I was having this very conversation with a friend yesterday. I always get into trouble with my coach when I talk about happiness because people are looking for success, not happiness. They want to make money in their business (I hang out with a lot of entrepreneurs, this is true for us all), they will pay to learn how to make money, but not to be happy.
This is a slippery slope I see entrepreneurs and leaders facing because we just want to help others with our service or solution and the way to show that we are being successful is by the money we produce.
Problems is, when we are not congruent with ourselves, it is difficult to show up authentically and help others.
This hits very close to home. We want success. Reality is, when I ask clients what success is to them, they cannot even tell me. They are good at telling what it ISN’T. It is because we have no real understanding of what we want; we are very clear on what we do not want.
When we focus on the external things in our life and expect them to provide us happiness, it works, for a hot second. In a matter of weeks or months, it wears off and we are looking for the next thing to fill our happiness bucket.
When in fact, when we look inward and discover the amazingly beautiful gift we are, we discover that being internally happy first is our key to success. We need to do some cleaning up inside, release the stored limitations, hurts, guilt; all those lessons that we currently see as problems or pain. And that is the last thing we
want to do: deal with our pain. Instead, we ignore it or lie to ourselves that it doesn’t exist.
Our mind is a powerful thing.
I have spent the last 8 years or so learning about how our mind is our “other” us – we come to believe everything it tells us, find our identity through our “roommate” (otherwise known as the itty-bitty-shitty committee) which started moving in when we were very young, pretty much immediately after we were born. I still am
learning through both academically and personally how powerful our mind is and the limitations it places on us. Almost everyday I am reminded that my “roommate” believes she is the boss of me!
As an entrepreneur and leader and human in general, I know my “roommate” believes she is serving and protecting me – and I also know she is reacting and even responding through the past hurts and experiences. That is the only way our mind is capable of responding. Unless we choose to do something different – change our old patterns, thoughts, behaviors and the emotions wrapped
around them, we will continue to live life seeking success based on exterior things.
It is an entirely different “feeling” to experience happiness first, then buy the new car, phone, or even outfit instead of trying to satisfy our happiness by purchasing things first believing it will solve whatever we are seeking to be fulfilled.
I wish you much happiness so that you can experience the truest success in the people you serve in your work, life, and relationships.
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