Existence of Success

What do you think when you think of success?

Is it a trophy, award, or achievement? Is specific number of followers? Is it a certain amount of money? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy?

While there's really nothing "wrong" with these things; a dozen championships won't increase your tranquility, a thousand admirers or likes won't bring you peace, a million dollar position or title won't make you happy.

Craving a certain outcome anchors you to a future that may not exist and drags you from the peace of the present moment.

If you’re always need more— more cash, more clout, more compliments, more XYZ —then you'll never have enough and you'll continue to yearn. Yearning leads only to misery. Misery isn't success—it's failure.

So what about winning? Isn't that, then another variable to the definition of success? To take home a trophy is to take home a object if virtue that points to the past; just another attachment that wrenches you from the present moment.

Winning isn't innately good or bad. But the sheer compulsion to win, to compete, to beat, to always be ahead, to number one, without humility is a prison. Imagine being trapped in a spacious jail cell surrounded by trophies. Does that even sound like success? Sounds absurd doesn’t it?

If you win the game but lose composure, what have you really won?

Nothing. You just have lost everything. You lose character, reputation, peace, joy, humility and spirit.  

Anyone is free to do any thing, to create and consume and contribute with abandon. BUT as soon as you attach happiness to an outcome, you place yourself back behind bars because you're living in the future again.

Running after a result isn't success; it’s called chasing. Chasing the past or even future. Success is always seems to be bound to chasing. But chasing is attachment. Attachment is suffering. Suffering is failure. Once you stop chasing - whether it's a job, people, relationships, stature, title, money, love - whoever and whatever is meant and belongs to you - will innately and organically come to you. That's successful and healthy.

This may be hard for anyone to grasp. It’s even hard for me to grasp a I write it. Because we’ve been sold a meme our entire lives. That success equals happiness. That the next best thing is one step away from happiness. But that’s a pipe dream. That’s not the truth. That’s a brutal alteration of reality. 

Happiness is your default state. The now. It appears when you stop chasing.

Happiness isn’t something to pursue so that it can be reached. The pursuit of happiness is just another form of chasing. Sometimes, you need to just drop the entire pursuit of everything - and then you’ll taste happiness.

Influence, wealth, and status are all hapless hunts. Getting more does not make you successful. Striving for more makes you excessful. Excess is accompanied by restlessness, pain, and misery.

So travel the path toward success if you want. Know that path diverges from peace. Peace is found only in the present, through awareness and letting go. Just fuck it. Let it go. That’s not to say that you "should" let go. Or that you “should” be happy. Or that you “should” not fail. There is no should.

If you want peace, it is not found on the horizon or in the rearview mirror. It’s right here. As you end this sentence. 

Ap