Success is a Greedy Mistress

Success is a greedy demanding mistress. To begin with, she makes small demands - all she is looking for is your passion to be in the game to woo her. But as you gain wins and with It the heart of success, her demands become increasingly greedy - winning not just for the sake of winning,  but for all that it brings in its train - money, fame and status.

This is what I call ‘The Greed of Success’.

Take the example of the Aizawl football club which won this year's I-league championship. To start with, they just wanted to see the best way they play the tournament and lose less. But with time and wins over the giants of football, they became more confident. They started thinking they could finish as the runners-up and ended up winners of the championship and winning the prize money off Rs 1 cr! After the win, Captain Alfred Jaryan said - they don't play for money - ‘money can come in the way of true performance’. ‘We just put our heads down and try to achieve as much as we can’.

Let us pray Dame Success doesn't claim another victim.

Resolving Dilemmas

There comes a stage in our life when we pause to ask ourselves, what is better - material fulfilment, or spiritual fulfilment?

To me, dealing with this dilemma is much the same as the way we might deal with our challenge of work-life balance - which is to choose to either: integrate, harmonize, treat them as continuum, or just make a choice between the two. I have come to the conclusion that it need not be the last, viz. an either or situation.

My first glimpse of a resolution to the dilemma came from something that Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post said. She told Forbes magazine that while tend to think of success along two metrics - money and power, we need to add a third. “To live a life we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives settle for,” Huffington said, “we need a THIRD metric of success that goes beyond the two. The third metric consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”

To me, adding the third metric is a possible resolution to the dilemma of having to choose between material and spiritual fulfilment. Instead of treating the two as as an either/or choice,  what if we think of ways to either integrate,  harmonise, or treat them as a continuum?

Any thoughts?

The Values Compass

“When I first came into the industry, I wanted my work to speak for myself and my aim was to earn a good name. Over the years,  my priorities changed and I wanted to make more money. But in the last four years, I’m back to square one. My character certificate became important for me.” - Actor Prabhudeva

Insight
Our values determine the choices we make. The priority of values tend to change as our definition of success changes. It is a good idea to revisit our values periodically to determine whether the things we do and the behaviours we exhibit are in sync with our values. Old or new.

The Digital Nomads

“The Millennials view of success isn't necessarily a house, a well paying job and a (white) picket fence. There's a huge shift towards defining success as working in terms of things that one truly believes in, and appreciating experiences over material possessions.” - Karoli Hindriks, owner Jobbatical, a site for digital job hunters on a global scale.

INSIGHT
In the 60’s and 70’s too, Western youth were looking for what they believed in. They were the drug-induced  peace-seeking nomads. In the present globally connected times the Millennial digital nomads earn their way through experiences.

Choosing Life Priorities

“.... a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving."
Together, those factors help you to take care of your psychological life and truly be successful….” - Arianna Huffington, Author and Columnist

Insight
This realisation dawned on Huffington after collapsing from overwork chasing money and power. Clarity on life's priorities usually comes after undergoing a life threatening experience. And that is something we understand only intellectually but fail to act on in time.

Defining Success

Naveen Jain is serial entrepreneur whose company Moon Express, is the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon. Talking about when customers don't come on board easily, he says, “...Your success is not about your bank balance, it is about how many lives you have touched.”

Insight
One of the most critical task in today's materialistic times where the money god seems to have the largest following, is to define what success means to YOU personally. Here are 9 ways incredibly successful people define success.

http://tinyurl.com/jv5p2sv

Life Choices

Bookmyshow's founder-CEO Ashish Hemrajani believes, "Ambition is a positive energy.  Desire can be unrelenting. I still live in the same house,  work from the same office and I am pretty much the same man I used to be when I started off 16 years ago."

Insight
"Don't give money way too much power over your life. It's not about how much you make, but the life that you make with the money you have. “ is an advice Suze Orman, TV financial guru says, she would have appreciated when she was 22.

What are the life choices you have made? How well have the served you?

Your Paths to Happiness

Seven years ago, Adam Newman, co-founder & CEO, WeWork weighed 30 pounds less, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day and his hands used to shake. Then he met his present wife, who told him he didn't understand life - he was chasing money, which was never going to work. And even if it did come, he would never be happy. Instead, she told him, he should be chasing happiness.

Insight
Yogic tradition teaches that the four desires, Purpose, Prosperity, Pleasure and Spiritual fulfilment are the basis for all human happiness. What paths to happiness have you chosen within each desire? Connect2Coach

Relationship Boundaries

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love became a bestseller, and from being an artiste living close to the bone, she found herself in possession of a giant pile of money. Feeling lucky and wanting to do something for her friends who still lived in poor circumstances,  she gave away a lot of money to them.  But by doing this, she found that in many cases, far from strengthening relationships, it actually spoilt them.

#MyLearning
Money, religion and politics are divisive. Best to keep them out of relationships, both at home and work.

Picture Source : Souleylo