Why success is really about impact

Most people think success is about achievement when it’s really about impact. 

This is the core thesis of Profit+ and the more I pursue this creative endeavor, the more I realize why. The challenge of modern life is that we are bombarded from a very young age with messages based exclusively on the idea that success is fundamentally an individual matter when nothing could be further from the truth. No wonder we are all so unhappy.

While I’m still working out just how I came to this realization, I know this: in discovering it, I immediately felt called to spread the word. It’s like I didn’t have a choice in the matter. 

For the longest time, I was convinced that there was “a way” to find success, one single secret path, and if I could just discover it, I could live the life of my dreams. But life has taught me, through some hard times and many, many more good times, that there is no path, at least not in the way I was thinking about it. More on this later.

Thankfully, my search for the path that does not exist wasn’t in vain, for it led me to explore in depth many of the great ideas of history. I was so motivated by this mission, so hungry for success, that I wasn’t just reading and taking in ideas, I was experimenting with them in my real life. Along the way, while I never did discover the one secret path to success, I did discover a secret of sorts and one of incredible value.

In all this searching and experimentation, two realizations came to me:

1. I saw that there was a kind of emptiness that comes with pursuing individual achievement. Even when you get what you want, that momentary feeling of elation quickly dissipates into a kind of depression. I found this to be true in my own life and also something I observed in others as well. By the way, to find a most poignant example of this curious phenomenon, watch Michael Jordan in “The Last Dance.” Here’s someone who achieved so much that he basically became a God-like living legend but here is after all the wealth, all the accolades, all the success still so clearly struggling with the hangover of achievement. 

2. Even in our rather narcissistically oriented culture, which is a cult of individualism, we keep telling stories and making movies that are all about personal sacrifice. We just cannot help ourselves. While we love our heroes, it’s what the hero does for others that moves us. 

So, while we are striving and striving, pushing ourselves ever harder towards our self-defined goals, the secret to a fulfilling life is just sitting there hiding in plain sight! Turns out, it comes down to mindset. The key is to think of all your actions not as things to benefit yourself, though they may do that, but as things that can benefit your broader community.

When I first discovered this secret, I found it incredibly motivating. Having kids helped me understand intuitively why this is so true and so vital to the human condition—it’s impossible after all to be self-absorbed and be a good father. But it took me a long time to figure out “why” from an intellectual perspective. At some level it just makes sense. As social animals, why wouldn’t we be programmed where we feel our best when our actions are contributing to the greater good? It also happens to be the unifying theme of all of history’s great religious traditions.  What kept tripping me up was the whole idea of the idea of the ego. Why is it that the thing that we need most to achieve our goals is also, simultaneously, the thing we need to overcome to live a fulfilling life? How does that make any sense?

It was history that provided me with the final clue, for I discovered that there was a striking connection between the things our great gurus keep telling us to do and what seem to be the universal goals of collective human action. So much so, that whether we have the right mindset or not, if we do the things our gurus want us to do, we cannot help but contribute to our collective goals. 

As soon as I figured this out, I immediately started working on developing a framework to distill this all down to a comprehensible and actionable picture. How to summarize 1000’s upon 1000’s of pages of study and two decades of journalling and experimentation? Well, here’s what I came up with:

When I say that there’s a profound relationship between success and impact, this is what I mean. The idea here is that each of things that we do to try to be successful necessarily contributes to a corresponding collective goal. So, when we pursue productivity, we are contributing to greater security and when we act with awareness and discipline, we contribute to freedom and so on. To be sure, these individual actions tend to benefit us directly but they also, at the same time, benefit the greater good. If we are more secure, or free, or prosperous, so is our community, right?

This is yet another example of the profound genius in the design of the human condition. Whether we consciously choose to or not, we cannot help but contribute to the greater good. The only difference is how we experience things subjectively.  Behind door number one—the right mindset choice—we find things like meaning, love, and fulfillment, while behind door number two, we are perpetually caught in the highs and lows of the achievement trap and never quite feel right about life.

In modern times, we have two acute problems. The first is that we have a general cultural blindness about the immense importance of community. Though we are completely dependent upon community, we act like it doesn’t exist. The second is that because of this cultural blindness, as individuals we are completely overfocused on 1, 2, & 3 when it’s 4 that makes all the difference. 

We humans are a vulnerable lot. Loss is literally the stuff of life and death is always lurking in the distance. No amount of ego-focused success will save you. It’s only by pursuing a life of contribution that you can find any solace in the impossible journey that is the human life. If doing the things that make us successful also contribute to our collective goals, why not do them with that intent rather than for the delusional dreams of the ego? 

While there is no sure path in this life, as I mentioned earlier, we do at least have this little formula: if we can pursue personal achievement with a greater intent, one that accepts the responsibilities of community, we can at least experience some good along the way. 

Ps.

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[1] My study of history has me convinced that the universal goals of the collective are security, freedom, prosperity, and community. Astute students of history may quibble and point out that I’m missing a big one here—the whole power thing. But the pursuit of power is more about the individuals in charge than the will of the people. When you look at what groups of people consistently value, it’s these four things. 

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