I become skeptical every time I hear about someone being an overnight success. Success is built on the process of becoming great; it’s not something with which you awake. If you just look at the end stage of success, you miss the endless grinding, failure, and pain that it took to get there.

Success is built on hard work, discipline, consistency, and hustle. You reach the point of success by becoming a little bit better every day, not by giant leaps and bounds. You don’t realize the exact moments where you make the most significant gains, when you’re physically exhausted but push through anyway.

Beginners are usually terrible at things. Whether you’re at the gym, tackling a new responsibility at work, or taking control of your finances, you will fail and want to quit. But enduring and putting in the work is key to reaching the next level. If you do something once and then quit you probably won’t see any benefit. If you pay your credit card on time once, your credit score won’t leap up. If you meditate once you may not gain any mindfulness. You have to focus and be consistent to change yourself. When I wrote my first newspaper article, my editors tore it to shreds because it was terrible. After writing article after article and reading the best writers out there, I’ve gotten better (but you can judge for yourself).

I didn’t see improvements in myself after going to the gym seven days a week for a month straight. But by three months in, I had gained 18 pounds of muscle. That result didn’t push me to continue going to the gym. It was struggling through reps of weights that my 7-year old nephew could probably lift that built grit to be better.

This is similar to finances and those who win the lottery. About 70 percent of people who receive massive windfalls of money lose it within a few years because they got the result (large amounts of cash) without experience the excruciating process of earning and investing the money. So instead of investing the money, the winners blow it all and usually end up bankrupt. On the other hand, most millionaires are people who never made over $200,000 per year salaries, but fully funded retirement accounts and invested regularly. In fact, teachers are one of the most popular professions of millionaires, according to Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires.

People my age who graduate from college making a $60,000 salary may not be wealthier than someone making $30,000 if they don’t have priorities. While the former has a larger income, he may not save more. The latter’s habits of budgeting and only spending on what gives him value can transform his thinking to saving most of his income whenever he reaches a $60,000 income.

Lebron James or Michael Phelps didn’t wake up one day and exude athletic greatness on accident. While they may have had some physical attributes helping them (Phelp’s body was the best design for a swimmer), they both put in countless hours training and becoming the best they can be. Malcom Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule that you have to spend about that amount of time to become a master of something. In that time you fail, learn from others, and consistently perform.

So can you become an overnight success? Yes, but it’ll take years.