Being successful comes with a great feeling if you take the right steps to get to that success. First, you have to ask if you love what you’re doing. Does it drive you or is it for something monetary? All the money in the world doesn’t bring happiness. If your loved ones or the people you work with don’t connect well with you, you just end up being lonely on top. This has been seen with many successful people. They become lonely because all they ever did was focus on their work.
Is what you’re doing your dream or something you’ve fashioned from someone else? This is an important question. This is perhaps a question you should ask before you work really hard towards something that might bring you nothing at all. As important as success is, it’s also really important that you find fulfillment in it and in everything that goes on in your life. The fulfillment is what will give you all the fuel you need to get what you want.
Support from others will matter throughout the years too. Don’t ever discount how essential your relationships are for your growth, ability to feel good, and support when things aren’t going the way you want them to. This article is based on the philosophy of Tony Robbins. He has worked with countless athletes, successful CEOs, and all the most powerful people on Earth. Through his coaching, he has found that many people are right where they wanted to be but not feeling the way they wanted to. The balance of success and fulfillment is an art. This is how you can have both and live the life you want to.
The Open Heart of Fulfillment
When you find fulfillment, you have a lot more energy. Think about a time when you were in love. Maybe romantic love, maybe when your child was born. There is that energy that comes up in you. It doesn’t matter how much sleep you’ve had or whether you’ve eaten, you could run a marathon. This happiness is totally going to fuel any success you have. Maybe you lucked out with your success, even though you’re not happy with it. When you’re just working towards a goal for the money without the love for it, chances are that it’s not going to last.
Success without Fulfillment is the Ultimate Failure
Tony Robbins says that if you succeed but you don’t have fulfillment, you have essentially failed. When you fail and you’re an achiever, it won’t take long until you find success. When you do, you’ll also have the fulfillment alongside of it. Robbins uses the example of Robin Williams. He achieved all the goals he wanted. He wanted to be a great comedian, have his own show, have a beautiful family, and make the world laugh. He was also a drug addict for most of his adult life on and off. He eventually committed suicide because he made the whole world happy except for himself. There is no stronger message about success without fulfillment I can think of.
Your Fulfillment is Defined by Your Choices
The choices you make will control you much more than any conditions you meet in life. The decisions you make to believe in something, what you do, and what kind of effort you put in are a powerful force in what your life is going to look like. Robbins says to look back at a decision you made in the past. If you had done things differently, think of how your life would look today. He emphasizes that the most important thing in life is deciding to live in a positive mindset or a beautiful state of mind. Passion, creativity, love. gratitude, willingness to give to others–these are all essential states of mind to give you fulfillment.
The Fear of Keeping Up Success
The positive mindset means that you live in a place of love as opposed to fear. When you’re in fear, no matter how successful you’ve become, you naturally worry that you’re going to lose everything. You wonder how you’ll keep up with all this success you’ve built. When you focus primarily on yourself, you’re going to suffer, especially when you fall into fear. You’re concerned about what people will think if you don’t continue on the same course, and if you don’t keep building or maintaining all that success. When you stop focusing on yourself and decide to serve something greater than yourself, the fear will dissipate.
Focus on What Matters to You
If you have a family that you love, give that proper attention. The nature of the mind is to compare things. Your brain is not designed to bring you happiness. It is designed to allow you to survive. This is why you are assessing risk all the time. Looking to past experiences to improve a circumstance that you’re having a challenge with at the moment. The brain does its job and that is to find something that is wrong. This is how we’ve survived for so long.
You may only start focusing on family or friends if it starts to fall apart. Your business is always at risk, and that is why the mind is always playing risk assessment. Even if your life seems perfect,, you know whether you’re giving 100% to the things outside of your success. So make it a point to focus on the support system you’ve always had. They are what will matter during any adversity you face, and they also share in your successes.
If You Had a Week to Live
Yes, it’s important to meet your goals, because the brain is a goal-oriented instrument. However, if you had a week to live, what would matter most? Really think about this question and answer honestly to yourself. What matters to you and what are you missing out on because you’re so focused on success? If you start to suffer, the solution is to stop thinking and obsessing about you. That includes your success.
Look outwards to the things you love, and honor those commitments. Feel the love that exists in your life. If you’re worried about anything, it all comes back to you thinking about yourself. If you’re worried about your children, that is still you focusing on yourself. Give people you have in your life love and time. Give those who need it money, time, and compassion. Look outwards at what you have and what you’d appreciate if you had very little time left on Earth. Your success probably wouldn’t be the most important thing.
