies why people succeed in certain contexts, how unconscious bias can sabotage achievement, and how conscientiousness, extroversion, grit, and confidence play in the success equation.

Psychology’s failing, because it reduces humans to the body and nervous system, and consciousness to the brain, is that it never quite reveals the full picture.

To take the journey that will lead to a proper investigation of success, there is a point where psychology can take us no further; we have to jump on the train of ethics & metaphysics. No-one can explain success without discussing its metaphysical or ethical elements.

We need to bring together personal development, psychology, philosophy and metaphysics into a theory of success that incorporates apparently mystical-religious ideas such as karma and fate as well as psychological-scientific ones such as personality and motivation.

I define success in a different way than the norm, and will try to show how this definition must be the only true one. It is the first principle needed to begin the discipline. Will elaborate in the next Memo.