This post was inspired by several encounters I have had over the past few months. Every day I work with clients who wish to pursue something that they feel will better their lives, make them happy, and overall make them successful. My clients come to me and expect me to have the answers; they expect me to provide them with success and happiness. What an expectation, right?
One particular client said, “I’ll get my degree and be successful. Then I’ll get married and have some kids, and be happy.” I looked at him and said, “So, what is it you hope to be successful at? What kind of company do you want to work for? What kind of work do you think will make you happy?” He shoots me a quizzical look and in a tone that insinuates he is speaking to a moron, replies, “Whatever, whoever offers me the most attractive package, of course.”
We all want to be successful, we all want to be happy, but if we haven’t bothered to define for ourselves what “success” and “happiness” mean, we end up chasing something vague and elusive, never really knowing if and when we have arrived. While I am on my own path of defining what success and happiness mean to me, I share with you a philosophy and suggestions which may benefit anyone who cares to live what Henry David Thoreau called “an examined life”.
1. Recognize that you are a product of a “Success-Obsessed Culture”.
While the attitude and perspective of my client about his future appears both shallow and short-sighted, it should be anything but surprising. He, like most of us, in addition to everything else he may have learned, acquired, or experienced, did not escape being a product of a deeply success-obsessed culture. Despite the messages you may have received from your family, your church or your cultural heritage, if you were born and raised in North America, you were raised with a societal backdrop promoting the idea that success is the all-redeeming virtue and that the acquisition of status and wealth is the single worthy aim of life. Through our parents, teachers, and coaches, through the media, the books we read and the movies we watch, the underlying message that persists is that the ultimate measuring stick of a life or a career is that of “worldly success”. Success, by this definition, has little to do with the level of happiness, purpose, or engagement one might be experiencing in their life or work, but by how many letters come after their name, how much money they make, how far up the professional ladder they’ve climbed, the current value of their portfolio, yada, yada, yada.
William James, considered a modern father of psychology, once referred to “the moral flabbiness of the bitch-goddess success” and described the culture’s craving for success as a “national disease”. We’ve all seen how the compulsive, unexamined obsession with success can run amuck in the life of a person, a workplace, or a community. Symptoms of this “national disease” include peptic ulcers, broken marriages, crazy lifestyles, and the most universally accepted addiction of our time – the addiction to work. This fast-paced, manic, success-driven society as we have come to know it values speed over pace, effort over effectiveness, adrenaline over purpose and busyness over discernment. Driven by the desire to be Number One, to produce the smallest, the cheapest, or the first to arrive on the market, we often confuse change with growth and innovation with progress. As writer Robert Holden put it, “In our relentless pursuit of success, we are all fast-forwarding to nowhere in particular.” In short, we have sacrificed much of our sanity and our wisdom at the altar of “supposed success”. We’re surely driven; we’re surely busy, even if we ain't too smart.
2. Live on your own terms and by your own definitions.
Here’s the good news that I am trying to remind myself daily. I am going into Social Work after all, you know, a field that you often feel powerless as the problems are so vast and hard to grip.
Society’s terms don’t need to be our terms. We can be acculturated and we can rise above the conditioning of our culture. We can sleepwalk through life and live according to other people’s standards and definitions, or we can wake up and determine the course we want our own life to take. But it begins by knowing where we’re going, why we’re going there, and what direction will take us there.
Life doesn’t equip us with meaning, we apply meaning to Life. Everyone responds to the notion of a “dream home” but what constitutes a dream home for one person would be a living hell for another. What’s yours - a high rise condo in Upper Manhattan, a rustic cottage on an obscure beach, or a tent pitched under a million stars somewhere in the Rockies? If we care to live an examined life, does it not follow that we have to examine carefully what it is that inspires us, what motivates us to do what we do, and what is behind our current ambitions? Clearly, our definitions matter.
3. Knowing how much is “enough”.
While the vast majority of people in North America will tell you that their primary reason for working is to make money, making money is not a pursuit itself, but a tool for pursuing something else. Money itself has no inherent value – the value is produced only when we exchange money for other things. Whether it’s making the rent, the acquisition of a new purse, the thrill of a trip around the world, or the security of a retirement plan – the true value of money is only produced when it is exchanged for something else.
In our collective and largely unconscious pursuit of money, we should be asking what it is we are really bargaining for, what we hope to gain in its exchange. This is important because financial experts repeatedly remind us that most people don’t know how much money they really need to do the things they want, and thus, often wildly overestimate or underestimate how much money they need in exchange for their desired life. I am definitely guilty of this. According to near-unanimous scientific research, pursuing wealth for wealth’s sake won’t get you very far. A certain amount of money produces happiness and a bit more produces a bit more happiness, but beyond that, the correlation between money and life satisfaction is null. How will my client discern the most “attractive package”, if he doesn’t know what it is he is ultimately trying to attract? How do we know how much money is “enough” if we aren’t clear what it is we are hoping to exchange it for?
