These last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot of about success and how you define it. This process has been helped on by books like The Inside-Out Revolution and Stilness is the Key.
Both of which can be warmly recommended.
One thing I’ve slowly but surely begun to understand is: Success (in itself) isn’t going to make me happy.
The goal line is JUST around the corner
I remember in my second year of high school, when I got the idea for a series of books that could help students learn their subjects easier.
At first my dream was to write a book. I thought “if I just accomplish this, everything will be perfect”.
Then, my co-author and I sat down, and over the next few months, we wrote a book about chemistry. We paid to have 200 copies printed and we were super happy and proud.
We decided that if we sold 20 copies of the first book, we would go ahead and write another one.
Those 20 books came and went. If I remember correctly, we reached that number within two weeks.
Next, our goal was to break even. To have made more money selling the books than we had paid to have them printed, THEN we would (finally) be successful.
And lo and behold: We reached that milestone as well. Then the goal became 500 books. Then 1.000. Then 2.000.
At some point, we had grown tired of writing books for students, and decided to release the books online for free. We posted them online, hoping that at least 1.000 people could use them.
And within a few weeks, they had been downloaded over 5.000 times. As of writing this blog post, they’ve been downloaded 20.000 times.
And while I feel proud about what we’ve been able to do, nothing fundamentally changed after doing all of that.
I learned new skills, of course. And I’m using those skills every day. But am I walking around in a state of pure bliss? Of course not.
Nothing was different
When we sold X number of books or had them downloaded Y number of times, nothing remarkable changed about my life. We celebrated the moment, sure, but it did not change our lives.
It strikes me that this is probably true about most accomplishments. They feel nice in the moment, but most of them don’t leave a lasting impression.
The same pattern has repeated itself with Conflux, our mentorship program for students. First, we had the program with 23 matches and we felt ecstatic.
Then, we expanded to 162 matches. We felt ecstatic again – it was amazing.
But deep down, I am still the same person.
I have a feeling that when we expand to all major universities in Denmark (that’s our goal, at least), I’ll be proud. Of course I will.
But at the end of the day, nothing will have changed. Again, I’ll learn new skills, but I won’t be transformed as a person.
I think this is a part of a general trend, let’s call it…
The Law of 7
I remember hearing Eric Edmeades speak about this topic once.
He mentioned something called The Law of 7 which really resonated with me.
It goes like this: In personal development circles, there’s an exercise called the “Wheel of Life”. In this wheel, you scale different areas of your life (wealth, health, family, love etc) on a scale from 1 to 10. The result is a wheel showing your view of your life in total.
What Eric noticed was following:
Even though his wage had become significantly higher than last time he filled out the wheel, he still ended up scoring himself as a 7/10.
And even though his health had improved drastically, he still scored himself a 7 of 10. Sometimes it was a bit above, maybe an 8/10 – and sometimes below 7. But it always converged around the number 7.
Based on that experience, we can formulate The Law of 7:
No matter your level of success, you will, at any given time, assess it as 7/10.
The law has the following consequence: If I feel like I need to be at a 10 to be happy, I’ll continue to be disappointed.
Why does The Law of 7 keep showing up?
In my opinion, there are a myriad of potential causes. I think it’s a mixture of the following:
- Accomplishing great things makes us raise our expectations of what’s possible, raising the bar indefinitely
- Our peer group might change, raising our expectations
- Striving for more and better results is a part of human nature
I’m unsure which is correct, but nonetheless, I think the tendency is unavoidable: At the end of the day, success in itself won’t make me happy.
Maybe THIS time is different (hint: It’s not)
Even though I intellectually understand the things I’ve written above, I think it will take a (long) while until I finally accept it. Until then, I’ll have to catch myself in the thought, whenever I think “if only I accomplish this, then…”.
In short, instead of chasing success, I’m trying to move towards enjoying the journey.
Enjoying the process of working towards my goals and – perhaps most importantly – the person I become through the process.
