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Which experts, personalities, and “influencers” do you follow? Whether you are aware of it or not, they are shaping your definition of success.
As you observe what they are pursuing, it automatically influences your beliefs of what is important to pursue.
Notice the imagery in their content (lifestyles of the rich and famous?), notice what they celebrate and point out to you, and notice the style they exhibit.
In this moment, question the direction of growth that they are encouraging you toward…
For example, many of the influencers in my industry of business/marketing/success tell us to:
- Be more attractive.
- Be more brilliant.
- Be more persuasive.
- Be more successful (looking) than others.
In the short-term, this set of “values” may create brief popularity or money, but then, we get stuck in the shallows.
It creates competitive pressure, and eventually, burnout and mental illness.
There was a recent article on how Youtubers with millions of subscribers are burning out en masse…
Whenever we follow an external metric of success, comparing ourselves with (or worshipping) those who have accumulated more money or followers, we risk losing the connection with our deeper, authentic selves.
This creates a pressure to #hustle… a deeply anxious grasping at some future success that must be achieved before we allow ourselves to be deeply happy.
Or to deeply rest.
As you go about your internet surfing, email newsletter reading, video watching and podcast listening, I encourage you to notice what kind of values you’re being influenced by.
What are the experts you follow encouraging you to be more of?
Instead of attractiveness, brilliance, persuasiveness, success-image, this is what I try to cultivate within myself, and hopefully influence you through my content:
- Connect again with authenticity.
- Connect again with your ultimate source of well-being.
- Connect again with your caring and compassion.
- Connect again with your values/virtues, especially in business.
To keep coming back, again and again, to connect with the deepest and highest truths, “even” (or perhaps especially) in our business and marketing.
The world is constantly giving us a much shallower definition of success. Not everyone can be the most attractive, brilliant, successful. Most of us don’t get even get close to that level of external “success.”
But what every one of us can be, is to connect every day to our authenticity, our deepest source of well-being, and the highest calling within us.
If we each can define success in that kind of deep and spiritual way, then all of us can be lifted up. All of us can succeed.
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This post was previously published on www.georgekao.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.
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Photo credit: Istockphoto.com