You Can’t Chase Success

Today I want to talk to you about success. I’m doing a four-hour master class for an amazing company. In the last part of this master class we will talk about what success really is. So many people think that success is something you arrive at. After a lot of research and looking at it from different perspectives, I’ve come to find that success is having a purpose in life and shooting for that purpose every day. The purpose that I have set for myself is to help people live happier, richer, and more fulfilled lives. And how ever I can do that, as long as I do something that contributes to that every single day, then I feel like it’s a good day.

Contribution is a big part of achieving that success you’re pining for. Maybe success is just contributing to someone else’s happiness, contributing to alleviating someone’s pain. Maybe success is just sending a text message to someone who’s having a bit of a rough go and there’s enough people out there that are having rough goes. You can have massive success every single day. Success isn’t the size of your bank account. Your money can be taken away from you – but your purpose in life cannot. Can you imagine how much happier we would be if every day we felt like we were actively working towards our goals?

When people chase success, they chase happiness and power. Please remember that happiness and power are not purposes, they are nouns. You can’t feel fulfilled working towards an undefined noun. I spent enough of my life feeling like that. Every single day can be a success as long as we are moving along for our purpose. One of the first things I do with my coaching programs is to help people to figure out what their purpose is. And you know, if you’ve ever read the book Man’s Search For Meaning, you know that one of the things that he talked about was one of the reasons he survived all of those horrible camps was that he dared to dream. He still believed in the future for himself. He found the meaning in the small and difficult things in his life. But above all, he found meaning in every single aspect of everything that happened in his life. And that is success. That is what led to him survive when so many did not.

If you’re kind of coasting, if you’re kind of worried about defining success, know that you can be successful right now in this moment and every moment of every day. As long as you just do a little bit of work by figuring out what you want and how you are going to contribute towards what you want, you will find success. Maybe it’s helping some of the downtrodden, maybe it’s helping other people who don’t have your skills or talents. Maybe you can unlock doors that people just can’t see for themselves. That’s success.