If we only knew. If we only knew how happiness works. Thatâd be nice, wouldnât it? So many of us continue to ask the question, âWhat would make me happy?â Of course, by asking the question, you inevitably proceed to brainstorm potential answers. Is it family? Is it status? Fame? Education? Income? A nice car? A big house? Being successful? What on earth is it?
Hereâs the first (bonus!) sign of a successful life right out of the gate: you are happy. Success IS happiness. Happiness IS success. But because this is an article and not a platitude, weâll dig a little deeper.
Again, if you are successful, you will have a happy life. If you are happy, you already have a successful life. For those who donât fit into one of these two groups, there is hope. If you take the time to define success â and what that word means to you, youâll have a happy life. Take note of the keywords in the preceding sentence: if, you, define. Letâs provide some context to those three words.
IF: Not everyone contemplates their success â or lack thereof. Those who donât will find both success and happiness to be elusive.
YOU: Success is highly individualistic. Itâs clear that society doesnât know a darned thing about it. How many people are living in abject misery despite their âsuccessâ?
DEFINE: Once youâve decided that success is worth considering, you must, of course, define what it means.
In this article, weâre going to talk about eight signs of a successful life that have nothing to do with money. First, let us talk about what success is not.
Success Isnât What Most People Think
Hereâs a question worth contemplating: Who or what has shaped how you view success? If youâre like most people, you need to give this question plenty of thought; even then, you may not come up with anything concrete.
There are a few reasons why answering the above question may prove elusive. Here are some:
– Subconscious programming: We must account for the first 6-7 years of life when a child is âtaking inâ the massive world around them. Of course, these memories are buried way down.
– Lack of input: If youâve never grasped the notion of success and what it entails, your brain wonât produce much more than a surface, knee-jerk response â if any response at all.
– Fear or bias: Your situation in life, if it doesnât match up well with your definition of success, may cause your brain to repress a response out of fear. We must also account for any cognitive bias(es), known or unknown.
Many (most?) of those who do manage to come up with a response to the question âWho or what has shaped how you view success?â probably came up with the same oleâ stuff: prestige, status, money, career, and so forth.
You canât blame yourself for thinking this way. You were bamboozled. Hoodwinked into buying a pipe dream.
You may be thinking âYeahâŚthatâs what people who donât have (x, y, and z) say!â This is a normal response â and it even has an element of truth (more on this later). But it doesnât come close to telling the whole story.
What Society Says: A Short Interlude
âI think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that itâs not the answer.â â Jim Carrey (source)
How have many rich, famous, âsuccessfulâ people turned out to be living in abject misery? Iâm sure that these folks thought that attention, status, and/or money would bring them that elusive happiness.
What the hell does âsocietyâ know about success much less happiness?
What the Science Says
ââŚnumerous studies have shown that happy people tend to be successful across multiple domains ⌠including work performance, health, income, friendship, and even marriage. ⌠happiness is associated with and precedes ⌠successful outcomes.â â Lyubomirsky, et al (emphases added).
Letâs unpack the above two findings from multiple studies which span years of research:
- Researchers concur that happy and successful individuals tend to be happy successful across a wide variety of domains â health and relationships among them.
- The happiness and well-being of successful individuals usually come before â and, arguably, as a prerequisite of â most success, theyâve had.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the years of study, including in the Positive Psychology arena, is that happiness and success are mutually inclusive. We established this mutuality in the earlier parts of the article â and itâs proven again here.
Letâs get a bit more specific with it.
Here are eight signs of a successful life that have nothing to do with cash:
1. Your Success Is Self-Defined
âIt is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.â â Herman Melville (source)
Itâs worth repeating: society doesnât know everything about success. Constructing a framework of success based solely on societal influences is a recipe for an unhappy â and thus, unsuccessful â life.
Some people are fortunate enough to know exactly what comprises a successful life for them (lucky, indeed!). For the rest of us, finding our own success comes through a period for introspection and, of course, trial and error.
2. Failure Doesnât Stop You
âSuccess consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.â â Winston Churchill (source)
One of the most frustrating life callings is that of a creative visionary â an âinventor.â In this respect, Thomas Edison is perhaps the most famous, accomplished inventor in history. It is safe to assume that Edisonâs relentlessness in the face of failure is what propelled him to the history books. Indeed, these failures may have been the catalyst of Edisonâs quote, âSuccess is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.â
3. You Do No Harm
âPrimum non nocerum.â (First, do no harm.) â Hippocrates (source)
Wall Street bankers â and the institutions they work for â can be considered by many some of the most injurious entities on the planet. These people are mostly to blame for the 2008 housing crisis leading to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Yet, if you were to ask someone passing by if they consider these folks to be successful, far more people would answer in the affirmative. How can one be successful at the expense of so many? Â This question begs contemplation.
4. You Enjoy Your Work
âDo what you love, and youâll never have to work a day in your life.â â Unknown
People who love their âjobâ are some of the most grateful people alive. Far too many of us slog through our workday, counting down the minutes until we can go home. If, at the present time, you find yourself in a less-than-desirable position, you can become more successful by following the next sign of successful people (so read on!).
5. You Manage Your Attention
âIf you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely you will become interested in it.â â Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (source)
First, re-read the above quote. Write it down. Commit it to memory. Itâs that powerful. Moving onâŚ
Attention is where you choose to place the spotlight of awareness. Prolonged effective management of attention leads to states of concentration, or the ability to focus exclusively on a chosen target, object, event, or situation. When you actively manage attention, you not only deepen your concentration abilities but become more resistant to autopilot mode. This maturing of your attention and concentration will drastically improve your life situation.
6. Youâre Selfless
âThe best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.â â Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi exemplifies the interrelationship between selflessness, service, and success. He may not have had a bunch of money, but he didnât need it. He was still able, through the power of his words and character, to unite a country in the fight against racial discrimination and help end the British occupation of India.
Selflessness requires continuous intense effort as well as firm belief in a cause bigger than themselves. It’s no surprise, then, that we find some of the most selfless, successful individuals in fields like teaching, counseling, and government.
7. You Meditate
âSome research shows that the way meditation helps your brain to work better is consistent, staying with you not just when you’re sitting on a cushion with your eyes closed, but all the time.â â Annie Mueller, Lifehack (source)
Many of the problems that we have, including those that obstruct our happiness and success, are caused by a lack of awareness. On average, the human mind wanders about half of the time. Multiple studies link mind-wandering with unhappiness (thus, unsuccess.)
Most meditation techniques are rooted in mindfulness â the ability to recognize a wandering mind and bring it back to the focus of attention. Many, perhaps most, people who call themselves successful have a regular meditation or mindfulness practice because it trains the mind to become much less responsive and habitual.
8. You Donât Try So Hard
âDonât try.â â Charles Bukowski, Jr.
Make an effort. Have goals. But donât go crazy trying to achieve them. While you may end up a âsuccessâ in the eyes of the world, youâll bring disappointment to the only person whose opinion truly matters: yourself.
The end.
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