No matter what we do for a living, we all want to be a success. But what exactly does success mean? Are we pursuing money? Power? A bigger office? Or is your ultimate goal something that lasts longer but is more intangible?
Chasing success often looks like this: Imagine you’ve been hired at a job you really love. You’re passionate about the work and want to impress your bosses and colleagues. So you go all in, working all hours, taking every chance to display how much you care. It’s only natural, but it comes with problems.
Sometimes, our passion gets in the way of doing the work well. This is especially true if you’re not taking into account the needs of others. For example, imagine you’re a brand new teacher on the first day of class. You’ve been working toward this for years and you’re eager to impart everything you’ve learned to your students. So you create a syllabus that includes as much material as you can possibly cover, scheduling what you believe will be challenging projects, stimulating reading material, and outside fieldwork.
But after about six weeks, you notice that your students are lagging behind. Assignments are turned in late, and no one is participating in the extra work outside of class at all. You’ve failed to take into account that this is just one class of many for your students. Your passion is not their passion. Not yet, anyway.
In other words, your eagerness does not necessarily equal effectiveness. And if we are not effective in our jobs, we can’t be happy. We must combine both passion and wisdom to work effectively with others.
So chasing success can bring problems; it’s also never-ending. Whenever we chase success, we’re using an arbitrary benchmark that was handed to us by someone else. If we achieve it, what happens next? There’s always another goal to chase on the horizon.
Happiness, on the other hand, is a goal we define ourselves. Only you can decide what makes you truly happy. And when you receive enjoyment from your work, other people see it. Would you rather work with someone who enjoys what they do or with someone who seems miserable whether or not they get the job done?
At the end of the day, don’t worry about what the world says you should do to be happy. No one can define that but you. Stay true to yourself, figure out what you really want out of life, and pursue it.
Chasing success often looks like this: Imagine you’ve been hired at a job you really love. You’re passionate about the work and want to impress your bosses and colleagues. So you go all in, working all hours, taking every chance to display how much you care. It’s only natural, but it comes with problems.
Sometimes, our passion gets in the way of doing the work well. This is especially true if you’re not taking into account the needs of others. For example, imagine you’re a brand new teacher on the first day of class. You’ve been working toward this for years and you’re eager to impart everything you’ve learned to your students. So you create a syllabus that includes as much material as you can possibly cover, scheduling what you believe will be challenging projects, stimulating reading material, and outside fieldwork.
But after about six weeks, you notice that your students are lagging behind. Assignments are turned in late, and no one is participating in the extra work outside of class at all. You’ve failed to take into account that this is just one class of many for your students. Your passion is not their passion. Not yet, anyway.
In other words, your eagerness does not necessarily equal effectiveness. And if we are not effective in our jobs, we can’t be happy. We must combine both passion and wisdom to work effectively with others.
So chasing success can bring problems; it’s also never-ending. Whenever we chase success, we’re using an arbitrary benchmark that was handed to us by someone else. If we achieve it, what happens next? There’s always another goal to chase on the horizon.
Happiness, on the other hand, is a goal we define ourselves. Only you can decide what makes you truly happy. And when you receive enjoyment from your work, other people see it. Would you rather work with someone who enjoys what they do or with someone who seems miserable whether or not they get the job done?
At the end of the day, don’t worry about what the world says you should do to be happy. No one can define that but you. Stay true to yourself, figure out what you really want out of life, and pursue it.
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