How to Become More Successful (Blog)

[songwriter]

One thing I seem to find is that "success" seems to be an important thing in life but it's not...

I mean "success" in a career, art or whatever...

You know it doesn't make a big difference in people's lives. There miserable "successful" people and happy successful people in a similar ratio than in unsuccessful ones...

The only true success is an internal one... Career and all that are not that great, sometimes success is even a change for the worse.

As you may guess I'm not very "successful", I don't care much, I'd be the same I am today more or less.

[Hunter Nuttall]

Originally Posted by songwriter

There are miserable "successful" people and happy successful people in a similar ratio than in unsuccessful ones...

That might be true, but it doesn't really matter, because the purpose of success isn't to make you happy, any more than the purpose of happiness is to make you successful. Two different things.

If your goal is to be happy, then the easiest way to do this is simply to be happy. Being happy is really much easier than everyone makes it out to be. It doesn't require any change in your finances, health, or relationships (although those things can certainly help). It's just an emotion that you can choose to experience.

Originally Posted by songwriter

As you may guess I'm not very "successful", I don't care much, I'd be the same I am today more or less.

Then maybe you are successful. If not in the traditional sense, then perhaps in the way that matters to you.

[purrhos]

Well, a more productive question might be, e.g. "What is my immaginative state of perfection?" And from there, what egocentric components are involved, etc. etc. and spinning down to something of the sort...well, perhaps there is a template in dharma space that would be just right for me. And finally, well perhaps I need to practice Zen and find out what this is all about.....

BTW, I really like your encouraging to connect with successful people. I have found it to be exciting and amazingly functional. Great article.

[Aleksander Krstic]

Originally Posted by jesstucker

Thanks so much Steve.

Yeah Steve just knows how to rock doesn't he?

[songwriter]

Originally Posted by Hunter Nuttall

That might be true, but it doesn't really matter, because the purpose of success isn't to make you happy, any more than the purpose of happiness is to make you successful. Two different things.

If your goal is to be happy, then the easiest way to do this is simply to be happy. Being happy is really much easier than everyone makes it out to be. It doesn't require any change in your finances, health, or relationships (although those things can certainly help). It's just an emotion that you can choose to experience.



Then maybe you are successful. If not in the traditional sense, then perhaps in the way that matters to you.

I see success as a path to walk, kind of natural things to achieve if you just "keep flowing" but not worrying or focusing much on "success", because it's not so important...

[ohTen]

Originally Posted by jesstucker

I'm an unemployed artist. In the past month I have been trying to work on my courage to "follow my bliss" which is in this case dedicating my time to making art. Despite feeling some denial, I knew that courage was the area in which I needed the most growth, so recently I decided to stop looking so begrudgingly for irrelevant sources of income (job hunting), and decided to leap on an act of faith that if I focused my time to making art work, that the income would follow.

Immediately because I allowed myself to do what I love, my mood soared greatly, and I was eager to tell people how great it is to be doing what I love. As a result, and to my great surprise, I have lined up a number of interested buyers, sold one work, and I have felt just super swell and (relevant here) successful. As a result of this feeling I have been attracted to following my bliss elsewhere, and before I knew it I found myself in the midst of a romance despite having none for almost 10 months.

It's been interesting telling friends about this... it seems that some of them don't say anything, almost as if I am speaking a foreign language, or holding their tongue, and others are so encouraging and helpful. To the encouraging ones, their enthusiasm really begins to match my own. They become very creative in helping me achieve my goals, such as a friend who is willing to sell me an old camera so that I may take slides of all the work I've been making recently. And for a really great price that I can afford!

Reading this particular article has just really felt validating that doing what I love has caused an emotional shift in me that has attracted something similar in others. Hopefully this commitment to doing what I love will continue to be perpetuated by the fact I find it so fulfilling, and that I am sharing it with all those who will listen, who in turn want to help me and who will willingly get it from me in return.

