Success…Is it Bullshit?

About a week ago I experienced major success. A full day where for over 20 hours I was living a life that once was beyond my dreams. Included in that dream day was my attendance, and inspired consumption of, TEDx MidAltantic. One talk has really stuck with me. Albert-Laszio Barabasi wrote a book called The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success and gave a talk about it.

When I was 19 years old, and freshly dropped out of the University of Maryland, I remember having some pretty serious questions about success. The academic world and the world of normative social life had never been arenas that I was successful in. I was frustrated.

Frustrated with myself for not being good enough.

Frustrated in the systems, as they clearly weren’t flexible or adaptable for a guy like me.

Frustrated with our culture for having values that I didn’t align with.

There was a point where I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen and telling them something like, “I just don’t get it. What’s the fucking point? I’m supposed to go to school, study something I don’t care about, accrue debt and then work at a job for the rest of my life, which I’ll hate?”

This lack of connection with “success” helped me see that the rat race was not going to bring me joy, happiness, purpose or fulfillment. In that way I was lucky. And with a world where most people were shooting for it, and I clearly wasn’t, I’ve spent years now ruminating on success.

At one point in my life, I had no vision for success. In fact, I was 100% ready to accept that I would never have success in love, health or professionally. Fortunately I built a marginally successful life. I had a good career, I owned a condo, I had dogs and I was married.

Then…I lost it all. Very quickly my marriage imploded at the same time I was waking up to the glass ceiling in my career and my quickly waning passion. My waning passion led to average performance. As much as I was not willing to worship at the altar of success, I always held a high standard for my team’s performance. So with performance escaping me, and the writing on the wall, I was facing the realization that my marriage was ending and soon my career probably would too.

Instead of falling into a spiral of shame, fear, and avoidance, I exploded with the realization of my potential. I knew I could create social and dating success. It was my time. I also had already lost about 80 lbs and for the first time in my life, I imagined getting healthy and loving my body.

I got to work…like a fucking warrior. I studied body, mind, nervous system, influence, attraction, love, sex, business, psychology…

And success.

Nothing was going to stop me from learning and growing.

Which led me to form the opinion that a lot of what was traditionally “successful” had no bearing on health, happiness or fulfillment. In fact, it was clear to me that a lot of what people chose to do, in the interest of becoming a “success” was what was killing our bodies, minds, relationships and robbing us of peace and joy.

As the story goes, I’m really fucking successful at transforming my life. I dropped the rest of the weight and was down 150 lbs. I started having a much more rich and exciting social and dating life. I transformed my relationship with anxiety and my nervous system. I experienced what some people would call a spiritual awakening.

Within a year I woke up saying, “I’ve got to help others learn how physical and emotional transformation really works.”Which is why I’m a coach today. It’s a calling.

In the passing 6 years, I’ve continued to study success. While being mindfully skeptical about anything that was labeled as such.

In his TED Talk, Barabasi broke down performance and success. Performance being how capable we are of achieving, creating or doing something. Success being the outside communities’ acceptance and recognition of that performance.

This smelled like bullshit to me.An inner voice said, “This is a brilliant and helpful distinction but it relies upon each of us believing that the opinion of others is equivalent to our value. Fuck that!”

The gift in this talk is that I then began to acknowledge two different versions of success and maybe, even to my distaste, it requires both to truly feel successful in life.

I work with high performers, leaders, creative and entrepreneurs. They typically appear successful to the rest of the world or community. Yet often these people, and many high performing successful people, experience negative self-talk, imposter syndrome and never feeling good enough.

When we rely solely on the outside community to warrant us a success, we can never get enough. We all know that person who has never made enough money, or won enough awards or has enough training, certifications or degrees.

The orientation towards “outer success” always leaves us wanting more, feeling empty or in a scarcity mode.

Enter “inner success”.

The next frontier for most of us is what I would call “inner success”.If “outer success” is when the community recognizes and rewards my performance. Then inner success is when my inner community (my various parts, inner dialogue, and self-assessment) recognizes and rewards my performance.

Who wants a version of success where the world around us is showering us with rewards and recognition but we have no appreciation for ourselves and we don’t reward our own performance?

This is not about lowering your standards and claiming that failure is good enough. It’s about taking full ownership and partnership in creating, recognizing and acknowledging your highest levels of performance. And actually acknowledging and celebrating that performance.

No one is showing us how to actually receive and absorb external reward and recognition in a healthy way. No one is out there teaching us how to have compassionate accountability for ourselves. No one is out there helping us hold a high standard and also claiming that our effort was enough.

No one is encouraging you to kick ass, grow, evolve, and challenge yourself and to do it from a place of joy, freedom, aliveness, peace, and love.

Are you willing to keep striving towards a performance-based lifestyle without ever being able to relax and receive the gifts that the external community is offering?

Are you willing to keep on feeling like you have to always accomplish, achieve, create and perform at a higher level so others will call you a success?

Are you ready to learn to hold yourself to a high standard for performance, while acknowledging and rewarding performance for yourself?

Or do you want to keep pushing the finish line further and further away and keep your own peace, aliveness, joy, and fulfillment at an arm’s distance?

Let’s clear up the negative BS talk in your mind, learn to reward and accept yourself and achieve a version of success that no one outside of you can deny. While you learn to rely more on your own approval to balance the external version of success that you’ve always felt burdened by.

It’s Your Turn