Episode 14 - Stop Trying To Be A Success and Focus on Being Successful

Success is defined externally and being successful is driven by internal values, goals and talents.  In this episode I will talk about why being successful is a more valuable journey.

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to episode 14 of live and lead from the wind side. I'm your host, Terry Lee. And as always, thank you. For tuning in. In this episode, I want to talk about self image and success. And the context from which I'm talking about it is from a great book called Psycho-Cybernetics. By Maxwell Maltz and Psycho-Cybernetics is self-image psychology. Maxwell. Maltz was a plastic surgeon. And he developed the psychology by trying to get an understanding of why people came to him to change their self image and why they wanted this plastic surgery. And he developed psycho cybernetics from trying to help people understand, you know, what they were trying to do, why they were trying to change yourself image.. I think it's a great book and I encourage you to go to go check it out. But what I, what I specifically want to talk about today is a success. But first I want to ask you. When you look in the mirror. What self image do you see? Do you see success? Or you, do you see successful? Just ask yourself, what do you see? What are you working towards? And in the book, he provides a great distinction between striving to be a success. And striving to be successful. What he says is no one should attempt to be a success. But everyone should attempt to be successful. Because success is striving for prestige badges approval., from external sources. And to me, I think that's always a slippery slope because it's always a moving target. Someone tells you, this is what success looks like. So you chase that so whatever field you're in and somebody telling you what success looks like. It's always a moving target and that can lead to frustration. It can lead to depression. It can lead to just giving up. If you're always chasing a moving target to be quote unquote a success. But to be successful is the satisfactory accomplishment of a goal sought for, and that's the definition from the dictionary. You know, when, when you seek things and goals that are important to you, that align with your values, that align with your talents, that align with your aspirations. Then you become successful. And being successful is a process where being success is like I've made it and you never really make it. So I want you to think about the difference between am I success? Or am I striving to be successful? Maximum malls lays out a path. Uh, it's actually an acronym around success. And , how you can , change your image around what success looks like for you. And for those of you that I have been listening to my podcast. I normally end the podcast with, with a wind acronym to summarize what I talked about in the podcast. But I'm not going to do that today because the acronym that I'm going to talk about. Aligns with the win, but we're going to use success. So the S in success is sense of direction. When you think about. What you're working towards. Do you have a sense of direction? Do you have a goal that you're working towards? The Bible says ponder the path of your feet. So that means to think about your next move. You. Does it have a reason? Does it have a goal? Are you shooting for something? And you know what also think about this? Sense of direction. I think about, do you live by a compass or a map? Because if you live by a map and you look at the map, the map is, is static. And if you travel down the road on this metaphorical map and you run into an obstacle. But the map, doesn't give you a way to get around the obstacle. It can lead to frustration and along the way you're going to, you're going to be stalled. You don't know what to do if you, if you live and lead by mat, but if you live and lead by a compass, you're moving in a certain direction. And you're not defined by the static objects, like a map, because if you're, if you're moving north so to speak and there's an obstacle in the road, you know, that you might have to move east or west, you might have to do something different than you really planned in order to continue to move north. And you're okay with that. As opposed to living and leading by a map to where you run into an obstacle and you get stuck. Which leads to frustration. So the S in that sense of direction is knowing that When you move in a certain direction. Sometimes you might have to shift and change a little bit and being okay with that. So start with a sense of direction, when you start to divine, you The U stands for understanding. And understanding is really about seeking clarity. And the first thing you want to see clarity is, is about yourself. You know, what's the reality of what you're working towards right now. What do you have? That's going to benefit you. What do you need to attain? Because we don't have all the knowledge. Sometimes we gotta seek it. And sometimes people say fake it til you make it. You can't really fake it. If you don't understand it, so seek understanding about what you have, what's the reality of, of what you have that allows you to move forward. And then when you run into different people, you also need to seek clarity because sometimes, our understanding is only based on. Our experience. So it's our mental models that we, we put understanding on. And if we don't ask further questions, we might be misguided and we might misunderstand some things. As we move towards. Living a life to be successful and leading people to be successful. So always seek understanding of who you are, but also seek understanding when you communicate with others. The first C stands for courage. And that's taking action. A lot of times we, we S we seek information. We figure out how to do something, but you have to have the courage. To act, you have to have the courage to move, because again, you can have all the information, but it doesn't matter until you move. So have the curves, don't be froze in one place saying, oh, I might fail because you might fail, but you have to have the courage to move. And then once you move. You start to build even more courage. The second C is compassion. Compassion for yourself because as you move down the road, you're going to have failures. And failures are part of the process. They'll have compassion for yourself and then also have compassion for others because as you help other people become successful, you, you gonna understand that failure is part of the process. Roadblocks are part of the process. So having compassion for yourself and others allows empathy to come in and provide some understanding. Uh, for yourself and others. And then the E is esteem and that's know that your value matters. We're all God created creatures and we have value. And sometimes we lose sight of that value. So know that you have value regardless of your strengths, regardless of your weaknesses know that you have value. Don't let anyone else tell you. You don't have any value because they placed a success definition on you that does not fit you. So make sure every day you recognize your value. Now we get to the first S and that's self-confidence. And to me self-confidence is built by building on small wins. A lot of times we have this all or nothing mentality where if, I didn't get the whole thing of what I desired. Then it's a failure, but that that's really not true. Self-confidence comes with the small wins. Did you, did you act, did you have the courage to act that's a small win. Did you, accomplish your goal for today? Just one day, that's a small win. Did you , reach out to a certain person that gave you some additional information that you didn't have before? That's a small win. So self-confidence is built on small wins, not on the ultimate goal because by the time you get to the ultimate goal, The process that you thought to get there is going to change. So make sure you have self-confidence built on small wins. And again, that's going to allow you to build some great momentum. And then the last S is self-acceptance. This is really about loving yourself. Strengths and warts and all. Sometimes we want to, again, fake it. Fake it till we make it. So we want to act like we know something or we want to act like we have the ability to do something, or we want to act like, uh, somebody else. Because again, somebody gave you their own definition of what success is. Self-acceptance is knowing where you can contribute and knowing where you need to ask for help. But also knowing that you can close that gap by building those skills. And accepting yourself where you are. So I want to go back to the definition of successful. And again, Being successful is the satisfactory accomplishment of a goal sought for the things that are important to your values. Your deep felt needs talents. And aspirations. So as you wake up tomorrow and the next day, and you work towards a goal and you look in the mirror, I want you to say to yourself, myself image is a work. Uh, being successful every day and not a work of. Success. And because going back to that definition of success of accumulation of badges, prestige approval, again, it's a slippery slope. It's a moving target and it's something that's defined by other people and not you. So there you have it. A great way to live and lead by the wind side is to work towards being successful. And not necessarily a success. So thank you for listening. I'm always appreciated. I'm always grateful. Uh, always thankful for team Lee for their love and support. And we'll see you next time on lead from the wind side.