Success that Keeps you Calm

The way you define success will determine the amount of peace and calm in your life.

The memory for me is vivid. I was sitting on the blue carpeted floor of my childhood bedroom sometime in the mid 1980’s, among a bunch of newly made mix tapes.

I didn’t own a dual cassette stereo at the time, so I made them by depressing the “record” button on one boombox while (awkwardly) trying to hit “play” on another at the same time, and then keeping as still and silent as possible.

Posters of Madonna, Michael Jordan and Manhattan’s skyline peered down upon me, scotch-taped to the walls.

I was about to start writing in the best manuscript I could muster. I had pulled out two of my favorite Mr. Sketch scented watercolor markers – Lemon and Orange – from that, now iconic, rectangular styrafoam tray.

I laid out a piece of ivory colored construction paper and I began meticulously fashioning each letter in orange. To add a dramatic effect, I resolved to outline those letters using the yellow marker.

After a few minutes the words on the paper, now beautifully scented, revealed themselves: "Rich and Famous".

I was a young kid from small beginnings in Michigan. I was impressionable and predisposed to being swayed by the mass opinions of the time, like all humans are. What the world had subliminally told me was that somehow, being wealthy and powerful and recognized was the correct, socially acceptable – even valiant - goal to strive for in life.

If you became rich and celebrated, you would be a human success. Who wouldn’t want that?

However, at that moment, little did I realize that decades later in my life, I would be desperately attempting to ban that definition of success from my life forever. Because it simply didn’t feel good.

Success That Keeps You Anxious

The zeitgeist of 2022 doesn’t seem that much different than it was when I was growing up in the 80’s. In fact, we might have added more fuel to the fire.

The current definition of success according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.

Today, with the help of social media and the ever-increasing polarization of ultra-wealth and ultra-celebrity, seeking this definition of success has become seemingly more socially acceptable, correct, attractive and faultless than ever before in human history.

Yet, we all know, deep down, that this definition of success doesn’t breed peace and happiness…Or do we? We say it, but do we really believe it?

Great minds have warned against this definition of success for hundreds of years. Preeminent spiritual masters and revered philosophers from Epictetus to Thich Nhat Hanh have warned us against seeking, desiring, wanting and craving externalities.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. ~ Epictetus

But it doesn’t seem like we’re cognitively processing these warnings.

My wake-up call to taking these warnings seriously ultimately didn’t come through trying to intellectualize them, it came from lower down my body - ?from the heart. It came through the way I felt.

You see, our standard definition of success prevents us from feeling calm and peaceful.

Eckert Tolle made a great case for this in his seminal book, The Power of Now. The idea of “getting” and “achieving” – the words that come up in Merriam-Webster's definition of success - ?are words of the future. And according to Tolle, and to nearly every other spiritual or religious teaching, the more we focus on what we don’t have now, the more unhappy we feel.

Wanting success can be one of the greatest harbingers of discontent, unease, worry and especially anxiety (which is a feeling of nervousness about something that is to come, something that will happen in the future).

Furthermore, our framework of success is turning us into beings that live more in fight or flight rather than rest and digest mode.

• Success keeps us wanting, which make us feel uneasy and restless.
• Success keeps us competing with the Jones’, which makes us feel distrustful and lonely.
• Success keeps us comparing, which keeps us feeling anxious and depressed.
• Success keeps us over-working which keeps us feeling burned out and drained.

In a nutshell, society’s definition of success, I soon came to realize, wasn’t making me feel calm, peaceful, or happy. It was doing the opposite.

I soon realized that I wanted my personal definition of success to make me feel relaxed, at ease, and serene. So, I changed it, and banned the original from my life.

Success That Keeps You Calm

To get you started on your own definition of success, one that brings you calm and peace, I’ll leave you with a version fashioned by 19th century poet and philosopher and friend of President Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

And if fortune, fame, prestige and influence end up coming your way, so be it, feel grateful and embrace it. For it won’t be the reason for your calm and peace, only a beautiful by-product of it.

“To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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