What is Success?

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I wearily trudged through the door, another 10 hour workday behind me. Slumping down onto the couch. I didn't even bother to ask my wife whether our one year old son was still awake. I already knew the answer. Of course he wasn't. It was 8:30 at night.

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The familiar twinge of regret and sadness started to well up inside of me before I pushed it back down to the gray landscape of daily obligations and responsibilities. Another day, another dollar, right? That motto rang very empty and hollow to me on that day, and the next one and the next one. 

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Henry David Thoreau says, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

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And honestly, that's where my life was at that point. I was quietly desperate. I knew there had to be another way of living and what I was currently experiencing. 

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Fast forward a year, with tens of thousands of miles traveled around the world, I stepped off the plane in Shanghai, China, after a month vacation spent snorkeling with clownfish in the coral reefs of Papua New Guinea, gazing in awe at the majestic architecture of the Sydney Opera House, and feeling my adrenaline spike as I plummeted toward the water dangling from a bungee cord hung from Auckland New Zealand's Harbour Bridge. 

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So, what changed? Well, besides everything, it all started with asking one question....

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Welcome to Thrive Culture: Success Engineering with your host Michael Bauman.

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Tony Robbins, one of the world's top peak performance coaches today says, "The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself."

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So, what was the question that changed the entire course of my life? 

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The question was this, "WHAT IS SUCCESS?"But more importantly, "WHAT IS SUCCESS TO ME?"

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In the movie Inception, Cobb, the protagonist is tasked with implanting an idea through dreams so deeply within the subconscious of an individual that it grows to define and shape their entire perspective and outlook on the world. Just like an inception, this small idea, this one question, has grown to shape everything I think about and pursue. 

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And while I definitely don't claim to have all the answers, I am dedicated to exploring this question and the practical steps and habits we can implement on a daily basis to experience more success in our lives. 

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In his book, Start with Why Simon Sinek shares about having the privilege of attending the gathering of the Titans. Every year at MIT, the titans of entrepreneurship and business gather to learn from each other to grow, to develop improve. 

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The list of accolades from a single person in the room is more than most of us would hope to achieve in our lifetimes. Many were multimillionaires, CEOs, innovators, some of the most influential people in business.

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This is a group where, when asked how many of them had achieved their financial goals, 80% of the hands went up. But one follow up question caused 80% of those raised hands to go back down into acknowledgement of their deficiency and lack in this one area. So, what could an entire room of some of the most powerful, seemingly successful people in business possibly lack? 

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The question that they were asked was this... "How many of you FEEL like a success?"

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Simon Sinek goes on to talk about how there's an irony to success. Many people who achieve great success don't always feel it. And that's because there's actually a distinction between success and achievement. They're not the same thing. 

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But we mistake one for the other. Achievement on one hand is something you can reach you can attain. It's very tangible. You can measure it, it's clearly defined. 

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SUCCESS, on the other hand, IS A FEELING or a STATE OF BEING. 

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So, we need to refine and redefine our question from, "What is success?" to "How can we FEEL like a success?" How can we engineer the feeling of success in every area of our life?

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First, we need to begin by clarifying what are the different areas of our life. And then we view each of these areas through the lens of success, utilizing very specific questions. 

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There are SIX MAIN AREAS of our life that we can channel this definition of success through. 

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First, we have PHYSICAL, so this is our health, our body. And we have FINANCIAL and RELATIONAL, this involves our ability also to communicate with other people. 

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We have our EMOTIONAL area; personal emotions, but also emotions for others as well. MENTAL, this is everything that we're learning about; the thoughts that are going through our heads, and we have SPIRITUAL this can be defined as our purpose or fulfillment. 

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Now, a great way to picture this is actually to picture an atom. Atoms are called the fundamental building blocks of matter. Everything that we can see is comprised of atoms connected together. 

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So, if we use this analogy with the atom, this center of the atom or the nucleus of the atom would be what we classify as success or life, what we're shooting for, it's the very center of what we want our life to be. 

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And then outside of the center; outside of this nucleus, you have these clouds of electrons that actually orbit around the atom, you can classify these as the six different areas of life. Again, we have the physical, the financial, relationships, mental, the emotional, and our spiritual or purpose and fulfillment. These actually orbit around that central nucleus. 

