Category: Defining Success

Some counter culture gift ideas for the holiday season.

• A friend and his girlfriend decided they were going to skip town during the holidays altogether and have themselves an experiential weekend in a city they’ve never visited before capped off with an NBA game as the cherry on top.

• Another friend was telling me about a new tradition he and his wife started with Gold Belly. Apparently, you can live in Alaska and have Chicago style deep dish pizza for dinner—without ever leaving your home. Or Philly Cheesesteaks from Philadelphia or lobster from Maine for that matter… Each year, it’s a new dinner dish from somewhere different across the USA and Canada. And it’s a gift that’s totally unique, authentic, and shared.

• And yet another friend was telling me how he and his wife have given up gift giving altogether and decided to write each other a love letter each year instead.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the commercial brainwashing of the holiday season that we forget we have control over how we want our holiday to actually unfold.

Ask yourself what your ideal holiday schedule would look like… what experiences you truly want to put on a pedestal (getting an expensive gift?)… and then start reverse engineering your way towards that vision.

As is the case with most things in life… this holiday season is what you make it.

…Not what it’s been made out to be.

I read a great line by James Clear today that said, “If we consider each moment a ‘repetition,’ what are most people training for all day?”

Some, I’d say, are training to become angry keyboard warriors.

Others, I’d say, are training to become professional self-sabotagers.

And there are plenty who it’d appear are training to become full-time spectators.

…This is an excellent question to integrate into your mindfulness practice.

Maybe add a random alarm on your phone or do a daily check-in at a specific time and ask yourself, “What am I training for—what am I getting repetitions in for—in this moment?”

…Are you reinforcing a message of self-doubt or a message of confidence and courage?

…Are you reinforcing a behavior of knee-jerk anger or calm removal from anger-inducing situations?

Are you casting votes for being a life spectator or a life participant?

…Because one thing is for sure, our life is built on moments. One moment at a time, one building block at a time, we choose how we construct the building that is our life. The question is… what kind of quality are you getting from each of those moments?

Last night, while watching the Buffalo Bills Football game, quarterback Josh Allen commented on how the team has been able to come together and play as well as they have—despite having lost as many experienced leaders as they had.

He said, “Coach McDermott talks about ‘Be you, with us,’ and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

He elaborated by saying he likes to joke around and be funny—that he enjoys doing things that’ll get the coaches and players to lighten up and laugh. But he also said, “…there’s times where there doesn’t need to be joking around. Time to get serious. Over the years, I’ve found when that is the most critical.”

What’s working well, it would seem, is an aligned energy with players and coaches where, between jokes and seriousness, one compliments the other and the other compliments the one. The jokes aren’t hindering the team energy or targeting/ostracizing anybody on it and the seriousness isn’t making the process miserable or becoming an unbearable weight on any one player’s shoulders.

Ultimately, those four words seem to capture the ideal recipe for engaging as an individual when you’re a part of a team. Be you—yes. To ask you to be anybody else would not only be cruel, but counterproductive. It wouldn’t be long before the person not allowed to be themself would start resenting the people around them. But also, and just as important, do so: with us. To be cruel, ostracize people, be overly critical, spread hate, or otherwise demean people around you—even jokingly—dismantles a team. Which, in effect, dismantles you—because you’re a part of it.

In reply to my post on one lesson from 35 years, my uncle replied with the following:

“It’s funny, most of the educated, ‘smart people’ I know told me not to retire early… ‘you’ll be sorry.’ Funny that they text me to see if it’s actually working… why??? Because they don’t get job satisfaction anymore and want to jump. It’s not about getting rich, it’s not about all the zeros in that account… it’s about having enough, having health, and being able to savor the flavor of life. I, we, take things slow, and my old way of looking at life is/has changed. Money can’t buy health or time.”

Pair this with a nugget of wisdom from my great grandmother (that my mom shared at my birthday party this past weekend): “If your problems can be solved with money… you don’t really have problems” and two thoughts come to mind.

(1) Damn, I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such incredible role models in my life. It makes such an impact (probably one of the biggest impacts) on a person’s life… and if you’re not surrounded by good role models… do everything in your power to change that.

(2) Get rich, quick! is the current of modern day society—swim against it. Which isn’t to say you should disregard money. There’s no doubting the fact that money is a powerful tool. But, that’s just it… it’s a tool. Don’t become so obsessed with hoarding the tool that you forget to use the damn thing to do amazing things!

The handyman who merely collects and stores tools is no handyman at all.

Ask yourself… Is the person who merely collects and hoards money really living at all?

Ever since this interaction I had with a random mechanic (and several other similar interactions I’ve had in the past), I’ve been quite skeptical of going to anyone new.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with my current mechanic and I feel very lucky to have found him, there are simply some things he can’t do… like body work and dent/scratch repairs.

This past weekend, lo and behold, my car got backed into and got a dent and scratches that need repair.

And so, rather than go to the closest mechanic to my home/work or even look at reviews online… I asked the mechanic I trust who he would trust to get this type of work done…

And he gave me a shop name and a number and told me to tell them he sent me.

Done.

There’s a speed that comes with trust that can be invaluable for getting things done in life.

And if you’re like mechanic #1 in the interaction I linked to above… you’re gonna find yourself climbing some uphill battles throughout your time.

But, when you prioritize trust over bottom line, suddenly the climb levels out and sometimes even turns downhill. Because while bottom line focus might get you some short turn dollars, it usually ends there or shortly thereafter. Whereas if you focus on trust… you’ll create a bond that’ll last much, much longer—maybe even for life.

And as a mentor of mine says, the best way to build a good business is to build a good business.

And being a good person who cares about doing good for other people is an excellent strategy to do exactly that.

The world is saturated with people who want to be successful.

But what the world needs isn’t more people who are successful via traditional metrics (e.g. money, fame, power).

What the world needs is more people who are successful via novel and highly personal metrics.

The world doesn’t need more people maximizing their bottom lines at the expense of the environment. What we need are more people who can minimize their carbon footprint, reduce their use of plastics, and align their purchasing behavior with a life mission that’s also aligned with our most important home.

The world doesn’t need more people obsessing over likes and numbers of views on social media. What we need are more people who are obsessed with liking themselves and minimizing the number of people they compare themselves to—both on and offline.

The world doesn’t need more generally educated, non-specific college grads. What we need are more people who have come alive and are ignited with a curiosity that makes them want to learn, grow, and improve each day in spite of mistakes, failures, and hardships along the way.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with traditional metrics of success per se.

…It’s just that there’s something way more right with personally defined, soul-aligned metrics instead.

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Inner Work Prompt: What’s your personally defined, soul-aligned definition of success?