I want to open up your eyes to looking at what success really is from a different angle.
It’s a dimension that you are living in but may not be aware of – as your mind is probably clouded by images or people who you view as being successful (i.e., Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, etc.), the bags of money that may sit in your bank account (i.e., Forbes top list of Billionaires, etc.) , the size of your home, the companies you have created (i.e., Facebook Google, IBM, etc.), and perhaps some of the coolest technological gadgets you have access to.
Is being successful beyond this?
Is it pointless to ask ourselves what we really want to be 5-10-15 years from now?
Is it even more pointless to ask, how successful we want to be?
Is a poor farmer in Africa less successful than a big-shot entrepreneur in San Francisco?
Ignore traditional definitions of success as queried by Google where success is: “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”, “the attainment of popularity or profit”, OR “a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity”.
Already there are flaws with some of the outlooks of this definition – “accomplishment of an aim”? Are you kidding me? If this was the case, why are many of us not satisfied after meeting an aim or purpose?
“Attainment of popularity.” This isn’t High School with a popularity contest. If this was the case, why do many of us become unhappy with those around us?
“Achievement of desired aims or attainment of prosperity.” Ah! Finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. OK, so even with all this wealth, why are we still not happy?
I will tell you why this definition of success is questionable as it is missing two critical items from all of these definitions: time and space. I vouch for a new definition of success: Success is the output of any action of choice that attains inner Joy without constraint of time and space.
Look at a three things that I have added to this definition:
- Output of any action of choice. Action can be static or dynamic. Meditation can be an action leading to a peaceful mind just like running can lead to a fit body. Brushing teeth is an action that leads to perfectly clean teeth just like careful driving leads to limited speeding tickets. In my opinion, all actions, static and dynamic can produce outputs contributing to personal success and can be completed at any point in time driven by choice.
- Attainment of inner Joy. The flaws with success today is that it is so outward facing focusing on quantitative outputs – amount of wealth, number of companies created, number of cars, number of products sold. We also look at success from materialistic angles. The guy wearing the fancy Armani suit, the perfect shining shoes, the founder of a multi-billion dollar company climbing into a personal jet, the guy getting out of a limousine, the fancy mansion on the side of mountain, the exotic lifestyle of the rich and famous. Even with all these things, there is no inner peace. If we hit a quota for sales one year, this increases the next contributing to greater fear and stress for potentially missing our targets. So, it baffles me why people look at success as outer production outputs and not inner production outputs – a feeling of Joy.
- Without constraint of time and space. The problem with success from a marketing perspective is that it ties time and space together. The very definition of success tied to achievement of opulence, accomplishments, attainments is flawed. In REAL success there is actually no attachment to either one of these things, as success in achievement of ANY of these things means that you give up time and space. It is impossible for someone to own a big home and declare success with the foolishness that he or she will now have to give up more money to pay a huge electricity bill, shovel a bigger driveway, clean and spend energy cleaning a large house. Again, things that impact your personal time and personal space, impact success. Get my point?
Already the marketing of what is success is flawed. It’s none of these things if someone is taking action that is not happy. You have to do things that make you happy on the inside. Success is something that should be 360 degrees of personal lifestyle happiness.
Being successful on the the job but not at home leads to partial happiness. Driving a $200,000 automobile and being a drunk, leads to partial happiness. Stop thinking about outcomes. Many of us look at success as an outcome and yes there are many that say that “success is a journey” and it is – as long as you find joys within yourself along the journey – not as sub-outputs of some accomplishment. People may have a lot of things – a great house, a big company, great kids, great gadgets, great this, great that – who cares! if you don’t have the time or space around you to enjoy it.
What I find from those people – who we see outside looking in as successful – is that they have no ability whatsover to create time and space for themselves. What is hidden underneath the success definition are two huge impacts: 1. Giving up personal time and 2. Giving up personal space.
In other words, my definition of success is around an individuals ability to create time and space toward inner Joy. This means that success CAN BE ANYTHING you want it to be as long as it doesn’t impact your personal time and space. For this very reason there are more people leading more successful lives with less money then the rich entrepreneurs seeking greater wealth.
Here are some things that make me successful, in my opinion.
- The ability to sleep 7-8 hours everyday without any distractions (time)
- The ability to have the time to work out – either yoga or walks – to keep my body healthy (time)
- The ability to take public transportation giving me ample time to read books and listen to motivating podcasts (time)
- Not allowing myself to be continually influenced by anyone like my parents (space)
- The ability to take 4-5 weeks of vacation to visit some amazing places (time and space)
- Drinking 8-9 glasses of water in a day keeping myself hydrated (time)
- The ability for me to give back and help others through my yoga teachings (time)
- Not answering EVERY phone call, text message, or email that that comes in right away (time and space)
- Collecting my mail just twice a week (time)
You can be the judge if this is what success is all about. I think it is and I feel pretty darn good about it!