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And how many electrons an element has classifies where it actually falls on the periodic table. Interestingly enough, carbon is actually the sixth element on the periodic table. And carbon is the element that's actually found in every molecule that makes up all living things. So it's an excellent analogy for success and for life, because we have these six areas of our life that actually orbiting around round it just like carbon does with its electrons. 

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Now, what actually holds those six electrons that are orbiting around there to the nucleus is one of the four fundamental forces in nature. And it's actually the strongest out of the four. So it's called a strong nuclear force. And it holds those electrons to the nucleus. 

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Now, in our analogy, the things that actually hold those six areas of our life to the central area of success, and our definition of that are the values that we actually hold about success. 

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There are FOUR MAIN VALUES that give us an excellent channel to develop questions around these different areas of our life. 

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The first one is the value of FREEDOM. So this is essentially what makes us feel free and unrestrained and come alive. 

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The second one is PEACE. And this is all about where we feel satisfaction where we feel contentment. 

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Then the third and the fourth one, kind of tie together. These are the values of JOY: What makes us come alive? What do we have passion about? What are we happy about, and then the value of LOVE: the things that we love, or the people that we love. Now, those are really, really closely tied together. 

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But I would define as those FOUR FUNDAMENTAL VALUES of FREEDOM, PEACE, and then the values of JOY and LOVE. 

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So, these are those strong forces that tie those six areas of a life into the nucleus of success. How do we take these things and use these values to help us to find success? 

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Well, Tony Robbins says that if we want to change the quality of our lives, we should change our habitual questions, the questions we ask on a daily basis. 

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So, let's start with the first area of our life, the physical area, and this has to do with again, our health and our body. 

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If we were to look at it on a macro level, the question we might ask could be, "What would success look like in regards to my health or my body?" 

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Now, this has two different aspects to it, there's an aspect of FUNCTION, and then there's an aspect of APPEARANCE. And both of those play into our definition of success.

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FUNCTION would be defined as the ability to be able to move our body in our daily life the way that we want. And this can be everything from a grandparent who wants to be able to get up and down off the ground to be able to play with their grandkids. That's an aspect of function. 

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But another aspect of function has to do with acute or chronic pain. So, if we wake up every day with back pain, that has an effect on our daily life. Or another aspect of function is, as a parent, being able to play the sports with your kids, whether that's in practice or helping them in the games. That's an aspect of function. 

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The other aspect of the physical area of our life is APPEARANCE. A lot of times we can classify this as superficial or think of this as superficial. 

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It does play a role in terms of our success, how we look at our body or how we feel, more importantly, I should say about our body and its appearance plays a role in our success. And so we need to actually address that and put that into our definition. 

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So, using that on the macro level, we can take the values, those four values of our life and actually make that definition more specific and channel it down to physical area. 

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We can start with asking the question, "What would FREEDOM feel like in regards to my health and my body? 

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And I put the word feel like because that's what we're really looking at. On the outside someone might look like a success, but we're looking at what feel like a success. 

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And again, for some people this might be they just retired after working their whole life. Freedom for them is being able to take the trip to Europe, they've always wanted to take be able to go up and down the steps of the castles, the towns that they go through, that might be freedom. 

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FREEDOM is the ability to be able to do the things that we want to be able to do. 

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Freedom for somebody else might be the feeling that you get after participating in a triathlon or an ultra marathon or dancing on the top of Mount Everest. You know, on one end of that spectrum, you have the peak of human performance and endurance, that might be freedom for somebody, for somebody else, it might be walking up and down the stairs in their house. 

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This is where success looks different for different people. But unless we intentionally define it for ourselves, we will automatically default to what the culture or what the people around us to find it is. So it's so important to ask these questions for ourselves. 

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The second aspect or the value we can channel it through is PEACE. So what would it feel like to be at peace with my body or my health? This is a really powerful question. 

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So often we can look at our body and we can judge it, we can shame it, or we have all this judgment that's placed on it from our culture and the societal definition of success. 

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But, a more important question we need to ask ourselves is, "How can I feel at peace with my body? Or my health?" 

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How can I accept it for what it is? It doesn't mean we don't change it. But a lot of change actually begins with an awareness and acceptance.

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Then we filter this through the values of JOY and LOVE. 

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So, the question we can ask in this area is, "How can I move my body in a way I enjoy?"

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This can look like if you love playing tennis; play tennis. You don't have to go to a gym necessarily to achieve success, even though that's typically what's defined a lot of times as success. If you love going on a run; go on a run. 

