Books and views #2: How self-awareness might be the ultimate key to long-term happiness and success

This is part two of my series on concepts I took from some of my favorite books and about how they influence my thinking and decision-making. You can find my previous text (on systemic disconnects that cause some of the world’s biggest problems) here.

When we talk about success - no matter if as individuals, teams or organizations - we often talk about goals, role models, plans, habits and how they get us to the metrics of success that we want. 

However, the more my work with our customers at Workpath teaches me about leadership and organizations, and the more books I read on the topic - the more I am convinced that becoming aware of ?who we are“, of our core values, strengths and weaknesses is not just harder, but also much more relevant for our success than we might think. Many of the books I recommend below left me convinced that true self-awareness is an underestimated superpower for individuals, organizations and even societies. 

Personal Self-Awareness

As an individual, it is not uncommon to be set onto a certain course early in your life and never leave this path again. Your parents pick your school and define your social environment, you meet your peers and role models. From there, grades, traditions (and stereotypes), peer pressure and your first jobs and partners already provide you with plenty of blueprints on how the next step should look for you. This easily leads us to following some apparently obvious milestones, comparing ourselves with others in the box we’ve been put into, and pursuing the same metrics of success as everyone else around.

While being an entrepreneur to me is about defining my own job and categories, even within this box, many of us believe that there is this one path to entrepreneurial success. Particularly as a young founder it is easy to let others dictate their metrics of success onto what you are building. After school, if you wanted to pursue an academic degree, 80% of my classmates usually chose from a short list of 2-3 universities. In my study program, there only seemed to exist the three career ideals of either becoming a founder, a consultant or a PhD researcher. What surprises me today is how little emphasis was put on what to base these decisions on. What can students do to figure out what they could become outside their current box? And what are your real personal metrics of success then?

Organizational Self-Awareness

As organizations, we usually identify with our products, industries and our financial performance. Something that is less tangible and oftentimes less defined is “what makes these products what they are” and why the company actually exists in its particular space. Once an enterprise has reached a certain size, its metrics of success are usually standardized and predefined, dominating their leaders' compensation plans and every article and conversation about them. Therefore, many companies seem to operate without being truly aware of their core DNA, culture, strengths and uniqueness that originally made their success possible. Some of the books below indicate that every truly successful company initially had a unique and unchangeable DNA that enabled them to dominate their space. Furthermore, the few organizations that continue to be successful over a long period of time, seem to be very aware of this core and consistently build around it. 

If you watch Apple’s product events for example, it seems clear that in its core, this is a hardware company that does not have the same passion and natural strengths for software. While this might sound like a very simplified assessment, if you compare the success and perception of products like EarPods (or even Airtags) to the evolution of iTunes or AppleTV, you might find further evidence. By the way, while of course, software is taking over more and more of the economy’s overall value creation, I think there might be a playbook for German automakers in this. 

Self-Awareness as a Society

Here is my favorite concept of self-awareness at the moment: as a society, it is usually not just borders, language, or laws that define our identity. There is a deeper layer of shared ideas that unite communities and peoples. I’ve come to believe that what makes a society is much more about creating shared self-awareness, than just about political facts or historical realities. 

The most interesting and relevant example for me personally is Europe. Many people don’t think of Europe as one, and we experience a lot of emphasis put on all the differences (expressed in all kinds of stereotypes and frictions). Yet, I strongly feel and think that we are one, and only as one we will have a seat at the global table. However, I am also sure that no EU bureaucracy and no EU regulation will fix this perception and contribute to further unification. In my opinion, we need more awareness of all the values and ideals we share as Europeans. We need more shared public spaces and dialogues to make this happen. While I love the diversity and contrasts of our continent, only when I lived in the US and met people from all over Europe, I realized how much we had in common and what differentiates us from others. So if we want to be taken seriously on the global stage, I think we need a new, strong narrative that helps us become aware of what defines us and what unites us.

In general, the books below and also my personal experiences taught me that reaching an effective level of self-awareness requires real work and some serious soul searching. The independent, critical thinking needed is not always easy to obtain and as the answers might evolve over time, it certainly is a lifelong process. However - no matter if as individuals, organizations, or a society - self-awareness might be the ultimate key to successfully position ourselves out there to ?become who we are“, and build an attractive “monopoly in being ourselves”, as two of the authors below describe it. 

My favorite books on this:

Atomic Habits by James Clear: On building life changing habits and the relevance of identity (over goals and systems) to achieve your goals. 

Good to Great by James C. Collins: On key elements of long term business success as an organization and the ?hedgehog concept“, that lets you define your strategic sandbox and build on your identity as an organization. 

Let my people go surfing by Yvon Chouinard: On the life and business philosophy of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, an inspiring role model for being true to your passions and then building a unique business around it. 

The strange death of Europe by Douglas Murray: On the lack of a shared European sense of identity and the problems it might create (although I strongly disagree with many of the authors viewpoints, particularly on religion) 

The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar: A story on “how to make a living while creating a life” and about the importance of finding a craft that just fulfills you while you are doing it - good Silicon Valley Buddhism. 

Das Buch eines Sommers by Bas Kast: (German) A fictional story about an unhappy Pharma CEO who re-discovers his passion for writing and the courage to follow it. 

Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney: On why “different often beats better” and about how to define your own category instead of following others, in business and in life. 

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by Eric Jorgenson: A collection of ideas and mental models for “wealth and happiness”, by Naval Ravikant (sometimes referred to as the “Angel Philosopher”), co-founder of Angellist and investor in more than 200 companies like Uber, Twitter and Notion. 

#3 Coming up next: We have leveraged technologies to create a world that is three thousand years ahead of our brains (and decades ahead of our social and political systems.)