Thanks so much Steve.

i've had a similar experience. i am an artist and musician. living what i felt to be two separate lives (college student and musician) and not wanting to break my commitment to graduate from college, i decided to align my in-school and out-of-school lives as closely as possible. this meant majoring in music, taking the cool music classes that i really wanted to take, worrying less about getting a 4.0 and more about meeting people and basically diving head-first into the nyc music world. shortly after i made this decision, i found myself meeting tons of new people who ended up being friends, lovers, connections, and creative partners. my social world expanded exponentially in a matter of months, and now i find myself nearly always surrounded by people who inspire and motivate me.

a strange thing has been happening recently in that my college life and city life have converged and become closely interconnected. as soon as i decided to follow my bliss and not see my two lives as separate, people at school in or connected to my city 'scene' began crawling out of the woodwork. i've even brought school friends together with my city friends only to find that they already know each other or share common friends! the world is much smaller than i thought it was (especially in new york city!), and it seems that it just came to embrace me once i invited the possibility into my life.

another wonderful by-product of this has been that i've naturally gravitated toward people who i am in alignment with, so i feel for the first time in my life that i fit in with a group. i am comfortable being myself around others and feel no need to prove myself, which is a great feeling after growing up and not fitting in anywhere.

my older, successful friends inspire me to no end. hanging out with them is like an osmosis bath. my friends who are my age inspire me with their idealism, intelligence, and ingenuity, and i know that many of them will go on to do great things...and we may go on to do great things together.

i'm totally with you, steve. ditch the debbie/donnie downers!

[Jumanji]

Funnily enough I am reading similar stuff from a book first published in 1959 called "The magic of thinking big" by David Schwartz. Fantastic book btw, it's amazing how these age old wisdoms stand the test of time.

[Still Growing]

Steve,

Great job on this article ! !

This type of article that is more catered towards the core fundamentals of Personal Development are what brought me to the site originally.

Just when I start yawning with some of your posts you always come through with one that I can personally identify with AND one that I'm not hearing about elsewhere.

Well done.

SG

[emialcashdotcom]

Another interesting read Steve,
I seem to be more envious/jealous of successful people, i can't help it, i want to be successful but always seem to fail, hopefully i get it right this time and don't fall through like in the past,

Keep up the good writing mate.

[-B-]

Success, in my measurement, requires happiness. If you are 'successful', in the way some people measure success, but unhappy, you are not, in fact, successful, and something has gone truly wrong with your life.

[advancedatheist]

Originally Posted by Armen

The point about befriending the successful people you know, or used to know, is one that I see value in. There are successful individuals we were once linked with that we got out of touch with, and doing anything is worth it to bring that bond back. The words and actions of a successful person can save you an abundance of lost time and energy.

I used to work with a guy (a Mormon, no less) who would volunteer to the guests staying at the resort I manage the story about his best friend who wound up in prison for a drug conviction. I warned this coworker that people tend to judge you by the kinds of friends you have. If you tell strangers that you have low-life "best friends" in prison, what would they likely infer about your character? If I had a friend who got into that sort of trouble, I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to advertise the fact.

Needless to say, this coworker's choice of a "best friend" did reflect on his performance on the job (the owner wound up firing his ass), even though he belongs to a church which promotes Calvinist-like habits of frugality, hard work and personal integrity.

[CharlieGreenwood]

Being successful or unsuccessful isn’t about how much money or status you’ve achieved. It’s an internal quality. It’s your attitude.

This is the part of the article that really perked my ears. After doing the exercise in the article, I came up with my own estimation of success as well, so it's cool to read that others here seem to agree.

I think success really is having a good positive attitude and finding a balance between yourself, your work, and your family and friends.

[Cyllya]

Originally Posted by ballhit2

The relationship between "growth" and "success" is now a complete sentence.

Metaphor alarm.

Is a seed, just taking root in the ground, successful? How about the first emergence above the soil? What about when the plant spurts up and doubles its size? Or must one wait until the released potential copies of itself fly into the wind?

End metaphor alarm.

End metaphor alarm alarm.

