Your Successfulness

“When we think of fail­ure, fail­ure will be ours. If we remain unde­cided, noth­ing will ever change. All we need to do is to want to achieve some­thing great, and then sim­ply to do it. Never think of fail­ure, for what we think will come about.“
–Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi

What’s true suc­cess? What’s real, authen­tic, ful­fill­ing suc­cess? Is it achieve­ment? Is it made of goals, effi­ciency, and dead­lines? Is it the kind that says, “The level of one’s suc­cess is mea­sured by the depth of one’s wal­let”? I’ve asked myself that deeply intrigu­ing ques­tion for many years.

In fact, I used to be a go-​​getting, goal-​​setting, efficiency-​​minded, try-​​to-​​get-​​as-​​many-​​things-​​done-​​as-​​possible type of per­son; the type that never seems to have enough time for any­thing. And I do mean “used to be,” since one day the answer to that million-​​dollar ques­tion became as clear as crystal.

You see, suc­cess is who you are right now at this moment, regard­less of where you’re going, what you do, or what you have. This might seem a bit abstract to you, but the truth is that suc­cess is not what you think it is.

Since time immemo­r­ial, the word “suc­cess” has been long equated with get-​​it-​​done-​​yesterday kinds of peo­ple. Espe­cially in the entre­pre­neur­ial world in which we are emerg­ing where busi­ness suc­cess has taken over what we used to call “job secu­rity,” suc­cess is highly over-​​hyped, exces­sively over­taxed, greatly mis­in­ter­preted, and often­times frus­trat­ing if not self-​​effacing.

We now live in a world that encour­ages a results-​​oriented, “get-​​to-​​the-​​point” men­tal­ity while at the same time we see some all too com­mon themes appear­ing in our soci­ety. For instance, the fam­ily unit is slowly dis­in­te­grat­ing. Peo­ple are get­ting sicker and sicker. And crime sta­tis­ti­cally increases with every pass­ing year where they used to be low. These things, of course, are not success.

Strangely, suc­cess in some areas seems to par­al­lel fail­ures in oth­ers. As time man­age­ment guru Alec McKen­zie once pointed out, we are now see­ing in today’s cul­ture the rise of many “suc­cess­ful” failures.

I do agree that suc­cess can be mea­sured in many ways. For instance, a per­son may have achieved busi­ness suc­cess. Another may have won some impor­tant com­pe­ti­tion. A cor­po­rate “sol­dier” may have earned a senior exec­u­tive pro­mo­tion. And another may work long ardu­ous hours in try­ing to make a liv­ing and feel pro­duc­tive by accom­plish­ing many tasks.

But in all of these cases, once they’ve achieved so much some peo­ple fail in other areas, such as their mar­riages, the rela­tion­ship with their kids, their health (men­tal or phys­i­cal), or, para­dox­i­cally, their businesses.

While less tragic but worst, some stop and won­der where their time has gone or why they are not happy with what they have achieved up to now. They’ve climbed the lad­der of suc­cess and, as Lao Tse once said, “Dis­cover that their lad­der has been lean­ing against the wrong wall.”

Some achieve suc­cess and ask, “Why am I not happy?” “Where has my time gone?” or, “I’ve worked hard (or all my life) for this?” In essence, outer suc­cess can be (and most often is) the cat­a­lyst in cre­at­ing a lot of inner tur­moil. This is why the kind of suc­cess I’m refer­ring to, this true authen­tic suc­cess, is not what a great many peo­ple think.

For instance, real suc­cess is not about achiev­ing more, doing more, or get­ting more. While that’s the way most peo­ple mea­sure suc­cess, those things are not real for the mea­sure­ment does not con­sti­tute the essence. Now, I know that some of you may not agree with me, espe­cially if you’re a goal-​​oriented, achievement-​​minded type of person.

“Goals are essen­tial to suc­cess!” is a rebut­tal I’m often given in my sem­i­nars. I do not mean to con­tra­dict and I cer­tainly agree that goals are essen­tial for exter­nal suc­cess. I used to be a high achiev­ing sales­per­son with a daily plan­ner the size of my suit­case. With notes, to-​​do lists, project plan­ners, goals, and date tabs pro­trud­ing the dog-​​eared pages of my day-​​timer, I was always doing more or tak­ing on more than what I can handle.

My defin­ing moment, you might say, was when I lost every­thing; yes, every major thing in my life. Dur­ing one cold fall week­day in 1995, every­thing hap­pened in what seemed to be a mat­ter of hours. The repo man came to take away my beau­ti­ful, fully-​​loaded Honda. I was evicted from my three-​​bedroom town­house. My wife packed her bags, took my daugh­ter, and left me. And then, the low­est of the lows for any high achiever, I was forced into bankruptcy.

I had to start all over… Lit­er­ally. Whether this has hap­pened to you or not is irrel­e­vant. But if you have goals, live con­stantly in the future, and always seem to never have enough time, then after you’ve given me the priv­i­lege to explain myself you will prob­a­bly dis­cover that this book may in fact be one that you des­per­ately need. Maybe your whole out­look on suc­cess will change. I hope it will.

About the Author

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