Success: Achievement vs Fulfillment

If you’re like most lead­ers, you’re used to plan­ning for achieve­ment—or what I like to call ​‘head suc­cess’. But this is only half of the equa­tion. Head suc­cess is about reach­ing goals you set like rev­enue growth, prof­it, mar­ket share, per­son­al wealth, pos­ses­sions and vacations.

If you want a sense of sat­is­fac­tion, you need to plan for enjoy­ment and ful­fill­ment—aka ​‘heart suc­cess’. This requires design­ing how you want to feel about your­self and your life when you wake up every day.

Every­one has their own def­i­n­i­tion of heart suc­cess. You may want to feel ener­gized, influ­en­tial and con­nect­ed to peo­ple you love. You may want to feel like you are mak­ing a pro­found dif­fer­ence in the world, and evolv­ing as a human being.

How­ev­er you define it, you need to sort out what heart suc­cess is to you so it can be part of your game plan.

If you play your cards right, you’ll be able to look back, decades from now, with zero regrets. This is the true test of an amaz­ing life.

Here’s a true sto­ry to think about until next week, when I’ll walk you through the first three of six steps to cre­at­ing an amaz­ing life plan.

Robert’s Sto­ry

By the time he was 36, Robert had made more mon­ey than any oth­er per­son in the his­to­ry of his fam­i­ly. He built his busi­ness from the ground up, and it could rea­son­ably be called an empire.

For much of his career, Robert had an unstop­pable focus on work, with the goal of accu­mu­lat­ing wealth and secu­ri­ty for his loved ones.

Trou­ble is, all Robert knew how to do was make mon­ey, and save mon­ey. His finan­cial posi­tion was ridicu­lous­ly sol­id, but he couldn’t bring him­self to spend beyond the essen­tials — at all.

He dreamed of tak­ing his fam­i­ly on vaca­tions. He imag­ined buy­ing pricey gifts for his kids. He longed for the day he would buy his hard­work­ing, rough-and-tum­ble dad a new set of pipes for his Harley.

Robert had a gen­er­ous heart, but he was so hard-wired to build wealth that, despite his best inten­tions, he couldn’t part with his cash.

Final­ly the day came when his father’s health fad­ed, and it was clear he didn’t have long to live. And it changed every­thing. Robert spent $5,000 to buy that set of exhaust pipes, and his dad’s Harley nev­er sound­ed loud­er, or felt more sat­is­fy­ing. His dad rode that upgrad­ed bike only once before he died, but the joy he expe­ri­enced gave Robert a whole new take on mon­ey. He final­ly under­stood he need­ed to expand his def­i­n­i­tion of success.

His whole life he had seen suc­cess through one lens: his wealth goals. All deci­sions were based on max­i­miz­ing his finan­cial posi­tion. He learned to method­i­cal­ly weigh enjoy­ment of life as part of his deci­sion-mak­ing cri­te­ria. This may sound sim­ple and obvi­ous, but for many dri­ven peo­ple like Robert, it’s a revelation.

Now, in addi­tion to build­ing wealth, Robert makes a con­cert­ed effort to cre­ate joy for him­self and oth­ers. He bought the water­front home he and his wife always want­ed. He took his fam­i­ly on a trip around the world, and proud­ly owns a mem­ber­ship at a pri­vate track for car racing.

Some­times that old per­spec­tive creeps up again, want­i­ng Robert to pinch pen­nies and lim­it his enjoy­ment of life. When it does, he remem­bers his dad’s Harley, and switch­es to a broad­er perspective.

This is the sec­ond arti­cle in the Liv­ing an Amaz­ing Life series. Oth­er posts include:

• Are You Liv­ing an Amaz­ing Life?