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For many people, they may not have necessarily thought about the things that they enjoy with their body. But as we start to do these things where our body is moving and it's being active, we may start to have more enjoyment that at first we didn't realize we could have in these areas. 

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So, another aspect of this is finding the areas that you enjoy with moving your body, whether it's with sports, or whether it's just going for a walk. 

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And the big area of asking these questions around success with our body is the aspect of loving and appreciating our body for what it truly is. 

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Our body is incredible! Just on a purely physiological level, the amount of feedback loops, the amount of systems, hormones, everything that's going on in our body, just to keep us alive, is phenomenal! Having an appreciation, even if it's for that alone, and being thankful for that is amazing! 

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Let's move on to the second area of our life, the FINANCIAL area. 

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This is one that our culture has very clear definitions around success; people that are living these lavish lifestyles with fancy houses, cars, clothes, etc. That's what we define as success in this area. But it's really important for us to ask these questions for ourselves. 

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What would FREEDOM feel like in regards to my WEALTH? 

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For a lot of people, what comes to mind is winning the lottery or having a million dollars. Interestingly enough, while that may be freedom for some people, and that may be what we want to define as freedom, there's another aspect of freedom as well. 

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On the other end of that spectrum, you might have people where their definition of freedom might be, they just love to go surfing. They don't need a lot of money to go surfing, and they just want to be able to have enough money to provide food, the basic necessities and to live the life they want to live. That is actually how some people might define freedom. 

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On the other side, you might have freedom looking like I want to have millions of dollars, I want to be a philanthropist. I want to contribute to the world and use my wealth to benefit others. That's their definition of freedom. We need to consider where we fall in that spectrum and ask these questions for ourselves. 

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Then the next question is, "How can I be at PEACE with my WEALTH?"

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For a lot of people that live in the western world, we really are in some of the most privileged, top 1% of all of history. The lifestyle we enjoy, whether it's medical facilities, or the ability anything is unprecedented throughout all of history! 

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A lot of times we don't appreciate it because we don't have the negative reference point of not having indoor plumbing or not having food or water, or some of these things that even other parts of the world don't get to enjoy. 

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Asking that question, "How can I be at peace with my wealth?" is learning to be content, satisfied, and grateful for what we have. 

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And then we can ask the question, "How can I use my WEALTH to bring myself JOY?" 

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And coming out of the Christmas season, we have the consumer centric idea that if I buy more things, it'll make me happy. And they do make us feel happier, for a very short time, through the dopamine response.

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A better question might be to ask, "HOW CAN WE USE OUR WEALTH TO BRING OTHERS JOY?"

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That, actually on a more long term level, will bring us more consistent happiness through being generous with other people. This helps us define in the area of our finances and our wealth, what success looks like for us. 

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Moving on to the area of RELATIONSHIPS, "What does a successful relationship look like?"

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We can split this down into the different relationships that we typically have: this might be our friends, it might be with our family, it could be with our spouse, or with our boss or coworkers. 

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What does FREEDOM FEEL LIKE in my RELATIONSHIP with my SPOUSE? 

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Asking ourselves this question and getting an idea of what it feels like help us incrementally move toward what freedom feels like through being able to express what we need and communicate effectively. 

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It's the same question with our friends or our boss, "What does freedom feel like in this relationship? 

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How can I be able to express what I need and have two way communication with our boss about what I value? 

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With any of the aspects of the relationships is not just asking for ourself, it's actually asking for the other person as well. So, we can ask that question, "What would freedom look like for our boss in relationship to me?" 

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That's the aspect of seeing it through a different perspective; a different lens. And then we can help that relationship on our end as well. 

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Same thing with our spouse and our friends and our family, "What would a peaceful relationship feel like?" 

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One of the most foundational aspects of relationship should be a safe place. Unfortunately, a lot of us haven't had that modeled in our life. We can intentionally ask that question and create that in our relationships with others through mutual respect and mutual understanding; a place that's safe, where we can be heard and known.

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"What makes up a RELATIONSHIP full of JOY?"

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How can we have something that's full of life? How can I have a relationship where I can be myself, can feel valued, and feel like I belong and am known? Those are excellent questions to start us on the road of defining the area of success in our lives. 

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Transitioning to the EMOTIONAL side of things, we can ask the question, "What does EMOTIONAL SUCCESS FEEL LIKE? 

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This has a lot to do with our relationships and this is emotional success both for ourselves and for other people. 

