|
You need to stop chasing success if you want to have happiness now. This is something I had to learn the hard way. My whole life, I have been a top achiever. I've always been chasing success:
 Whatever it may be, I've been going for that thing. I've put that thing on a pedestal, the success that society is saying that I should have and you should have. I've been recently working with a client who has had a lot of success professionally, a lot of success in her personal life around the home that she was able to build. What I'm noticing in her, and I've noticed in a lot of high-achieving women, is we are sold this story that to be happy, we need:
But these things don’t make us automatically happy. That's the hard truth because we're being pushed, driven, and signed up to this false reality that when you have these specific things happen to you and reach these particular successes, you will be happy. I can remember the very beginning of my coaching journey. I put it out there that I was offering coaching services, even on Craigslist, and someone reached out to me. It ended up that they had just sold a business two years earlier. They had built up this business with two other friends and sold it for 75 million to another major company we use daily (you probably know the name of the company and the name of their business, but for confidentiality, I won’t share.) His cut was 25 million, and he was just in his 30s when the sale happened. At this point, it was ending the time of the transition from passing it off to the new owners. He was free to do whatever he wanted with $25 million. The problem and why he hired me is he said, “I'm not happy. Everything in my life was culminating to this moment of building this company and selling it, and I've done that. I've achieved that. Now, I'm at the point where I'm like, ‘Why am I not happy? Why is there a void in me?’” I coached him to switch from measuring life according to success to measuring life according to satisfaction. This happens repeatedly in my clients. Just recently, this client bought into the idea of “have these successes, and then you'll be happy.” But after facing burnout on multiple occasions, the switch had to happen! This is a story I see over and over and over and over again. It might not be burnout. It might be…
 It's this moment of, “Is this what I signed up for? Because if so I don't like it.” Then you don't want to say anything because you'd be ungrateful to have…
All the boxes are checked. Yet, you are…
I've been there. I’ve felt it. It's not just for those in a nine-to-five. It can happen in your business as well as in life. It can happen in the perfect career or the perfect business. That feeling of, “Why am I not happy?” As I mentioned, you dare not say anything to anyone because it would seem like you are so ungrateful. I know another woman who built up a business. I won't say what business it is because that could potentially give it away to people who know me. She built up a business, and then she decided to sell it. People said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, it didn't work out.” She replied, “No, it did work out. I'm selling it because I'm not happy. I'm moving on to something else. I was happy with what it was and the time is done.” People think when you end something, you couldn't keep it, or it didn't work out. But I have clients who…
They stepped away from all these situations because it wasn't what they wanted anymore. Sometimes we paint a vision for ourselves of “this is what I wanted”. Which makes it hard to make a new decision later down the road. Not as a completely new person, but with a different value system or stronger dialled in values, more of a vision for what's important in life. We have this moment where the person you are today wants to make a different decision than the person of the past. That stuff doesn't matter anymore because you've learned something, and there's wisdom that has come in. Some people might say, “Oh, that's too bad that you couldn't keep it going” Or “That was a bad decision for leaving that. You'll never get that type of career/position. You'll never have that kind of money again.” Well, what would I say? It's worth testing out, worth taking the leap. Some of my clients have grieved
But was it what they wanted or what their ego told them to go for? We have this fine line of: "This is good for you,” and “This is a jail that you're going to be trapped in.” I felt that years ago, before I started my business. I would come home at night and reach for the wine, eat junk food, be tired, and wonder, “Why am I unhappy?” Everything on paper was successful. I looked at my list and check, check, check.
Everything was getting checked off. I was on the success path. “Why do I feel this restlessness? Why do I feel empty?” I thought, “This was supposed to be exactly what I wanted.” But the thing is, I needed to figure out what the vision really felt like for me. Over my path, different pieces have come in, piece after piece, and it's started to reveal a new vision for my life. What happens with clients is that once they stop measuring their life according to their success and start measuring it according to their satisfaction, their contentment increases. Their happiness, values, and lives become rich, energetic, happy, joyful, fulfilling, and precisely what they want. But they had never really asked themselves the coaching questions I ask to give them the clarity and vision. Are you going to break free from what society tells you is successful for you? What is important to you? If you really break it down, these other things are what matters most. I've heard from many people who have gone to third-world countries and helped people.
They say, “I can't believe how happy these people are without much. They’re much happier than I am. I thought I was coming in and teaching them things. They taught me things.” That's because these people don’t measure their life according to their success. They are looking for…
Yes, they may not have lavish homes and amazing careers that bring in a lot of money, but they're happy. You need to stop measuring your life according to your success.  I know it's hard. It's so hard. I'm a recovering perfectionist. I am a recovering high achiever. I still achieve, but slowing down has been one of the greatest gifts in my life and relationships. My clients say to me, “Wow, it's so good to choose me and what I want. Not to be pressured by keeping up with the Joneses or what others think would make me happy.” It's not about the ego of how life looks. It's more about how it feels to live your life. That's the key thing. Sure, you've heard many times over. People on their deathbed, they don't say things like…
What they say is…
You have that choice now, whether you are 7 or 70, 19 or 90. I love when my clients have that moment of “Wow, this is what it means to live. This is what it means to be happy.” I had been living in black and white before. Now, I get to choose what I want to have. Stop measuring your life according to society's belief of success and start looking at what will make you truly happy. Have that vision for your life and what you want it to be like.  It's sometimes just about the simple things. That's why I find I'm happiest on the weekends having lazy days. When we don't have a big list of accomplishments and we're not pressured to have expensive experiences, instead it’s the simplest things. Just ask yourself, “What brings me joy?”
I'm super passionate about this because I'm so grateful for my experience with my coach about 14 years ago, where I saw the difference between these two. It's funny. I just did the Wheel of Life with one of my clients, whom I've been working with for years, and she didn't click in that The Wheel of Life is a professional coaching tool that measures satisfaction, not success. See how strongly it’s ingrained in us! If you want to go through that experience, I have two one-on-one coaching spots right now. We can figure out where your wants and your needs are and the vision for the life you really want to have. You’ll know how to bring that spark back to you, and you’ll be satisfied not just when you've achieved success, but now and every day on the way to success. We don't want to keep waiting for those “when” days, the “if” days. When I get that… If I get that…. We want it to be happening now. Because some of our goals are big. They'll happen five years from now, or 10 years from now. What does that mean for this life in the moment? That client I had who had 25 million was able to look at all areas of life and determine, “What do I really want in those areas? What values matter to me?” What came forward was family, being connected with someone else so that they could share their life with them, develop things like their language from their culture and background, and form more family bonds because they've been working so hard for so long. I ask that of you. What is it going to take for you to stop measuring your life according to success and instead measure it according to satisfaction? This is one of the biggest switches, maybe even the biggest switch, that I made 14 years ago, that has made the biggest difference in my life and is the biggest difference in every client's life. You may think, “That's simple, I can do that.” You could, but the switch isn’t that easy. It's much easier with someone else looking into your life, giving you that hard truth, the no BS, and taking you through it. I tried to find happiness myself. Even as a coach, I need someone else to hold me to a higher vision for myself. I'm happy to be that person. As I said, I've got two spots right now for one-on-one coaching. Let's do this. Let's spend the next little while figuring out what that vision is for you and helping you be happy every day. Read my other blogs:
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed