Introduction
A few days ago, while having a conversation with a friend, the topic of what we wanted out of life came up. I asked her what she wanted most in life, and she replied, “to be successful”. Curious as to her definition of success, I followed up with the question, “what does success mean to you?”. She paused and thought about it for a minute. After thinking for a while, she replied, “to have and accomplish everything I want”. Of course, this answer is one of the most common you will receive when asking someone what success means to them, and at face-value makes sense, but how realistic is it to have and accomplish “everything” that you want? What even is “everything”, of course, it will vary from person to person, but more often then not, people say “everything” because they haven’t figured out what success means to them. They say “everything” because that’s what they’ve been trained to say.
Indoctrination
Growing up, we are constantly surrounded by images of “success”. We see the movies and TV shows where big-shot celebrities live in huge extravagant mansions, with their luxury cars, Louis Vuitton bags, and take excessive trips all over the world, staying in five-star hotels every night without stinting on expenses. Moreover, when we see these images they’re always accompanied by narratives of great lives and snapshots of happy faces, and we think to ourselves “If only I could have that life too”. Not only do we see it on television, we are surrounded by it in our daily lives. We’re raised by the parents that work hard 50 hours a week in their wonderful jobs, earning just enough money to pay the bills and scrape by. But sometimes, after a few raises and that big promotion they’ve been working towards for 10 years, they make enough to buy those things that will make them “happy”. They finally buy that corvette they used to see people drive on television when they were kids, and then to match it, take out a mortgage on that 2300 square foot house that they can show their friends when they come over for the annual Superbowl party. Your friends tell you how your parents are doing so much better than their parents, and obsess over the corvette, big house, and the family trips you take to Jamaica. After hearing these things over and over, you start to develop a framework of success. You start to hard-wire beliefs about happiness into your brain which get reinforced throughout life, but what you don’t know, is that the compass you’ve been given is pointing in the wrong direction.
The Loop
You see, from a young age, we are trained to look at success as an external end-state. We think about where we are now, and where we want to be, and we think that once we get there, we will finally be successful. But why is it then, that when we get there, we’re still unsatisfied and unhappy? The answer to the question is that it is because we are human. As organisms that share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, we are subject to the same primal instincts as our primate cousins. We have been tempered by hundreds of millions of years of evolution to become greedy, lustful, envious creatures, hell bent on having more than what we have. We often set goals for ourselves that we think are milestones for success, such as buying expensive cars, big homes, fancy clothes, and everything in-between, and when we finally get there after years of hard-work, years of sacrifice, and years of depression, we realize that we are still unhappy. So, to remedy the situation, we set even higher goals for ourselves. Now instead of the 2300 sq/ft house, we want the 3000 sq/ft house with granite countertops and a swimming pool, we want to take a vacation twice a year instead of once a year, and we tell ourselves, “then I’ll be successful”. Unsurprisingly, we reach our new target, and we’re still unhappy, and after the initial euphoria has worn off from the fleeting hit of dopamine we received from our new stuff, we feel unsuccessful again. So, after another frustrating let-down we again set new goals for success, and expect that once we get there, we’ll be successful. At some point in life, most of us will find ourselves in this situation. We will have reached a dozen goals, and a dozen times we will have felt disappointed and reverted to feeling unsuccessful and unhappy, and will be inevitably, once again, enter back into the false success loop. Herein lies the truth of success, which is that success is never found in the end-state.
Where to find Success?
True success cannot and will never be the external result of an action. It is found not after getting promoted to VP of a multinational corporation, it isn’t found when you make your first million dollars, it isn’t even found when you make your first billion. It is hidden where we aren’t trained to look for it, beneath all the glamour and riches, away from all the fame and fortune. It is in an area that we spend our lives overlooking, and that place is the journey.
The Journey
The beautiful thing about the journey, is that it is immediately accessible by everyone, it isn’t some far off target that requires trudging through years of pretending like you care about your bland, meaningless job so that you can get that raise that will help you buy the stuff that you think will make you happy, No, it is found through the day to day promises we keep to ourselves that may eventually lead us to realizing our goals. The journey is the most fulfilling endeavor anyone can ever undertake, it is a process of unmatched joy and beauty, that leaves us feeling satisfied at the end of every day. As beings with dreams, goals, and ambitions, we crave the approval of one person more than anyone else, ourselves. One of the most common, silent causes of depression, is the continuous loop of letting ourselves down. It is from silently pushing our goals and dreams to the back-burner, in pursuit of those things that we think will make us happy, and at the end of the day, we feel like we haven’t moved a single inch. Eventually, we feel stuck, we feel a gaping void in our life that we try to fill with lots of money and lots of stuff. Then we get that stuff, we are rewarded with that odious little hit of dopamine which triggers the feedback loop hard-wired in our brain leaving us wanting more. Most people will never break free from this living hell, they will be in it their entire lives, never knowing what they want, or where they’re going. They will spend their entire lives on a ship with a captain that doesn’t know where he is going, forever drifting at sea. For the majority of us, this is where we will stay until one day we die after a life of unfulfillment, misery, and deep regret. If you are anything like me, you have found yourself immersed in this type of misery after many years of letting yourself down and not taking care of your dreams. If you want to put an end to this cycle, you must embark on the long and arduous road known as “the journey”.
Breaking Free
Success isn’t for free, it is earned. It is earned through the constant and consistent reinforcement of positive thought patterns, and rejection of old thought patterns. The brain is a very confused organ. On the one hand, it wants to keep you a prisoner. It wants to stop you from taking any unnecessary risks. It wants to protect you from any physical or emotional harm. It wants you to merely survive. But on the other hand, it is the home the part of ourselves that doesn’t want to just survive, the part of us that wants to prosper. Our primal instincts are constantly in direct conflict with our dreams and ambitions, and the process of quieting our primal brain to let our evolved brain flourish can take years. It’s a difficult process that is only achievable by those who have the courage and mental fortitude to persevere. But when you’re finally able to subdue your own mind, and create the heaven in which you can flourish, you will have taken that first step on the path to success. You will have made an agreement with yourself that no longer will you let life dictate you, no longer will you live life passively, and no longer will you play by someone else’s rules. You will have become someone you can be proud of, you will have become the hero of your own story.
Conclusion
From a very young age, we are trained to view success as an external state, when in fact, it is entirely internal. The old cliché “money doesn’t buy happiness” is a truth that has been evident since the beginning of mankind. Many powerful, rich, famous individuals throughout history have died with the bitter taste of dissatisfaction engrained on their tongue from a life of emptiness. Yet, some of the happiest, most successful people that have ever lived, had what many call “nothing” their entire lives. They never became rich or famous. They never wound up on the cover of People or Forbes. They lived their life in quiet bliss. They lived their life embarking on their journey, realizing their purpose, and breaking free from the rat-race that so many people in the world are trapped in and will never get out of. The truth is, that to find success, we must take risks, and the path to success is filled with failure, hardship, and obstacles. It is riddled with temptation, detours, forks and lies crafted by our own mind to turn us away from our goals. But every day that you keep your promise to yourself to continue your journey, every day that you chip away at your dreams, every day that you persevere through the challenges you face, every day you continue to be the best version of you, you will go to bed rewarded with the feeling that has eluded you your entire life, you will be rewarded with the feeling of success.
On that note, here is one of my favorite movie clips of all time