SubscribeThis TED talk couldn’t have come at a better time. Alain de Botton speaks on a kinder, gentler philosophy of success.
Alain starts off by saying that we live in an age where our lives are punctuated by career crisis. That it’s easy to make a good living, but it’s very difficult to be free of career anxiety. Think about that for a moment. Are you stress free in your career? Good for you if you can answer that, I’m still trying to figure out what my career is supposed to look like.
He goes on to explore the idea of success and what it really means to be successful. Again, take a moment to think about what success means to you. Does it mean free time? Does it mean a nice house, a nice car, a happy family (which is impossible for a family to be happy 100% of the time)? Does it include fame, money or a prestigious job title?
Now think about it in terms of your parents. If you are male, think about your idea of success and compare that to how your dad (or what you think your dad) defines success as. If you are female, same question, just think about your mom. How close is your answer? What is success to YOU?
This got me thinking…or rather stopped me thinking. Over the past eight months, I’ve been trying to nail down what my definition of success is. And it feels like a moving target. On the one hand, I’d love a nice house. Preferably one that I don’t have to spend a ton of time renovating. I also want to have a close and (mostly) happy family. Being brought up in a low emotion, loose knit and broken family, I don’t want my kids to have a similar experience.
On the other hand, I want to be personally successful in my business life. I’m still not sure how much money that takes, and if notoriety is part of the equation. Shit, I don’t even know what field it should be in. I’m still looking for my “calling” and want to make sure that what ever I do, it’s in harmony with my desire to have a wonderful family life. You know, my “work/life” balance.
Thanks to Alain, I’m second guessing the possibility of that coming to fruition. In his talk, he says that you can’t be successful with everything. There’s a sacrifice. Which makes sense. I instantly think of Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule” from his book, Outliers, where he states that the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours. Think pro athletes or musicians. There’s not enough time in a day to master more than one or two things.
It also brings to mind Curly’s Law. It’s from the movie City Slickers, and the dialogue goes like this:
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Curly: This. [holds up one finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.
Again, you can’t be successful at more than one thing. You have to make a choice. You have to commit to a decision. And that scares the living shit out of me most days.
The upside to this philosophy is that you can accept being mediocre at everything except that one thing you do. Just focus on being the best in that one thing you’ve chosen to focus on.
Another example that solidifies this concept is a book I read (and loved) called The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. Remember the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher? Well, Josh is/was the kid that the movie was based on. And he was the best in the world in his age group in chess. Not chess and physics, chess and cooking, or chess and checkers. Just chess. And when he grew older, he shifted his focus onto a competitive form of Tai Chi called push hands (I miss my Tai Chi class). Where, you guessed it, he became the best in the world at it. He wasn’t a chess champ at the same time as being a world renowned push hands competitor. Do you think it bothers him if he can’t cook worth a shit?
What am I getting at here? Alain’s talk is a great one, especially if you are feeling depressed or if you have been served up a nice little (or big) failure from life. It’s a tad on the new-agey hippy dippy side, but hey, that’s what I like. And it’s okay to have your own definition of success. And you don’t have to be successful with everything you do. Because you can’t. And it’s cool, baby!