4. Own the price exacted by your ambitions.
In the pursuit of money and success, we can certainly be ambitious. Ambition can be a wonderful thing – it is a force that inspires vision, drive and determination to accomplish whatever is in our mind’s eye. The fundamental issue, however, is what we are being ambitious about. Each of us must discern for ourselves the answers to questions like the following:
Are your ambitions supporting you in becoming your best self or are they exacting a price from your soul?
What are the potential benefits and sacrifices of attaining the kind of success you seek?
Are you choosing your ambitions or are they choosing you?
Are the values and emotions driving your current ambitions the ones you would purposely choose to have behind the wheel of your life?
Who/what are you trying to please, impress, persuade, or influence through your current ambitions?
Who/what share the cost of your ambitions in terms of your time, energy and attention?
These questions and others like them lead us back to our personal understanding and defining of success and happiness, purpose and meaning. I remember a friend who told me that he was here “to play” – the world for him was one big playground. He was a self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie who continually pushed his limits through adventures like hang-gliding, deep sea diving, parachuting, etc. Another friend used the words of Mother Teresa to describe how she most wanted to live her life – as a love letter to God. Is it any surprise that she wants to spend her life advocating for the rights of the poor? Both were extremely ambitious, but in very different ways.
5. Think of success as a stopping place rather than a destination.
Personally, I have very little affinity to the concept of “being successful” in general terms, although I am willing to use the term in relation to particular events. In other words, I can relate to “success” simply as a place along a road, a temporary stopping place, or an experience such as an ‘A’ on a paper, a planned surprise that went off without a hitch, or a client lands a job. Likewise, there are specific achievements that herald “success” like earning a degree or a diploma, or landing a position. At times like these, we certainly know what it is to enjoy “moments” of success. But who gets to a place where they can say, “Okay, I have arrived. I’m there! I have achieved all the success I set out to attain. I get to sit on my glory now.” I don’t know about you, but if and when I ever did arrive at that place, I would be looking for a new definition of success!
I don’t think human beings are made for being perfectly content in the here and now, at least not for a very long “here and now”. An hour of sitting by the ocean, sure. A week of holidays in Tuscany, I’m in. But we don’t just want to be happy in life; we want to be engaged, challenged, curious, growing, surprised, and evolving. Wouldn’t we prefer to experience the entire spectrum of human emotions than to hang out indeterminately on the “happy end” of the life scale? Isn’t growth the only evidence of a vital life? And if so, doesn’t growth require a reaching and a stretching beyond what is comfortable? So even if there is a “there” in terms of achieving some level of success, it will only satisfy for a certain amount of time before it becomes the new starting point by which to judge the next “there”. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “I always dreaded the thought of success. I prefer the continual state of becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.”
6. Clarify and define what success means to you in its many shapes and forms.
While we were raised in a culture that defines success in the narrowest terms, usually relating it to one’s financial and professional achievements, the trajectory of our lives is wider, deeper, and more complex than what is reflected on our resume or in our bank accounts. Our understanding, definitions, and perspective on success need to reflect that more expansive and diverse spectrum of life experience. While one is grappling with vocational issues, she may be rockin’ in the realm of her physical exertion and stamina. Another has failed to reach his financial goals, but has earned the title of “Employee of the Month” by his inspired colleagues. In the same way that “Success” is more temporary than permanent, it is also far more multi-dimensional than it is unilateral.
With that in mind, consider how you define “success” in the following dimensions of your life: What would mark your success in each of these areas, letting you know when you have met each of these goals or aspirations?
Education and Professional Goals:
What do you hope to achieve in relation to your education?
What do you hope to do or accomplish in relation to your current job or your career goals?
What does “success at work” look like to you?
What talents and gifts have you been given that you want to most fully develop and put to use in your work?
What would you like to be part of or contribute to in relation to your community or to your profession?
Acquisition Goals:
What do you want to have, save for, and acquire?
What worldly goods or possessions would make you feel as if you have succeeded in some way?
What does your dream home look like?
What belongings or possessions will tell you that you’ve “made it”? A house that’s your own, a fabulous shoe collection, or the funds to travel around the world?
How much money do you need to make to feel like you have “arrived” in your field?
How much money do you need to make or save in order to feel accomplished and comfortable as a breadwinner for your family?
Personal/Relational/Spiritual Goals:
What kind of person do you want to be?
What qualities and attributes do you wish to develop and earn a reputation for?
If you were famous for anything, what would you like to be famous for?
What legacy do you hope to leave those you love?
What part do you want to play in the lives of others?
What are you here to give and teach the world, and what are you here to learn and receive?
7. Live the questions.
This list only scratches the surface of the many questions worthy of our time and attention as we come to terms with our own definitions of success. I will be adding to the list, and I encourage you to add your own to the list. Likewise, be aware of how the responses to these questions and others like them will change and morph over time, as we “live the questions” as Rainer Marie Rilke so wisely advised us to do.
I think it’s valuable to take the time to consider and be clear about what we are willing to sacrifice in order to have what we want to have and to do what we want to do, because in the end, what will matter most is who we are and what we have become. In this noble venture, my friends, I wish you great success!
