Bacon and Bears - Leadership, Travel & Self-Improvement
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Photography

BLOG

The Happiness of Success

12/15/2018

0 Comments

 
Success is a phantasmagorical swine. In chess, the rules are relatively simple, the world is black and white, and you know what success looks like. You know what you need to do win. But in life, it isn’t so simple: diving into a swimming pool of money? Leading corporate empires? As simple as shared love, perhaps? There seems to be no single formula as we don’t know what the game looks like. We know what the end looks like – death! – but in between that, you know, as we tread the long march towards death (jeeezz, what a downer!), success evolves entirely to a question of personal choice. 
Picture
It’s amazing how many famous people, dead or alive, celebrity or scientist or comedian, we would label successful and yet battled crippling depression, anxiety and self-doubt. Winston Churchill famously wrote about suffering from the ‘black dog’, now common parlance for the affliction. Abraham Lincoln, Peter Cook and Spike Milligan, and since it’s almost Oscar time and At Eternity’s Gate is showing, the infamous and plagued Vincent Van Gogh. Hero’s are often depicted as trying to prove others wrong, yet it seems the real battle is within: forever trying to prove themselves worthy of their own love, which no matter their lifetime achievements, remains elusive. 
Picture
Self-love and compassion for oneself isn’t based on achievements or goals or tasks ticked off during the day – he says, looking at his post-it note of lists with adjacent ticks. Perhaps it’s the success of knowing that you tried your best with your gifts, bestowed or acquired, and that perhaps you made someone else’s life a little bit happier, no matter how trivial it seemed for that fleeting moment you were acquainted. Out of the all the books I sourced this week which got me quite excited - John and Claudia Altichore’s The Power of No, Peter Thiel’s Zero to One and Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends Upon It by Kamal Ravikant – it’s the latter that inspired me to reach out to the author and thank him for sharing his story.  Zero to One is also excellent by the way, the ex-Pay-Pal CEO has a singular vision and drive which strides from the pages, finding a niche in his book that others rarely talk about i.e. finding that niche for your start-up. Jumping into a competitive marketplace is hard, jumping into one that doesn’t exist makes much more sense. In listening to venture capitalist Mike Maples on a Tim Ferris podcast, since 93% of start-ups are successful only after a pivot, it almost doesn’t matter what the company’s initial vision is. Find the niche, find your niche.

As with the last few weeks I’ll leave you with an excellent quotation from James Allen:
‘The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart -- this you will build your life by; this you will become.’
 
Links
http://everygeek.net/how-much-money-does-scrooge-mcduck-have-anyway/
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Writing and writing...

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Photography