What comes first? Success or Happiness
After years of walking the preconceived path of success, I realized I wasn’t happy. The path I was walking was defined by others, I checked a bunch of boxes that made me appear successful on the outside, and I was grateful for what I had, I knew I should be happy, but something from my life was missing. I mastered that fake and often painful smile, pictured here. Here’s a brief snapshot of some of those boxes I checked:
Personal
Met my now husband at 22; married at 31
Purchased my first house at 23, a vacation condo at 27 and our forever home at 30
We rescued the sweetest pup who is the love of our lives
Have a great group of family, friends and neighbors
Professional
Graduated with a job that aligned with my degree
Moved to a role that allowed me to travel the world
Became highly respected in the organization and freely changed departments to assume roles that fit my ideal image and allowed for professional growth
Achieved/received my MBA while working full time
Promoted to management level and earned respectable a 6-digit salary
I was successful, but I was far from happy. I was so focused on achieving success that I was inherently draining my energy creating more stress for myself. By focusing all my energy on my definition of success and achieving the next “greatest thing,” I was diverting my energy away from the present moment and diverting my energy away from my happiness.
It wasn’t until I started to tap into higher levels of energy and took the time to understand my core values that I was able to shift my perspective on life. Once I realized that I could change the paradigm and focus on the now, focus my energy on my happiness, I began to experience greater success. By changing the paradigm and putting my happiness first, I had more energy to pursue the next big thing. I had a more open mind to the opportunities that presented themselves to me, I was able to detach from the outcome and focus on the journey, which ultimately allowed me to achieve some lofty goals that originally felt out of reach.
As I began to understand this shift, I began to listen for it as I coached my clients. I began to listen for it as I spoke with friends, family members and colleagues. In these conversations, I have found that nearly all of my peers have walked or are walking a similar path to the one I once walked. They are checking the boxes, they are focused on being successful, they are doing what they are “supposed to be doing” to achieve that success, but they are not happy.
In a world where currently success is at the center of happiness, how do we flip the script? How do we change the paradigm and start defining a world where happiness is at the center of success?
This is an interactive blog post, with prompts to help you consider this exact topic. You can do these by reading along and responding on a plain piece of paper, or, if you’d like, I created a free workbook here that you can utilize as you walk through the rest of the post.
Introduction
Throughout this exercise, I challenge you to take time to think about how you define certain things. I ask you how you define success, I ask you to define happiness, I ask you to tap into what emotions and feelings you’ll have when you experience these things individually.
As you work through this exercise, I ask that you please define these things for yourself. Take your parent’s definition of success out of play. Take your boss’s definition of success out of play. Forget about how social media defines happiness. Forget about how every book, podcast or motivational speaker defines happiness. Forget about all of that and look within you.
How do YOU define these things? How do YOU envision these things manifesting in your life? If you were the only one on this planet how would you achieve these things?
Step 1: Defining Success
The first thing we need to do to flip the script is to start defining what success and happiness truly mean to us, at a deeper level. So rather than thinking of success as a title at work, or happiness as this mystical feeling you’ll have when you achieve your goals, what underlying emotions, thoughts feelings, and actions would occur if you were truly successful?
Let’s focus on success first. Think about a goal that you have. One that you’ve been pining over, one that you tell yourself that you’ll be successful when you’ve accomplished this goal. Is it making manager and having a six-digit salary? Is it losing 50lbs?
I’d like you to take a moment to really pause and envision success for this goal. Close your eyes and put yourself in the moment when you’ve realized you’ve accomplished it. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What underlying emotions will be present when you first experience success and will remain present? What are you doing, who are you surrounded by? What other signals, internally, may trigger you into realizing that you’ve been successful?
Now, either in the workbook or on a piece of paper, write down the following:
A detailed vision of the accomplished goal.
How do you know you’ve been successful? Who are you with? What are you doing? Who are you surrounded by? What’s different in your life?
