Unhappy Success
Success and Well-being
Success includes achievement but is more complex. It is personal. No one may ever acknowledge your success, and you can live successfully without accolades. Waking up with a thirst for life every day is success.
Many people wake up with contempt for what they must get done for the day. They are prisoners of their own lives, even high achievers.
The COVID-19 quarantine allowed everyone to redefine success. People whose well-being was tied to their jobs suffered the most. Many people realized that their jobs were just that — a job. Their job titles left them empty and isolated when their role could not be fulfilled.
People who invested in well-being, not just achievement, suffered less during quarantine. Well-being is the success that is well-rounded enough to sustain you in difficult times. If one area of life gets depleted, the other areas counterbalance.
Specifically, anchors of well-being include a reliable social network, managed health, adequate resources, and inner peace.
- Reliable social network: A group of diverse people in your life support all your efforts, not just your career efforts. Your social network goes beyond your family. You have communities where you share your interests, religious beliefs, or hobbies.
- Managed health: Your psychological and physical health are well managed. Whether you manage alone or with professional help, you take good care of your body and mind. You live with authenticity and transparency because you are not hiding shame and are free from abuse.
- Adequate resources: You have resources to secure your basic needs with ease. You feel safe in your physical environment and have reliable nourishment. As your career advances, your resources expand. But well-being requires only essential resources.
- Inner peace: Your mind is free to make good decisions without fear or emotional pain. You pursue emotional healing as necessary for inner peace. Psychological trauma isn’t latently waiting for the next trigger. Vulnerability can be your strength.
Reality of Success
COVID-19 quarantine uncovered the lack of success for many high achievers. Many invested in their mental or physical health for the first time. They bonded with their family members over neighborhood walks. Counselors were booked out for weeks with first-timers.
The quarantine anxiety wasn’t just about how people would pay bills. It was just as much about emotional well-being. People craved to be noticed, feel important, and be recognized. They had to find such fulfillment outside their jobs for the first time.
I once assured my daughter that the only thing I wanted her to be when she grew up was happy because that was the most important job she could accomplish. It has proven to be the most challenging job for humans.
My daughter was concerned about disappointing her parents, who both earned Ph.Ds. I assured her I preferred to be disappointed, and her be happy rather than the other way around.
Happy means her heart is at peace. Peace means that her mental state is undisturbed by daily circumstances. She should feel like an active agent in life, not a victim of her parents’ expectations.
I want her to own her choices, be accountable for her actions, and live with grace when she doesn’t like the outcomes. I knew if she did those things, she would build a happy life, not just a career.
The Success Journey
If life is a journey, well-being drives the car, happiness rides shotgun, and success is the backseat driver. Well-being is a steady driver.
In the absence of well-being, your mind feels a perpetual sense of lack of wealth, recognition, family, or support. The mind is always in pursuit. Reaching a goal doesn’t validate success. It triggers a greater awareness of lack. A new success goal comes immediately.
Success is the intoxicated driver that drives erratically. Its distorted perception lowers the chance of you reaching your destination without injury to oneself or others. It’s clumsy and careless. If success is your driving force to navigate the world, you may notice these symptoms.
Your support system is weak or nonexistent because you have little life balance. You are consumed by one identity that you derive from success. You derive a sense of success from the difficulty of your tasks even though you perpetually complain about how hard it is.
Your carelessness yields unwanted consequences that you don’t take responsibility for. Instead, you feel like a victim. You don’t understand why things don’t turn out as you think they should. Your worldview is narrow because you are trying to build a world around a single identity.
You feel emotionally drained from trying hard to make life go your way. When life goes your way, you are happy. Conversely, when it doesn’t, you are unhappy. You are riding an emotional rollercoaster and feel exhausted.
If you are depressed or anxious from a lack of success, change your definition of success. Invest in your inner self so you can experience well-being that is not tied to external validation.
Well-being is the relationship with oneself, not the external world. Self-concept, self-efficacy, self-acceptance, and self-reliance are well-being essentials. When you pursue success with these essentials, happiness flows. Well-being invites you to release the struggle.
References
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