How Do You Measure Success?
Success isn't all that it's cracked up to be... I'm serious!
Stop laughing!
Well, success is important, very important in fact, depending on
how you measure it. I going to give you an example of an
imaginary "successful" individual. Let's call him Fred.
Fred starts work each day at 6am. Fred works 11 hours per day
and travels one hour to get home. He is highly successful in his
job and is the highest paid and most productive widget salesrep
in the northern hemisphere.
Fred has a wife at home with their two children aged five and
seven. Fred doesn't see his children much because he leaves
before they are awake and they are almost ready for bed when he
gets home. On the weekends he is unable to spend much time with
his wife or children because he is networking and playing golf
with the town's largest widget retailers.
Fred is extremely successful at his job. As we learned above,
there is no widget rep in the northern hemisphere that comes
close to him. The trouble with Fred is, however, he only
measures success in dollars and cents. He doesn't see success as
an all-encompassing journey.
Fred's children would much prefer he was a failed widget
salesrep that was good at helping them with their homework.
Fred's wife would much prefer he didn't always make bonus and
occasionally lingered over a romantic dinner with her. He
doesn't need to be good at the homework or dinner, he just needs
to be there.
The trouble with success is we've become so fixated with being
super human work junkies, we've forgotten what really matters
most- being successful in our lives and relationships with our
family and friends.
My advice is, next time you consider success, consider whether
you're giving your family and friends all they need emotionally.