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Now, typically, when we think about our emotions, we think about things that we either need to change or we need to repress or things that are not good. 

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Once we start digging into our emotions, our emotions are basically warning signs or triggers that are trying to tell us something. 

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When we ask the question, "What would FREEDOM feel like with my EMOTIONS?"

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Instead of it being we have perfect control over our emotions, it's actually going, "How can we ACCEPT OUR EMOTIONS AS THEY ARE?"

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That allows us to have freedom with them. So, it's not freedom FROM our emotions, but it's freedom WITH our emotions. 

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"If we keep our emotions in our cage, they will actually in return keep us in a cage."

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Second question, "How can we feel at PEACE with our EMOTIONS?"

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Instead of trying to change them and warp them into something else we can ask, "What are you trying to tell me right now?" Then we can accept the emotion in this moment. 

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We can also ask ourselves, "What things can we do to help us feel more joy, or more love and compassion in our life?"

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This allows us to develop habits that consistently support feeling more joy. 

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Moving on to the fifth area of our life which is the MENTAL area. 

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Freedom in this area actually looks like finding the things that when we're learning them, we actually lose track of time. 

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These states are called FLOW STATES. In athletics, a lot of high performing athletes or musicians will achieve these flow states where they lose track of time and are just fully in the moment. 

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We can ask ourselves, "What, when we're LEARNING it, do we actually LOSE TRACK OF TIME?"

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We can use that to define our MENTAL FREEDOM. 

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On the other side, what brings us a sense of accomplishment and pride? When do we feel at peace? What brings us satisfaction, contentment, and pride? 

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And then with JOY and LOVE, what brings me JOY? What gives me CURIOSITY to LEARN? 

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How can we fill up more of our mental space with that?

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These things tie very closely into this sixth area of our life, which is a PURPOSE and FULFILLMENT or the SPIRITUAL area of life.

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HOW CAN WE LIVE A LIFE OF PURPOSE?

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We can ask the question, "What would FREEDOM feel like in regard to pursuing my PURPOSE or FULFILLMENT in my CAREER? What wouldn't feel like work?

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What would make me feel SATISFIED, CONTENT, at PEACE with my life? 

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I love this question! WHAT MAKES ME COME ALIVE? What fills me with joy when I think about it, or when I talk about it?"

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These can all allow us to define our purpose and sense of fulfillment.

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Maria Popova, a well known author behind the website, Brain Pickings, (which essentially compiles articles about different thoughts, ideas, creations of philosophers, artists and thinkers) has this to say about success, "It's only satisfying if it's defined by you and influenced most deeply by the people you love and trust."That's what we're looking for! 

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When we ask the question, "How can we engineer our success?" we need to define it for ourselves and allow it to be influenced by the people that we love and trust.

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One of the MOST BEAUTIFUL DEFINITIONS OF SUCCESS I've ever come across is by Ralph Waldo Emerson... 

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"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people, and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

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To sum it up, instead of asking, "What is success?" we actually need to redefine it and ask ourselves, "What FEELS like a success?"

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 When we use the analogy of the atom, success in life is the nucleus, and orbiting around it you have those six different areas of our life: the PHYSICAL, FINANCIAL, RELATIONAL, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL, and the SPIRITUAL areas of our life. 

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We can filter all of those things through those FOUR VALUES of FREEDOM, of PEACE, of LOVE and JOY, which allows us to develop questions that we can ask to define this for ourselves. 

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I'd encourage you to ask these questions to start to begin to get an idea of what success looks like in these areas.

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What would having a body that feels like a success be like considering both the aspects of function and appearance? 

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What would it feel like to be a success in your wealth and finances? 

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How can you feel like a successful parent or spouse or friend or coworker? 

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What learning growth and development helps you feel like a success? 

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What makes you come alive? What fills you with joy to think or talk about in regards to your purpose and career?

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Tony Robbins talks about how all goal setting must be immediately followed by both the development of a plan, and then massive and consistent action taken towards this fulfillment. 

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So, in the next episode, I'm going to lay out exactly how to develop a plan that takes these ideas about success and these questions we asked, and allows us to take massive consistent action towards the accomplishment of these goals.

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I hope to see you back for another episode of Thrive Culture: Success Engineering with your host, Michael Bauman!

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If you enjoyed this show, it would mean a lot to me if you left a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts! It really does help people find the show! Until next time, thank you for listening!