Understand that Happiness and Fulfillment is an Inside Job
The world will always change around you. You are unchanging on the inside. If you’re unhappy and become successful, that won’t change the fact that you’re not happy. Whatever your mindset is should remain unmoved by outside circumstances. That is why successful people are successful, and most people will never really get there.
Success is also determined by how you feel inside. It sounds so fundamental, but there is no greater truth. It doesn’t matter what material things you gain in life, it won’t really give you the fulfillment you desire. You may get fulfillment from a job well done. Something you enjoyed doing along the way. The money will just be a gauge of how hard you worked. You can make great amounts of money, and there is no shame in that. It’s how you work towards it.
Did you love doing it? Was it a passion project? Did you have to give up deep relationships to get there? If the people in your life have to act a certain way in order for you to be happy, it’s probably time to start taking a look inside. This is a gauge on your mindset and if you continue, you will likely lose your success, and fulfillment will be as mythical for you as a unicorn.
Enjoying is Just as Important as Achieving
When you feel open and spacious, in awe of life, the achievements will be that much sweeter. They won’t come from an empty place but somewhere deeper. They are just one more addition to your incredible life that you have grown to deeply appreciate. When you’re in this state of fulfillment, you naturally become better to the people around you. You’re a better business partner, boss, parent, romantic partner, and friend. You really can have it all. There doesn’t need to be a sacrifice of your soul to have the monetary things. Remember the things you love to do along your path to success, and make them as much of a priority as your business.
The People with the Least Amount are Often the Happiest
Not to deter you from going for it in life, but know that it won’t be what brings you happiness. Have you ever been to a poor country? Have you noticed how vibrant the locals are? They laugh, they love, they care for one another. This is largely in part because they take care of each other. Every decision they make is based on the survival of their family.
Their decisions are based on love. At the end of the day when they go home, they are filled with love. They feel protected, and they know their purpose. People such as Osho have observed that America has the most miserable people in the world per capita. He is from India and is a spiritual leader. He has spent a lot of time helping people with their spiritual endeavors in the U.S. He sees that people have a lot of money, but there is very little happiness.
Extraordinary Life
You are unique, and with that, you have unique dreams and goals. Don’t look to someone else’s success and try to do what they’re doing. That is their dream. Somewhere in you, you have one too. It is uniquely yours, and when you find what it is, things will step into place for you. Know that if it’s not your own passion project, you won’t get the fulfillment. Even if you’re successful and you make a lot of money, those things won’t give you the happiness you want. That is ultimately why we want anything in life. We believe that it will make us happy. Money won’t. That’s no secret.
Mastering the Skill of the Science of Achievement
When it comes to the science of achievement, there are three steps to follow. The first step is to focus. You won’t reach any goal if you don’t make it a focal point in your life. The next step is to get hungry for it. Find that desire in you, and it will be the driving force to achievement. The way to get that desire can vary for everyone. Get your heart rate up, and deeply imagine what it would be like to have the things you want. The third step is grace. Really understand that life happens for you and not to you. Having a sense of grace to you will allow you to appreciate it when good things happen. When bad things happen, you’ll know you’re being redirected. This puts you in an incredible headspace.
Then there is the art of fulfillment. It is a hard skill to master but know this, if you don’t master this, you won’t master your outside world. Even if you get everything you want, you’ll feel like a fraud. Whatever happiness you feel won’t be sustained. The two main principles for mastering the skill of achievement are growing and giving. When you grow and give, you’re looking outward into the world. This allows you to live yo the fullest. If you don’t have anyone to share your success with, you’ll see that there is no point to it. So give your time, energy, and money to people who need it and people you care about.
Here are a few more tips:
- Money makes you more of what you are. If you’re unkind, it’s going to make you meaner. If you’re a giving person, you’ll have more to give and you will. You will give yourself more time to be you. Money isn’t going to change you, it will magnify you.
- Find a way to add more value than any other person in your industry.
- To change your life completely, figure out how your worst day was your best day.
- When someone is making a big life decision that will essentially be a game changer but they really want to do it, say “I bet on you.”
- Base your business decisions on what you love.
If you’re not feeling close connections in your life, if you’re not feeling bliss, there is nothing monetary that will bring that to you. There is no amount of money, no success, no accolades that will remotely touch you if you don’t first have inner fulfillment. If you took the steps to find fulfillment and achieved great things in the process, you will be able to enjoy those successes. You’ll enjoy them with other people in your life who are happy for those accomplishments. There are so many successful people who are just alone at the top. That’s not a design for a happy life. Consider that as you strive for great success. It should be coupled with a healthy dose of fulfillment.
