Success Unplugged: Your Worth Isn't Your Wallet (Part 1)
Introduction
As students in higher education, you might be thinking about what you’d like to do next, after you graduate. Some of you may be striving for a high-paying job or to get in some work-experience. Others may be seeking to specialise through further education. The more business minded among you may be thinking of getting started with your entrepreneurial journey.
Many of you, however, may still be trying to figure it all out. You may have some ideas but you haven’t yet zeroed in on a future direction. If you find yourself among these, you may be happy to know that you are not alone. According to Jeffery Salingo, the author of the book, There is Life of the College, two out of three students don’t have a clear and well-defined career path when they graduate. This statistic may sound counter intuitive, particularly if you had expected college to give you clarity but in my opinion, it shouldn’t be cause for any alarm whatsoever.
Back in the day, I sailed the same boat. Higher education opened up many doors but getting out of college seemed confusing and overwhelming at the same time. I found it extremely difficult to commit to something as I was lost in a world where there was just so much more to explore, so many more experiences to soak in and so many options to pursue. On one hand, there were expectations to meet - from family, friends and society at large for not falling on wrong end of the employment statistic. On the other hand, I felt like I was being rushed into making a choice and that I needed more time to figure things out.
With a little more experience though (and a receding hairline for company), I have realised that answers to these questions are never really straight-forward and it is a process of self-discovery, one that sometimes lasts a lifetime. But it is important to start somewhere! If you are looking for a suggestion, I recommend you start with answering for yourself, what success really really means to you. Be rooted in the knowledge that your view point will change as you navigate your own life and expand your collection of experiences. But that is okay and just the nature of the beast.
This blog post aims to get you started and is organised as a two part series. Part 1 (what you are reading now) raises some important questions you need to start thinking about and explores the most common approach towards success. It also establishes the need for alternative, more nuanced paradigms.
Part 2 of this series is focused on the answers. Ready to get started?
The Traditional View of Success
For the longest part of human history, our tendency has been to evaluate success using wealth as its common denominator. About a century back, the success of an Empire, hinged on how how many lands it was able to get under its rule and how it was able to protect that from invaders. Not much has changed, even today. Mukesh Ambani is ‘successful’ as he is wealthy (at the time of this writing with a personal net worth of 83 Billion USD). His brother, on the other hand, Anil is perceived to be ‘unsuccessful’ as he carries with him the legacy of a fumbling business empire. Money (and not land) has become the new currency of success. Money has replaced lands, but the underlying equation of ‘wealth equals success’ remains by and large, the same.
Personally, I have nothing against wealth. Over the past few years, for instance, I have made several directional changes in my life, including quitting a lucrative career in technology to choose entrepreneurship as my vocation. Without a certain level of financial security, this decision would been impossible. The problem, is not wealth in itself but is in not having an alternate, more nuanced approach towards success. I offer you the following limitations of wealth, if you are still aren’t convinced.
Wealth is deceptive and forces false comparisons
The simplicity of it make comparisons really easy. All it takes is a closer at lifestyles - the houses people own, the clothes people wear and the cars they drive to make a conclusion on who is wealthy and who is not. Who is to be admired and who can be ignored. Rich people lists - like the Forbes Top 30 under 30 makes it even simpler. Would this comparison be fair though?
Can one really compare the accomplishments of a successful business leader like Mukesh Ambani, with that of Padma Shri Sindhutai Sapkal the social activist who, despite very limited means, provided a home for and raised over 2000 orphaned children? Both these lives have been incredibly successful in their own ways. Plotting their success on the wealth scale, would lead us think otherwise, wouldn’t it?
Wealth doesn’t recognise tradeoffs
The stresses and strains at work sometimes mean that health is compromised. Late night meetings, travel and commute often leaves us with no energy to pursue our hobbies and interests. The time and hours needed to generate wealth often come with not having enough time to spend with family and friends.
In an interview with Aspen Institute, Indra Nooyi, while talking about the demands of her role as the CEO of Pepsico said, "I don't think (wo)men can have it all. If you ask my daughters if I have been a good mom, I am not sure". Hard hitting comments, by an incredibly wealthy and powerful business leader, but very indicative of this tradeoff.
Economically we are better off now than at any other point in time across human history. We have more money, are better educated and have better access to healthcare than all generations that have come before us. Yet, study after study shows that we, as a collective race are lonelier and in poorer health than ever before.
Pursuing wealth is like a chasing moving goalpost
When I started my career, the pursuit of money meant getting promoted, staying relevant with the latest skills and investing in the future. I celebrated wholeheartedly the growth, the titles and pay rise that came my way from time to time. Within a few days of getting the promotion letter, however, I inevitably found myself chasing the next step in the career ladder. Success and the feeling of accomplishment felt elusive and I felt somewhat like a dog chasing its own tail.
While life is unpredictable, and an attempt to account for everything we will encounter along the way is downright impossible, it is still important for you as college students to reflect on what success means to you as you embark on your careers. It would even be better, if you can find ways to translate that into well-chosen, meaningful goals. Without this, I assure you success will always feel like a moving goal post, no matter how big your bank balance gets.
Wealth reduces the value of our accomplishments
Wealth reduces our accomplishments to a a mere accounting exercise. Moreover, it creates the tendency to confuse our self-worth to our net-worth. In a study conducted by Lora Park and others at the University of Buffalo, researchers revealed that in doing so, people experienced more stress, anxiety, and felt less in control of their lives. Outcomes most would agree, are counter-productive.
Success on the other hand is far more nuanced than that.
The Search for Different Paradigms
The couple of questions that you probably have on top of your minds as you think about the future:
At what point do we actually stop chasing money? How much money do we need to afford us a good lifestyle, a decent level of financial security and take care of our current/ future needs and wants?
What approaches do we have to determine how successful we really are? Is it appreciation from our family, recognition from society, the number of subs on Youtube, service to humanity or something entirely different?
No straightforward answer to the first question, unfortunately, as each of us is very different both in personality and in circumstance. We don’t have the same set of needs, responsibilities nor ambitions. But these are topics for a separate conversation.
The answer to Question 2, sorry to say, is even more complicated, but that is what I would like to explore with you next. I would like to do this by introducing you to some of my favourite ideas from across the world around success. These my favourites, not because they gave me definitive answers to what I wanted to become, but because they helped me ask the right questions to guide my search within. They helped me evaluate what I wanted to get out of my time on this planet and balance tradeoffs in the pursuit of success. They helped me set the goal post and navigate the many failures that I inevitably encountered while trying carve out a path that I could truly call my own.
I look forward to seeing you in Part 2 of this series! Until then, Be Gritty!
What are your thoughts on success? I’d love to read them all in the comments section below