What thoughts, feelings and emotions are present for you now, that wouldn’t be present if you hadn’t been successful?
Before moving on to step 2, take a moment and rate your current level of success. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very, how successful do you feel you are right now?
Step 2: Defining Happiness
Now, let’s put that page away for a moment and switch gears to start thinking about unencumbered happiness. Think about the present moment, what does true happiness look like to you? If you could melt away all the stress and hardships in your life and truly be at peace, content, and happy, what would that look like? Remove the goals, remove the idea of success, and just focus on the state of being happy.
For some people, tapping into the vision and emotions of happiness can be difficult. If it is for you, think about a time in your life that you were truly happy. Picture it, close your eyes and immerse yourself back in that moment. What were you doing? Who were you with? What feelings and emotions come up for you? In addition to those warm and fuzzy feelings that you experienced in that moment, what other thoughts, feelings and emotions would be present for you if you were truly happy with your life. Content with everything it is, unencumbered by stress or unfulfilled desires.
On a new piece or paper, or in the workbook, write down what happiness looks like to you. Describe it in detail. Describe the words, feelings, thoughts and emotions that you experienced when you envisioned yourself experiencing true happiness.
Before moving on to step 3, take a moment and rate your current level of happiness. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being very, how happy do you feel you are right now?
Step 3: Creating Awareness
For some, when they do this exercise, the two descriptions and lists of thoughts, feelings and emotions are completely different. For others, the lists are more closely aligned. What is it for you?
Similarly, when some people do this exercise, they have rated themselves as being relatively high on one or both scales, while others have rated themselves quite low.
This exercise represents your current truth, so whatever comes up for you However you rated yourself is your current truth and is exactly where you need to be on your journey.
Take some time to reflect on where you are in your journey. Think about the similarities and differences that appear for you as you review your responses from Step 1 and from Step 2. What emotions or feelings are coming up for you? Are you at peace with the scaled numbers you wrote down? Are you at peace with the thoughts, feelings and emotions that you associated with success and happiness? Are you prioritizing one area over the other? How does that make you feel? How is that impacting the life you are currently living? How is that impacting your mindset? How is that impacting your story?
Before moving on, take the time and the space to reflect on any of the above questions or to journal about anything else that is coming up for you as you evaluate your responses from the first two steps.
Step 4: Defining Balance
Look back on how you rated your current level of success and your current level of happiness. Are the responses balanced? Is one rated higher than the other? If so, which one? Are you prioritizing one area of your life over the other? If so, what impact is that having on your life?
Wherever you are on your current success and happiness scale, what in your life would be different if you brought them in balance with each other?
What would happen if you started to use the thoughts, feelings and emotions associated with success and happiness to create new definitions and visions for yourself?
Similarly, what would be different if you were living a "10" on both the happiness and success scales? What would it look like if you achieving ultimate happiness and ultimate success, if you were authentically at peace with your life?
Final Notes
My old way of living had me completely out of balance. I was prioritizing my success over my happiness. The interesting thing is that although I was prioritizing my success, at the expense of my happiness, I still wasn’t as successful as I wanted. It was a vicious cycle because my lack of success made me even more unhappy.
It wasn’t until I performed a similar exercise to this that I realized I needed to re-balance. I chose to take a step back and to prioritize my happiness. As I did this, my energy rose, my mindset changed, I became more positive. I took the time to redefine success. Rather than focusing on my job title or my salary, I used the thoughts, feelings and emotions that envisioned when I thought about success as my definition. As I changed my mindset and started using my core emotions and feelings as drivers for success and happiness, I became more open to opportunities that presented themselves to me. I began to understand that there was more than one path to every goal, and I began to realize that there was so much more to be experienced when I focused on the journey rather than the destination.
I hope this exercise was helpful to you! I would love to hear about your experience. Feel free to comment below, to drop me a note, or to discuss your results in more detail, schedule your free discovery session here.