This reminds me of an article by Scott H. Young which talks about having a velocity-based outlook instead of a position-based outlook.
Scott H Young » Balancing Today and Tomorrow
In summary, it says you should care more about how fast you're improving than where you currently are, and set your goals accordingly. (I think this ties in nicely with something Steve wrote once: your goals for the future should be serving you today).

So, in your metaphor, the seed/plant is always successful.

[Armen]

advancedatheist: It sure doesn't help to point out associations with certain types of individuals. Associating with someone tends to indirectly say you support their actions, and if this is not the case, social issues can arise.

[marcm]

Hi Steve and other smart people, I am a blogging neophyte so am not sure quite how to start, but I read with interest your article suggesting (in a nutshell) that religions are perhaps not the best path to follow in order for a human to grow spiritually. This is actually how I have felt for quite some time, I too was raised a Catholic and have shed that particular affiliation, and although Steve was quite blunt in a lot of his assessments of the negative aspects of religions and would thereby offend a lot of people who are affiliated with them, his points are pretty valid. I read an amazing book by authors Peter Gandy and Tim Freke (yes, like freak) called The Laughing Jesus, which divides religions up into 'the baby' (the true spiritual center of most religions) and 'the bathwater' (all the crap described in the '10 reasons' article).

I think one of the things that makes religions so powerful is this little central kernel of truth on which all of the rest builds, and if it can be dug out and salvaged, it's ok to toss the rest as it does in fact hold us back from true spiritual growth.

Thanks, Steve, for your candor and all of the powerful information you have gathered here, I am enjoying exploring your site. M

[RLCates]

Originally Posted by songwriter

One thing I seem to find is that "success" seems to be an important thing in life but it's not...

I mean "success" in a career, art or whatever...

You know it doesn't make a big difference in people's lives. There miserable "successful" people and happy successful people in a similar ratio than in unsuccessful ones...

The only true success is an internal one... Career and all that are not that great, sometimes success is even a change for the worse.

As you may guess I'm not very "successful", I don't care much, I'd be the same I am today more or less.

Kurt Cobain comes to mind...

Hi songwriter..I'm a songwriter too (and multi-instrumentalist). )

[Juki Schor]

I have been thinking about this (imo excellent) article a lot and always get stuck on these two sentences:

"They simply have a strong tendency to focus on what they want."

"They’ll often try to “help” the successful people by cautioning them about negative outcomes."

I wonder if unsuccessful people do not so much "want to caution the successful people about negative outcomes", but instead they try to prevent that they are left behind or hurt, so they use whatever they feel could stop the successful person from doing so?

You wrote, accurately, and I have seen that in my own life, that people who tend to be successful have strong "wants", are constantly occupied with their projects and follow through with getting it materialized. In most cases this takes a lot of focus and it seems this often leads to situations where you have to make a decision: success or people, especially if you have deadlines to meet. Those who then decide for people, will often not be so successful, those who drop people and follow through are mostly successful. Simple example: if you have small kids and want to become a top manager at the same time, you won't see them very often.

So I found out that I start to have a negative attitude towards successful people when I feel that their success hurts, exploits or damages me (or for example their kids or the environment), i.e. lack of consideration about the impact of their striving for success to others. Which of course leads me to the thought that for me, due to past experiences, success is somehow linked to exploitation and damaging others which is why I refuse to become successful, may be.
Is there a way to be successful without damaging or exploiting other people?

Is it about finding people who do not get hurt through my own success? As a mother I am constantly in this conflict when it comes to my own development, sensing how far to tune the success process down to keep everybody in the boat (because somehow kicking them out in order to be successful is not an option).

Another thought: Could it also be that those "nagging" unsuccessful people are actually serving the one striving for success through training, unintentionally, their focus, stamina and follow through ability? After all, challenges make you strong. If you stay focussed on achieving your goal despite your partner threatening to kill himself if you don't show up in time for dinner, isn't that a great service? Or did I get something wrong here?

I just hope I never get stuck in neither part, successful or unsuccessful, but can easily switch from and to both sides.