The Success Deception: How Our Culture of Busyness Undermines Our Happiness
“The definition of success changes. Success is to live your life with integrity and not give in to peer pressure to be something you’re not. Follow your passion, stay true to yourself, never follow someone else’s path; unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path, then by all means, you should follow that.”
A client once share shared with me she felt she wasn’t achieving enough in her career. She thought she should probably be “doing more.” Looking around at others at work, it was clear to her that others were working very hard and generating a lot of work. They were even posting about that work on LinkedIn! They were busy! Isn’t a sign she should also be very busy?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I knew my client had built a life she had worked hard to design: a successful career while maintaining plenty of time to be with her family. When I asked her, “Are you happy and satisfied?” She said yes. But the thought nagged at her that she needed to achieve more. The pressure was obviously there and so was the stress.
My client (like so many of us) was feeling the pressures of the nebulous, ill-defined, and often changing benchmark we call success. If she didn’t think it through, she might fall into the trap of following success without knowing it for herself.
everyone is feeling the pressure
I’ll break it to you now. The great majority of us walk around feeling like failures. (Sure, there is that tiny minority that seems to have a pretty healthy ego. We know them well.) But I can promise you that despite the incredible confidence that many people convey, most are wondering how they are falling short. Of course, people won’t actually share their insecurities with you. They wouldn’t dare. We’ve got to keep up appearances and look confident in everything we do!
But what is happening more often than not (especially now with the omnipresence of LinkedIn and Facebook) is we are looking outside ourselves and at others to figure out what we need to do in order to feel successful. And that is one reason we get busy. Because, busy = successful, right? The Harvard Business Review even addressed the downsides of a culture of busyness.
how we are deceived by a culture of busyness
The truth, of course, is that being busy doesn’t mean one is successful. We might get really busy, generate some output and for a moment, we may think, “I’m on the success track!” Until, our reptilian brains tell us, “No. You aren’t successful after all. See how John just posted about how he spoke in front a thousand people at that conference? You haven’t hit that measure that so get busy again!”
And that is when we are deceived. We start to equate busyness with success. We look outside ourselves for the benchmarks. We fall into this trap looking for success but aren’t necessarily feeling the victory.
You know where I’m headed right? If you are feeling the pressures of the success but are determined to create the life of your dreams, your current model of success may not be working for you.
the problems with looking outside ourselves to define success
Let’s get back to my client. What could have been happening with her?
Sure, she was ‘feeling’ something was missing. But she didn’t know what that was.
This is when I asked her, “What is your definition of success?”
As you can imagine, defining success is a messy business. We’ve had our parents, friends, teachers, schools, family, religion, and peers lay out all sorts of measures. And now we have another layer which is literally screaming at us on a minute-by-minute basis: social media. It tells us: Success is travel! Success is another degree! Success is having a child! Success is making money! Success is family! Success is not having a family! Success is being able to hit my organization’s goals! Success is stepping back and getting out the rat race! Success is leaning in!
From a very early age, we are told what success is and there are a lot of mixed messages. And yet, listening to those mixed messages is precisely what keeps us in a trap of busyness which doesn’t lead to us feeling success.
What we understand (and this is proven out by my clients) is that you will feel a greater sense of alignment and meaning when you are guided by your personal definition of success. And that is where crafting a Success Plan comes in.
“If you follow a path to success that isn’t your own, you may achieve your goals, but when you arrive at your destination, you may not feel successful or fulfilled at all.”
defining success according to you
What would it look like if you took a step back to understand what you mean by success. Getting clear on this key point could save you a lot of stress and time.
Understand what YOU mean by success.
In truth, there isn’t a “correct” way of defining success. There is your way. Success is dependent on each individual. You have the power to design your own success model.
Defining success on your own terms means answering some fundamental questions like:
How do you want to feel in your life? Grounded? Curious? Calm? Driven? Here you want to think about the exact feelings you want to feel in your day to day. It is not about your action plan just yet. You want to know how you want to feel exactly once you have achieved your goal or how you want to feel day to day.
What do you really value? If we stop and think, we will see that really matters to us are linked to what we value in our lives. Often, we don’t really value working or money. When we think about what is valuable to us we tend to focus on family, friends, rich experiences, causes we belief in, and well-being. We also look to our core values.
When you think of having a meaningful life, what does that mean for you? This is another question that gets to the heart of success. If you step away from the day-to-day to do list, you step away from the pitfalls of how others define success (read the Pitfalls above!!), you and truly take in the big picture. What does a meaningful life look like? What is an ideal day? An idea year?
Don’t forget to take stock about what is already working for you. There are parts of your life that are likely successful but maybe you aren’t giving those things a moments notice. If you aren’t, then you won’t be acknowledging those places where you are making and want to keep progress.
Once you spend some time reflecting on these questions, you can take the extra step to outline some success statements.
Here are some examples:
I am calm because I am exercising and creating more space in my calendar on a daily basis.
I am healthy moving my body multiple times every week through hiking and biking while eating homemade meals.
I focus on life outside work (ending work at 5 and avoiding working over the weekends) to invest in my hobby.
“There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
my success journey
I have personally transformed my definition of success. For many years, success equated to a laser focus on achieving goals in the workplace. And those goals were all too often measured by external measures.
Today, I measure success by whether I can use my strengths, and whether I am energized. I also measure success by how much I am also investing in other parts of my life including friends and family.
A final point: Consider whether success is an means or an end. Could success be more about the journey than the destination?
As for my client? When she took the time to think about what success really meant for her, she realized she had already the perfect balance of work and life. She began to realize that nagging thought she needed to “do more” was driven by something that was planted inside by her parents long ago. And she was relieved to know she was already further along on her success path than she thought.