How to define a ‘successful life’

Amy Haworth
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

“If you only master yourself and you don’t help anyone else, we’d call you happy, but nobody would define you as successful. If you want to be undeniably successful, you need to both master yourself and help others.”
(Derek Sivers on episode #325 of the Tim Ferriss podcast)

There’s a lot of focus on ‘career development’ these days. And, I’m struck by how infrequently ‘helping others’ is mentioned as a critical piece of developing our careers.

Helping others is career development “cross-training” and it has an exponential reward.

By cross-training, I mean it’s an indirect path to the same result. For example, to become more confident, the fastest path is not necessarily diving head-long into things that you’re not great at doing or make you feel insecure. How about doing more of the things you’re awesome at doing?

Same with developing a career. Rather than focusing on me, me, me…(my skills, my career path, my promotion)…consider spending part of your career-development time with a you, you, you approach.(your next opportunity, your feedback, the door I can open for you). (By the way, here’s what I’ve learned about developing the career of your dreams).

Researchers have tried to measure the impact of making a difference in the lives of others. When I Googled, this quote struck me:

“According to a study in Social Science & Medicine, a person who volunteers more than monthly, but less than weekly is 12% more likely to report being very happy and a person who volunteers weekly is 16% more likely to report being very happy. Volunteering weekly is like moving from an income of less than $20,000 to an income between $75,000 and $100,000!” (From Psychology Today)

And, this short, beautiful post by Joshua Becker on Becoming Minimalist explains why:

“Inherently, we know we have been designed to live for something greater than ourselves. Our contribution to this world has to be measured by something more meaningful than the size of our house or the neighborhood where it is located. And our lives are going to find lasting significance in how we choose to live them… and how we enable others to live theirs.”

In the podcast episode that is the source of this week’s quote, Tim Ferriss asks three undeniably successful people what defines a successful life.

I ask you the same: In your perspective, what defines a successful life? What changes do you need to make to align to your definition of a successful life?

I write words of encouragement on my blog Nobody Makes It Alone. Subscribe for weekly doses of encouragement. I have shared some other thoughts on LinkedIn over the years (mostly on organizational change management and leadership, which is the focus of my career right now). While I don’t tweet often, I do find and share some gems on Twitter periodically at @chng4good.

I believe in human potential, and seek to encourage others to live their best life. Blogging since Jan 2018 at www.nobodymakesitalone.com

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