Formula for Success 2.0
Who here doesn’t have a formula to succeed in life (includes work)? After all, we are in constant pursuit of happiness which, as we know, results from succeeding! Our definition of success is to “Have” — a lot perhaps! What we want to have includes name, fame, stuff, money, connection, power, position or some variation or cocktail thereof. To have more, we face these choices;
(a) Do what is required legally, ethically, morally and achieve goals
(b) Do whatever is needed as long as it continually results in growth
(c) Do nothing and wish/pray everything desired is delivered on a platter
(d) Do something, try, blame and generally meander through randomly
(e) None of the above — no must “haves” or laissez-faire mindset
Thus the couplet doing and having, we can agree as core building blocks and if we repeat this endlessly thru life, it is the basis for our desire to have “all” . Irrespective of how we define success individually, this is a good baseline. What if we have to upgrade that formula for the cheaper, faster, better world?
Be > Do > Have
Doing internet search results in incremental versions like Be-Do-Have, which asks to reflect “Who must I be”, “What must I do” so that “I can have”. This helped me to go from a technologist and get a b-school degree to climb corporate ladder and buy a house with swimming pool and jacuzzi. Such ones are good additions but we are getting ahead. Let’s first ask why if all we need to upgrade and what’s wrong with the current one if it still works! Yes the technology is moving us at a faster pace and competition is fierce and world has become more “VUCA”, but one’s definition of success may be same. Agreed that the Do-Have formula has side effects, such as stress, burn-out, addiction, mental illness and so on… but we have found workarounds too via exercise, sex, yoga, meditation and also other supplements like medications to keep us on the path of happiness as we crank up our formula of success. When occasional job-loss or bankruptcy or other life challenges (divorce, health issues) hits us, we then take some down time to upgrade to an incremental version but our compass by and large remains steady and pointed north to “H” for happiness. If this is indeed true has your happiness measurably or qualitatively gone up? If it did, great — else what?
Disruptions
Glad you asked. I submit that only when individual's life or business context or content changes, we can gauge if our formula is working — or we need to upgrade by revamping the formula totally. From Steve Jobs to Beatles and everyone in between have been to their safe haven to eat, pray, love to regroup and to reengage with the world. With my coach’s support, I too relocated my family 8000 miles across without understanding fully how change of location impacts — only to learn later that such personal disruptions are key ingredient to professional transformation (Sidebar read : change vs transformation) . Retreats of various kinds flourish on this human need to disengage and piece together life that has become battered as a result of the Do-Have-Repeat spin cycle.
Without the necessary unlearning, we can only handle disruptions by putting a band-aid to BE better and upgrade the formula incrementally for the next round of Do-Have more cycle. Would we still be ready to succeed when the ultimate/untimely disruption happens — death or major illness for instance?
Beauty
I found there is something intrinsic in us that craves beauty. I bet you can recall a perfect day at work or with your loved ones when everything went just right and you felt on top of the world! Life or work when balanced within each other feels amazing — despite of disruptions. After all courage is grace under pressure. Can such lives be deemed as success and if yes, what is the unified formula for life that yields such a day every 24 hours at work and beyond! The elements of such a formula intuitively feels like it has got to be more than just the Do-Have couplet, even if it includes them as the base!
Key as mentioned earlier, it needs to include the human being, more than the compulsive doing or having. Such transcendence is inclusion plus extension, and it helps an individual’s unique formula of success to emerge. Subsequent expression of doing is being-centric (in contrast to having-focused) and hence is broadly applicable in work & life context such that it can then be called 2.0! Having, then becomes resultant outcome, coming out of a conscious doing.
Not buying it!
Thankfully no one is selling anything here. Let’s do a quick game to check.
Imagine yourself in a familiar room, perhaps like the one you are sitting now and reading this! Find a nice comfortable silk cloth and blind fold yourself. Done? (how are reading this now ;) Your mission should you choose to accept, is to exit the room you are in thru the door with minimal or no contact with the wall or other objects! For added challenge add a stop clock and deduct 10 energy points from 100 for every contact with the wall or objects. Can you find the door before time and energy expires — Go! Make sure the door you found is not the cupboard! OK congratulations if you found the door — now you may be ready to play the game of Life and succeed where the parameters are similar. This game is similar to the Truman show. You are the hero.
Unlearning
How to find this door in real life? Family we were born into, Community we identify with, Society we are part of, Nation and other identities we take on, condition us from birth, help define the “success” for us. Unknowingly we swallow it lock stock and barrel and come up with our efficient and effective formula for life’s purpose. In the altar of such deemed purpose, we expend our time and energy package called Life. So until and unless we choose to redefine success in our own terms sans conditioning, it doesn’t matter what formula we use for that Success, we are yet to learn the formula 2.0. Life gives us many opportunities up until mid-life crisis hits, beyond which unlearning is difficult if not impossible. Opening the door is a key step forward I discovered.
Welcome to Life 2.0 — and your own joyful formula for personal definition of success/clarity, balanced and conditioning-free and side-effects-free.
Wishing your Odyssey be expeditious one!
